Maverick Jetpants in the City of Quality by Bill Peters

tip. Riding—the tip.”
    â€œAnd you have enough hair on your head to clothe a small child!” Lip Cheese yells.
    On the drive home, passenger-side windows fogging up with Lip Cheese’s having to piss, probably, here comes a preview for the movie Why Lip Cheese Will Die in a Life of Priestlike Anger: The Proto-Stachening of Lip Cheese . Which was the joke we made up when Lip Cheese slept over once, and we noticed how movie titles were always “The [Somethening] of [Some Guy’s Name]”; The Fridgication of William Perry , we said. Which eventually turned into the Proto-Stachening. The Proto-Stachening, right here, of why there is no way Lip Cheese will be able to live a full life:
    â€œHey Nate?” Lip Cheese asks, voice kernel-sized in the dark of the passenger seat.
    â€œWhat.”
    â€œWill you kill me?”
    â€œWait. What?” I say.
    â€œAs in, just, you know, pop me in the head.”
    â€œI have to drop you off in—where am I going to get the gun?”
    â€œGuess Necro had the right idea. Might as well light myself on fire,” he says, voice getting knots in its yo-yo string.“Lip Cheese the Maverick Jetpants. Gets all the women on a conveyor belt.”
    He’s trying not to sniffle. “That girl?” I say. “How she kept rubbing her eye? That story about that van?”
    But when you think the earthquake needle is about to settle, Lip Cheese shoves open the passenger door; wind rumbles in off the highway; the car jackhammers into the rumble strip.
    â€œLip Cheese!” I yell over the windquake.
    â€œGonna do it myself,” he yells, seat belt stretching.
    â€œQuit it! Quit it!” I go, slapping his shoulder, grabbing at his shirt. “I’ll crash the car!”
    He closes the door. I yank the car back into the lane. All quiet.
    â€œI’m just trying to do the practical thing,” he says. “I’m just trying to be practical.”
    So to keep him from crying until his tears form people, here’s what I do. As Buffalo’s early shift wakes up, me and Lip Cheese go to get Gatorades at a Wegmans in Depew or somewhere. The Wegmans building is huge, its red-lit logo turning pink in the sunrise. We walk through the heat blasters in the entrance’s corridor, and inside, it’s bright. Boxes and pallets are in the aisles, and men with tattoos fading under their arm hair maneuver industrial floor sweepers. Def Leppard’s “Hysteria” sounds like brittle crunch through the speakers in the store’s ceiling.
    Me and Lip Cheese set our Gatorades on the checkout conveyor. When who is in front of us, in line, paying for coffee and a pre-rolled sandwich, but Mindy Fale?
    â€œNate?” she says.
    She’s put on weight, in a beer-and-chested-up sort of way—all tits and failure. Her chin juts like a punter’s chin-guard, and under the white semi-see-through sleeve of her work shirt, there’s a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on her shoulder.
    â€œOh. Hey. Wait—hey!” I already hate myself. I’m already back in the low-ceiling halls of high school, when Mindy Fale and me got into a mock kickboxing match once, in the hallway, shoehorning each other into pretend headlocks. I’d listen to her laugh and try to figure out how she’d sound in bed. I guess she was always okay; she was maybe my eleventh choice for a girlfriend.
    â€œDo you live here?” I say to her.
    â€œNope. Still in Gates! Parents and everything!” she smiles in an angry-chipper kind of way.
    â€œWhy are you all the way in Buffalo?”
    She pays for her food, sighs, plants a palm on the bagging area, and leans.
    â€œI was at Fredonia until about November, but it’s stupid, political,” she says. “Professors know what they want to see, and if you don’t do that, well. Now I’m making the drive to work at USNY Insurance. Buffalo office. Claims!” She makes a stiff