Ah, never mind: that ticking clock scenario is old and tired and there are other narrative threads to explore. Besides, if you can't come up with a tangible reason for going to Richmond...
So Ellen, Chick, and I prep the vehicle—which, it becomes clear, is sometimes a boat—for a more dalliant sally, or perhaps salient dally. Prep happens in the manner of a camping "pop-up": the roof, shaped a bit like an ice cream truck roof, though larger and, did I mention, aggressively beige, is raised on high, and we get inside. It's bigger on the inside. There's a queen-sized bed in the main compartment, and we need to set it up as bunk beds, which is actually fairly easy since the headboard includes an electric forklift contraption that raises a platform for the second box spring and mattress. The upper berth is mine. There's a strange glass plate in the stack of bedding, rectangular and lipped, like a bed-sized microwave plate, from days before build-in carousels. I say, We should stow this; and Mom (oh, yeah, Mom is there now) asks Why? and I say Because I don't see any reason it should be part of the bedding. And we put the glass plate in the back of the closet—which is now Nanny and Poppop's bedroom closet in their trailer—and I put the box spring and mattress up on the fork and my bed is magically already made.
Once we get the RV on the road, there's this guy hanging around who is at least attempting to socialize with Chick but is also possibly attempting to interview him for more structured journalistic purposes. Chick is having none of that. He's terse and brusque and retiring. The journalist makes the most of it, speaking aloud, framing his documentary story elsewhere so Chick seems never to have been his focus but just a random encounter. While he speaks he paints various parts of the boat. Chick is having none of that, nor, and paints them over a different color. It seems to me this is vaguely about Ireland in a green-and-orange way, but neither of the colors they apply is green or orange. I think it's black and red. At least the whole damn thing isn't so fucking beige anymore.
In what must be a flashback I am hurrying through the refrigerated section of a supermarket—and it is not my first time through this supermarket on the same errand, to lade in supplies for the RV trip. I pass a very sparse display with a few boxes of Cap'n Crunch, all askew from customer handling. It is the only breakfast cereal in the whole store—I am reminded there is a cereal shortage and I wonder whether I can afford the time to drive to a different grocery—or maybe a pyramid, offers Ben Carson—where my luck might be better.
And then I realize I have a lit cigarette in my hand. How the hell do I have a lit cigarette in my hand? Did I just forget I had one lit upon entering? That's very, very strange: it is not 1970. But of course I wish to dispose of it quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. For some reason it never occurs to me to throw it on the floor right where I am and stamp it out; I guess I'm looking, with increasing panic, for an ashtray or -bin. Maybealso I don't want anyone to actually see that I have a lit cigarette, and if I stamped it out they would see and I would be arrested. It doesn't help that the store is very crowded, so as I head to the front left corner of the store, where the customer service counter is, I'm maneuvering through closer and closer batches of humans, all the while bobbling a still-lit cigarette in my hands like a particularly hot potato.
And somehow I end up putting it on the floor anyway, and the spot I pick is disastrous: it is one foot away from an infant whose mother is on the floor as well, keeping her baby entertained while the line she's waiting in goes nowhere. And while I smoosh the burning cigarette with my shoe I cannot seem to extinguish it: indeed, new embers keep cropping up, five, ten seconds later, and inches closer to the baby! The mother keeps her child (who's maybe a year old) safely away from the residual fire, saying, "Let's stay away from those golden pearls!" but the baby is clearly interested. Don't start smoking, baby!
And I'm on the floor, extremely close to these people, feeling like the biggest asshole in the world. It was all accidental; I had no intention of; I'm usually a very courteous smoker! Nope: biggest asshole.
Somehow, though, I get a mulligan. The entire supermarket scene replays, and at the end of it I manage not only to get the cigarette out more efficiently, I somehow charm and quip my way through the villainy of having tried to light a baby human on fire—I watch myself ingratiate myself to the young mother with smiles and self-deprecation and wordplay. (I am at least part Noah Wyle here, in a fetching blue shirt.) I ask about the little girl, but mom says it's a little boy. At the end of the scene mom kisses her son's cheek, and I lean over and kiss him, too. We're still all on the supermarket floor.
Several years later and this same child is now mine, or at least in my care. It is bedtime and we are having supermarket stories. "Did you really used to shoplift?" he asks me.
—All the time, I tell him. Back when I lived in Delaware I stole packs of cigarettes from the Pathmark. (I omit to tell him about the more elaborate bouts of boosting and the occasional fraud.)
—Really, all the time?
—Well, I don't know. Maybe it was just a few times. I think every time I went, I was more and more afraid that this was the time I'd get fingered for the heist.
—Fingered. (Ah, we're playing the thesaurus game! This is a reliable precursor to sleep. He'll tell me when I've reached an acceptable word; if he doesn't, he's sailed off.)
—Picked up by the police. Caught. Arrested. Nabbed. Pinched.
—Nabbed.
I thought sure he'd go for "pinched"; and my mind does a tailspin on the workings of his mind: Is his brain doing a sort of routine statistical normalization, trying to adjust for the possibility that its positive response to "pinched" was artificially heightened by its coming right after "nabbed" which brain also liked?
—Ok. Nabbed for the heist.
—Heist.
—Theft. Lift job. Caper. (I flash on "I got pinched mid-caper" and then I really want to amuse him with "I shall pinch your caper and tickle your olives" but this is possibly too Dada for him. And then, brain stalls, moves on to verbs.) Steal. Boost. Promote. Nick.
—Nick.
—Perfect. I was afraid it was my turn to be nabbed in the nick. Or nabbed mid-nick.
And my brilliant sleepy boy says: I wanna be Nabs McNick for Halloween. Make me a costume.
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