A plunk on my face kisses the countertop. Chairs both sides of me spin, and bearing the whip of their smarting wristflaps teases up my hair. The waitress, backing off, menus us. Would we care to hear the specials? No, probably not. She doesn’t guess these two pay in pinched coin, so I’m game for whatever’s being served, right about tonight if it’s about me or them sticking together. Whether they run on when running over with their thumbs the stately foreheads of this country’s fictional dignity, the medals we like giving ourselves for rewarding our noble pasts, the partners are ready to spend them away first chance.

Driver rants up his girl, pulling her waist around until the chair circles. She could be clever. She who is into shortening locks with naked safety razor. Preys upon desert sunlight. I gather African tribal ritual-enforced is very keen. Her blade, fused to bent coathanger. She soldered its way with a lighter and powdered magnesium in the frontseat, now tells me no worries once we settle. She had studied hard on some jane’s flaky scalp. Did it for free without looking.

Your hair’s too stringy to join, he keeps working her fuss. This the drill you signed up for, Slow Motion. Meaning it’s her treatment, or I can forget those pancakes he promised. He jingles our stash in his leathery jacket and orders Denver omelets for the both of them.

Over their pitstop eggs I get terse. We have substantial business remaining along the interstate—a defense of numismatics. This might make sense. For obscurity they might want to let me keep my hair. If not, I bargain, with their stopping me over at each public destination for collectors, I’ll ask for the other kind of pancakes. Silver dollars. The smaller, thinner ones relegated short order; and then no one working here forgets those pancakes. Later our luck may get worse, shaved head next to shaved head, standing before the district attorney spinning a rare Susan B. Anthony between his fingers. He dares our golden broken promises to return plus interest.

The Ikes, I clue them in. Several stops before, a beat gas station attendant bartered for a fake Eisenhower I reluctantly offered, gave away as a 1971 proof. His mistake. First non-precious circulateds in the country. Copper-nickel alloy—though savvy collectors can put an uncirculated silver-copper in their hand and the weight tips them off. Either way, public ignorance being what it is, the whole deal breaks even (unless an old buzzard pumping diesel thinks he knows better). Ordinaries pocket like squeezed lead, same as the authentics. Worth a buck apiece and a funny look. They don’t go anywhere fast. They add up.

A diner’s no harm. Except who’ll keep spending with dull ingots up and down the I?

Surprise. These two get it. And their getting it allows me buttermilks. Flapjack style.

Until the pancake dinner slides plop on my right leg, I look settled. The partners burst out laughing. As they pick up for another table I’m left alone sitting on this perch, empty fork pointing in direction of the distracted waitress. She’s gabbing with co-workers plenty about warblers—warblers this, warblers that—a cabal of them in the valley that smack her windshield at night when she drives home. Natural conspiracy to make her guilty or upset. Meanwhile my leg simmers sticky, buttered. Curious melodrama for me in this state. Listening to a woman who lives off quarter tips feel sorry for birds.

Crickets at it in the parking lot bounce off car windows. Have been since Yuma. The heat they stomach well. What’s flying around blind inside seldom catches up to them.

I push the plate away.

Behind my back, the partners have their show going. I turn the chair. Shave-girl gives me a twinge in my chest as she thick-lips Driver on his pockmarks. There’s nothing that can’t be frenched, I’ve heard her claim. Why, she’s not at all disillusioned.

And yet I’m full of buttons and feathers and blemishes. Dishwater coffee. Real Eisenhowers.

What the hell is a speechless sort of bravery for the tired mind, owing scant allegiance to fair value. I’ll let the waitress have one despite her sloppy leg-job service. Since I possess true wealth. Passing-by has gotten far distant for listening to tinny pocket change hit the table. It’s late even by our standards.

There Ike goes—

At the metallic ping my cohorts stare me down across the tables. The fat, silver token slowing its tom-tom to a halt on the counter. Then the startled waitress.

Jesus I should apologize to her especially.

Does she see an evening already by their looks above themselves? Aimless entrepreneurials willing to shear brunette curls. Their mattress leans side-up against a tree away from the roadside after following a trail of dead warblers. Dirt and dust we’ll fabricate on our own. But being a part of their shadows underneath the tree because the tree stands outside a modest apartment where porch lights fail: I won’t watch for the unintended signal to call them racing upstairs but a demure potted plant by the windowsill to move instead, and, with its shudder, an asking through silence for a bounty of water that is singular expectation.