It's one p.m., and Forkboy and I are hungry. Not just hungry in the sense that it's lunchtime, and we feel like we should eat. Hungry in the sense that we're hung over, radish-eyed and slow, and even though we've done nothing more strenuous than sleep for the past nine hours, it feels like if we don't get as much of the worst food available into ourselves as possible, stat, then we'll die.
Indian style on either side of a cheap glass-and-aluminum coffee table, in an oblong rectangle of sunlight while Montel Williams wows a questionable crowd on the tube, Forkboy and I have The Munchies.
Time doesn't pass so much as it stretches out toward some distant point on the horizon, where when we get there, assuming we can, a little time will have passed. I forget I'm hungry. I forget which particular relational difficulty Montel's guests are undergoing, so I spend the rest of the interminable segment rediscovering their emotional strife, unmindful of the stark caption at the screen's lower left-hand corner detailing the problem. Then a commercial for a fast-food hamburger chain comes on, reminding me that I'm hungry.
I look over at Forkboy, sending out wave after wave of lazy taciturn communication to help him remember that I'm here, and that I'm hungry.
It works. He swivels his head in my direction, and smiles beatifically.
"I'm hungry," he says.
We set upon deciding exactly what we want to eat. I've never been good at this part. It takes four days, during which, miraculously, only four minutes actually pass. Proximity and frugality prevail; Taco Bell it is. Keys, shoes, sunglasses and suitable music are haltingly sought, found, forgotten, sought again and found in hand. I wonder if perhaps there's a Montel Marathon on, but it's still just a little after one when we step out into the bright Temple Terrace early afternoon. This seems impossible.
Forkboy has a badass car.
It's a dark gray Chevrolet Caprice Classic with an Alpine CD changer and a backseat of roughly the same size and comfort level as your average backyard swimming pool. It will be stolen, twice, but now, in 1991, even though he can be a little keyed up about the car's safety, I love it when he drives. South across the Howard Frankland every week to Club Detroit's Channel Zero night; listening to Soundgarden's Ultra Mega OK or the first Buck Pets album throbbing, slamming illegal quarter beers and who cares that my 1980 diesel Rabbit would get us there for 50 cents or so, were it running.
But we're not going to St. Pete. We're going to the Taco Bell at Fowler and 56th Avenue, the one that I've loved since my first trip to Tampa — we stopped there after leaving Busch Gardens, and it was hidden back in the palms. It takes forever, not only because getting anywhere in Temple Terrace's bright, humid sprawl takes forever, but also because we're doing about 23 miles per hour, and I've got the sneaking suspicion that Forkboy has forgotten where we're going exactly one more time than he's remembered.
Two really, really long songs later, we pull into the parking lot, and spend another really, really long song obtusely discussing whether we're going to dine in or drive through. I can't pull together an eloquent argument for whichever side it was I originally decided to favor. Neither can he, but we find ourselves negotiating a line leading up to a uniformed employee manning a cash register, so one of us must've been pretty convincing.
I'm really worried about having my order ready when I get to the counter. It's important; I don't want to look like I'm baked, or anything. Some people take forever to figure out what they want, as if they hadn't even considered it during line-time. As if they didn't know they were waiting in a fast food restaurant to order fast food, but were rather sleepwalking, and the restaurant employee woke them up with his or her polite inquiry regarding what they felt like eating.
Sleepwalking is weird, you know? I used to sleepwalk when I was a kid, especially when my family traveled in our RV. It was used, but in pretty good shape, with fake walnut finishing, a fully functional kitchen, the works. There was a bed over the driver's and passenger's seats, like a bunk. I never slept there, because I would sleepwalk, and I didn't want to fall out of the bunk onto the dining room table that dropped down and made the booths into another bed. My sister slept there. Pretty weird, sleeping on the dining room table. One time, my sister wanted to drive the RV …
"May I take your order, sir?"
Shit.
I panic. A bunch of trademarked, semi-Mexican sounding words come out of my mouth, and the employee seems satisfied. Everybody knows it doesn't matter what you order at Taco Bell, anyway. Beyond your preference for crunchy tortillas or soft, everything is made of the same five or six ingredients and sauces.
Forkboy handles himself much better, and soon we're sitting in a booth beside a large picture window soap-painted with specially priced items, shoving various combinations of beef, beans, cheese, onions and red sauce into our faces. It's heaven. Until Forkboy glances casually out at his Caprice Classic, does a double-take, and slams his Chilito or MexiMelt or whatever the hell it is down on its unrolled paper wrapper in disgust.
"God DAMN it!"
"What?"
He gestures with his head toward the car. I take a look.
The shotgun window is rolled completely down.
I am ashamed. I am mortified.
"Is it so tough to remember to roll up the window?" Fork asks, as pissed as I've ever seen him, boiling, completely out of sorts. "I mean, do you want my car to get stolen? Jesus CHRIST!"
I can't even eat, for a minute.
"Dude, you need to get it together," he says. "It's ridiculous. All my shit's in there. FUCK!"
Forkboy slides out of the smooth plastic booth without another word. He sort of flings both the inner and outer glass doors of the Taco Bell's vestibule open, and makes a beeline for the Caprice Classic. Rounding its generous hindquarters, he stops outside the driver's side door and reaches into his pocket for his keys, because he can roll up the shotgun window from his side of the car. Then his manner changes. He slows, and opens the driver's side door. And straightens, and looks at me, over the roof and through the restaurant window, with the weirdest expression, half confusion, half smirk.
So I slide out of the smooth plastic booth, and sort of fling both the inner and outer glass doors of the Taco Bell's vestibule open, and make a beeline for the Caprice Classic. I figure it's too late, the radio's been stolen, our CDs are gone.
When I get to Forkboy's badass car, it takes several chewed-taffy seconds, but when it clicks, I start to laugh. It's the kind of huge guffaw you really wouldn't ever want to expel in public, and it feels like it's never going to stop.
Forkboy just looks at me, that strange combination of bewilderment and cynicism still in his features.
I just keep laughing.
Because the keys to the Caprice Classic are still in the ignition.
And the car is still running.
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2003.