Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
(Art by spoon+fork.)
I was about to cross the street, far from the crosswalk, when I had to stop for a Jetta coming down.
It was moving just fast enough that I couldn’t cross the street but also slow enough that the driver wanted me to know he was holding me up on purpose.
I swept both arms to the left to suggest that the car speed the fuck up. To my amazement, the car turned slightly and bared down upon me. The sun was low and threw a glare on the windshield so I didn’t see Mrs. Angrywall in the driver’s seat until she was nearly on top of me.
“I thought it was you, Sean!” she yelled out the window.
“Hi, Mrs. Angrywall.”
“Can I give you a ride?”
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“You’re just driving around?”
She smiled and shrugged.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said. “I don’t want to piss off your husband.”
“It won’t piss him off.”
“He looked pretty mad last time I saw him.”
“That’s how he gets from time to time.”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s out of town right now, if that really makes a difference to you.”
I shook my head and came around to the passenger side. I sat down and strapped myself in.
“Which way?” she asked as she let up off the brake.
“Go down to the third light, make a left.”
“Are you just going to go home now?”
“That’s what people do when they’re done with work.”
“No! The Americans go out and have fun in tacky corporate pseudo-pubs! Go down to Applebee’s or TGIFs!”
“I’ve never been to a TGIF! That’s for yuppies!”
“Do you want to go now?”
“God, no. What’s gotten into you, Mrs. Angrywall?”
(Art by spoon+fork.)
We had to use the bathroom in the lobby of the Seahorse Hotel because the burger shack didn’t have one. In exchange for such a privilege, we had to pick up trash in the hotel parking lot, most of which was from our customers.
The hotel was run by the hindu couple, Mr. and Mrs. Angrywall. I thought it was a weird name, but I asked Mrs. Angrywall and that’s what it sounded like. She looked like she was my age, but she spent the whole day slumped like a grandmother behind the counter dressed in her colored togas. Mr. Angrywall was usually prowling the rooms on the top floor of the hotel. The ceilings on the top floor had caved in a few winters ago, before they bought it, and he was fixing the rooms himself.
“The dots are taking over, man,” Howard told me. “Have you been to our old elementary school and high school lately? They have totally infiltrated.”
“Why the hell are you going to our old schools for? Are you trying to abduct little boys?”
“No, I’m not a pedophile. I’m just saying, you’ve got little curries running all over the place. Our grandkids are going to have to wear turbans.”
“When are you going to have grandkids?” I asked him.
“When I give up on being a free man and decide to settle down.”