Johnny America

 

Al Taller

by

They wait­ed in stiff plas­tic chairs, fac­ing each oth­er un­der the Yu­catán sun, two ro­man­ti-cyn­ics won­der­ing silent­ly how best to kill an in­def­i­nite amount of time. (The per­fect crime…) They stared at the clouds over each oth­er’s shoul­ders. They stared at the dirt be­tween their feet. She crossed her legs, right over left. A truck rum­bled and growled in­to the grav­el­ly pot­holes on the street next to them. The girl both­ered to look up. Neg­li­gi­bly, the dri­ver glanced back at her, then con­tin­ued his gaze down the jolt­ing lane. They kept wait­ing. Dart­ing across the rock­pile be­hind the boy’s chair, a gecko taunt­ed their im­pa­tience. They stood up and fol­lowed it around to the oth­er side. It was afraid and ran in­to a tee­ny lit­tle crevice, as lizards like to do. The boy sat back down, dis­ap­point­ed with the brevi­ty of ad­ven­ture. Be­fore re­sum­ing her spot, kept warm by the sun­light, the girl plucked a hi­bis­cus flower from its branch. She slow­ly and me­thod­i­cal­ly dis­sect­ed the flower, pulling out the sta­men and mak­ing a lewd com­ment to the boy. She was a pornog­ra­ph­er-botanist. With fi­nal­i­ty, she crossed her legs, right over left, and tossed the fuschia petal pieces to the ground. They float­ed a lit­tle be­fore land­ing. Then the truck came back, the same way it had come be­fore. The girl looked up again. The dri­ver saw them watch­ing the sky, the dirt. This time, there was an ar­ray of bro­ken rosy frag­ments strewn be­tween their feet. They would lat­er be eat­en by Kukulkán.

Filed under Fiction on April 8th, 2005

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Tyler Tomato wrote:

Were they drink­ing tea?

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