A Tale of Two Trucks by Thea Nishimori

that. I imagined big, burly bikers and tattooed toughs looking at me and cracking their knuckles.
    “Don’t worry—you’ll be with my friends,” Joe assured me when I voiced my concerns. “Besides, you’re supposed to be distracting! You have to distract everybody from the fact that I’m not gonna be there. It’s just too bad you didn’t bring your white feather thingy.”
    “My boa is for special occasions,” I informed him archly. “And you’re right, it is going to be a challenge to distract people from the elephant in the room—or not in the room, as the case may be….”
    “Hey! I resent that. I’m more like a… like a….”
    “Water buffalo.”
    That earned me a painful punch on the arm, although Joe might have meant it as a light tap.
    “ Ow ! Hey, that just gave me an idea—can I paint a herd of buffalo on the other side of your truck?”
    “Turn left up here,” he said suddenly, and in a minute we were pulling into the parking lot of the bar.
    I was relieved to see there were mostly normal-looking people inside, although there were a couple of bikers too—not the gangster type, thankfully, just the touring-with-my-wife type. I was hidden behind Joe as he walked back toward a table where several members of his crew welcomed him.
    “Oh, hey! You brought your little friend,” one of them said with a smirk, noticing me. I could feel my face turning red-hot, but Joe just laughed and clapped me heartily on my back.
    “Yeah. He’s never been here before, so I thought I’d show him how we have a good time. Guys, y’all know Mike, right?”
    “Sure,” and “Hey, Mike!” greeted me, and I tried to smile back. Joe offered to get me a drink so I asked him in a whisper if I could get a cosmopolitan here. He grinned and whispered back that he’d have to see my ID. I punched him in the arm (no harder, I’m sure, than a gnat) and he grimaced and rubbed the spot as though I’d grievously injured him.
    “So, uh, Mike,” one of the guys began, “what’s up?”
    “Actually, we had a rude awakening today,” I said, wishing Joe were telling it instead, but steeling myself. “He crashed at my place last night—”
    “No way !” another guy gasped, and they all stared at me. That sure got their attention in a hurry!
    “Not like that ,” I hastened to clarify. “He came over for pizza and fell asleep on my couch watching TV. What was I supposed to do? Drag him out the door?”
    “We did work hard yesterday,” the guy who’d asked me (Aaron, I think) conceded.
    “Anyway, he left his truck parked in my driveway, but apparently my ex came by in the middle of the night and trashed it. I mean, rotten eggs, rotten tomatoes—the works !”
    “ Shit !He thought it was yours, didn’t he?”
    “Dirty bastard!”
    “Exactly!” I replied, more confident now that I had their support. “I feel so awful about it—”
    “Don’t,” Joe interrupted, coming back just then with my cosmo, which he set down carefully in front of me, and a handful of beer bottles for his buddies. “It’s not like you knew he was gonna do that!”
    “No,” I admitted, “but he’d just seen me in my new truck. I should’ve known he wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
    “But rotten eggs and tomatoes?” one of the burlier guys (Hank, I’m pretty sure) asked incredulously. “That’s low!”
    “We parted on… less than amicable terms,” I said dryly. It was the understatement of the year, and the guys could tell.
    “That’s not even the worst of it,” Joe said, taking over. “He even spray-painted my truck with… less than flattering phrases! So, I decided to come to my amigos for a little help in a… conspiracy, of sorts.”
    “Whaddaya need?” and “I’m in!” were the immediate responses. These guys were solid!
    “First, I need to borrow a car,” Joe answered with his voice lowered, and everybody crowded in over the table. “I have to go teach this guy a lesson! But I can’t be seen, right?