Slide through the doors of the convenience store. Live a little in your skin. This skin was given to you in about 1975. Friendship Wolfcheese made sure you got the kind of skin that earned you favor. Ask for cigarettes. Carefully enunciate the vowels and the consonants. Friendship Wolfcheese was very particular about sounds.

Marlllllborooooo Liiiiiights.

Feel the heat in your cheeks. Why the heat in your cheeks?

Marllllllborooooo Liiiights.

He doesn’t understand you. This boy of fifteen, with the fresh coat of paint on his face. Squints in your direction. He’s speaking, but the speaking isn’t happening in your ears.

Friendship Wolfcheese lived on a boat. He hunted for fish with a stick and string, and then he fried the fish in a sea of butter. Fish eyes popped because of the heat. Because of the way they were being cooked.

Marllllllboroooooo Liiiiights.

This boy of fifteen. He doesn’t know you. He doesn’t care for you. He’s got the phone to worry about and the hair to worry about and he doesn’t know you.

Point.

Marlllllborooooooo Liiiiiiiiights.

Point again, hitting the plastic separating you and the boy.

Marlllllborooooooo Liiiiiiights.

Fish eyes popping. More of a melt, really. Friendship Wolfcheese could melt a fish in butter whole. A whole melt.

Marlllllboroooooo Liiiiiiights.

Until the fish was just butter.

Marlllllboroooooo Liiiiiiights.

You could live without. Friendship Wolfcheese could live without. Fish could live without water for nine days. Flipping and flipping. On a chopping block.

You walk back.