I’m sitting in my car, an ’83 Subaru hatchback handed down from my mother, in the Gull Lake Café parking lot. The Café is the semi-fancy restaurant of the area and I’ve been here since day one, before day one, hired when they were still putting up drywall. My application at the time had said busboy—like MLK, I had a dream—but I balked when they asked if I’d mind cutting my hair—it was over the ears then, sort of Peter Buck or Rubber Soul Beatles—and that’s how I began my career as a dishwasher.
It’s dead this time of day, mid-afternoon, just a few staff cars in the parking lot and the dumpsters way in the far corner. I’ve got the black-and-white checkered kitchen pants on, still stinking and greasy from last summer.
I’m ready for warfare.
On the other side of the Café and across D Avenue is the southern end of Gull Lake itself. I look at the dashboard clock. In five minutes I’ll be late for work.
I leave the car and walk down to the bay, onto the public dock, out among the lake people and their screaming tans. Behind me is the Gull Lake Market, to my left is the Filling Station, the place for burgers and ice cream. Both doors have leather strips of bells that jingle infinitely.
The day is pure blueness, all sky and water.
I turn around and see Dale the Hippie ahead. Dale and I started on dish together, hired the same day, but he stayed on after I left that fall, the fall of Desert Shield, and he’s been there ever since. “Vim Sweeney,” he says with slow stoner voice. He’s leaning against a mountain bike, holding a mini thing of orange juice, long blond hair vaguely wet or greasy.
“Say there, Dale. What’s the good word?”
“Hydroponic.”
“Do go on.”
“Skip tells me you called him up, signed on for another tour.”
Skip is my boss, head chef and co-owner of the Café. “That’s true. I’m on my way there now.”
“Ouch. I’m off today. Takin a little ride. One end of the lake to the other. Plus check it,” pulling down both eyelids, “I’m completely baked.”
Dale is one of those guys who can get high and function perfectly in the world, talk to the cops, give a deposition, do the alphabet backward, whatever.
“Still a dish dog?” he says.
I nod and look away. He’s wearing only thumbnail-sized Umbros, a pair of Tevas and a fanny pack for his pot materials.
“You maybe heard I’m a salad boy now.”
“Sure, who hasn’t? It’s all over Reuters and CNN.”
“You’re a funny guy, Sweeney, I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”
“Still taking classes?”
“The U of L, duder. University of Life. It’s a big old shitty school.”
“I applied there,” I say. “Didn’t get in.”
“I’m . . . fuck,” he says, “I’m hungry.”
“So go eat.”
“Eatin’s for pussies.” He flashes the old thumbs-up and then pedals away.