A Snowball Fight

Posted by LVDIII on August 23rd, 2006 filed in Uncategorized

Phwap. A snowball glanced off the back of my head. I turned around to see Molly standing with another snowball in hand ready to throw. Thwack. She hit me in the center of the chest.

“Oh,” I said, “so that’s how you’re going to be?”

I grabbed some snow from the pile alongside the driveway and quickly packed a snowball and threw it towards Molly who was now running and giggling her way across the front yard. Swish. I missed her completely.

“Nice throw,” said Molly as she packed another snowball together. Thump. She hit me in the knee.

I gathered up some more snow and started to chase her. She ran across the street over towards my front yard. She tried to jump over the snow pile left on the side of the street by the plow, but her foot caught the top of it. She flew over and disappeared from view.

I quickly ran to her to make sure that she was ok. Splat. As I crested the snow drift, she nailed my forehead with another snowball. She lay on her back in the snow giggling.

“All right, that’s it. I’ll give you something to laugh about.”

I jumped down from my lofty perch on the mound of snow to where Molly lie. I began to tickle her.

“Think you’re clever do you?”
“Yeah,” she said between laughs.
“You think you’re funny, don’t ya?”
“Yeah.”

I tickled her for another couple of seconds, let her catch her breath for a second and then tickled her some more.

“You’re evil,” she said smiling.
“Yep.”

I stopped tickling her and her giggling gradually subsided. We stared into each other’s eyes, her chestnut eyes looking deep into mine. I sensed at this point I should lean down and kiss her, but being full of insecurity and self-doubt, I could only continue to stare into her lovely eyes.

“Lucius!” yelled my mother out the front door. She did not see Molly and I behind the snow fort Scooter and I had built.

The spell was broken. I sighed, knowing in my gut that for a shy thirteen year old boy, opportunities like that are rare as ambergris. I stood and helped Molly up.

“Right here,” I said to my mother.

“Oh. Oh, hello Molly.”

“Hi Mrs. Van Dyke.”

“I’ve got to go get your dad.”

“It’s not five-thirty yet,” I said with some aggravation.

“Don’t give me a hassle Lucius. Come inside and watch your brother.”

“He’s old enough to watch himself.”

“Lucius,” she said in a you’re getting on my last nerve tone.

“Can Molly come in?” I asked hopefully.

“Today’s not a good day Lucius. Goodbye Molly. Tell your mom I said hello.”

“I will, Mrs. Van Dyke. Bye Lucius.”

“Bye Moll.”

I slouched my way back into the house and into the living room where Scooter was watching afternoon cartoons. A female black cat had just slipped underneath a freshly painted iron gate leaving a white stripe painted down her back. Pepe le Pew was immediately smitten, pursued her, all the while she desperately tried to get away this amorous and odorous fellow.

“I’ll be back in a little bit,” said my mother.

Twenty minutes later, I heard the car pull up the driveway. My mother came in without my father.

“Lucius, come give me some help please.”

I sighed heavily and pulled myself up from the couch where I had so comfortably been watching cartoons. I walked outside to the garage with my mother to see my father passed out in the passenger seat of the car. I opened the door and shook his arm. He wearily raised his head and looked at me.

“Lucius, m’boy, you’re old man’s not feelin’ well.”

I could smell his whiskey steeped breath as he spoke. He reached out his arm, looking for help getting out of the car. I supported him as he wobbled to his feet. He put his arms around mine and my mother’s shoulders, much like an injured football player being escorted of the field would. We eased him down the basement stairs to his office and deposited him on the green glider in the corner. The damp coolness of the basement always seemed to ease his hangovers.

My mother and I went back upstairs. I could tell that she was holding back tears, trying to appear strong in front of me.

“I’m going to go lie down for a while,” she said.

“Ok.”

“I don’t know how much…” she started to say before reconsidering. She put her hand on my shoulder and then retreated upstairs.

•••••••••

I poured some coffee into my travel mug and walked out of our Hollywood apartment stopped in my tracks. I was disturbed to see the little man who wanted a dollar sitting in the bus stop shelter. The bus was due in three minutes. There was naught I could do but wait there with him. I stood at the stop and pretended not to see him, opting to inspect my fingers at close detail.

“Hello chum,” said the little man.

“I don’t have a dollar,” I said.

“No worry, my friend. I got my buck, bless my luck.”

“Ah.”

“Never underestimate the kindness of strangers.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“De bus, de bus,” said the little man, doing an incredibly accurate impersonation of Tattoo from Fantasy Island.

I hopped on the bus and found a window seat. The little man sat down next to me.

“I was a munchkin,” he said. “An Oompa-Loompa too. Damn orange paint made me break out.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. He pulled back the wrapper and took a bite and then offered some to me.

“No thanks.”

He shrugged, carefully re-wrapped the chocolate and put it back in his pocket.

We rode in relative silence for a while as Latino ladies boarded the bus for their hour long bus trip to Bel Air, which would be followed by an hour long walk up steep hills to get to their jobs as underpaid nannies and housekeepers in the homes of wealthy Angelenos.

The bus came to a stop at Santa Monica and Highland. I looked up.

“My stop,” I said. “Good luck.”

“Luck’s the confluence of the right knowledge and the right situation. Remember that,” said the little man.

“Will do. Take it easy.”

I stepped off of the bus and glanced at my watch, ten after nine. Shit. My boss was an asshole about time. I opened the door and stepped into the Wilcox Agency, a firm that considered itself an high power advertising agency, but in reality was so low on the food chain, it had to be content with being the company who was the primary provider of sign holders in the greater Los Angeles area. That was my job, I was a sign holder. That is, I was one of the guys you see standing on the corner of the street with an arrow shaped sign pointing in the direction of the latest condo project, apartment building, restaurant, or massage parlor trying to encourage drivers to stop on in for a look.

I wandered to the back of the office where the meeting room was. Dan Templeton, my boss, was briefing my fellow sign holders as I walked in.

“You’re late Van Dyke,” said Templeton.

“Sorry, bus was slow.”

“Leave earlier next time.”