The Legend of Eddie and Lola

��LET’S DO IT,” SHE SAID. “LET’S FUCKIN’ DO IT!”

Eddie sat on the couch and continued to stare down at the can of beer sitting in his lap just as he had been doing for the last twenty minutes or so. “Do what?” He eventually said to the beer.

“What we were talkin’ about just a few minutes ago! Let’s fuckin’ do it!”

Eddie really had no idea what they had been talking about a few minutes ago. Both he and Lola had started drinking at around 11 a.m. that day. Beer and whiskey. Eddie had no idea what time it was, or even what day. He just knew they had been drinking for some time. It was still daylight, that was the only thing he was fairly sure of. He could see and feel the sun shining through the window of the trailer.

Things hadn’t been going well lately for Eddie and Lola. Actually, things had never gone well for them, but lately things were going worse than usual. Eddie had lost his job at the pretzel factory a few weeks before. Habitual lateness. Too many days missed. The usual. He was having trouble getting unemployment. Lola didn’t have a job. Her mother used to send her money once a month but she stopped doing that. No more money until Lola got her life straightened out. To her mother, getting her life straightened out meant getting rid of Eddie. And to top it off, they’d been evicted from the trailer they’d been living in for the last six months. Mainly because they were three months behind in the rent. They were supposed to be out of there by today if they didn’t want the authorities to be involved. They didn’t have anywhere to go.

Eddie tried hard to remember what they might’ve been talking about a few minutes ago but it was no use. It could’ve been anything. He vaguely remembered hearing Lola talking, and himself as well, but he hadn’t really been paying attention. He had been staring into the void of the beer can in his lap, feeling rather numb. With some effort he looked up from his beer and tried to focus his eyes on Lola. “Do what?” he said again.

Lola was pacing about the trailer, wild eyed with a glass of whiskey in her hand. The whiskey was splashing out of the glass unto the floor. She was wearing blue jean cut off shorts and one of Eddie’s old Led Zeppelin t-shirts. “What do you mean, ‘do what?’ Let’s do what you said. Let’s go balls out! Fuck some shit up! Let’s take what we need and fuck anybody that gets in our way! It’s time we did sumpthin’ for ourselves! The good life ain’t gonna be ours unless we take it, right? Isn’t that what you said?”

Lola wasn’t exactly right in the head. She got funny ideas when she drank, and she drank a lot of the time. She was twenty five years old. She had been molested by her step father from the age of twelve. She was an alcoholic by the age of fourteen. Three half-assed suicide attempts. The usual. But Eddie was at least a little bit crazy himself, so he couldn’t really hold anything against her. Besides, she still looked pretty good in cut off jeans and a t-shirt.

“What...”Eddie said, trying very hard to piece something together. “You mean, about the...the liquor store an’ all? You mean all that? That was just talk, honey...I wasn’t really serious about all that...”

“Well, you sure sounded serious! You sure sounded serious a minute ago!”

Eddie looked back down at his beer and tried to think whether or not he had been serious. Maybe he had been. It was hard to remember. “Huh...” he said.

“You said we’d walk right in that fuckin’ store and take whatever the hell we wanted. You said we’d take the money, the booze, and everything! You said if anyone so much as looked at us sideways we’d blow their fuckin’ heads off, right? Especially that fucker behind the counter, remember? The one that wouldn’t cash my checks? You said we’d just blow his fuckin’ face off, remember? You sure sounded serious to me!”

“Yeah, I do hate that fucker,” Eddie said, remembering. It was beginning to make sense again. Perhaps he had meant what he had said after all. “Maybe you’re right, baby. Maybe I did mean it...”

“Well, I sure as hell mean it! I’m tired of readin’ about other people in the papers. I betcha by tomorrow we’re gonna be in the fuckin’ papers...just like...what was their names?”