Not carter house
July 1, 2020

The wind blew the thoughts out of my head.

And dinner landed in the dirt, along with the six-pack of to-go margaritas.

The wind blew the thoughts out of my head and dinner landed in the dirt when table tumbled over, the table with the avocado green umbrella, the avocado green umbrella opened wide tilted at an angle to produce maximum shade. One gust and the table lifted up off the ground and tipped over the deck. The man deftly caught the six-pack, labeled Dos Equis but holding now three cups of lemon-limey ice spiked with plenty of Vitamin T.

Nice catch, she said.

Not bad, considering how strong these are.

The soy chorizo super burrito had landed on its foil wrapping but his chile Colorado had slid into a mucky ditch of mud, a possible mosquito-hatching haven, a mucky ditch that she doused with Dawn dish detergent every few days. Just a squirt mixed with some water and fluffed up to sudsy. This was supposed to render the mosquito habitat unpleasant to breeding blood-sucking insects.

The wind blew the thoughts out of my head or was it the combination of strong margaritas and the open bottle of wine and the hot sun toasting my shoulders. Thoughts thoughts. The salvaged soy chorizo was sliced in sharable chunks and it was enough, enough, enough. He propped the table back into position, straightened the umbrella and cranked it closed, closed, closed.

A phone rang and she put the caller on speaker phone, the caller from Hawaii, from the big island. Our dinner just landed in the dirt, she told the caller from Hawaii. I want burritos, said the Hawaii caller. Are to-go margaritas legal? Now they are, he said, and they toasted cups to the air over the iPhone on the railing with the Hawaii caller on speaker phone. All hail quarantine! Shelter in place!

Are you still sheltering in place, because we’re not. We’re the wild west here. The tourists are back and nobody’s wearing masks. Not in the grocery stores or on the beaches or in restaurants.

Covid is over! She said. Over … cough cough laugh.

I might have said something like tell that to the 48,400 United Statesians with new coronavirus cases today, tell that to the people whose numbers broke another record here, another record in the world.

But she was joking, joking, cough cough. And I only had one third of a vegan burrito, one half of a bottle of wine and the better part of one whole to-go margarita. The wind blew the thoughts out of my head. Look at the honeybees getting bliss on the flowers. Look at the leaves jiggity jiving on slender slithey branches. Ants, armor gleaming, ascending Mount Chile Colorado with military precision.

It’s hard to tell who’s here, who’s he and who’s she and why delineate by gender and not they and they and they, the three of them the three of us of us but who’s counting, maybe they were we were feeling dual or tripled and you might as well count six, a half dozen to-go margaritas, enough Vitamin T for everyone and the wine wasn’t even gone.

For dessert, we picked berries in the breezy patch of the side yard. One ripe red berry, then another. Held up into the evening sky, tiny globules of juice in small packets, packets bunched together around a soft white phallus. Pinch the berry, stain your fingers. She inhaled details without words, without distinct images. He looked on. I looked away. They, they, we finished the food and swiped fingers into tiny containers of salsa until every drop had been consumed.

And that was all, stripped of vestige to simple survival, beyond air masses blowing and human consumption, eating and drinking and mindless being, feeding ants and bees and gusting away on another takeout Tuesday, another night at home, this same trio of people now for all these many months, the same he-she-they-we all these years,  all these decades. I didn’t want to ponder. I think, therefore I am freaking the hell out. No, no, no. Better not to. Think, that is. Better to keep the umbrella wound nice and tight, all the better to endure the blare of sun and the 24-7 news cycle. A marvelous solution indeed to let the breeze, the moving air, to let the air move, you know, to whoosh.

The wind blew the thoughts out of my head and dinner landed in the dirt when table tumbled over, the table with the avocado green umbrella, the avocado green umbrella opened wide and tilted at an angle to produce maximum shade.