shiitake and cilentro

          "Why don't you use my sofa rest of the night?" Hank suggested. "I'll stay in here."
          "And drink more beer," she teased.
          "Might just DO that. Might just DO that." Wilfred Brimley.
          "Love ya, Dozer."
          She stood to leave. He observed her with fondness in his watering eyes. Recklessly he confessed: "I've always thought you looked like Adriene Barbeaux. Have I ever told you that?"
          "Not to my face." She chuckled. "To my chest, maybe."
          Impishly she skipped from the nook.
          Hank shook his head. "Busted again."


                                                                                  *


        Maxine awoke with a pain in her kidneys, having slept on her back without changing positions. As expected, Hank was gone. This time he had remembered to take his cell. She called him just to say thanks for everything.
         "H'llo, what's up?"
         "Don't eat while you're out. I'm fixing one of your favorites."
         "Ten-four."
         Shiitake and cilentro. He could taste it already.
         Maxine again: "Dear, would it put you out too much to stop by the Asian Market?"
         "Not at all."
         "Some Lop Chang pork sausage. Oops! There goes my surprise."


                                                                             *


         A two-rut road climbed like Jacob's Ladder from the wilderness onto a stretch of hardpan and there was a bend. Shafts of golden sunlight, with green motes swimming within like plankton, fell between braces of Douglas fir. Hank put a cassette in the tape deck.
         Siegfried's Rhine Journey.
         Indeed. There were giants in the earth.