Known

"You ready for one?" he asked as a commercial broke the tension in the television set. We'd only met that weekend, but it felt as though we'd known each other forever. Maybe, through one regrettably thin degree of separation, we had.

"Sure. Let's go," and with that we made way for the sliding-glass door.

Rain dripped down between the cracks in the porch above us as we cupped our left hands over our cigarettes and flicked our Bics. My lack of shoes forced me to stand in the limited two-by-two square of dry deck underfoot. This newfound friend of mine was smarter than me in many ways. He'd brought his sneakers outside with him. The rest of the gang watched Steve McQueen out-drive, out-smart, and out-shoot all criminals in his path while the two of us sucked in our sweet carcinogens.

"Your name sounds familiar. Weren't you friends with Mary?" I asked pointlessly.

"Yeah. We went to school together," he responded. I had him cornered. There wasn't much else for him to say, or so I thought. He proved me wrong by adding a well-placed "She's a nice girl," before taking a deep drag on his cigarette. I noted his subtle smirk in the glow of the TV screen. McQueen wasn't the only one winning that night. We both knew what that last comment meant, though neither of us would acknowledge it. That'd be uncivilized.

"Didn't you use to...?"

"Yup. Long time ago," I cut him off. Any dates or places would've further complicated things. I liked my fresh acquaintance, in spite of our ironic common denominator, and wanted to keep it that way. He reminded me of myself when I was younger, but with a penchant for marijuana. Nothing was perfect, least of all the fiasco he'd tried to reference before I interjected. Against that pillar I was certain as Samson.

It was starting to come back to me slowly as if in a dream. I could hear her ignorantly "white" mispronunciation of his Latin last name. There was an initially unnoticed fondness in her voice that suddenly gave it all away. She had. They had. He had. I was standing in the rain next to someone who knew, or thought he did. If I'd been a better man I would've corrected his first wrong assumption. I decided to let it go in favor of letting him draw his own conclusion since he would anyway. We all find out eventually. The self-flagellation that follows is more debilitating than any lashing someone else could dole out. The cycle rarely breaks in Smalltown, USA. Everyone's broken. Some of us just play it better.

"You almost done with that?" he asked as he doused his butt in the quarter-of-the-way-full beer cup we'd designated earlier.

"I've been done for awhile now," I told the poor kid. He glanced at my hands to check for a Marlboro that wasn't there. Like I said, I'd been done for awhile.

We went back inside as the credits started rolling. Brock Davenport played the part of Bad Guy #2. The rest of them did what the rest of them do and no one dreamt a thing that night.