Nick opens the door to the Montego and leans over to unlock the door for Travis. Then, he strokes the dashboard lovingly and says, “Good evenin’, darlin’.” They pull out and get on their way, rolling the windows down to enjoy the breeze. The sun is just starting to go down on Baxter.

Travis says, “I decided that my muse is a fat nagging housewife.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I was thinking about what kind of personality my muse would have—that’s what I came up with. She eats hostess cakes by the handful!”

Nick laughs. “I could see that actually: Travis! Travis! What’s that God awful noise? What’re you doing in there? I’m going to get your father!”

“Go away! I’m busy,” Travis says, playing along.

“You better not be playing with yourself! You’ll go blind!”

They both laugh.

“Mine’s probably a big black woman from an episode of Jerry Springer,” Nick says.

Travis jerks his head to the right and left. “Damn! I know you ain’t paintin’ that shit with my inspiration.”

Holding his hand up flat in Travis’s face, Nick remarks, “Don’ be comin’ ’round here tryin’ to paint that shit wit’ me,” He stops to turn the radio on, chuckling. It’s “Santa Monica” by Everclear and Nick starts banging on the steering wheel to the beat. “Speaking of pizza,” Nick starts, “I was talkin’ to Jim today. He showed some of my slides to a guy up in Pittsburgh. Turns out I might get to show my stuff alongside Jim.”

“For real?” Travis asks.

“Yeah.”

“Dude. That’s great.”

“I’ll probably go up there for two or three weeks in August. And the gallery’ll know later this month if I’ll be in the show. We’re shipping them some more slides to look at first.”

“That’s excellent, man.” Travis thinks about it. “Pittsburgh, huh? That’s a ways.”

“The lease is up at the end of this month, right?” Nick asks.

“Yep. I’m amazed we made it.”

“Do we know what we’re doin’ after that, yet?”

Travis shrugs. “Do we ever know what we’re doing?”

“Well, we can extend it ’til August if we want. Most people won’t want to start leases until September anyway. Ian and I were looking at some places last week—houses actually.”

“Yeah. You, me, John and Ian.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Cool.”

“Man, the four of us living in one place…”

“That might be a little scary,” Travis agrees, chuckling. “The Fat Kid and I found a nice little number over on Habersham actually. It’d run about two-fifty a piece—a thousand a month.” Nick thinks about the numbers. “That’d be good. I could handle that.” Nick sits up a second.

“Hey. I don’t think Karen’s keeping her house. We should ask her.”

“Yeah,” Travis agrees. “Her place is the shit.”

“God, I can’t wait to move out of our place. It’s such a shithole,” Nick says with sudden distaste.

“Home is where you take a shit.”

“Yeah. I mean with all of us there and all it’s tolerable, but whatever persuaded us to get it in the first place…” and Nick rolls his eyes.

“It could definitely use some work,” Travis admits. Beating his hands on the steering wheel, now in time with Frank Black, Nick replies,

“Somebody should burn it down.”

Travis scratches his head. “We still got a month or so.”

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