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He knew he had to pick up the pace.
Whenever anyone told him that, he couldn't help but think of those old television commercials with the cowboys threatening to murder one of their own because he brought the wrong condiment.
Frontier justice used as a marketing tool.
Strange how murder can be portrayed as lighthearted fun, that is at least until somebody gets hurt or brings the wrong kind of picanté sauce, which in that case, homicide is truly justified.
I mean for Christ's sake, this stuff is from New York City!
They have no idea what picanté sauce is supposed to taste like!
Get a rope, string up him up and let's enjoy our tortilla chips and this delightful dip as his body slowly swings in the summer breeze. The cactus grows wild all around the campfire, the smell is getting unbearable but we continue to enjoy the taste of Pace picanté sauce.
Those folks in San Antonio certainly know their way around the art of mixing many herbs and spices, only the truly talented can wrench from the nether regions, a fantastic flavor explosion such as this. May god have mercy on our souls for the killing but you have to admit this is some fine dip.
The western fantasy daydream ended just as abruptly as it began.
Several colleagues in attendance noticed the lack of enthusiasm coming from his side of the table. His hands loudly announced his intentions to shovel in a few more crunchy corn chips into his mouth, the meeting still had another hour to go.
"May I ask why you insist on interrupting the presentation? After all, I seem to recall that this whole affair burst out of your brain. Am I to assume that you simply cannot find it in your schedule to pay attention?"
His hands continued to empty the bag, even the fragmented ones found no mercy that day.
This was a holocaust.
"I am talking to you! Will you please stop making so much noise or I will have these," the unamused speaker pointed toward the bag, "CONFISCATED! Do you understand me?"
He nodded in approval, his cheeks puffed out by mammoth portions of food, a bit of picanté sauce spilling from his lips.
"As I was saying, if we have to close these three outlets, I believe we could pull this company out of the red and, if the Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, into the black. Now, all we need is…"
A small fire had quickly developed from a discarded cigarette and began to pump a blackish plume into the air. The scent of burning paper and oddly enough, tortilla chips, filled the room.
The glass formed a ring on the new coffee table. He no longer cared about the condition of the furniture. The bare room a testament to his spending habits or what most classify as a lack of class.
He used to own a television, his favorite of all appliances. With a flick of the switch, he could enter worlds better than his own. They all sprang from fantasy but he never cared about that reality, the only one he was painfully aware of was the one he lived in.
After a week of staring into the blue light, he decided to sell the machine. He wrote letters to forgotten friends, asking if they needed a decent television set. A month passed, the postman only gave him more eviction notices and overdue utility bills.
Once he finally received real mail, the problem being the envelope not addressed to him but to someone else, a mistake on the part of a bored and overworked government employee. The event lightened his mood, though he desperately wanted a potential buyer for his used apparatus, the thought that people still wrote each other letters made him happy.
He never turned on the television after that.
The Name Is Dalton is a punk rock bass player with too many beers in his fridge and too many Bukowski books on his shelves. You can check out his music at http://www.myspace.com/paulkersey.