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JOE
Daniel Lebost
Let me introduce you to my magnum and his idleness does not
good friend Joe. Joe, like your aver- fade, but I place a gentle hand on
age name, is your average person. his shoulder and through broken
He has always been a loyal friend sobs Icry, "I'm sorry."
and anyone who knows him would
tell you that he is a really nice guy. Four days before Joe and I are
sitting at the Clam Shell restaurant.
Joe, though, is now standing in Joes is talking to me about his day
the middle of the fourth floor hall- at work. We talk because it is some-
way of the Ramada Inn located in thing to occupy the vacant space we
Mt. Laurel, NJ. The hotel provides feel in our lives, not because we re-
the hallway with cream white walls ally have anything pertinent to say.
and maroon red doors with the stan- Iam sipping out of a bud light bot-
dard golden numbering. A heavy tle when my attention turns from
downpour can be seen through an Joe's speech to a small elegant foun-
oval glass window at the end of the tain outside the glass window. The
hall. Sweat beads have formed on kind one would see in France, with
Joe's large forehead and scrawny artistic flowery designs around the
?utstretched arms. Joe's wavy hair bowl-like base and a sprinkle com-
ISruffled up with cowlicks sticking ing out of the center. It is not even
out at all angles and his clothes reek the actual fountain that catches my
of old sweat and are pungent of attention, but the sound that every
blood. Feet clamped solidly to the small and flowing droplet of wa-
floor, Joe is incapable of inhalation ter makes as it falls into the filled
and gives off no signs of life. The bowl. I should not be able to hear
o~y offering of his true tangible it, but I do. I can hear it through
eXIstence appears solely in those the window and over the chatter
ocean blue eyes of his, that are of the almost filled restaurant. Just
open so wide with maddening hor- a trickle of water was all it took to
ror that the unheard screams of his seize my attention. Or maybe it was
Victims can be seen through them. her. Maybe she somehow changed
Joe's outstretched arms hold a .357 the trickle. Maybe she rearranged
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