Munmun(55)

So Grace and I said some awkward goodbyes, me trying to drown her apologies with I Had Fun and This Night Was Great Seriously.

Then I cowered below the halfcar windows and listened to Grace Dad come out and gasp and yelp kind of loud and theatrical, “Grace, where were you, oh Grace you look awfull and you stink like drugs and vom. Ohhhhhhwow, oh dang, Grace how could you, what a bad betrayal, do you mean to tell me you were out addicting yourself to drugs instead of helping your family restaurant survive.”

Listened to Grace mutter tearfull sorrys and then escape while Grace Dad discussed with Gill a little, well ofcourse thankyou for bringing her home, nexttime though if you see her at one of these drug parties call me rightaway immediately, I will drop everything to come get her even if it means closing up the shop which ofcourse will cost us untold munmuns but nomatter, most important is that Grace needs to be studying or working, oneortheother, not suiciding on poisonous drugs.

? ? ?

The drive up into Wet Almanac was long, atleast for a halfcar, a little deathdefying too, no halfroads and not a ton of middles. Mostly we hugged the gutters of bigroads and scanned the rearviews constantly for giants roaring up on us from behind. I was a little terrified but Gill was super calm, the guy drove like in spacenavy.

My phone was trembly with messages, I was dealing with it by pretending the phone doesn’t exist.

“Gill thanks again for driving me home, I really appreciate it,” I mumbled.

“Don’t even worry about it, how is life with the Almanac cityboss, anyway,” wondered Gill.

“It’s good, it’s good, I mean a little stressfull sometimes,” I said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

“Oh I don’t need to,” I said.

But then the drugs loosened my mouth and I did babble like a drugster for a while, there’s just a ton of stress, pressure, awkwardness, got to learn math or I’m worthless, but the math is too much and I’m starting toolate, seems like it’s impossible but I’m not allowed to say that.

Gill said finally, “But you’re putting up with it because you want to be middlerich someday.”

“I mean, doesn’t everybody,” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “At some point, don’t you think enough should be enough?”

And he started speeching at me a little of, Warner, here’s how it is. Some people need to scale up nomatter how big they are, because they’ll never feel big enough, never feel safe enough. They get to halfscale, they need those extra sixinches, extrafoot, need to get to threequart, someday get to middle, someday climb above middle to oneandahalf, onandon, it’s all they think about.

Their minds are swirling always with pictures of living in a bigger nicer home, driving in a bigger nicer car, eating bigger and more illaborate food, starting to accumulate staffs, cleaners and cooks and drivers and then personal assistant and head of staff, people to orbit you like moons.

And that’s the only way they see the world, just scale, nothing else, scalemun is the only focus of their mindseye. And hey, I’m not talking about Grace Dad, necessarily, although I mean I’m not not talking about him either, you know, well howabout we just say forget I brought him up.

What I’m saying is, it’s okay to want to get bigger, sure we all do, but just remember it’s not the only thing, it always comes at a cost, not just time and munmun but your relationships with people, your printsapulls, the person that you are, stuff like that.

At a certain size you can still be happy, remember that. At most sizes really.

It was a littlebit the classic oldguy move of deciding it’s time for you to take the class of How To See Everything The Way I Do, hey polite respectfull kiddo, congrats, you’ve been enrolled freeofcharge in the school of How To Be Me.

And after a while I wasn’t really listening, just mumbling yeahs yups yuhhuhs and whiteknuckling the seatbottom while triplecars flew over us.

But at the same time, gotta admit, that oldster tactic works prettygood because here’s what I was thinking: well what if I do become the same guy as this Drivy beardo, what if that’s my life.

What if I don’t even retrack to Mathy, just graduate with a Lifty degree, work Lifty jobs carrying burdens and everynight earning a goodnight’s dreams.

And what if I marry a wife who breadwins also, working a Wordy job maybe, editing corpo texts up in some Sentrow skyscraper.

Middlelife with a Grace type girl, shy and kind and secretly bloodthirsty, looks like Grace too, infact let’s just say Grace.

Middlehouse down in Eat Almanac, going to beebeecues, throwing parties for our middlekids in a ballfield.

Warner don’t get ahead of yourself, dummy, who said anything about Grace wanting to marry you.

But I couldn’t not think it, zoomed the last few biggutter miles with a dumb little smile on my face.





DREAMWORLD


In Hue Family Palace ofcourse an ambush waited for me.

“There he is, Warner ohmygod where were you, what happened, are you okay,” cried Kitty, peeking out the sunroom window, other familymembers crowded quickly behind her.

I told them it was just a nice beebeecue, lost track of time, won’t happen again, if we’re being honest I smoked weeds with some friends.

This last piece of news might have been a mistake to admit. Because it filled everyone with despair and rage.