"Road trips," said Tony. "They're great, aren't they? It seems we're always on a road trip together. First the bus, now this. Even that night in the bar was like a road trip. It was like a musical journey of the soul."
I nodded. We had been on the road for about two hours. We still had another four to go to where we were supposed to meet Franklin.
"And we didn't even stop to pee," added Tony.
I thought about it for a moment. "True," I said.
"Although you did spit beer all over the floor," said Tony.
"It was coffee," I said. "It was hot."
"Right... right..." he said. "Because of the narcolepsy."
"What narcolepsy?"
"You were drinking coffee because you were narcoleptic. Remember? You kept falling asleep on the bus."
"I was drinking coffee because I was doped up on painkillers," I said.
"Oh come on," said Tony. "The coffee wasn't that hot."
I held up my right hand. "Broken hand," I said. "That's how we met in the first place. I broke my hand."
"Oh right," he said. "I met another guy with a broken hand once. His name was Alvin. He worked in a circus. I met him on the bus too."
I slumped down a bit on my side of the seat. The road ahead of us was empty. If only there was some oncoming traffic I could end this right now. "Maybe you should tell me about your bass again," I said. There was a bag of assorted junk food between us. "Better yet, give me a Pringle. You've got two good hands and I'm driving."
"Okay." Tony opened a can of Pringles. He handed me a small stack of them. I braced the steering wheel with my right forearm and took the chips with my left hand. I placed one on my tongue and balanced the rest of the stack on my left thigh.
Tony put the can of Pringles carefully back in the plastic shopping bag and tied the top of the bag in a loose bow.
"Why did you do that?" I asked.
"What?"
"Tie the top of the bag like that?"
"Well, what if you have to brake suddenly, or we hit a moose? The Pringles and the Pepsi and the cheese balls would all go flying. It would be a mess. You don't want cheese balls all over the inside of the truck." Tony paused for a moment. "Although they do kind of match the paint. I wonder if you could make a kind of paste out of cheese balls and cover up some of the scratches on the side. This truck could use some detailing."
"What if I want more Pringles?" I said. "And if we hit a moose, I guarantee the inside of a truck will be a mess anyway." I popped another one of the Pringles in my mouth.
"Well, it will be less of a mess," said Tony. "It's an imperfect world. The best that we can do is to do the best we can. Even if the truck is slightly less of a mess when we hit that moose, the world will be a better place than if I hadn't tied that knot." He picked up the bag, gave one end of the bow a yank and it came untied. "And it's easy enough to open again. Want some more Pringles?"
"No thanks," I said.
Tony tied the bag up again and put it on the seat between us. "It would probably wash off right away," he said.
"What?"
"The cheese ball paste. Unless we missed it with some kind of glue or something. Some chemical that wasn't water soluble. Maybe we could somehow harvest the orange dust from the outside of the cheese balls and mix it with some epoxy or something."
"Or instead of cheese balls and epoxy, we could just buy some orange paint," I said.
"Yes," said Tony. "That would work. But right now we don't have any orange paint but we do have cheese balls and epoxy."
"We have epoxy?"
"It's in the glove compartment. I noticed it earlier," said Tony. He opened the glove compartment and showed it to me. "We don't have orange paint but we do have cheese balls and epoxy. I like to solve problems with what I have on hand rather than, you know, dreaming of a perfect world."
"Do you mean that perfect world that has orange paint?" I said. "Tony, I don't want you to get too excited, but I think we may be living in that perfect world. Maybe things aren't as bad as you think. Maybe you didn't need to tie that bag up. Maybe we won't hit that moose after all."
"Don't get me wrong," he said. "I'm not suggesting we stop the truck now and mix up a paste of cheese balls and epoxy. For one thing, what if we get hungry later? It's probably far more important that we have some food on hand than to spruce up the truck. I mean, you're the bush man and all, but surely we should keep some emergency food with us at all times in case something happens." Tony undid the knot on the bag and peered inside it. He tied it back up again. "Still, it would be nice to clean up the truck a bit. Not with cheese balls or anything, but maybe just some soap and water."
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