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Jass Richards
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Category:
Humor
Publisher: Magenta
ISBN-10: 1926891422
Type: Fiction
Pages: 286
Copyright: 2011
ISBN-13: 9781926891422
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
A coming of age story. For those in their forties.
Rev and Dylan are intelligent, sensitive, idealistic, enthusiastic, and – utter failures. When they reconnect twenty years after teacher’s college, Rev is en route to Montreal to see the fireworks festival. (Something with great social and political import.) (Oh shut up. I tried. For twenty years. So to hell with it.) Dylan goes along for the ride. (Typical.) They get stoned and change the world. Not necessarily in that order.
The Road Trip Dialogues by Jass Richards
Excerpt
She pulled on the door to the auto shop from the outside, and he pulled from the inside. Thus demonstrating the law of reality that says when two or more people do exactly the same thing, it has no effect whatsoever on the world at large.
“Dylan?” she then said through the glass. Amazed.
“Rev?” he said back. Equally amazed.
They tried again. As people who want to change the world at large do. Only this time they both pushed. Demonstrating exactly the kind of teamwork they’d perfected back in teacher’s college. They eventually coordinated their actions and were face to face.
She was so not a hugger and he just kind of was, so you know how that part went.
“Well,” she said. And then didn’t say anything else.
So that hadn’t changed, he thought. Happily, he realized. Her capacity for small talk had always approached nonexistent.
“What are you doing here?” she said next. Okay, that sounded wrong, she thought, fully aware of her arrested social development, but not really giving a damn.
She took in the well-worn jeans, the lime green t-shirt, and the second-hand suit coat he managed to make so very his own. Still loose and lean. The pink rat’s tail was gone though.
“I thought you were teaching up in, what was it—Nelson?”
“Yeah…”
“You were all excited about it. Small community, informal school. I was a bit surprised, actually. Thought you’d go for the action of some inner city school.”
“Yeah, well, that must’ve been Monday.”
She waited.
“Tuesday I joined a bunch of drunken Indians,” he smiled cheerfully, the Irish lilt still in his voice, “and we formed a band.”
She broke into a grin. Typical Dylan, really.
“What’d you call yourselves?”
“A Bunch of Drunken Indians.”
She burst out laughing.
“I didn’t know you played an instrument,” she said in the ensuing silence.
He hesitated. She waited again, sure it would be good.
“Tambourine.”
This time she snort-laughed.
“Still haven’t lost the laugh, I see.” He started giggling then.
“Nor you.”
They stood there grinning at each other. And then just sort of picked up where they’d left off some twenty years ago.
“Hang on—” Rev went to the counter, paid for her new brakes, then joined Dylan standing outside.
He’d gotten a couple cans from the nearby vending machine and handed her one.
“Thanks,” she said. She noticed then the knapsack slung over his shoulder, a larger bag at his feet. “So. You need a ride?”
He looked around, as if he were considering what to do next with his life. “Okay,” he said.
She led the way to her car. It was a black Saturn, polka-dotted with—
He studied it. “What in god’s name did you do—” he walked around it, “to piss off an armada of pigeons?”
“It’s globs of pine tar.”
“Oh.” He leaned forward to take a better look. “So it is. Doesn’t this place clean your car before they give it back?”
“I asked them not to.”
“Right. And you did that because…”
“It’s my anti-theft device.”
“Ah.” He considered that. “Good idea.”
She unlocked the back door for him to throw his bags in. “Besides, in the summer, it’s all sticky and a real bitch to get off. Better to do it in the winter when it gets all hard and you can just flick it off.”
He looked at her expectantly.
“I’m not standing in twenty-below to clean my car,” she said. But what she meant was, I’m not an idiot.
“Cars are not meant to be clean,” she continued. “They stay outside all the time. Where it’s dirty. Where there’s gravel roads. And mud puddles. Which they go right through without a moment’s hesitation. Most of the time.”
She got in and reached over to unlock the passenger door. “You’re going to want me to cut my grass and sweep my driveway next.”
“You have grass and a driveway?” He got in.
“Well, not exactly. But if I did.” She pulled out of the lot and onto the highway.
“So what, exactly, do you have?”
She looked over and just—beamed. “A cabin on a lake in a forest.”
“No,” he said. “What you always wanted!” He smiled broadly, happy for her.
She nodded. “My dream come true. Been there for over ten years now. And you?”
“I’m sort of between dreams.”
“But what about—”
“It’s in storage.”
“What—your dreams?” She grinned.
“No, my stuff.” He grinned back.
“You got stuff?”
“Everybody’s got stuff.”
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