It is our usual Monday meet-up, a date we’ve kept for so many years that we can’t keep count, once lunch but now breakfast in a booth overlooking a manmade lake, my breakfast burrito, his croissant sandwich, our favorite server Omni, settling in to talk about life and art and retirement and marriages, eyes on the window to watch the flock of Canada geese that seems to have taken up permanent residence but what is that over there, Grant, is that a flamingo in the water, standing on one leg, is it a lawn ornament someone stuck there as a joke, and he turns to look but then we see a great flock of them settling in, landing, then walking on their impossible pencil legs in a great rushing circle, stirring the lake with their kitschy pinkness, I saw them do that at the zoo but will you look at them? and Grant turns around and he’s wearing a straw fedora and holding a mai-tai, and he says, “Here’s mud in your eye!” and we are both drinking out of tall ceramic glasses shaped like Tiki idols, all around us the bar is festooned with lights and awnings and torches, Don Ho over in the corner with his ukelele, and Jimmy Buffet in another corner with his guitar singing one of his stupid songs, it’s like a musical standoff but then Lee Greenwood bursts in the patio door bellowing that he’s proud to be an American, and everyone has on some kind of hat, veterans trucker caps and those big black velvet sombreros people buy in Mexico and wide-brimmed sun hats with bunches of flowers and those “I shall wear purple” red hats that embarrass me on a group of ladies across from us and MAGA caps galore, and a man in the corner is selling timeshares and a man in another corner is booking new building lots at the Villages, and there’s a voting booth up front and all names on the ballot are Donald Trump, and instead of Subarus and Hondas in the parking lot it’s all golf carts with flags and teddy bears and novelty horns, and why am I wearing a muumuu, not that I mind but for god’s sake, I know we’re both retired now, but are we in fucking Florida?
Karen G. Berry lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She is interested in micro-societies, the strange and secret lives of children, and the heroic nature of everyday living. Karen’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and published by Thin Skin, Persimmon Tree, Open Secrets, Inknest, The Offing, Pasager, HerStry, Flash Fiction, Rust & Moth, The Gilded Weathervane, Ekphrastic Review, and many other journals and anthologies, online and in print. You can learn more about Karen at her blog, I am Not a Pie.
The Dilettante 
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