almost okay

SHERMAN WHISTLES WHILE HE WORKS
Chapter Two: It Rains, Pours, Turns to Shit

The sky was dark all around me, much blacker to the north, where pulses of lightning flashed through the clouds as I raced along US-30 trying to beat the back end of the storm to my hotel room. After hours of only being able to pick up fading young country stations and religious programming, I found a decent R&B station with a strong signal on the radio and had cranked up the volume to see what kind of guts the stereo had. It was Lil Mama, the beat stomping along, hand claps helping me forget my troubles...

“...They say my lip gloss is cool... My lip gloss be poppin... I'm standing at my locker and all the boys keep stoppin... What you know bout me... What you what you know bout m...”

KRACKABOOOOOOOMMMM!! The sky was split in two by a blinding vertical rope of lightning, the landscape momentarily turned a ghostly blue and Lil Mama died a sudden death. A push of the 'seek' button yielded a crackling, mechanical warning that sounded like it could have been broadcast from Mars: “...the National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for parts of...” I stepped on the gas, took a deep breath and kept my eyes on the road as the rain started coming down hard again.

Twenty minutes later I was checking into the Days Inn on Keller just west of downtown Lancaster. The room was a dump, easily the worst one I'd ever stayed in. Just outside the door and across the parking lot was a stop for the eastbound commuter train which ran all night, and the toilet took three flushes to get rid of the nervous load I dropped as soon as I'd bolted the door. I had asked the clerk at the desk where I could get a six-pack of beer on a Sunday night in Pennsylvania.

“You must go do de leegor store,” he had said. “Bot eet eez doo late. You ghan buy beer from de bar, d'ough. Eet weel be oben ondeel eeleven.”

I picked up six Corona for nine-fifty at the bar and the bartender threw in a lime for another seventy-five cents. I thanked him, dropped a couple more singles for tip then headed back to my shit hole of a room. Sleep came late and I dreamed about the pretty brown-haired girl, the girl who's photo was in the manila envelope in my bag. The girl they'd sent me here to kill.