Craig Lancaster - Edward Adrift

“Are you afraid you can’t keep peeing better than I can?” I ask.

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“You sound afraid,” I say. “You sound like a chicken.” I set the bottles down on the leather seat and put my thumbs in my armpits and flap my elbows. “Bock-bock-be-gock!”

“You’re being immature,” he says.

“Come on, chicken.” I flap my elbows some more, and finally Kyle laughs.

“OK, dude, you’re going down,” he says.

We high-five, and I feel as happy as I have in a long time. It’s as if the Kyle I remember from Billings, the one who was nowhere to be seen in Boise, is back with me. I hope he washed his hands.

It is 2:47 p.m. when we park at a McDonald’s off the interstate in Denver. I implore (I love the word “implore”) Kyle to pick a different place, but he’s insistent that he wants McDonald’s, and I am reluctant to do anything that stops our good momentum.

The shopping center holding the McDonald’s has many stores and good pathways for walking, and I tell Kyle that after we eat, we need to walk. He doesn’t appear keen on this, until I remind him that his debt will be down to $202 if he walks with me.

At the restaurant, Kyle orders a Big Mac, large fries, and a large Coke. I order a grilled chicken sandwich, no fries, and an unsweetened iced tea. It’s not an ideal diabetic meal, but it’s better than what Kyle has.

I’m the first to notice that six men in this restaurant are wearing Denver Broncos jerseys with Tim Tebow’s name on the back. I’m usually the first to notice such things. I point it out to Kyle.

“That’s because Tim Tebow’s the best,” he says.

This is so far beyond absurd that I cannot believe it.

“He’s the best what?”

“He’s the best quarterback in the NFL.”

“Kyle,” I say, “that is a laughable contention. I know you are a Denver Broncos fan, but you’re being ridiculous.”

“Who’s better?”

I laugh a ha-ha laugh. I even snort a little bit, which is strange. “Aaron Rodgers is better. Tom Brady is better. Drew Brees is better. Ben Roethlisberger is better. Tony Romo is better. Lots of other guys, too. I can prove this statistically.”

“Tony Romo! That’s a laugh!”

“He is, Kyle.” It’s a strange feeling. I know that I’m being defensive because Tony Romo is the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback, and the Dallas Cowboys are my favorite team. But I am also correct about this. Also, my voice is getting loud.

“Tony Romo is a punk,” Kyle says.

“He’s better than Tim Tebow.” I’m being really loud now, and people are starting to look at us. Three of the men wearing Tim Tebow jerseys begin walking toward our table. I ignore their approach and keep arguing with Kyle. “Do you know what Tony Romo’s completion percentage is? It’s sixty-six-point-three percent. Do you know what Tim Tebow’s is? It’s forty-six-point-five percent.”

One of the jersey-wearing men, a guy who looks to be in his mid-twenties and is so large that he probably shouldn’t be eating at McDonald’s, says, “Tim Tebow wins. A lot more than Tony Romo does.”

“OK,” I say, “but you have to acknowledge the fact that one player can’t do everything. Tim Tebow has a better defense than Tony Romo does. That makes a difference.”

“All I know,” says another man with a Tebow jersey, “is that the Broncos were one-and-four before Tebow started playing. They’re seven-and-one since he got in there.”

Kyle looks at me with a big smirk on his face. “Yeah!” he says.

“I’m not talking about wins and losses,” I say. My eyes are moving back and forth between the two men who have rudely injected themselves into my discussion with Kyle. “The debate is quarterback ability. Tony Romo is better than Tim Tebow.”

Everybody around us groans, and now the third man wearing a Tim Tebow jersey jumps in. “What’s the point of being a quarterback other than to win?”

“I’m just—” I say, but I’m cut off, because now the second one is back at it.

“You’ve got big balls, bad-mouthing Tim Tebow in Denver, dude.”

A chorus of “Yeah” goes up in McDonald’s. Kyle is sitting there with a shit-eating grin on his face. I’m not even sure where that saying comes from. Why would anybody grin after eating shit?

I try to talk, but everybody in the restaurant boos me, and a couple of people—including Kyle—throw french fries at me.

This sucks.

On our seventh lap around the big shopping center parking lot, Kyle, who is walking a couple of steps behind me, says, “Will you buy me a Tim Tebow jersey?”

I stop, turn, and stare at him. I am incredulous.

“You must be kidding. After what happened in there? You have big balls.” I didn’t like the men in the Tim Tebow jerseys, but I like this saying that one of them introduced me to.

“You owe me a buck,” Kyle says.

“‘Balls’ isn’t a curse word.”

“So I can say ‘balls’ as much as I like?”

Kyle has me cornered. I don’t think I should lose a dollar on a word like “balls.” On the other hand, I don’t think Donna will be pleased with me if I send her son home and he’s saying “balls” all the time. I think she will be especially angry if she finds out that I gave him permission to say it.

“OK,” I say. “Your debt is now down to two hundred and one.”

“What about the Tim Tebow jersey?”

He has incredibly big balls.

“No.”

“If I’m good the rest of the trip?”

“Maybe.”

“If I call my mom twice a day?”

He has relentlessly big balls.

“Yes.”

Back in the Cadillac DTS, we take a big loop around Denver, out past the new airport, to Interstate 40 East. For part of the trip, Kyle chats happily on my bitchin’ iPhone with his mother, and as he hangs up, he tells her that he will call again when we reach Cheyenne Wells. After the phone is back in my hands, he reminds me that he’s part of the way to a Tim Tebow jersey. This annoys me.

Near the small town of Deer Trail, 119 miles from our destination, Kyle tells me to pull off at a rest stop so he can pee. It’s good timing—I have to pee, too, and we’re now able to renew our contest.

We’re alone in the restroom, which is a nice development, as I’m feeling a little silly about this even as I’m powerless to stop it. This is one of the struggles of my condition, particularly the obsessive-compulsive part of it. I wonder what Dr. Buckley would say if I told her that a twelve-year-old boy and I were comparing our levels of urination. It’s difficult for me to even imagine telling her such a thing, although I surely would if she were still my therapist, because I told Dr. Buckley everything. I have not reached that level of trust with Dr. Bryan Thomsen. I suspect that Dr. Buckley would say this is the sort of compulsion I should work harder at controlling.

Having learned how to pee into the bottle at our previous stop, I fill mine with no trouble. From the stall next to me, where Kyle is, I hear a gurgling sound.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

I walk around to the front of the stall and peek through the opening between the door and the wall. I can’t believe what I see.

Kyle is kneeling at the commode, and he has pushed the bottle into the toilet water to fill it up. This is cheating. This is also really, really gross.

“Kyle!”

He jumps and drops the bottle into the toilet.

“Shit!” he yells, and I make a mental note to add $10 to his debt.

“I can’t believe this,” I say. “You’re cheating. Did you cheat at the last rest stop, too?”