flash friday 2-21-14, grenade, styl;e, smoke, fortune in Flash Friday

“Are you with the bride or the groom?”

“Boss, it’s me, I’m with the caterer.”

“Really? That center piece looks like an armory for the in laws, what’re those, grenades?”

“Pineapples boss, you said pineapples, you said there was supposed to be pineapples.”

“Peeled and splayed dumbass. You got your better homes and gardens subscription mixed with your guns and ammo.”

The boss trotted off to yell at someone else. Glen palmed a pineapple in his large hands, looking at it from different angles.

“God grant me the serenity …” he started in that flat affect chant that prayer is so often done in.

I interrupted him.

“C’mon I’ll show you how to peel and splay a pineapple.”

I took him out back where the boss wouldn’t find us, where I could grab a smoke, where I could go all of Mice and Men with Glen. You know, treat like a real person. Protect him.

The last time the boss heard him go into the serenity prayer he went off.

“You know that is all kinds of fucked up. It’s like going to an uncle you’ve never met and saying ‘Hey, uncle Joe was it? I’m into a bookie for a few k, I can’t pick a pony to save my soul, can you spot me some cash?’ Except the uncle might say something like ‘You avoid me your whole life and now you come to me to bail you out of your own fuck up?’ or he might say ‘Sure’ or ‘Yes, you can work it off’. God? He ain’t going to say nothing, but if he did it’d be something like ‘You never talked to me before, use my first name like we were friends and you want serenity, acceptance, courage and wisdom. Pretty tall order, what’re you going to do for me? So far I gave you a life and place to keep it and you fucked it all up, and you didn’t ask me to help you not fuck it up, you’re asking me to fix it.’ Fucking junkies, I swear, if there wasn’t a targeted jobs tax credit I wouldn’t hire a single motherfucker whose even heard of the twelve steps.”

Yelling at Glen was just mean. It wasn’t going to stick, it wasn’t going to make the gig move quicker, it had no other purpose than giving the boss a whipping boy to get his mega-maniacal ya-yas out on.

“Ok, now, you see that hard core in the middle?”

Glen nodded.

“We’re going make strips … wait, just watch me … don’t go all the way, just about three quarters like this … see? We’ll do it all around and then bend them back. Just watch.” I made the juicy splayed pineapple, ugly, but what the boss wanted. I walked Glen through his own.

“Good. You know Glen, you’re not stupid. You’re a good man. Don’t let the boss get to you. He’s really just scared.”

Glen looked at me. It was a serious look, unblinking, fearless and stoic. But mostly it was sad with deep comprehension. “I know,” he said, “I know. It’s why I stick around.”