"Why can't I?!" The shrill shriek echoed through the thick night.

"Honey . . . "

"Don't call me honey! I am not a little kid! What is your problem?! Why can't you let me go!"

A middle aged woman closed her bloodshot eyes and raised a tired hand to a tired face, gently letting her makeuped cheek slouch on her yellow palm. A duo of plastic hot pink claws adorned two crooked fingers that wearily rose a fuming Virginia Slim to her crudely outlined lips; the lipstick wore off long ago. Her elbow seemed as if it would break in its wrinkled fragility, causing her blue eyelids and platinum hair to crash into the plastic table.

"Mother..." Ah, the next phase: the storm and now the calm.

"For christsakes don't call me that; it makes me feel old. I have a name you know," a smoky voice knew it was useless. She braced herself from her daughter's all too predictable bullets of sarcasm.

A teenage girl glared under a ridiculous facade of cosmetic attempts to appear older. The mother cowered under her fatigued cosmetic attempts to wind the clock backwards. Both failed. The girl drew in her breath unevenly, her heart pounding with the fury of not getting what she wanted. She let out an unecessarily dramatic adolescent sigh and stormed out of the house. The forlorn figure at the table took a long drag, then reached for her cheap gas station caliber beer.

Tina, as her friends called her, met her drinking age boyfriend at the corner of 6th and Main. She strutted over to his Mom's new purple Neon. Her miniskirted rear slid daintily onto the leather seat under the watching eyes of a smirked young man. She nervously fished around a patent leather purse, after a time revealing a Virginia Slim, conveniently lifted from her mother's stash in the underwear drawer.

She used to be a Katrina. That, of course, was when her dad was still around. For a moment, her long brown hair was pulled up into a girly ponytail and she insisted on wearing that little pink tutu that had to be pried off her for the wash. She shined under a missing tooth smile and her ballet slippered clicking feet protruded from the seat by a few inches. Then the moment was over.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"How about the bar on 4th?"

"Sounds fun," she lied. How romantic.

"Let's go over to the bar on 4th and watch the game. Mike says that the drinks will be on the house if the (some team here) do good," a woman said matter-of-factly, flipping her brown shiny hair.

He cringed. He always cringed when someone said, "do good." He used to try to correct her, but discovered that to his disappointment he would have to settle for her twist on the language. "Yeah, alright Minnie."

She smiled a victorious smile, proud at her powers of persuasion. She once got in a fight with the local girls, and they exchanged some nasty words. "You shoulda been a lawyer," one of her friends had said after she had successfully endeavored to make the opposing woman burst into tears. She tried, but she couldn't even get past high school.

He looked up at his image in the bathroom as she scurried off to her extensive wardrobe of plastic and rhinestones. He frowned at the face in the mirror. Had he seen this image on the street a couple years ago, he would have laughed at the desperate Just For Men attempt at regaining a lost and wasted youth.

Earl had led a normal life; an average, if there is a such thing, life. He married young, had two daughters and a loving wife. He had a steady job with steady pay. He lived in a doily apartment in a perky suburb.

Then it hit him. Sixty. He felt betrayed, as if someone has stolen a few decades from him. He took action. He left his wife of forty years, died his hair and starting dating the eloquent and educated Minnie.

The bar on 4th was crowded. The decade and a half Tina and her drinking age boyfriend slid in a booth near the corner of the smoky haven of intoxication. The TV blared something about a score. The boyfriend immediately became enthralled with the spectacle on the television.

Tina's eyes danced from person to person, searching for a cure to her usual ennui of being with her boyfriend. She found none and instead sought refuge in the television.

Six o'clock turned to 10 quickly. The game was over and the room with dizzy from free drinks, courtesy of Mike.

"I'm going to go outside for a sec, ok?"

Her boyfriend grunted in approval. Tina slid out cautiously between the worlds of the bar. She took a deep breath and smiled up at the stars above, glad for the fresh air. A pang of guilt struck as she wondered if her mother was worrying. This thought was quickly replaced by the site of a man curiously watching her under the streetlight.

"May I ask you a question?" he said in an old, charming voice that betrayed education.

"Yeah," she said suspiciously.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-one."

He laughed an easy laugh. "Let me guess. Sixteen." She glared at him. "Why are you trying so hard to act so much older than you are?"

"My turn. Let me guess. Sixty. What's with the cheesy dye?" she snapped back with an added pop of an old flavorless stick of Trident for a menacing effect.

He smiled a painful smile, embarrassed of his Rogained head while she tried to discreetly rub off some of her makeup. An awkward silence hung in the humid air.