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Periwinkle

"Five o'clock break, come out to my truck real quick. Got something I wanna show you."

Last time Kelly spoke to me in such a conspiratorial manner was three months ago when Gina, the third shift lathe welder, gave him a dose of the clap.

Knowing his luck had improved little since then, I shuddered to think what might be wrong this time.

At break I followed Kelly out the back bay door near where he parked his Dodge Ram. He opened the driver's side door, glanced over both shoulders, and pulled out a ten inch dildo from beneath the seat.

"Check this out," he said.

Despite its mythic proportions, the latex cock looked unsettlingly realistic from the coloration to the puckered circumcision scar.

"Kelly, why are you waggling that dildo at me?"

He grinned like a masturbating spider monkey. "You know what this is for?"

Perhaps these last nine days of court-enforced sobriety had unbalanced his mind, I thought. Or maybe during the last two months since his divorce, Kelly had decided to explore an alternative lifestyle.

Regardless, I knew, with such hardware readily available to the ladies out there, it's a minor miracle I'd been able to get laid at all.

"I don't even want to begin to guess what you're doing with a gigantic dildo in your hand."

As if finally realizing what was dangling from his hand, he stuffed the appendage back under the seat.

Returning to the factory's innards, Kelly explained his need for ten inches of fake dick. "I saw this Ethan Hawke movie the other night on Cinemax and it give me this idea. I'm gonna hollow that fucking dildo out, line it with a condom full of your piss and stuff it down my pants. Next time I go in for a piss test I'll be ready."

Since pleading guilty to a DUI and possession of marijuana Kelly lived in constant fear of the color periwinkle. Every morning he'd wake up insanely early, like nine o'clock, and phone his court-appointed counselor. If the automated voice said burgundy, turquoise or magenta, Kelly could breathe a sigh of relief and crawl back into the bed wedged in the corner of his parents' basement.

"Periwinkle" and it was in Kelly's best interest to make an appearance at the courthouse before lunch to piss into a little cup while the counselor and all those civil servants and government workers sitting around with nothing to do treated him like a common criminal.

He had already failed two drug tests. Another failure meant thirty days in the city jail, trading stale danishes for toilet paper with good ole Otis.

It was time I asked the obvious. "If you only need a condom full of piss, why such a big dildo?"

"Vic, it's gotta look realistic."

"Who you think you're talking to? I'm half mick. I'm well aware of the Irish curse."

"It skipped my generation."

"I can tell by the way you walk you ain't got no more than four inches."

"How's that? How do I walk?"

"All stoop-shouldered, like you're waiting for a back hand across the fucking mouth. You look like you've already lost the war."

"Shit. You're momma will hafta disagree."

"Mamma jokes... The last bastion of the truly stupid. I don't see why you just don't give up the dope for however long you're on probation."

He looked at me as if I'd just admitted to fucking his sister in the ass. "And turn my back on the herbal embrace that's gotten me this far in this shitty world? What the hell's wrong with you?"

"I just thought you'd want to stay out of jail. Keep employed and what not."

"I ain't going to jail cause they ain't come up with a system I can't beat. Last thing those bastards are gonna be expecting is me walking in there with a dildo full of your piss."

"I see where you may think you have the upper hand."

"Damn straight. You still feel like driving me down the mountain to the beer store?"

"Ain't got no gas in my car."

"We'll take the truck. Don't wanna drive down there on a suspended license. Fucking cops everywhere. You driving, it won't matter."

"Clever."

"Not a system I can't beat."

"Cops pull you over on the way to work, though, it's another five hundred dollars you gotta hand over to the system, eh?"

"I see any cops on the way to work, I'll pull into the first driveway I see. Knock on the door. Ask for directions to Jablowme Drive."

"Where's that at?"

"Exactly."

And that ended the conversation for the moment. Kelly slouched back to his machine and I scurried to my welder. He stopped by again around 6:30 and presented an empty baby food jar. It was widely believed I had given up dope since my stint in rehab. Discounting the crystal I snorted three days ago, I had been clean. My momentary fall from grace, I decided, Kelly did not need to know about.

"Set it down, Kelly, I ain't gotta piss, yet."

"Better piss before we get that cold beer."

Cold beer. Time passes slowly when you're waiting on the cold beer. I filled the jar with what Kelly hoped to be his frothy, golden get-out-of-jail-free card. For the next couple hours I welded more cylinders than was customary. But, then, on returning from the beer store I did not intend to even look at my machine for the remaining hour and a half of my shift.

With ten minutes left until break, we were driving down route 67, myself behind the wheel, Kelly seated beside me. He lit a roach squeezed in a set of tweezers usually reserved for prying slivers of metal from flesh. He sucked in a lungful, relaxed against the seat and exhaled the pungent smoke out of the open window, not wanting to taint his spring of purity as it were.

Now, in a civilized society, procuring a case of Schlitz should be no more difficult than driving down the block. The South, however, is not civilized. The Christian contingent has seen to this. Living in a dry county warranted a fifteen minute high speed careen down the mountain to Guntersville where the jesus mongers held only a tenuous toehold.

In order to return to the factory at a reasonable time, I got her knuckled down at an agreeable eighty five miles per hour. Not as adverse to The Man as Kelly, I was a bit late in noticing the cop pulling out of the Starvin Marvin's gas station.

"Oh shit, it's the goddam Man."

"Relax."

I pulled the parking brake slowing us down by maybe thirty miles an hour without the tell-tale lurch jamming the brake pedal delivers. Didn't matter. I only succeeded in throwing Kelly, joint-first, against the dashboard. The cop swung in behind us and hit his red and blues. The alternating colors splashed against Kelly's slack face.

I pulled over. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

Kelly placed the remainder of the joint in his mouth and swallowed while I removed the customary smirk from my face. The cop pulled in a few car lengths behind us and immediately shined his spotlight on us.

"Oh fuck, we've had it, now."

"Shut up, Kelly, we ain't done... You ain't got any dope in the-"

"Nah, man, I only carry a joint at a time since my last misunderstanding with the man."

"Good, then stop fidgeting like a bitch. And quit looking over your shoulder. You're making us look guilty."

"What's he waiting for?"

"He's probably running your license plate." The red and blue lights approaching from up the mountain, north, doesn't necessarily contradict me. "He's likely got all the information he needs. Now he's waiting for backup."

"Backup? What the fuck for? I ain't even driving."

"Dammit, Kelly, relax."

The second squad car drove past, made a U-turn and pulled in ahead of us. The officer in this cruiser also felt it necessary to shine his spotlight on us. I tried to appear nonchalant, also taking special care to keep my hands atop the steering wheel where they can be clearly seen. The way the officer approached the truck, cautiously with his hand settled on the butt of his .38 was not lost on me.

I waited until he was standing outside the driver's door before slowly reaching over and rolling down the window. "Is there a problem, officer?"

"Please step out of the vehicle."

I could tell by the cultivation of the officer's mustache he was no one to fuck with. It was one of those bushy, dick ticklers you might find on stereotypical cops or homosexuals. The thing jutted off his face like a goddam Muppet.

A second officer from the squad behind us approached as Kelly and I climbed out of the truck. Mercifully, he lacked the Freddy Mercury mustache. He did sport the prototypical flat top, though. His stance, legs out and arms crossed against his barrel chest, insinuated he took notes on his profession from Judge Dredd comic books.

"License, registration, proof of insurance." The m mustache said.

I dug my wallet out, my fingers suddenly thick and slow-witted. I handed over my license after what seemed a small eternity of fumbling.

"Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr. Zahzaa... Zahzoo..."

"Zjanecki. Pronounced like it's spelled."

The cop stared at me for what seemed to be a long time discerning whether or not I was fucking with him. Of course, I was. Polish last names are never pronounced as they're spelled.

"Regardless how you pronounce your name. This truck is registered to a Kelly Halligan."

"That would be me," Kelly said, finally breaking his terror induced silence.

"You do realize your license is suspended."

"Well, that's why Vic's driving and not me."

The mustache ignored my grin and walked to the cab of the truck. Sticking his nose into the cab of the truck, he had to grab the door to keep his mustache from overbalancing him.

"Smells like marijuana in here, boys. Officer Buffet, do you detect the scent of dope?"

The Judge Dredd fan took two steps forward and inhaled. "I can smell it from here," he said.

They smiled like mules eating briars.

"Have you boys been rocking the ganj?"

"Hell no," I blurted.

Kelly spoke with a bit more tact. "You see, officer, I use to smoke all the time. Then, bout a month ago, I got busted for DUI and possession. So I had to give it up. Can't seem to get the smell out of there no matter how much air freshener I blast up in there."

By now, an officer from the cruiser in front of the truck had joined the pow wow. His duty seemed to consist of staring hard at Kelly and I, two suspected dope fiends.

"So then you know the drill," The mustache said. "And you wouldn't mind if I took a look around the cab, here, would you?"

"Help yourself. Whatever you find I'll whack it with you 50/50. heh heh."

The mustache hesitated a moment as he pulled on his leather gloves. "Joe Pesci delivered that line much better."

"Yeah. heh heh. I guess he did."

While Judge Dredd and Eyeball glared at us, Mustache systematically searched the truck. Kelly and I smiled sheepishly and stared at our boots. It was Judge Dredd who reinitiated conversation.

"You boys ain't on your way to the beer store, are you?"

"No, we were, uhm, going..."

"Going to Wendy's on our lunch break," I said.

"Yeah, Wendy's. Almost forgot."

"What's this?" Mustache asked. He held aloft a baby food jar. The way the streetlight glinted off the amber contents was almost beautiful in a modern art sort of way.

"That," Kelly said, "is a jar full of piss."

"No shit. What's it doing in the glove compartment of your truck?" He made this sound as though it were a suspicious activity.

"He couldn't wait til we stopped to take a piss so he pissed in the jar," I said.

"What are you? His goddam lawyer? Don't speak unless spoken to." The mustache hanging off his face trembled.

"What he said's true. I couldn't wait so I pissed in the jar."

"And put it back in the glove box?"

"I didn't want to litter."

He set the jar on the roof of the truck. "You better hope I don't find nothing else."

I knew the moment he found it. His flurry of activity ceased and he hesitated for nearly a minute as his mind wrapped itself around what he held in his gloved hand. Even the other two officers glanced over, maybe anticipating a pound of crystal meth or something just as newsworthy to help boost their ascent up the ladder of local law enforcement. There was a palpable air of disappointment when the mustache pulled the dildo out, gingerly, as though it were a rattlesnake that might yet have some life to it.

It hung there in his hand. We all gazed in secret awe at its monstrous length, somehow feeling less of a man.

"Is there a reason this is in your truck?" He seemed truly at a loss.

Excellent, I thought. He hasn't connected the urine with the dildo. Kelly's scheme is still safe.

Without missing a beat, Kelly said "yes, there is. I am gay. Me and my lover, here, like to jag each other in the ass with that thing."

The dildo slipped from the mustache's hand. The cops glanced nervously at each other, remembering their sensitivity training, knowing the last thing the city needed was another gay bashing law suit.

"Well," the mustache said with forced nonchalance. "Everything here seems to be in order. You boy's drive safely, now, and, uhm, enjoy your lunch."

He began walking away, followed by Judge Dredd. Eyeball had already retreated to his cruiser as though the latex cock would rear up and bite him had he stuck around.

"Excuse me," Kelly motioned to the dildo. "That's not where you found it."

The mustache gritted his teeth and, for a moment, I thought he was going to throw away all those weeks of sensitive training and go back to gut instinct, beating Kelly about the melon with his night stick, law enforcement's penile replacement.

Instead, the red-faced cop hunkered down. He pinched the dildo between his thumb and forefinger and jammed it back in the Dodge.

He didn't meet our eyes as he walked away nor did he answer when Kelly wished him a good night.

Back in the cab, the cops gone, Kelly pulled out a joint from the top of the visor and fired it up.

"You're not gonna say anything about this, are you?" He asked.

"Not a word."

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