Thursday Night

Last night, after a day of sweltering heat, I rode my bike down the street in the dusk to the dive bar to meet up with my friend. We were going to have a few beers and help him make a list of everything that needed to get done this next week. He made a list. We checked it twice. Then he helped the bar owner do her crossword puzzle, tbars and Eli and highest mount in the Philippines. The basketball game was on, so we decided to go somewhere sporty where people might be watching that shit, and because I had tried to look cute for him, we went to ABC. I ran into the Swedish model interior designer and the glossy curled brunette from the Film Festival, and a guy named Kevin from Rocky River who was there with his brothers and they were all wearing different colored solid plain Ts which amused me to no fucking end but I was polite and didn't say anything. It rained lightly on the patio, and I could see huge flashes of lightning from the lake but the storm wouldn't break. The basketball game ended. The guy nobody likes won a championship, and then my friend was all like "well, okay, we gotta just let him have it, look at his face", which is the right and true way to treat athletes. We went out to the car to go home, and he decided it was too early, so instead we went to that jazz place for Blues Night. There was some musician there that he had taken lessons from when he was fifteen. I drank patron, and wiggled around to cover songs while he talked about existential crisis. The bass player was in a wheelchair and playing from next to the stage. I almost said things I'm not supposed to, but caught myself, like a lady. Or rather, like a good friend. We went to the 5'o'clock and got a sixpack to go, then drove to this warehouse, and I walked around the concrete floors in my bare feet, and got covered in black dust from leaning against The Best Car in the World, I named it Matilda and wrote it's name in dust on the hood. Then he put me in charge of learning to drive the scissor lift, and after about 15 minutes of "which button do I push?" "All of them" I figured it out sort of. He knew how to do it, of course, but that's a proper boy thing to do, let a girl push the buttons and sit back knowing you can step in before she does anything bad, letting her figure it out on her own. Maybe that's just a proper Bridget thing. Always let bridgets figure these things out on their own, despite their begging and cajoling.Then we went all the way up to the ceiling beams and I shrieked because I thought it might tip over if we shook it too hard. And I could hear the rain against the roof right there above my head, and the trains going by outside. He drove it back to it's rightful place, and I hung off the back steps like a hitchhiker, drinking a beer, covered in dirt, extremely happy.

And this is how summer starts properly.