Fire on the River Flint

The other day Latigo Flint strode into his local Starbucks. He was feelin' awful parched and reckoned a Mocha Chip Frappuccino would go down mighty smooth and slake thirst and soul alike.

Then Latigo Flint noticed the cute barista with mean eyes and blonde highlights behind the counter. The busy roar of a crowded Starbucks faded away to just the dullest of hums. Wavy lines and bursts of light danced across Latigo Flint's vision, and he seemed to detect the faint odor of burning feathers.

She works the afternoon shift, and it was the afternoon. Now I'm not gonna lie, I had a pretty good idea she was going to be there, but my plan had been to play it cool: Order my drink using none but the sanest of words. Calmly pay for my drink and quietly wait for it to be made. Then steadily grasp it and stride away with dignity intact. It was a good plan, a sound plan, a plan of which I was proud.

Unfortunately what we plan and what we do are so very seldom the same. (Especially when cute Starbucks baristas are involved.)

"Your order sir?" She warily asked as I approached the counter.

I cleared my throat.

"Um."

I cleared my throat again.

"Um, I would like..."

I picked up one of the music CDs they keep on display near the register and intently studied the back for some reason.

"Sir?!"

I returned the CD to its rack. Some distant part of me knew that this was where I was supposed to tell her my drink order, so I raised my head and looked her square in the eye.

"Yes, I will have... You know something Starbucks barista--I actually love you, as it were, with easily twice the savage intensity of a surface fire roaring up the oil slick eddies of a dark, industrial river."

Which, damn my insubordinate heart and mouth, wasn't a drink at all!

Then apparently I lunged across the counter and started licking her neck, and maimed her boss with a syrup pump when he tried to intervene. (Or so the prosecution claims.)

Anyway, now I'm sharing a ten-by-ten with three tattooed skinheads and a transient. I'm nursing a caffeine headache and a broken heart, and may have just been sold for a book of matches and a broken joint.

These days you're allowed to trade your one phone call for five minutes of internet time, which only a fool would use to post to his weblog, but, you know, I reckon I must just really like you a lot.



(Oh yeah, turns out they take your six-guns away at the door in places like this, so someone needs to do me an urgent favor and send forty cartons of cigarettes to a Bernard "Bulldog" Smith, care of the Burbank Department of Corrections. Thanks. More than you'll ever know probably.)