On a walking/bike path through suburbia, eavesdropping on a couple twenty feet in front of him. They seemed unaware of him behind them, and he measured their walking cadence, matching it perfectly so as not to gain any ground and not to lose any, stay with earshot but not encroach, hanging back in their fuzzy periphery.
“It was Cinco de Mayo, so they were the Cerveceros instead of the Brewers, on their uniforms, in honor of the day, I suppose,” the woman was saying, alternately watching her feet take one step after the other, a mechanical process that might seem to her like she was detached from. Right foot and left foot trading places in the lead, and glancing at her male companion to check his reaction to anything she might say. They were confidantes and between the two of them there were suppositions aplenty.
“They have to appeal to their Hispanic fan base I suppose,” said he, as if she needed a mansplanation, or was angling for his usual pithy summation.
He would do that, eavesdrop, unrepentantly. If people were speaking loudly enough in his presence they were inviting him to listen, and they were intentionally loud to attract an audience so he was only obliging them. And anyway, they had nothing to worry about if they were being unintentionally loud and invidious. Most of what he overheard didn’t hold his attention for long.
“Harley-Davidson was doing some kind of promotion, so just before the start of the game the Racing Sausages raced Harleys along the outfield warning track, and when I say race, I don’t think they broke thirty. Naturally the Chorizo won that race, and then they held the regular sausage race during the game, surprise, the Chorizo wins again. Seriously, would anyone have cared if the Hot Dog or the Italian won a race, or the Bratwurst? Would the Hispanics, Hispanic people, would they really have been offended…”
“…given a mierda…”
“…if the Chorizo didn’t win both races? Isn’t Cerveceros enough of a tribute?”
“How many Hispanics go to their games, realistically?”
“Exactly.”
He watched their feet as they spoke, feet taking them confidently and with determination to wherever they were going. She was wearing white running shoes with pink trim, upturned at the nose of them, the pink sole extended up over the front like a tongue trying to taste something on the upper lip of her shoes. His running shoes were glittery cloth, splayed to near bursting at the sides, as if he had wide feet, ever widening, as if the inevitable weight gain was causing his feet of clay to splay out to toed flapjacks, the breadth of his feet threatening to defeat his shoes. The outsoles were more worn as though he walked on the outer edges of his feet, as if he customarily walked on hot coals.
He watched their asses when they would speak, as if when they said anything they were really talking out of their asses within their shorts and lip-synching. His ass appeared flat and muscle-less beneath the long, baggy shorts, an ass pounded flat from sitting, her ass like two pumpkins beneath gym teacher shorts, shorts from years ago she could confound by still fitting into them, if gruntingly, shimmying, holding her breath, sucking in her gut and lamenting the inevitable spread of her hips.
