4.
Joey waves and whistles to Nate. Nate flips Joey the bird and laughs. He walks on back toward the booth. Nate slides in opposite Joey and the men fist bump. Joey says, “How they hanging, Nate.” Then pushes a beer bottle across the table.
“It’s all good, Joey since I hooked up with Cutie.”
“Who’s Cutie?” asks Joey.
“I don’t know. I jus call her Cutie, I forgot her name and haven’t had a chance to look through her purse for her driver’s license.”
“Looking through her purse is a good idea, Nate. I shoulda thought of that when me Sunny was together. Maybe it woulda made a difference.”
“It coulda made it worse, Joey. What if her real name is Chester.”
“That’s a guy’s name,” says Joey.
“Exactly. Calling Sunny by her real name, Chester, is gonna freak you out,” says Nate.
“How’d you find out her real name is Chester? Did she tell you when you slept with her?” asks Joey.
“Chester was an example. She never told me her real name. I called her kitten while we was having sex.”
“Kitten? You got to be kidding me. Did she buy it,” says Joey.
“She was purring in my hands, if you know what I mean. No offense intended because at the time she was living with you. It just happened.”
“No offense taken, Nate,” says Joey.
“In school, you and me was never good at remembering stuff. One thing we could do was cheat. We never got caught. High five, man.”
Joey and Nate high five celebrating their success as cheaters in middle school and high school.
Nate changes the subject, he says, “She give you back your Barlow’s Beer Stop t-shirt?”
“Nah. I think I’m going cut off Punkin’s ear and send it to her. That will teach her a lesson.”
“Don’t do that, man,” says Nate.
“Why? It’s been a living hell without my t-shirt.”
“Like you could get arrested for intent to do bodily harm. I seen something like this on TV show,” says Nate.
“It’s a stuffed poodle,” says Joey.
“It don’t matter, man. The laws are crazy. They’re protecting everything. I saw a show where the judge put a guy in the slammer because he told his kid’s teacher if the teacher didn’t pass his son, he’d twist the teacher’s nuts off.”
“You got to be kidding me? That’s the kind of talk guys been doing since the beginning of time,” says Joey.
“The damn judge gave the guy a month in county and two-hundred hours of community service. My point being the judge will say if Sunny thinks it’s real, it’s real.”
“That sucks, Nate. I need my t-shirt. It’s like Superman’s cape or Batman’s cowl.”
“What about Captain America’s shield?” asks Nate.
“That too. You got any ideas?”