Fog Bastards 1 Intention Read Online Free PDF Page A

Or that we eat the same thing every time? Yes, but dead men are entitled to whatever they want for their last meal.
     
     
The wine takes the edge off for both of us, and soon Jen's happily describing her day, and I am happily pretending to listen and care. She finishes, I ask a couple obligatory questions about which I care nothing, but I know make her happy. It is now my turn, and I think about commenting on the situation in Italy, but I suspect from a prior conversation that her primary concern will be the possible interruption of shoe deliveries if the country goes bankrupt, and this from a woman much smarter than me, who works at the most prominent bank in the world.
     
     
So I let something real come out.
     
     
"Suppose you could push a magic button that would end all the violence and hate in the Middle East. It would make the streets of Kabul or Baghdad safer than the streets of Beverly Hills, and save the lives of thousands of kids, but you would die if you pushed it. Would you?"
     
     
She looks at me with the most serious expression I have ever seen her make, and she's obviously thinking about her response.
     
     
"You have too much time on your hands." She laughs now. "Magic button." More giggles.
     
     
I try again. "No, I'm serious. What would you do? Push it or not?"
     
     
"I've never seen you so fired up about something so silly."
     
     
"Amuse me."
     
     
Her voice is angry, hard, in pain, something I have never gotten from her before. "Do you really think you can fix anything? How long would it be until it breaks again? My brother went off to fix Iraq and he never came home. Did it accomplish one fucking thing?"
     
     
I had never heard her use that word before except in its sexual context, and I had never even known she had a brother. Her face is actually glowing with anger, something else I have never seen before, and she doesn't stop there.
     
     
"Did World War I end all wars? World War II? Korea? Viet Nam? Did the war on crime stop crime? The war on poverty prevent kids from going to sleep hungry? There's no point in worrying about anything but yourself. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream."
     
     
She's not a super smart woman who is ignorant of the world around her, she's a super smart woman who sees too much reality. Who knew? And she's read Wallace Stevens. I reach out and take her hands in mine. The anger is still there in her eyes.
     
     
"You want to go to Hawaii with me Friday morning? No ice cream, but unlimited shave ice."
     
     
She laughs. I am instantly happy I'd made her laugh.
     
     
"No, but I'm going to lick your ice cream cone tonight."
     
     
I look her in the eye, trying to look mischievous, and give her something back. "And I'll put some ice where you shave."
     
     
She laughs again. We just hold hands until dinner came, and then talk long and hard about absolutely nothing.
     
     
The movie is, for me, boring, but I keep the tease alive for Jen. Everyone thinks she is purity and light. I know that there is nothing that excites her more than something forbidden done in public. So we watch a chick flick with her favorite stud actor, and when he appears in a scene, I let me hand slide to her thigh, or a finger slip between her legs.
     
     
When the movie ends, she tells me to drive to my place, and, after carefully buckling her seatbelt, promptly sticks her hand down my pants. She has my shirt off in the elevator. I have her pants off in the kitchen, and made good on my promise to use ice in a way not intended by whoever invented it, assuming that ice was actually invented to keep things cold. Not that I wasn't keeping something cold, just not something that you normally attach to the word cold. We finish with each other after midnight, and cuddle in my lumpy bed.
     
     
I fall asleep holding her, no thought about the consequences.
     
     
Fog dude apparently has no shame. Once again he's sitting on his boulder, guarded by the evil grass. I decide to