She had a fictitious kid. We were sitting on her porch, drinking Ballantine Ale out of a grubby Styrofoam cooler with missing pieces. A slow moat surrounded the leaking cooler, expanding with the gradual melt.
In front of us was a narrow strip of dirt and crabgrass scattered with worn out toys. Her fictitious kid was named Randy. I never asked about him but that strip of dirt and crabgrass was where the fabricated child played.
“Randy! Put that down! It’s dirty,” she said. She looked at me and laughed. “Randy picked up a worm.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He loves anything like that,” she told me. “Bugs, worms, toads. He’s fascinated by that stuff.”
In hindsight, the fact that she had to tell me what Randy was doing meant she knew he was fictitious. Otherwise it would have been perfectly obvious to me that he’d picked up a worm. So, I had no excuse, really. I should have known better when I said, “Maybe he’ll grow up to be a biologist.”
“How the fuck is he supposed to do that?” she snapped. “He’s not even real. Jesus….”
So, I wasn’t allowed to play in her fable. Good to know.
“Gimme another beer,” she demanded.
So I did. And then opened another one of my own.
Crumbling Asphalt 