Tick Tock

tight that he was unable to swallow. It would be more merciful to take a gun and shoot her. Just shoot her in the heart.
    So this was the kind of son he had become. The kind of son who shoots his mother in the heart with words.
    The traffic light changed from red to green, but he couldn't immediately lift his foot off the brake pedal. He was immobilized by a terrible weight of self-loathing.
    Behind the Corvette, another motorist tapped his horn. “I just want to live my own life,” Tommy said miserably as he finally drove through the intersection.
    Lately he had been talking aloud to himself far too much. The strain of living his own life and still being a good son was making him crazy.
    He reached for the cellular phone, intending to call his mom and ask if the dinner invitation was still open.
    Car phones for big shots.
    Not anymore. Everybody's got one.
    I don't. Phone and drive too dangerous.
    I've never had an accident, Mom.
    You will.
    He could hear her voice as clearly as if she were speaking those words now rather than in memory, and he snatched his hand away from the phone.
    On the west side of the Pacific Coast Highway was a restaurant styled as a 1950's diner. Impulsively, Tommy swung into the lot and parked in the glow of red neon.
    Inside, the place was fragrant with the aromas of onions, hamburgers sizzling on a grill, and pickle relish. Ensconced in a tufted red-vinyl booth, Tommy ordered a cheeseburger, French fries, and a chocolate milkshake.
    In his mind's ear, his mother's voice replayed: Clay-pot chicken and rice better than lousy cheeseburgers.
    “Make that two cheeseburgers,” Tommy amended as the waitress finished taking his order and started to turn away from his booth.
    “Skipped lunch, huh?” she asked.
    Too much cheeseburgers and French fries, soon you look like big fat cheeseburger.
    “And an order of onion rings,” Tommy said defiantly, certain that farther north, in Huntington Beach, his mother had just flinched with the psychic awareness of his betrayal.
    “I like a man with a big appetite,” the waitress said.
    She was a slender blue-eyed blonde with a pert nose and rosy complexion—exactly the kind of woman about whom his mother probably had nightmares.
    Tommy wondered if she was flirting. Her smile was inviting, but her comment about his appetite might have been innocent small talk. He wasn't as smooth with women as he would have liked to be.
    If she had given him an opening, he was incapable of taking it. One rebellion a night was enough. Cheeseburgers, yes, but not both cheeseburgers and a blonde.
    He could only say, “Give me extra Cheddar, please, and lots of onions.”
    After lathering plenty of mustard and ketchup on the burgers, he ate every bite of what he ordered. He drained the milkshake so completely that the sucking noises of his straw against the bottom of the glass caused nearby adult diners to glare at him because of the bad example he was setting for their children.
    He left a generous tip, and as he was heading toward the door, his waitress said, “You look a lot happier going out than you did coming in.”
    “I bought a Corvette today,” he said inanely.
    “Cool,” she said.
    “Been my dream since I was a little kid.”
    “What colour is it?”
    “Bright aqua metallic.”
    “Sounds pretty.”
    “It flies.”
    “I'll bet.”
    “Like a rocket,” he said, and he realized that he was almost lost in the oceanic depths of her blue eyes.
    This detective in your books — he ever marry blonde, he break his mother's heart.
    “Well” he said, “take care.”
    “You too,” said the waitress.
    He went to the entrance. On the threshold, holding the door open, Tommy looked back, hoping that she would still be staring after him. She had turned away, however, and was walking toward the booth that he had vacated. Her slender ankles and shapely calves were lovely.
    A breeze had sprung up, but the night was still balmy for November. On the far side of Pacific Coast Highway, at the entrance to Fashion Island Mall, stately ranks of enormous phoenix palms were illuminated by floodlights fixed to their boles. Long green fronds swayed like hula skirts. The breeze was lightly scented with the fecund smell of the nearby ocean; it didn't chill him but, in fact, pleasantly caressed the back of his neck and playfully ruffled his thick black hair. In the wake of his little rebellion against his mother and his heritage, the world seemed to have grown delightfully more sensuous.
    In the car, he switched on