“Can I get a smoke?” blurted Frank, interrupting.
“Get your own.”
Kurtis put his pack of smokes in his tan button-down shirt pocket. A silver Zippo followed. The sunlight flashed across the surface of the lighter, revealing the words Vanilla Sky engraved on the top.
He walked past me, flicking his cigarette. On his way by, he aggressively bumped into my shoulder, forcing me to drop the picture I’d been clutching in my pocket. It fell to the ground, right next to Kurtis’s still-burning cigarette.
“Fuck that guy,” Frank said as he shamelessly picked up the butt to smoke. “Whoa, who’s the babe?” he asked, grabbing the picture of me and my ex laughing in the park, madly in love on a summer day.
“Oh, that’s just this girl,” I said, pulling the red ball out of my pocket. I began to nervously bounce it.
“Just this girl? This don’t look like just this girl to me. This looks like a girl you put a baby in and lock down immediately!” He chuckled. “Trap her!”
“Yeah, well, that ship has unfortunately sailed, man. Let’s just change the subject.” I pulled out my pack of toothpicks and threw one in my mouth. Frank raised his eyebrows, as if to say ookkaaayyyy, but let it go.
“So, as I was saying, the brain is very important!” Frank said, motioning with the two fingers gripping the cigarette. He pointed the tips of his index and middle fingers to his temple with his thumb cocked like a pistol.
“And the lungs aren’t?” I asked, motioning to the cancer stick he was holding.
“That’s different, man. This is addiction . . . you wouldn’t know,” he said, pointing to me.
“Yes, I would,” I said. “I started smoking when I was fourteen. Finally quit six months ago.”
Frank burst into laughter. “Six months? Hahaha. Six months? You high and mighty motherfucker. Talk to me in a year, minimum, bro,” he said, inhaling deeply on what was left of the hand-me-down device of death. “Six months,” he said, chuckling.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Go on, what were you saying?”
Frank paused.
“Wait,” he said. “What the fuck was I saying?”
We both paused for a moment—you know how it is. One of those moments when you and someone else are discussing something, but one of you gets off track and, for the life of you, you just can’t remem—
“THE BRAIN!” howled Frank, completely satisfied with his discovery. “It’s a powerful thing. From my research, bananas are some of the best brain food. They are packed with nutrients that help the mind function. You see, there are a lot of foods that are great for the brain—walnuts, flax seeds, and avocado because of their omega acids and nutrients—but bananas have been digested by us since we were swinging in the fucking trees, man!” He was absurdly passionate about this banana.
“Damn, man, you really know your shit,” I said with a smile.
“Well, one of us has to take care of your brain,” he said as he grabbed another banana from the pouch in his black apron, the one he wore over his tan company-issued button-down. He threw the banana to me. “And you can take care of the lungs,” he said, waving a finger at me, mimicking a nagging old woman. “You see, bananas can also help with your mood in addition to your brain. Eating them can help you remember things.”
By now we were inside walking through the store. “I mean, without memory, who are we, you know?” he asked. “Just a shell of who we once were . . . with no memory, there’s no self, there’s no ‘I’. Is there consciousness without memory? Is there language? Experience? Without memory are we just living in a loop? Is memory the only thing keeping us sane? Without memory we’re just walking around like that guy in Memento, scribbling shit on our arms, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.”
“Ummm,” I said. “You’re giving that banana a lot of weight, man.”
“Think about it, Flynn! The mind is a powerful thing!” Frank said, walking us around the store.
We turned down the cereal aisle, where I saw a man wearing a white doctor’s coat. He seemed to be a physician, but why he was shopping in his full getup, I had no idea.
“Did you know one standard-size banana provides approximately .4 milligrams of B6, 450 milligrams of potassium, 30 milligrams of magnesium, 30 grams of carbs, and 3 grams of fiber?” Frank continued as we walked. I looked over my shoulder and noticed the doctor wasn’t wearing his jacket anymore—he looked just like a regular customer now. I figured he must have placed his jacked inside his basket and carried on his merry way.
“The facts on bananas are damn near endless,” said Frank.
“Who the fuck would remember all that?”
“Somebody who eats a lot of bananas, somebody who cares a lot about their mind,” he said. That’s when I realized Frank was perfect. I mean, he was the ideal candidate. It was as if fate had brought us together in this supermarket. I pulled out my Moleskine and went down the list.
On the left side of the page it said:
Store/Layout—medium size, checkout and customer service in front, produce section on the left, bakery, coffee shop, and pharmacy in the back
Company Uniform—black pants, black shoes, light brown button-down T-shirt, black apron, and name tag.
Possible Characters—Becca, Rachel, Ronda, Ted, Ann, Kurtis
I added another name.
Frank
Types of Customers—man who always drinks coffee; let’s call him Joe. Wacko out front playing chess by himself, mystery doctor, moms, grandmas
Different Kinds of Food—canned goods, juice, pasta, cereal
Store Gossip—
Love Interest—
On the right side of the page, another list. I went down it, checking items off, as Frank incessantly spoke in the background.
Protagonist
Kind of funny—✓
Good with women—✓
Smart-ass—✓
Prick—✓
Talker—✓
Normal dude in twenties—✓
He is perfect! I thought, biting into a banana as I strolled down aisle nine with Frank by my side. Frank finally stopped talking, looking pleased about his deep knowledge of fruit.
The crazy part about this list is that these things were all expected to come from different people, and I could use other people’s attributes to create a composite person! One person who was funny, another who was a smart-ass, another who was a bit of a womanizer, but hell . . . all these characteristics within one guy was a dream come true. It was all I could hope for when using a real-life person as the foundation for a fictional character!
Oh, wait, damn, I’m sorry . . . you must be confused. I’m a writer. I know my methods are unconventional, but that’s what I was currently doing . . . finishing a book. A book, which I planned to base entirely on Frank. And I wasn’t afraid to get weird with it.
Actually, this seems even more confusing now. I think we should take a moment. Step out of aisle nine and take you back to the inception of all this.
Give you a proper beginning.
CHAPTER 4
A PROPER BEGINNING
“It’s over, Flynn.”
My girlfriend Lola looked at me, her eyes welling up with tears.