Pink Neon Incident

She told herself be grateful for the drug dealers because they help you get better at writing. When they came onto the property she had little time to gather vital information while remaining invisible. She was getting quite good at it. In fact she was as addicted to watching as the addicts were to the drugs. She told her niece that she had one second to gather the most important information before the opportunity door closed. But how do I shut off the hunt, she wondered. Her jolted brain was always ticking away trying to solve problems and observe invisible clues. She tried sweating it out running for miles and she even visited a hypnotist once.

The other night she bicycled over to the Eskimo Cone for pistachio ice cream. As she waited in line in the pink neon glow she couldn't help noticing the perforated wingtips belonging to the large well-dressed man at the picnic table. Something struck her and it wasn't just a childhood memory of that type of footwear. Two minutes later the big man reached across the table and slapped his six year old daughter, abruptly getting up and nearly flipping the table. His wife moved in the slow motion of caution and embarrassment, escorting the gray-eyed daughter into their silver Mercedes. There was a child's glittery sticker of a whale on the back window. The car drooped when the man climbed in. She watched as the sleepy car eyes opened and blue LED head lights came on. He backed the car out slowly and then gunned it forward, spraying sand at the empty table. I'll bet that was Gene Gold she thought. Would there be a photo on file of his shoes?

Would you like jimmies with that? the freckle-faced girl at the window asked.
No thanks, just a few napkins please, she replied, landing back in the moment.