Where does your father do his barnacles? Part 15

Steve tried to follow them, but at the door Abbie turned back to face him with all the posturing of a mother baboon barking, “Fuck off my babies, boy!” A waitress moving at a barely detectable speed sopped up the mess and ran her rags back to the kitchen before Steve could come back to the table to wash away the taste of defeat. Soroush threw a glance my way as Steve finished his beer and grabbed a half-glass that was left by the girls. He dropped it down on the table and pretended to look around. Finally, he looked my way.

“Yah, good?” I didn’t smirk.

“Yeah, fuck it.”

Soroush kept his eyes on his phone. “We’ve all made bad investments.”

“What’s that app again?” Steve pulled out his phone and hunkered over it on the table like he was about to draft out a serious work of art.

“This here’s a brownie club, honkey. No whites allowed.” Soroush had told him before it wouldn’t work, but as Soroush had more and more success Steve just wouldn’t quit pestering him.

“I thought it was an Indian app?”

“Yup.”

“Are their white girls on there”

“Yup.”

“So, what’s the app?”

“Sorry white-boy, get your own app.”

“Fuck you, man.” Steve slammed his phone on the table.

“Try DiggR, Burger had some decent luck on there.” I was back to looking over Soroush’s shoulder. The olive-gold woman finally gave me a smile and I was drifting out of the conversation and into a possible conversation I could be having with the women with the sharp lips and the green eyes.

“That wasn’t luck. Burger is attractive.” I was trying to say “Why don’t you come over here?” with my eyes and “I’m fun but I can hurt people,” with my smile, but I was a bit drunk so I might not have been doing it correctly.

“I don’t get it. I work out more than him. I’m more cut. He never has any money and he just smiles and these girls crumble. All he did was go out there and bum a cigarette.”

“Yeah, but I bet they could tell that he really wanted a cigarette.” Maybe I should ask her for something.

“What do you mean?”

“Dude, when you bummed that cigarette off that Brazilian girl outside the hostel in Madrid it was totally obvious that you just wanted an excuse to talk to her and she knew it.”

The memory made me turn my head back to the conversation. “Yeah man, you doing weird shit like closing your eyes every time you smoked and holding it like a pencil.”

“You dicks were in there watching?”

“Brother, we were up against the glass of the window having a fuckin’ blast watching you fuck up so badly.”
Steve finally laid back in his chair and laughed. “God, at that point she wanted to get the fuck away from me, but I had no idea. She fuckin’ touched my arm inside so I was all confident and shit.”

“Yeah man, when she started on her phone walking down the street, telling you every way she could with her body that she didn’t give a fuck about you, we watched you trailing behind like a little lost puppy who smokes like a dumbass.”

“Fuck!” Steve pressed his hands to his face in embarrassment, but giggled to himself. “Yeah, I gotta relax or something.”

“I’m telling you man, learn a lesson from burger. He’s sincere and it’s obvious. If she says something that’s not funny then don’t laugh. If she says something you don’t like then tell her. Just say what you actually think.”

“That’s what I do on here.” Soroush waves the phone he’s spent all night on. “It works wonders.”

“How can you be sincere when you’re fucking telling them you’re Indian, you lousy fuck?”

“Everyone else makes the assumption about my race and if it comes up I tell them exactly what I think about it which is: it doesn’t fucking matter. If she thinks it matters tell her you don’t give a fuck. Hell, not giving a fuck is the key to sincerity as far as I’m concerned. That’s what burger has that makes women juice at the sight of him.”