One Date Forgotten, Another One Lost

"Wait, you're Ali B? I just deleted you from my phone last week."

"What? Why?"

"Because you were always at the top of my address book and I didn't know who you were. I figured I should either call and ask or delete you. So I deleted you. You'd been there a long time."

"We met a few years ago. At The Rattlesnake. A friend of yours introduced us. We had a drink."

"Really? Who was it?"

"I don't know. Kevin? Scott? I'd only met him once or twice. You knew him from work."

"Oh man, so many people cycled through that place it could've been anybody. Do you remember anyone else you met that night? Who else was there?"

"There was nobody else there. It was just us. It was a date."

"Oh...Oops...How did it go?"

"I'm embarrassed for you, you idiot," interjected Jen, who'd been resisting my advances anyway.

The Old Texas Goat

Locals gathered on the bench outside the only store to watch another dry Terlingua day fade down. You bought your beer inside, took your seat, and let the scraggy south Texas desert set the pace.

An old man who'd been there for hours, maybe years, began telling tales. As a pretty young mother with blonde hair and warm skin walked by, he said,

"Her name's Summer. When she was younger she was really something. One day she had on short shorts and a tight top and my buddy said, I wish I was 20 again. I told him, You wish you was 20 again? Shit, I wish I was 60 again!"

Down the bench, on the other side of my brother and me, a skinny guy in jeans shorts, a dusty white t-shirt, and Coke bottle glasses, leaned forward. "I wish I was 60 again?" he cackled. "You old fuckin goat!"

Savages to the Left, Africa All Around

They turned left. She was English, he Australian. Tired of the safe, typical tourist route through South Africa ̶ Cape Town up the coast to Kruger then across to Johannesburg ̶ they drove into the country's interior.

Hours later, they stopped in a small village to ask about the nearest gas station. While he spoke with some guys on the corner, a man approached her. There was menace in his walk. His eyes were yellow. His cheeks were scarred. He locked her into a stare and walked slowly.

She wanted her husband's attention but was afraid to look away. She cleared her throat but he didn't hear. The man kept coming, his face a stone. She wanted to run or scream.

The man stopped right in front of her and spoke: "We're not savages, you know." Then he burst out laughing and apologized. She laughed, too, and they stayed for hours.

Estivation

I'm pretty sure several guys at the party were wearing loafers without socks, weathered nantucket red shorts, and oxfords with the sleeves up. If any of the girls didn't have a pastel sweater around her neck, I didn't see her.

While I didn't exactly feel uncomfortable -- I'd known some of them for years through my cousins -- I didn't quite fit in either. They grew up among big money in Watch Hill and Westerly, RI. There was probably a Chip there. Maybe even a Muffy or Madison.

But I was new in town so it was nice to meet people.

One dude came over and we went through the usual questions: name, connections to the party, jobs. Then he said it. "Where do you summer?"

Without meaning to be a jerk I said the first thing that came to mind. "I didn't know it was a verb."

He walked away.

Introducing 151 Word Stories

From now on, every post here will be 151 word story. Why? Because you can light the rum on fire. Because it's a prime number and a palindrome. R.E.M. sang about it and I still don't know what it meant. It's a psalm, a sonnet, a song in a hymnal and the total number of Pokemon in the first set. It's about 5 months, which feels right. It's been 151 years since Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, which hints at triumph.

There have been a few disasters that took the lives of 151 people, which makes it newsworthy but also limited in the grand scheme of disasters. It's slightly longer than a rule-of-thumb length for good marketing emails, and these are better than spam. It's a lucky number. The first story had 151 words and I needed a rule. It worked for Twitter. I'm more creative with restrictions. Why not?