Good Behavior

The current draft of the story I wrote this weekend:

She was late. And that was familiar and reassuring.
Jason turned the coins idly in his pocket, wondering whether they were heads or tails and their denomination.

-heads or tails relative to what?

The wind kicked up his coat and, his other hand preoccupied with the luggage, he resigned himself to the whirlwind of wool.
Taxicabs were leaving taxistands, there were kisses goodbye, kisses hello, and amidst this every permutation of his current situation he felt strangely detached, as though he would not become the person waiting for her until she had arrived.

-heads. nickel.
He glanced down at the coin in his cupped hand. Five cents off and wrong by one hundred and eighty degrees. Damn.

This wait was good. He could recalibrate. Remember things like which side of the road was used for driving and how many miles he could drive over the limit before she took her hand off his thigh.
He took in his surroundings, reacclimating. He gave names to the things he saw, little nodes of familiarity. Terminals. Skycaps. That was the roar of engine noises. That was called the sky.
He fumbled with another coin.

-heads. Eisenhower
Dime. Tails.
Huh. Broke even.

Thus establishing himself in space, he moved on to time. History, to be accurate. It had been about thirteen months, and he struggled to conjure her outline up from memory. He started with her hands, wrapped firmly around the steering wheel, guiding her path to the airport. He began to work his way simultaneously up both arms to her elbows when his mind caught on an almost forgotten snag - a small scar on her forearm, from stealing apples through a barbed wire fence when she was twelve. It had bled for hours through her bandanna while she’d tried to hide the cut from her mother.
He tried again, starting from the feet up. Only to be thwarted again by a childhood of playground scratches located about the knees.
He stopped.

-quarter. tails.
Too easy.

Her scars were like town names on a map. He thought of where she’d been cut by the sprockets of her bicycle on a rainy trail in Oregon. He remembered cleaning the wound, gingerly wrapping her calf. He recalled gently unpinning her hair in the tent later that night...

He’d cast his eyes upon many maps in her absence, many towns and many names. She too, he assumed, had done her fair share of traveling, adding names, scars and memories.
He tried again, hands to elbows, feet to knees. Every inch of her body beyond these borders was impenetrable. Unimaginable.

When he’d left from this terminal months prior, the parts had been the same. But the individual pieces-the luggage, the jetplanes, the ticket agents-had all been different. His mind held the memory of an airport that no longer existed. In the same way, her body’s marks and memories were those of thirteen months past, inaccessible for want of existence.

-dime. tails.
Shit; wheat-penny.

Up ahead there was an aberrant spot in a long line of taxis: a steel-gray Ford, late and reassuring. The queue worked in pulses as the cars pulled up, let off, let in, and went out. The Ford advanced slowly and without rhythm. As it approached he counted the rust spots, let his eyes trace the scratch from the rivet of his jeans. There was an unfamiliar dent above the front right wheel. Nothing broken, just a change in topography.
The car slowed to a stop with a familiar sputter. She reached a long arm across the long bench of the front seat and let him in. She was wearing long sleeves and a turtleneck. He took his hand out of his pocket, finally patted down his coat, hoisted his suitcase. Where could he have gotten a wheat-penny?
He ducked his head down and got into the car.
She’d left her lanky arm laid out across the old car’s sagging seat.
He followed the sleeve up, up with his eyes to her face and said, “hello.”

The weekend upstate was fantastic. John and I developed a game. We call it "Danger Shots".

To play Danger Shots, you need, (1)a bb gun, (2)a target, (3)a bottle of beer and (4)a flask of whiskey. You set the target up so that the bullseye is a half inch above the top of the beer bottle. The object is to hit the bullseye. If your shot lands anywhere outside the inner target ring, you have to take a drag on the beer and then put it back. But if you get the bullseye, the other guy, specifically John, has to drink the beer and the whiskey. All of it. If you break the bottle in your attempt, however, then you have to down all the whiskey.

The game should never be played twice in a row.

You may also need health insurance.