“Ow.”
“I know.”
“You got coffee, though.”
“Yeah. Oh! Did you want one? I mean, was I supposed to get you one?”
“No. I mean — well, it wouldn’t do much good at this point anyway. So what’s with all these people?”
“Well, you know, it’s a train station.”
“Yeah, but still. It’s, like, negative fifteen in the morning.”
“That’s the best time to go to Boston.”
“Or Springfield. Have you ever been to Springfield?”
“No. You?”
“No. What’s in Springfield?”
“Springs? Fields? I don’t know. Didn’t something Revolutionary War-like happen there?”
“Probably. Okay, we need tickets.”
“Okay. So where –”
“Over there. See, where it says ‘tickets’? And see that guy, with the — head thing? There.”
“Okay.”

“How can she eat cheese puffs? It’s, like, negative fifteen in the morning.”
“She’s two years old.”
“But at this hour?”
“I’ve seen you eating caramels at this hour.”
“Whaaat? When did you see me eat a caramel at negative fifteen in the morning?”
“You know, that, um, time. That you ate one.”
“In the morning.”
“Look. Okay, didn’t you — you admitted to me that you woke up in the middle of the night and ate a Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew!”
“Well, yes, but that was a Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew, not a caramel, and that occurred not at the breakfast hour –”
“My point is that you eat weird things at weird times also.”
“You could have just said that.”
“And it’s not the breakfast hour right now.”
“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Morning Has Broken Like The First Morning, but it’s nine o’clock. I think we can reasonably consider that –”
“Is this our stop?”
“Huh?”
“Our stop, our stop! Is this it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want help with your suitcase?”
“No. Yes.”

“Oh, hello, sweet, life-sustaining mead known in some cultures as ‘coffee.'”
“Is that a hair?”
“No. Yes. Could you hand me another cup?”
“Sure. Ew, pork knuckles.”
“Ew. Yeah, those have been here since, like, 1988.”
“Visit that aisle often, do we?”
“It’s a small town.”
“It’s not that small.”
“It’s small enough.”
“Is that a bug?”
“No. Yes. Could you –”
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s that smell?”
“It’s the sweet, life-sustaining perfume of coffee.”
“It’s the thick, nostril-searing stench of burnt coffee.”
“Okay, here’s the thing. The thing is that I have not yet consumed said sweet, life-sustaining mead, while you have already partaken of the sweet, life-sustaining mead.”
“Yeah. Dunkin Donuts mead. Which isn’t burnt.”
“Do you want to get to Toronto before the equinox? Because we can’t stop at every shop in town.”
“How many shops could it have? It’s a small town.”
“Get your Diet Coke and get in line or I will have you killed.”

“There’s a Behind The Music on Journey? And I didn’t see it? How can this be?”
“It’s new.”
“But — but — but it’s not like I was doing anything good last night.”
“What did you do last night?”
“You know — the Big Night soundtrack, the sprained calf?”
“Oh, riiiiiight.”
“Fucking Connie Francis.”
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: ‘Fucking Connie Francis.'”
“And I love you for it. So did you see it?”
“No, I missed it, because I was sleeping through large chunks of Before Shite Falls.”
“The operative word being –”
“Chunks, yes.”
“Now, here’s my question — how can they not have Behind The Music-ed Journey before now? I mean, they had one on Loverboy, for chrissakes. Loverboy. Have you seen the size of Mike Reno’s gut? The man is a building.”
“He’s alive?”
“Well, technically. I think they have to hoist him in his meals with a forklift. He’s like Mr. Grape. But seriously — how could Poison get a BTM ages ago and Journey have to wait all this time?”
“It doesn’t make sense to me either. I mean, ‘Faithfully’!”
“I know! ‘Wheel In The Sky’!”
“‘Open Arms’!”
“Exactly! You know what I bet happened? I bet that, except for Steve Perry, they couldn’t even find the guys. Like, they went looking for the bass player to get him on camera and he’s, like, living in a tree now.”
“Yeah. A tree in a prison. A Balinese prison.”
“Totally.”
“And then one day they accidentally kicked a piece of cardboard on the sidewalk, and what should they find underneath?”
“The keyboard guy.”
“Right. So it’s not surprising. I mean, notice that we keep saying ‘the bass player’ and ‘the keyboard guy’? It’s not like we know their names.”
“It’s not like anyone knows their names. They come to visit their parents and their moms are all like, ‘You look familiar…paper boy?'”
“Not even — their moms just start shooting. ‘You, with the butt-cut — HIT THE FLOOR!’ Rat-a-tatta-tatta-tat!”
“‘And stop stalking Steve Perry!'”

“Okay, but if it’s based on a real-life girlfriend that he had, then you can see how I’d have the wife-beater imagery with the dad.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Okay, he’s brooding. He’s in his room, watching ‘the tube,’ as stated in the lyrics. Then his ‘old man’ — again, stated in the lyrics — tells him to STOP kidding himself, wasting his time. So I have that mental imagery of the dad with the dirty tank top on busting into Billy’s room, yelling ‘STOP,’ and slamming the door again.”
“Ohhh, I see. Yeah, I could see that. Except I always envisioned that little vignette as happening at the breakfast table. You know, Billy’s hungover, he doesn’t have a job, he’s squinting dully at his coffee in the glare of the morning sun…I don’t know.”
“It’s the frenzied chord-playing that gets to me, frankly. I mean, we get it, dude — she jumped in front of a train.”
“Where did you get that from? I think she just dissed him big time. I don’t know that there was a death involved.”
“Except IN HIS HEART.”
“Well, you’ve heard the frenzied chord-playing. That much is obvious. Where does the train come in?”
“He’s standing on the…oh, okay, he’s standing on the tracks. Well, there’s that theory blown to shit. Do you know I’ve been going around thinking that damn girl died since I was eight damn years old?”
“Wow. That’s not even the French song.”
“Yeah, right? I’m an idiot.”

“Oh, calm down. It’s not like you actually abducted the girl on the ‘missing’ poster yourself. You just called her fugly.”
“That’s plenty! That’s speaking ill of the dead! I’m going to hell.”
“Today is the first time you’ve spoken ill of the dead? Please.”
“No, but this doesn’t help.”
“Do you think you’d have gotten some sort of credit if you’d called her pretty?”
“No.”
“So whatever. Besides…she is fugly.”
“Of course she’s fugly, she’s abducted and dead!”
“Not in the picture!”
“But the picture foreshadows the — oh, forget it. I’m just a horrible person.”
“‘Have you seen this girl? Dial 1-800-FUGSTER.'”
“Stop making me laugh about going to hell.”
“Oh, lighten up, you’re not going to hell today.”
“I am if you don’t stop making me laugh — I’m going to drive off the road here.”
“I think her parents did it. What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know, something about your tone of voice — oh, I can’t breathe.”
“Seriously. Like, ‘Okay, Fugly, we’ve done all we can do for you. Go missing.’ And then they shoved her off the back of a streetcar and nobody’s seen her since.”
“‘Hey, what’s with the bag?'”
“‘You know I love riding in the trunk, but — ow!'”
“‘See you at the top of the Ferris Wheeeeeeeaaahaahhahhhhhh!'”
“Yep, we’re going to hell.”
“Save me a seat.”

“Huey Lewis or Mick Jagger? Present day.”
“Ew. Huey Lewis. You?”
“Huey. Mick Jagger is really disturbing to me.”
“No kidding. Like, you’re sixty-eight thousand years old — learn to tuck in your shirt.”
“And your giant lips.”
“And your giant lips.”

“Look at all this stuff, seriously — who would need Tylenol and Midol in the car? I think just Tylenol would do the trick. And excuse me, but — modelling clay? At a rest stop. What could a kid possibly make a model of, the interior of the car?”
“Well, dinosaurs.”
“That’s your answer. ‘Dinosaurs.'”
“The package has dinosaurs on it, see? ‘Modelling suggestion.'”
“Please don’t interrupt a rant with facts.”
“Sorry.”
“Okay. Where was I?”
“Interior of the car. Except can I say something?”
“What.”
“If my kid made a model of the interior of the car, while we were in the car, that would be cool. I would think the kid was pretty damn smart.”
“That’s not a bad point, actually. Still, it strays from my original point — what? Was that an eye-roll?”
“No. Yes.”
“Look, my point here, and I promise I’m rapidly approaching it, is that you could conceivably need certain things while on a driving trip, like gloves or a windshield brush doodad or carsickness medication or whatever. Who in this fine land of ours needs a keychain calculator? NOBODY. Exactly nobody. I need a tape-head cleaner for my car’s tape deck. Lots of cars have tape decks; I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that a rest-stop convenience store would stock a tape-head cleaner, particularly when they’ve got Gummi peaches. Who has ever required a Gummi peach while driving? Who, in fact, has not fled in terror from the very thought of a Gummi peach?”
“My mom likes those.”
“Your mom needs to get off the rock.”
“That’s true, but for different reasons.”
“And do they have a copy of Out Magazine? No. No, they don’t. They don’t have a damn thing I need. Oh, snowglobes.”
“You didn’t seriously expect them to have a copy of Out, did you? Isn’t this, like, the Northern Bible belt or something?”
“No, it’s the we-don’t-care-if-your-car’s-tape-heads-have-an-entire-sheep-accruing-to-them belt.”
“Huh?”
“It’s the fuckwad belt.”
“Oh. What happened to your cheek?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“What is that thing?”
“What? WHAT?”
“It looks like a — a goiter.”
“Ohhhh. It’s a gumball.”
“When did you get a gumball?”
“Before I went in the bathroom. I got a white one — I always get a white one, and they’re always gross, and I never learn. It’s like with eggnog. Every time I’m all, ‘Oh, this time it’ll be different,’ but it’s always the same.”
“Did I miss this?”
“What? My getting a gumball? Why, did you want one?”
“No.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“No, I just…didn’t know you’d gotten a gumball.”
“This isn’t about the gumball, is it?”
“It was never about the gumball.”
“Words to live by.”

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