It was two o’clock Tuesday, another perfect day in California. Doug, David and Jojo were enjoying overpriced coffee at a table in front of the coffee shop.

“I dunno,” David was saying, “I think he’s just lazy. I mean, it’s like he doesn’t want to do anything with his life, and it’s absolutely killing Susan, my poor sister, as if she hasn’t been through enough.”

There was a peremptory gleam of victory in Doug’s beady eyes. David primly adjusted himself in the plastic chair.

“There ain’t nothin wrong with being lazy,” Doug smiled, “everybody’s lazy. But think about it, where would this world be if we weren’t lazy.”

David tried to think about it.

“Electric drills; some guy was crankin away with a screwdriver and he thought, ‘this sucks’. Lawnmowers, electric razors, even fucking fords. We wouldn’t have none of that stuff if people weren’t lazy, lookin for some easy way out of working hard.”

A pouty expression crossed David’s face; he didn’t want to concede anything, but Doug’s point seemed iron-clad. But if there wasn’t anything wrong with Ryan’s behavior, who could be blamed for his sister’s declining emotional health.

“We’d still be sitting in caves and throwing rocks at fucking deer!” Doug laughed. “Now we’ve got electric toothbrushes and, and electric starters in our cars.”

Electricity pulsed in Jojo’s head, words swirled and nipped at the wrinkles of his brain, tickling his toes and warming his eyes. Momentary surprise; then he identified the intrusion; his own hand, delivering the warm, rich, frothy coffee concoction to his mouth. The cup kind of resembled a flying saucer, filled with tiny men intent on harvesting human DNA to fund their political campaign on the rings of Neptune. Jojo eyed it discriminatingly, or at least acted like he was eyeing it with discrimination, it was just a facade, his brain wasn’t quite up to the task of discriminating at the moment. In fact, he had completely forgotten about the cup when it suddenly tipped into his face and allowed hot coffee into his mouth. It was a pleasant surprise, releasing a psychedelic pandemonium across his tongue and into the cracks of his addled mind.

“Work is for suckers, we’re all suckers really. The things we own, own us. Before I got married, I didn’t have a care in the world, I worked cause I didn’t care, I spent my money on beer and weed and I had more than I knew what to spend it on. After I married, there were bills and car payments and gifts and birthdays and all that shit. Now I’m just a sucker. Women man, heh heh heh.”

Doug winked at David knowingly and David arched his eyebrow to simulate concurrence. Doug seemed to find the expression satisfactory and took a big gulp of coffee.

“I just think that she needs to take a break from all that, she needs to explore who she is as a woman.”

Doug blinked, he squinted at the white sky; liberal stuff, he wasn’t much in the mood for arguing politics with David so he would take the easy way out this time. Doug never liked to argue politics with women or men like David, it was so unsatisfying, beating them, better to best a Jew or one of them hippie college students, someone who would react to losing, someone who would get good and angry and understand that he had lost.

“Yeah, I don’t know much about that stuff. I know all about cars and trucks and guns and politics, and even how to keep a woman from complaining, but stuff like feelings and art and shit like that - I like it nice and simple. I don’t think I could tell a picasso from a van gough, I like paintings that look like something, you know.”

David did know, even though he didn’t agree, he was dazzled and a little bit annoyed by Doug’s ability to turn things around on him.

Jojo knew, for a second, an ephemeral second of universal understanding. Not only did he know how Doug did it, he knew everything and anything there was to know. But then the next moment he knew nothing. Not that he minded, just knowing that he had known, was enough for him. He basked in his once greatness, greater even than greatness itself for there is no pressure in holding the intangible, once it is lost, one is dismissed from its responsibilities but forever touched by its godliness. Jojo summoned the face of god and drank of his love.