Sometime between cooking breakfast and the first bong hit of the day, I lost my keys. While I ransacked my car, a Ford with pickup a big white fridge in the bed pulled up behind my station wagon. A fat man with tattooed forearms and a Bluetooth piece in his ear stepped out.
“You live here huh?” I nodded, too stoned to explain that I slept in the basement, a semi-permanent house guest who planned on leaving as soon as the car keys showed up.
“And you like meat.” He pointed to the ghetto barbeque on the porch, a device Max bought at the thrift store a week before. “Can you help me out bro?” He pulled out out a half dozen boxes of vaccum sealed steaks, ribs, hamburgers, and pork chop from his fridge. He claimed the beef tasted tender, the chicken never cooked dry, and the burgers could be chopped up and tossed in spaghetti. After I asked him three times about the price, he opened a glossy brochure, showing a variety pack of meat for a mere three hundred dollars. But since I was helping him out, he’d give me a smoking deal or so he insisted. Five George Washingtons stared at me from my wallet, about all the money I had. Showing him my near empty wallet, he quickly noted he could practically give me a box of steaks for twenty bucks. I stumbled into the house, emptied Max’s wallet, and brought fifteen bucks back to the fat man, just to get him to leave. Instead of the steaks he promised, he shoved a box of hamburgers into my hand. I waddled back to the house, blinking my eyes, and wondering how I spent money looking for my car keys.
We cooked the burgers. They sucked. I fell for the hypnotic sales pitch of the fat man and got screwed. Maybe it was watching his jowls jiggle that caught me. Maybe it was the fancy talk. Maybe it was his blinking blue tooth. Fuck if I know. I’m just pissed I’m fifteen dollars poorer.