The Diner

Ted walked into the diner to get a burger.  He was high as a kite.

Sometimes, when he’d been working for the corporation and feared drug testing, he’d turned down the drugs that were often available at the sessions where he’d been hired as an arranger or an engineer.  He’d smelled marijuana before, but he was proud, like Bill Clinton, and he’d never inhaled.  Of course that didn’t count when it came to the boxes of Marlboro Lights.  Ted had to admit that many people assumed he was a pot smoker because they saw him smoking the cigarettes, almost as if he was fearless.  In some ways, he was fearless.  He was married to the best woman he could imagine; and she was the smoker, which made him laugh inside, except for when he thought about his two daughters.  Smoking wasn’t something he wanted them to do, and he knew he was going to have a fight on his hands if his daughters ever decided to challenge their parents “do as I say not as I do” decrees.  Ted was a serious man.

The knock on the door came at ten thirty in the evening.  She had gone with the kids out to the county fair, where they were going to ride the roller coaster and walk the midway while watching Martina McBride sing. The State Trooper who knocked n the door said that the truck that hit them collapsed the car, killing them all instantly.

For six months, Ted did not know what to do.  He tried to work; he tried not to work.  One night, a friend he’d met in the days when he’s been cruising the Sunset strip looking for his first music industry job offered him a pipe with what he called “the most excellent hash”.  Ted inhaled, just some.