Wanted 9:25

When Jake comes, we always get candy.

As always, we enter the fluorescent wasteland of Kmart with a mix of trepidation and fascination, both repulsed by it and drawn to it like an overturned semi on the highway. Thickness isn’t working tonight and Jake and I are both disappointed. He’s been there every single time I’ve come here and his absence creates a disappointment in us both that cannot be replaced by the middle-aged woman sitting in his spot behind the Customer Service counter. She looks like Fran Dresher in a shag haircut, sans makeup.

We make our way to the candy isle and confront the wall of choices. Jake grabs a box of Good and Fruity, but I’m in the mood for something different. We handle boxes of Gummi worms, sour cherries, generic candy fruit slices, coconut covered marshmallows, and chocolate covered raisins. Jake finally picks up a box of Whoppers and we head for the checkout.

The magazines shout at us with their gaudy covers: “Britney Talks about Family and Her Troubles,” “10 Ways to Make Your Man Go Wild in Bed,” “Double Chocolate Cherry Bunt Cake Recipe Inside,” “Lose 10 lbs. in 10 Days.”

The clerk slides the candy across the scanner as I pick up a fuzzy animal PEZ dispenser from its display next to the register.

“We have political ones over there,” the clerk says brightly.

“Oh?”

“There’s an elephant, and a donkey with a red scarf.”

“Awesome,” I say. “Over in the political section?” As if I’m interested in buying a fuzzy donkey, so I can show my political allegiance through my choice candy dispenser.

The clerk looks confused. “No,” he says. “Just over there.”

“Sure,” I smile. “I’ll check it out.”

He looks at me, expecting that I have something to buy as well. But I just walk past.

How do two grown men look, buying two boxes of candy together at 9 o’clock at night?

We pick up Nate on our way to the theater and I play him a Regina Spektor song where I think she sings in Russian. He knows Russian, so I thought he could enlighten me. But he shakes his head. “It’s not Russian. It’s a Slavic language, but it’s not Russian.”

I shrug my shoulders.

As we sit down, Jake breaks out the candy and passes it around. I’ve never really understood the fascination people have with eating while watching a movie. Usually the candy or popcorn is half gone by the time the previews are over anyway. And, as is the case this time, we get sick of the candy and only continue eating it out of obligation. We pass the candy back and forth, not really wanting any more, but taking it for the sake of politeness.

Ten minutes into the movie my mouth is raw from sucking on Whoppers, and the Good n’ Fruitys cover my taste buds with a haze of sugar so everything has the same indecipherable sweet-sticky synthetic fruit flavor.