Trade All of This In

Yesterday she had been in the lanky check-out line at Ikea when an employee jogged by holding a Border Collie by the collar. Another employee asked what was going on.

“It ran in from the parking garage,” he'd explained frantically, “squeezed out of someone’s car window I guess.” He then marched the dog away, as it wagged its tail excitedly.

She had watched the pair disappear down a corridor.

“Are the lamp shades yours as well?”

“Hm?” she had asked looking at the cashier.

“Oh no,” she had replied and looked apologetically at the man behind her.

She blinked and took in the long road that her friend was driving them down at moment.

“If the side of the road is called the shoulder, does that mean that you drive on the neck?” She said immediately regretted it.

“I guess, if you’re trying to get a…head,” he replied and looked expectantly at her while the pair was at the stoplight.

She had never liked puns.

Sometimes language was pretty, like the way her grandmother used to say emery boards instead of nail files. But she was dead. Sometimes when she had her music loud enough, she thought she could hear her grandmother saying her name from the next room if the bass line was going just the right speed. Once in awhile she could be convinced to pause the music and wait.

“What’s that?” she asked, motioning towards the monument towering alongside the road. She loved that sort of thing.

“Don’t know,” he said wiggling his hands beneath his leg to look for his cellphone.

“Pull over,” she insisted, with one hand on the passenger-side window.

“No, there’s no where to park and it’s dark,” he said while glancing at his cellphone.

People were always saying things like that.