Cricket

Across from me Mitch the Cat is dancing in his seat, white Amazon headphones about his ears, as I journal my journey so that the cacophony of my mind isn't so loud later and maybe I can have a fun time. We're on the upper deck of the Coaster, a comfortable double-decker train that runs the coast of southern California.

Our first stop is in Anaheim, outside of the Angels' stadium. As I admire this modern day coliseum, he focuses on the parking lot, where there is the usual story going on: men, mits, bats, balls. Three pickup games are in progress, and it takes me a second to realise there is something odd about them, and another second to realise what that oddity is: they're playing cricket.

When he's through listening and dancing and energetically drumming his bare thighs till they're bright red, I tell him of my choosing to jump back on the happy pills.

Mitch:

     When?

Leo:

     This morning.

Mitch:

     Why?

Leo:

     They might make it easier for me to think how I want to think, act how I want to act, live how I want to live, be how I want to be.

Mitch:

     Great! What's different from a year ago?

Leo:

     I'm ready to face what they will show to me.

Mitch:

     Oh, I see. When do they kick in?

Leo:

     Three weeks or so.

Mitch:

     Bummer! Guess you'll just have to suffer the world sober like we other fools till then.

     Cricket by Gawd! Outside a baseball stadium! What sacrilege! What anarchy! What a jumble this American culture is: a culture of all cultures!

Leo:

     I walked by one Richie's Diner this morning. 'Real American Cuisine' they claimed.

Mitch:

     How absurd, for one; for two, what is that? Greasy hamburgers? They are from Hamburg, Germany. French fries? We are a nation of imports, a culture imported.

Half an hour later the beach comes into view (and never leaves). The ocean strikes me: the sheer expanse, the placid eternity. There are surfers like seals in scattered, trailing clumps out in the water.

Mitch:
     I see you lying on that beach.

Leo:
     Ah... me too.

Mitch:
     Crab-gnawed; pale, purple, swollen with salt water; daintily nibbed; eyes gone; skin sallow. Lord, what a tragedy!

Leo:
     If you say so, so it is.