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We'll Have No Bananas 6.6.99
There seems to be this temporary lull in the calamity of my budget so when Lance and Shelton asked for ice cream I didn't plead the poverty line but simply made a U-turn into the parking lot of Baskin-Robbins, where a banana split can be had for five dollars.
But I'll be kiss my ass if I'm gonna spend five dollars on a couple of scoops of ice cream and a banana sliced in half long ways. I don't care how far uptown I am. And this, more or less, is what I told Lance when he requested the pricey dessert. I told him he could have the two scoop sundae for three dollars twenty-five cents.
Earlier, at the house, where the three of us men pitifully attempted to plot a course of decisive action, Shelton asked me would I change a five dollar bill into nickels, because that was his preferred denomination for gambling; cards and craps. As luck would have it I had almost exactly five dollars of nickels in my change cup, and I gave him a ziplock bag in which to carry the one hundred nickels. Lance was at the computer playing one of the game demos I had recently downloaded, not the one called Postal which is a top down perspective game in which you control a heavily armed, trench coat wearing, disgruntled employee on a contruction site, and people you shoot bleed, or if merely wounded, pant, very realistically--"I can't...breathe, I can't... breathe."
Miss Liddie, who ran the little store at Rocheblave and Dumaine, and put upon me the curse of children, died awhile back.
A and B 's mom, C, who stabbed cousin D, and then turned herself in to police, has apparently been forgiven, and is out of jail, but frankly, doesn't seem all that happy about it, or anything.
Back at the Baskin-Robbins Shelton has selected a strawberry soda from the cooler and appears to be contemplating payment as he stares at the ziplock baggie full of nickels on the counter, but a youthful, strapping, frattish, young man who seems to be in a hurry assures Shelton he will take care of it. Shelton looks back at me quizzically, uncertain, but with the beginning of a smile, which I finish for him.