Jumbo

It killed him.

He told me how he took my advice, and told her how he felt. He told me how they met at their usual spot every Wednesday for lunch, and how she sat in complete silence as he told her. He told me how she said nothing when he finished. He told me how he asked her what she was thinking. He told me how everything he said made her cry.

Her tears hit him like a left hook. It carommed off his cheek, reverborated to his molars, split his jaw, shot up his skull, shook his brain, buckled his knees, and crumpled his lifeless body to the floor. I knew that feeling, but he said he could take it: He made adjustments to the pattern, and thus became adjusted to the pain. He could take the punishment, the repeated shots, and the constant punches. He wasn't in love, he was punch drunk.

It killed me to watch him get up from his stool with his eyes swollen shut, his nose bloody and broken, and his jaw enflamed with two teeth missing. Between pitiful gasps for any kind of air, he would say "Sheesh da one, Filff. I can doo ith! Sheesh da one! I nooo ith!" He wanted the same thing I did, so I let him go, "Fine, finish the job." I said. Before leaving the corner, he turned to me to wink as best he could with the one good eye he had. "Noo plaablem!"

Now, here we were. I found him still sitting in the chair later that night. His parents called me asking where he was, and I told them I had an idea, nevertheless I would call them once I found him, and drive him home. There was so many wrappers on the tray in front of him; if I didn't come earlier, the manager said, he would eat the entire menu in another hour. Without saying a word, I slinked into the booth and sat there across from him. Mixed with saturated fats and absolute sorrow, his tears flowed from his face and onto the paltry board the fast food joint called a table. I watched him cry for a couple of minutes, before a pair of eavesdropping teenagers in the lineup began whispering about us. "With the way he's going, I wonder if there is anything left." One of them said, which got both of them chuckling. I knew we had to leave, and sadly so did he. As I put my hands on the table to rise from the booth, he stop sulking and asked, "Why duss no one luv me?" I knew there was an answer for him somewhere. Such a question followed other men right into the grave, but other men were not like him. He would die that night if he didn't know.

"I love you, Phil." I said. "We all love you, man."

His sulking quieted down, but he kept crying. Reluctantly, after I rose from the booth, he followed me out of the restaurant leaving a ton of crumpled wrappers, a bewildered manager, and a pair of laughing teenagers behind.

As I opened the trunk to get a pair of water bottles, he sank into the passenger side of my car. When I closed the hatch, I received a text message. It was her: She "heard from friends I was back in town, and since she wasn't doing anything maybe we could..."

I got in the car, gave him a bottle, and put mine in the cup holder.

"Was dat her?" He asked.
"Yes, it's her." I replied. We stared out the car as it started to rain.
"She alweez lucked at yuu." He added.

"Wha dit yuu say?"