Creamy Bullets by Kevin Sampsell Page A

but she was going to some sort of women’s book club meeting. She’d been plowing through a 500-page Margaret Atwood novel all day at work.
    “Maybe we should organize a benefit or something,” Shane suggested. He was one beer ahead of me.
    “Who would we get to play for a water buffalo?” I said.
    “Are you kidding me? We could get all sorts of bands. Just have Libby ask them. Who can say no to Libby?”
    “What do you think about Libby, anyway?”
    Shane finished off his third porter and looked around before answering. “She’s cool. But she can be kind of preachy too, I guess. Like when she bosses people around at work.”
    “No, I mean, do you think she’s cute?”
    Shane scooted his empty glass to the edge of the table and shrugged. He took his time to think of an answer though he already knew it. It was something he thought about a lot. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “I’m not a big fan of the dreadlocks though. I like the pink, just not the clumps.”
    “I heard that stuff is made out of fertilizer.”
    “What, dreadlocks?”
    “Yeah, like some kind of poop.”
    Shane thought about this for a second. He looked around and nodded toward a forty-ish guy with dreadlocks wearing a Clash t-shirt. “You should go ask that guy over there,” he told me.
    “No way, man.”
    “I’ll buy you a beer if you do.”
    I got up without saying a word and walked over by the guy. He was hanging out with two girls that I’d seen in the record store before—Gwen Stefani wannabes. I leaned over and asked them if I could borrow their salt. I walked back to Shane.
    “You didn’t ask him,” he said.
    “I didn’t have to ask. I smelled.”
    “Nice,” he said. “Nice and covert. Was it poopy?”
    “Like a day-old diaper,” I said.
    Libby walked in just then. She spotted us, gave us the thumbs up, and went to the bar to order a beer.
    “Why don’t you just take a good whiff of her hair when she gets over here,” I said to Shane.
    “Shut up,” he said. “No more poop talk.”
    She walked over with a pint of local beer, lemon wedged on its lip.
    “How was the poop talk?” I asked. “I mean, book talk.”
    “There were only three people there this time. And no one even read the whole book.” She squeezed a little lemon onto her tongue. “You’d think that literacy was dead or something.”
    “It is,” I said. “Anyone that reads books is a rebel.”
    “You don’t read books,” Shane scoffed.
    “I’m not a rebel,” I said.
    Shane got up to get more beer for himself. “Want another one?”
    I shook my head as Shane started his squeeze to the bar.
    “We were just talking about the water buffalo,” I said to Libby. “Shane wants to help set up a benefit. You know some band guys, don’t you?”
    She listed off eight band names in a row, only a couple of which I’ve heard of. I nodded and raised my eyebrows like I was impressed. I could see Shane coming back with his beer, slowing behind her, crouching down with his nose out. I wondered what she smelled like too.
    The Ugly Mug Café was kind enough to let us do the fundraiser in their space. It was a large room, big enough to hold a hundred people. It was nearly full.
    A band called Hand Over Fist was playing first. Shane and I were working the door (five bucks a head) and Libby had a table in the corner that neatly displayed information and photographs of water buffalo. She also made buttons and t-shirts with water buffalo on them just for the occasion. People seemed more interested in the oddly fashionable image of the buffalo as opposed to its actual humanitarian benefits.
    Rod came up to Libby’s table and enthusiastically launched into a business idea that would, he said, “pay for a hundred buffalo.” Libby listened considerately as Rod laid out his ideas for water buffalo bags, bumper stickers, coffee mugs, baseball caps, designer jackets, lunch boxes, action figures, mouse pads, pillows and so on. “To go along with the buttons and