The phone rings this morning. It's my daughter, calling from school. She'd slipped and fallen in the basement doing her laundry last night, and wanted my permission to leave school to go steal some drugs from her mom's house.
Sure.
It rings again, shortly before lunch. It's Patty again.
Can I eat lunch with you?
Sure, meet me at Frankie s. If you're not there waiting for me you go hungry, I only have an hour.
OK.
I don't like Frankie's. The jukebox is usually playing sucky music, either hip-hop or country. Bleh to both. Their Rolling Rock is outrageously expensive, priced as if it were an import. Their jukebox costs more than any other jukebox in town.
And Frankie is an asshole.
But they have all-you-can-eat walleye for about three or four bucks on Fridays.
So she's waiting for me in the parking lot, and we go in and sit down. Ten minutes later we still haven't been waited on. Some people come in and sit at a nearby table. A waitress finally takes our order, then takes the orders of the people who just came in.
One of my friends goes to that Quro shin, corrosion, whatever it's called. He reads your stuff there, Patty tells me.
Huh? How did he know I was your dad?
He didn't, but he mailed me a link to something there and I saw your thing about Mom.
Yeah?
Yeah, one of your friends made a comment that I didn't like, so I flamed him in a comment.
You have a K5 account? I ask.
Account? No, I just made a post.
This confused me for a bit, until I realized that the browser is set to log on to K5 automatically; or at least, it's still logged in if I don't log out. She had made the comment under my ID.
Don't worry, I signed it with my name.
Well hell, I guess it's OK unless you crapflooded or something. Who was it you replied to?
Elevator something... I don't remember.
Cruel Elevator? That's not my friend, he's just a troll. And you bit. Boy, did you bite! How many times have I told you not to feed the trolls?
The people who came in after us got their food and started eating. The waitress comes by. Need another beer?
No, just this one. I have to go back to work. In twenty minutes, in fact. Have they caught those fish yet?
We got our food about the time the people who came in after us were leaving. Probably tourists who had all damned day.
My tip was far less generous than normal. I was almost late back to work.
The Station is having their CD release party at Dempsey's tonight, so there will likely be another diary tomorrow or Sunday.
Chapter 42
Chapter 44