Providence, Rhode Island

On the sidewalk beside us one million flies hover over our trash bag full of torn apart pastries. More than anything I know the lord of shit is with us wherever we go. We are smoking cigarettes on the steps of somebody's enormous Victorian house while the others get fried chicken. Two Boston University students film us attentively while we play a stupid game with some stuff on the ground.

"You are thinking of the water bottle, aren't you?" says Maxwell.
"I was thinking of the tape recorder," I say.
"Fuck!"
I am the king of the stuff. Georgios looks hard into my eyes.
"Are you ready?" he says to me.
"Yes. I am thinking of one." I try hard to send "water bottle" signals to him, but it is no use.
"You are thinking of the shoe."
"How did you know I was thinking of the shoe?"

The BU kids film the painted cardboard stuffed into our outrageously cluttered van and a deranged Maxwell eating from the bag of torn apart pasties. Two cops rolls up and park nearby. They walk to the back of the house we are sitting on.
I hold up a scrap coated with jellies at each end.
"Do you think it was initially a lemon-filled pastry that got covered in cherry jelly, or was it the other way around?"
"It looks to me it was a cherry-filled pastry that got covered in lemon goo."

"Hey you kids," the cops have come back around now and they are talking to us. "Do any of you live here?"
"No," someone says. Or possessions are scattered over the entirety of the front stoop.
"Ah, OK," they say. In a moment they are gone. Score one small victory for either chaos magic or white privilege, whichever you prefer.

Hours later the people who went to go eat fried chicken come back. We get inside the van and drive off listening to a mix tape of top 40 hip hop. The Dream croons out of the stereo speakers as we fall asleep, driving deeper into the Connecticut night.