The ice-melting slipped some shrinking cubes out of a sandwich bag. People dove to clean up the mess. "That was my last good shirt," an everybody's Dad said of wiping and wiping at the ice water on the gymnasium floor. "Why is this locker room floor like the court floor?"
"They're new. The lockers."
A man with a towel hanging over his shoulders sat on a no-back bench like it was a horse. "My dad's generation lost this place once." He sighed like the weight in his body was shifting. "Oh my God, they did?" A young boy and girl started and finished the question together. The man raised his obviously tired eyes and looked in each face.
"When it's a war, we can lose everything," the mom-in-law-to-be put her arms around the boy and beckoned the girl to come get hugged too. She sat where her Dad's lap would be but for the bench.
"We'll see you at the restaurant," a showered, shaved, and dress-casual clothed man came from the shower area and said to the family.
"That's what happened in Germany to the Jews," he got out to scrape the windshield. "What do you mean?" Blended with the roaring defrosting sound. "Put the cigarette out before I get back in."
"Technically, they lost."
"I'd say. We went to the museum in Philadelphia."
"I've been studying." He blew the horn. "Goats. At home. They stand around anything warm."
"They lost...their democracy."
"Yes. And then the Republic was up for grabs!"
The fog was stranding off and up from freshly plowed slush mounds. "First, they lost their property rights and then themselves as property."
"Did it have to do with taxes?"
"In a way. Tax base." The curb outside the restaurant was being shoveled. "We could've walked."
"Couldn't leave my property on their property. Can't afford another ticket."
"Thanks," to a door being opened and a hand to help over the garbage in snow ice mounds.
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