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“An hour?” I shout, eyeing the phone on the counter. “Look, kid, I’ll give you…” Opening up my wallet, I pull out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’ll give you twenty bucks if you let me use the phone.”
He leans forward, the cash speaking volumes. He drums his fingers on the heavy wood. “Fifty.”
“You little shit,” Hunter scoffs behind me. “Do not—”
But I wave him off. “Fine, fifty.” I hunt through my wallet and toss the cash at him as he turns the phone around so I can dial.
I see a list of numbers by the phone, and thankfully, there is a number for a local cab service. I dial it quickly, impatiently tapping my foot as I wait for them to pick up. The moment they do, I bark out my address and where I need to go.
I breathe out a sigh of relief when they tell me no problem. But when they tell me, “The wait time is approximately three hours,” my sigh of relief gets caught in my throat.
“Excuse me? Three hours? Why so long?” Is this a sign, a bad omen that I shouldn’t go?
Hunter stands beside me, placing his hands out to the side, silently asking what’s up. I cover the receiver and explain it’ll be a three-hour wait.
The pimply teen decides now is a good time to intervene. “I could have told you that. There are like a dozen things going on down there this weekend. There’s the Nutcracker Ballet, Senior Citizen Picnic, the eleventh Annual Great East End CommunityPicnic…” He goes on to detail each event on his fingers while I’m seconds away from using my fingers to strangle him.
“And you couldn’t have told us this sooner? Maybe before you took the fifty bucks?” Hunter declares, leaning menacingly close while the kid slowly leans back.
He raises his shoulders, untroubled. “I suppose I could have.”
Hunter immediately launches forward and grabs the kid by the scruff of his T-shirt. He drags him forward while I slam down the receiver and remove Hunter’s hands from the terrified kid who yelps when I set him free. “How far away is the Mist deL’Océanfrom here?”
“Um…I…hmm…I dunno.” When he hesitates, I take over the role of aggressor and dive over the counter like a wildman.
I fist his shirt as I demand, “Listen here, you little jerkoff, if you ever want to get laid, you’ll think long and hard, as I am seconds away from ripping off your dick and using it as a doorstop!”
Hunter bursts out laughing, thumping the counter in delight while I shake the kid, demanding he speak. “It’s like maybe a half-hour drive,” he whines, trying to fight me off.
“Are you sure?”
When he falters, I drag him closer so we’re eye to eye. Items strewed on the countertop spill onto the floor. “Yes, yes!” he shrieks. “Please, sir, don’t rip off my dick. I’m a virgin!”
By this stage, Hunter is laughing so hard that he’s choking on his raspy breaths. “Oh fuck. This is so worth the fifty bucks!”
I let the kid go, satisfied he’s telling the truth. He quickly runs into the backroom and locks the door. I feel like a brute, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “Right, so he said half an hour drive, which is what, an hour walk?”
That shuts Hunter down immediately. “I am not walking for an hour. These shoes pinch my feet.”
I look down at his black loafers and curl my lip. “Are you listening to yourself, you pussy?”
He folds his arms over his chest. “Fine, but you can carry me if my feet get sore.”
“Fine, whatever, let’s just go.”
Snatching a visitor’s map from a stand, I storm out of the office, hoping little Miss Twinkle Toes is following. Thankfully, he is, as I can hear him mumbling how he’s the bitch in our relationship.
Unfolding the map, I look for any familiar landmarks to point us in the right direction. “According to this map, we need to go…” I turn the map upside down, to the side, and then back up again. “Shit, this is not to scale.” I stop walking as I try to decipher which way to go.
“Fucking great. We’re probably going to die of thirst and starvation.”
“Oh, stop being so melodramatic. It’s an hour. You’ve fucked for longer and somehow managed to survive.”
My comment puts a skip in his step as he smiles. “Boom! Yes, I have.”
We decide to turn right for no other reason than I think we drove in from the opposite direction. Ten minutes in, Hunter is complaining that the sea air is frizzing his hair.
“I’ve solved the puzzle of why you’re single.”
