November 11, 1983
Jimmy told me to meet him at the Fotomat booth so I could
drive him up to the mall to buy a lizard.
I knew he was lying – Jimmy always says one thing when he
means another – but it was such an interesting lie I agreed if only to find out
what he was really up to.
I figured he just didn’t want to have to walk in the dark in
the rain and wanted me to drive him to the bank with the night’s deposit and
then drive him home again.
The problem is when I got to the booth, he wasn’t there. I
drove up the road to the bank, then back, and to the bank again in case I
missed him, but didn’t see him coming or going, and so I was shocked to find
him at the booth when I got back and hear him complain how little he could
trust me to be on time when I was there early.
He was dripping just enough from the rain to convince me that
perhaps he had walked to the bank like he said he had, and I had someone missed
him in the dark.
When he got into the car, he surprised me by insisting we
drive to the mall.
“For a lizard?” I asked.
“Of course, for the lizard,” he said.
I suppose there is something wrong with me, my getting angry
at what are Jimmy’s typical antics. I should shrug these off, but rarely do,
and so driving, I got into a mood I couldn’t get out of even at the thought
that Jimmy needed me to help him buy a lizard – which I knew he really didn’t
want, and that he would soon unveil his real intention a moment or so before we
reached the place where he really needed to do – in this case Pearl Paint for
supplies.
Later, he would try to make up for this deception by giving
me the painting of a lizard he said he did just for me – though oddly enough,
somewhere down deep in that twisted maze of his mind, I knew he really did want
a lizard.
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