a short work of fiction
I love the sound of breaking glass, deep into the night.
--Nick Lowe really understands.
Another Friday night, and Trip was cruising to meet his compadres. He'd gotten off early from his stock-boy job at the Winn Dixie. It was early evening on a Friday in June, the summer still stretched out like an endless opportunity for mischief and fun. The sun was starting to set as he pulled his Ford Pinto into his buddy Chuck's neighborhood. Chuck's real name was Charles, just like that jerk on M*A*S*H*, and everyone called him Chuck to irritate him. He'd long gotten over it.
Along with Chuck, Trip expected to see Greg and Benz hanging around. This was the core of his high school friends. Trip had scored the beer for the evening ahead and had already been indulging his adolescent thirst. In fact, it was probably safe to say that Trip wasn't exactly driving legally in his current condition. It never occurred to him whether this was right or wrong, but such things rarely cross the mind of a 17-year-old kid near the beginning of summer break on a Friday night. The Igloo cooler in the back seat of the Pinto was already 5 beers short of a case. The flavor tonight was Miller High Life, a group tradition.
Chuck would probably have a bottle or two of the hard stuff. His father worked for a distributor. Booze was stacked in Chuck's garage in crate boxes, the fringe benefits of his Dad's job. Chuck knew what his dad drank, so he selectively pilfered from the not so popular brands. Lately, it had been a green bottled gin Trip couldn't remember the name of, not that it mattered. It would all do the job of getting you "shammered". That was a Chuck-ism, shit-hammered smashed into one word. There were a lot of Chuck-isms among the group, and they liked it that way.
Greg and Benz were longtime neighbors who grew up together a few houses apart. Since the time they could walk, they'd been friends and as high school progressed, the blond haired duo almost became a single entity, like GregandBenz. Where you saw one, you saw the other. They were also a bit notorious among the group for wild behavior. Pranking neighbors’ houses, racing cars all over, setting off fireworks at inopportune moments, all of these were GregandBenz trademarks. Benz's last name was Benzetti, but few people outside of the group knew his real first name, and in fact, Trip probably couldn't tell it to you if you asked.
It didn't matter.
They were the few, the happy few, this band of brothers in a white bread suburban neighborhood on the East end of a mid-sized city in the middle of America. Good kids, middle class educated punks, with a taste for bad behavior.
As Trip pulled to the curb in front of Chuck's split level house, little did he or any of his buddies realize how tonight's activities would redefine the word "epic" for them. It was going to be a night to remember, then forget and deny (for a few years anyway).
It didn't take long for Trip to set the agenda. Rolling down the window in the gathering dusk, Chuck, Greg and Benz got up from their folding lawn chairs on the front porch and approached the car at the curb, plastic tumblers in hand.
Chuck spoke first "Hey Trip! What do you want to do tonight?”
With an evil grin, Trip's one word reply would echo long into the night.
"Damage." he said, and started to laugh.
With a chortle, Chuck tipped his cup and said, “I’ll drink to that”.
