Cracking Spines
it's a pun! get it?
nonversation
Thomas was roasting coffee on the balcony when I came over. He heated the beans in an old popcorn maker. The odor filled the entire condo. Aficianados might have noted scents of cherry or cocoa or leather, but most people would identify the smell just as coffee.
“Yo,” I said.
“Oh, hey,” said Thomas.
“What’s up?”
“I’m roasting coffee,” Thomas said. “There are people coming over later. Your mom’s at the grocery store.”
His t-shirt had the name of his son’s college printed on it, and the letters XXL, even though it, like Thomas, was sized medium. He stepped in from the balcony and slid shut the glass door, locking it even though the beans were still cooling outside. Next to the popcorn maker on the deck were basil and tomato plants, thriving. Thomas was an agricultural engineer and tested out different types of soil and fertilizer in his and Mom’s balcony garden.
“Vikings,” I said.
“Brett Favre,” he said.
“Twins,”
“Joe Mauer. Politics?”
“Barack Obama,” I said. “Hillary Clinton. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
“Iran,” said Thomas. “And also Israel.”
He stepped back outside, checking the beans for something I wouldn’t know how to gauge. When he lifted the pan, the beans didn’t spill off the porch onto the street below; the pan didn’t scald his hand; the balcony didn’t collapse under Thomas’s average weight, maiming him before the wedding photos.
