Alawnso Baretti walked down the city street like a dog with a cone on his furry little pup dog neck. The limp was noticeable and the boot that the doctor gave him was brutish and bulky, not to mention that it seemed to be chaff against his leg hair. At an intersection he joined three girls in waiting for the light to change. He had just finished Lolita in the car before the appointment and he fashioned himself a full-fledged nympetaholic, crazy-eyed and easily spooked by cunning black and white patrol units on street corners. The girls couldn’t have been out of 8th grade. One bared her braces at him. Every one of them were wearing their moms’ yoga pants.
One redhead, the prettiest in the trio spoke up, “I hope Starbucks still has the peppermint hot chocolate!” It must have been Christmas or divine intervention because they did. So easily pleased.
He stumbled up the block and stepped in gum on the boot leg. An unsuccessful attempt of grinding it off resulted in a bizarre birdlike dance. Eyes followed his performance from shiny cars. The girls passed him laughing nervously. Across the street on a giant billboard a Goodwill advertisement read “Buy a Child HOPE for the New Year”, however someone spray painted over the HOPE.
Ho. hum. Alfawnso lingered around storefronts eyeing bourgeois menus with dwindling interest. After studying a menu outside a self titled “Latin Comfort Food” place he stepped in and ordered a side of fries. The woman at the counter asked him if he wanted the three sauces that come with the fries. “If they come with it then, yes” he said. He paid at the counter, joking weakly with the waitress about the option of salsa on french fries (which she mistook for a complaint). He vaguely recounted a fact he saw on the news the night before that the average American owns 2 credit cards. He stepped outside, sitting next to the only two customers there: a young couple composed of a well dressed Indian guy that looked like Aziz Ansari and a ditzy white girl that was a stock photo apparition of a generic “white female” Google search. There were probably fifty empty seats.
Alfawnso listened to the Indian guy make Aziz Ansari jokes and the girl laughed stupidly. Back and forth they went, like a ping pong rally, Bam one-liner Bam *chortle chortle grunt grunt*. The man good-humoredly criticized her for going to Germany during the Super Bowl, and then whined that he’d be “the only Patriot’s fan in San Francisco” if they both made it to the Big Game. Life is just tough sometimes. The waitress brought out the fries and Alfawnso pivoted between the ketchup and the salsa verde, the latter actually better than one might expect. The aioli sauce decidedly shouldn’t have made the cut. He rubbed his oily eyes. He wanted to cry in his fries.
A homeless man pissed on the wall a couple feet away but the couple didn’t seem to notice. Baretti drew on the cover of a paperback book from his backpack. The book was called Even Cowgirls Get The Blues. Urine drifted down the sidewalk slowly and collided with one black medical boot owned by one Alfawso Baretti. It was almost graceful the way that the plastic diverted the small rippling yellow creek which flowed onto bigger and better adventures. He cursed the river and left and never came back to the place,parting with a half consumed plate of soggy fries and 53 cents on the table which was timely stolen by the vagrant that relieved himself on the brick wall.
Alfawso Baretti walked into the sunset, surely destined for better days. Although part of his boot and one pant leg were still a bit damp, he looked forward to the day when he could once again run unburdened by his aching leg.
naturesalute 