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American Contemporary Funny

“Thank you darlin’.” Old Upjohn took the pie handoff from a waitress wearing a starched, pink and white pinstriped nurses’ cap and matching diner waitress skirt and blouse. He watched her retreat, brought his attention back to the pie. “Place is closin’, Lamar.”

“This place? You sure? It’s been around longer than you.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Maybe,” Lamar blew on his spoon of Jambalaya, “it’s so old they can’t keep it up to code.”

“Don’t know about no damn code, but I sure ‘nuff know it’s a cryin’ shame. People got their lives mixed up in this place. Proposals, weddins, birthdays, anniversaries…” Upjohn loaded some butter pecan ice cream on his bite of peach pie. “Hell, Clyde Barrow took a shot at a po-leece in here right after robbin’ that bank across the street.”

Lamar turned halfway around in the booth to look out the front window. “There’s no bank across the street, Upjohn.”

“You think those condos was here when Bonnie an Clyde was robbin’ banks? Hell no. You check your history, Lamar, an you be findin’ out I ain’t lyin’.

“I didn’t think you were lyin, Upjohn. Just you said it like the bank was still sittin’ there.”

“To folks be knowin’ that story, the bank’s plain as the nose on your face. Etched into their minds. Like this place.”

“So even if it’s gone, that bank’s still real to some people?”

“There you have it. Change is real, an it’s gotta happen, but when you get old there ain’t much left to hang on to, an here they are, closin’ another old folks landmark. Nothin’ left to hang on to, I’m tellin’ ya, ‘cept memories of things you used to know. Speakin’ along those lines, I tell you I took old Emerson Pitts to the dentist the other day?”

“No. Never heard you talk about him, either. This another man you played in a band with?”

“No sir. Emerson Pitts, he’s a neighbor over to where I’m stayin’ these days in the over fifties’ condos there by the grocery store size of a small town. Now Pitts, that’s what everbody calls him, he can play him some serious soundin’ ragtime piano. He’ll start out with Scott Joplin an continue to beat the shit outta three chord boogie till the sun goes down. But that’s it. Scott Joplin, Boogie Woogie. So no, me an him don’t play together. Can’t say I’ve seen anybody else play with him, neither.”

“Like a one-man thing. I saw a video on the internet like that. Some guy comes up, plays The Entertainer and launches into an hour-long Jerry Lee Lewis dinkdinkdinkdink, zhooooom, zhooooom key rakin’ piano solo.”

“Saw that myself, thought it mighta been Pitts but that was a scrawny fella with a beard. But it’s sad Boogie Woogie’s all they got to hang on to.”

“You were sayin’ about this Pitts an a trip to the dentist?”

“I was. See, Pitts was out in the play yard throwin’ horseshoes with a coupla old bats. I told him bean bag toss was safer, but hell no. Don't blame him since they takin' to callin' it cornholin'. The short version is Pitts went to collect his horseshoes and stepped on the rake they use to smooth up the sand around the stakes. Handle come up quick and smacked him in the face. It was off center a little or it woulda broke his nose. Did a good enough job though, splittin’ his lip an look, see this tooth right here,” Upjohn pulled his lower lip down, “the one just left a center? ‘Well, it’s a cap,’ Pitts says, an it’s flappin’ back an forth like a for sale sign in a high wind an there’s blood startin’ to run. Now Pitts, he says his dentist is dead, or retired or both, an one a the old bats says she’s got a nice young lady dentist who’s probably available on short notice. Pitts says to call her an the dentist says to the old bat that called, ‘get the fool in the car an get on over here.’ Like if Pitts hurries, she can deal with him in the right now. All that’s secondhand, cause for me it starts with Pitts standin’ in my door bleedin’ sayin how he needs a ride to the dentist. I ain’t doin’ nothin’ but bemoanin’ the state a the blues over the internet with a fella from the Netherlands so I grab my keys an a towel ‘cause Pitts damn sure ain’t bleedin’ on my leather car seats. We drive off a couple miles down the road there to the dentist’s.” Upjohn shoveled a spoonful of melting ice cream and pie past his own dental work, put on a smile and a thousand-yard stare.

“Upjohn? There’s an old boogie woogie piano player bleedin’ in your car and you’re on the way to a lady dentist. Not the time for a transcendent pie moment.”

“You an them fitty cent words.” Upjohn lifted the napkin to his lips, swiped it left and back to the right, folded it slowly on the way to the table, straightened up like Moses about to let loose the ten commandments. “Well, we get to the dentist office. it bein' wedged in there 'tween a Supercuts with a old Mexican woman standin’ outside smokin’ a skinny cigarette hadda be a foot long and a place with a German name I can’t think of right now that’s sellin’ expensive little bags a pasta and I’m thinkin’ pasta is Italian, not German. Well, I park an we walk past the all dressed in black smokin’ woman and I tell her she oughta quit while she’s able an she holds up her cigarette an slides her finger out straight so I get the message. She has her some scissors showin’ in one a the pockets of her black apron so shut up an walk on."

"We get to the dentist an gotta get buzzed in so I hold the door for Pitts and I say to the glass booth ‘This here’s Mister Emerson Pitts,’ ‘cause Pitts, he’s suckin’ on a ice cube wrapped in a wash cloth, and the woman who mighta been a Sumo wrestler in her younger days steps around the counter, slides open one a them modern barn door things, only it’s a thick frosted glass number with some kinda leaves etched into the frosting. Sumo says ‘Number Three’ and we know which one it is because stickin’ out the wall there’s these square glass things lit up somehow an they're over more glass barn doors, only the door to where we’re goin’ is open. We go in an damn if it ain’t like bein’ in a nice Chinese restaurant, you know? There’s a fish tank in the wall an a IKEA lamp in the corner, the ones’re about four foot tall have the wrinkly full length paper shade? I did object a little to the shit jazz with oriental overtones playin’ real soft in the background but you know you can’t never have everthing just how you like it. Pitts, he looks at me kinda panic-y an mumbles ‘Let’s go’. I say ‘No sir. We come this far, seems like a nice clean place an ‘sides that ain’t neither of us up to wrestlin’ our way past the door guard.’ That’s when the Doc come in sayin’ ‘Mister Pitts, I’m Doctor Wu. Please, have a seat’ an she directs him to the dental business chair savin’ me any more argument. Well, she’s a tiny Asian woman, looks to be about twelve years old, an I see when she gloves up she has small hands, somethin’, you want in a dentist or proctologist. She’s all business poppin’ them gloves on an says ‘Mister?’ to me and I say ‘Upjohn, no Mister’ and her face gets tight but she points me to a chair in the corner where I can see the fish tank. Well, the chair is new, chrome and camel leather with a seat like a sling, you know the ones, uncomfortable as all hell, and while I sit she takes the ice cube wash cloth that’s all melted by now away from Pitts and drops it in the little stainless sink and I figure she’ll make a face but like I said, she’s all business.” Upjohn drank half a cup of lukewarm coffee and used his fork to load a peach chunk on his spoonful of butter pecan soup.

“So the tiny Asian lady dentist was a good call for your buddy Pitts’ broken cap?”

“Hell, you ain’t getting off that light. You want the story, you gotta set through all of it.”

“Like a sermon?”

“Zactly. An it’s the gospel.”

“According to Upjohn?”

“Is there any other?” He got the waitress’s attention by holding up his coffee cup. She didn’t bother to refill it, brought a fresh hot cup with her and disappeared with his old one. He ran the melted ice cream off the plate and into his coffee.

“Pitts?”

“Yessir.” He tested the coffee, nodded. “So where was I?”

“In the dentist’s office with Pitts in the chair.”

“Okay, so I’m tryin’ to watch the fish, but Pitt’s, swear to God Lamar, sonofabitch’ll argue with anybody about anything and the doc, she’s tryin’ to put this wad a gauze in Pitt’s mouth sayin’ it’ll numb the pain for the shot and he’s sayin’ something about ‘Oh no, I can’t. I won’t be able to talk’ an me, I’m thinkin’ that’d be a fine thing if it was true, but she pushed him back in the chair and held that gauze in his gum there like a wad a chewin’ tobacco with one hand and checked her watch an when she figured he’d had enough she pulled it out. Pitts goes to sayin’ ‘Can’t feel my lips’ an some other shit but it come out funny, only you can understand him a little. The doc, she’s ignorin’ him, an she opens the door on this little white box settin’ on the doctor counter there by the sink and frosty air rolls out, like when you breathe an it’s cold outside, an she pulls out a syringe so cold frost is formin’ on it when she turns around toward Pitts. Well, he liked to freak out in a full blown panic attack this time hollering through his numb fat lip ‘No needles! I hate needles!’ while tryin’ to crawl up the chair on his back. The doc, she looks at me like I’m gonna help an I shrug an she says ‘It happens. Calm down Mister Pitts. See? I’m putting the syringe away.’”

“Pitts, I think he might go to cryin’ and the doc, all calm like starts unrollin’ the hose for the laughin’ gas. Well, Pitts, he don’t see it comin’ till the mask is a coupla inches from his face an the doc’s got the ‘lastic stretched out to go over his head an his eyeballs go big as this saucer. He goes to thrashin’ his head around like a baby lookin’ down the barrel of a spoon fulla creamed spinach sayin’ how when he was a kid he almost suffocated treat or treatin’ wearin’ a rubber Frankenstein mask an ain’t ever put a mask on his face since.”

“So now,” Lamar pushed his empty bowl to the side. “Now the doc gives up on your friend and calls in the Sumo wrestler assistant?”

“Oh hell no, Lamar. I’m thinkin’ the onliest way she’s gonna get him to calm down is sneak up on him with a hypo a some kind, but you can see everthing she’s doin’ reflected in the fish tank, an say the Sumo woman were to sit on him, well, he’d stop breathin’ guaranteed. No sir. The doc, she asks Pitts can he take a pill an he lights up a little an says, all mumbly, ‘I don’t mind pills.' The doc says 'Good.' See no matter what kinda pain in the ass she thinks Pitts is she’s still calm as can be. She slides out the barn door an comes back in a coupla minutes an hands him a pill an one a them little Dixie cups a water. He pops the pill in his mouth an enough water gets in there he don’t slobber out on the little dentist bib and the doc snaps off her glove, tosses it in the little stainless can an says ‘Okay Mr. Pitts, I’ll be back in about twenty minutes.’”

“So at least he’ll get his tooth fixed. What’d she give him?”

“That’s exactly what old Pitt’s asked her an she said 'Viagra.'”

“Viagra?”

“See, now you soundin’ same as Pitts. He mumbles out ‘Doan know Viagra were a pain killer’ an the doc says ‘It’s not.’ Pitts goes to lookin’ all confused an she says ‘It's so you have somethin’ to hang on to when I start grindin’ on that tooth.”

January 09, 2025 17:35

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1 comment

Esther Squires
14:41 Jan 17, 2025

I found the dialogue engaging and immersive for a first post! The characters were well established and I knew who was talking when. The descriptions were just enough and I think you ended well. All the best.

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