Chapter 16

As Spiderman and Wolverine walked through the front doors of Dairy Queen, all of their troubles seemed to melt away like an ice cream sandwich that had been left out of the fridge for too long. When they were hit with that fresh aroma of hot eats mixed with cool treats, their brains instantly knew everything was all right, and nothing could hurt them…not even a nuclear bomb!
“So, what do you want?” asked Spiderman, directing his question somewhere as the lovely Mr. Wolverine as they got into line.
“Oh, I don’t know; I’m just going to study the menu for a second, and then I’ll tell you that I am going to get!” replied the blue-and-yellow bandit.
“Soooounds good!” said Spiderman, although somewhere, deep inside his chest, a little something died when Wolverine didn’t immediately say he wanted a Heath Blizzard. “Man, this place is really busy tonight.”
“Yeah,” responded Wolverine, “there must have been a high school sports game tonight or something.”
“Yeah, probably,” conceded Spiderman. A minute of awkward silence followed this last comment as the two heroes slowly shuffled forward toward the sexy order-taker lady. They sat there, waiting for their chance to order and listening to the familiar beeps and whirs that help create the homey ambiance of DQ. Spiderman, of course, broke the silence by saying:
“Man, we should have gone through the drive-thru; there’s hardly anybody in there.”
“Yeah...oh well, we’re almost up anyways.”
“Up for what?” asked Spiderman?
“Up for ordering, silly!” replied Wolverine.
“Oh…LOL!” laughed Spiderman.
“Hello my name is Kindy, may I take your order?” asked the sexy DQ ordering gal, who had on a sexy Dairy Queen visor.
“What?” queried Spiderman, startled.
“May I take your order?” queried Kindy, again.
“Oh, oh, sorry. Well, I want a cone of chocolate soft-serve…dipped in chocolate,” winked Spiderman.
“Okay, one chocolate soft-serve cone dipped in chocolate,” confirmed Kindy.
“Well, but wait, I don’t want the cone dipped in chocolate, just the soft-serve.”
“Of course, sir,” replied a slightly annoyed Kindy. “Anything else for you today?”
“Yeah, my friend here will have…uh…what do you want, Wolverine?” asked Spiderman, his white eye-things curled up with anticipation.
“I want…a Starkiss.”
“Well, we all want that, Wolverine, but I’m afraid you’re gonna have to order off the menu,” rapped Spiderman somewhat sassily.
“Sir, I believe he means out star-shaped popsicle things…they’re called Starkisses,” informed Spiderman of Kindy.
“Oh, well then…order away,” mumbled a moderately embarrassed Spiderman.
“Thank you,” said Wolverine kind of huffily. “Um…what flavors do those come in?”
“Well, sir, they come in cherry, pineapple, blueberry, strawberry, and cotton candy.”
“Ooh, they all sound so good…I’ll go for……cherry. Yeah, cherry,” decided Wolverine.
“Okay,” replied Kindy, “Will that be all for you today?”
“Yes’m,” replied Spiderman and Wolverine in unison, although they forwent their usual jinx ritual after a moment of goofy eye-contact.
“Allright, that’ll be exactly five dollars,” cajoled Kindy. Spiderman handed over exactly five dollar bills. “Aaaand your order number is 169. May I help the next person, please?”
“Yes, you may!” replied some guy behind Spiderman and Wolverine, who presumably was next in line.
“Well, shit, wanna blast a ciggy while we wait for this fuckin’ food?” said Spiderman to his friend, who, for anonimity's sake, we'll call W.
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call it food, exactly, but yeah, I'm always down to kill a fag or two.” Spiderman and Wolverine casually passed through an unremarkable set of double doors and emerged outside of Dairy Queen under some sort of awning. The sun was setting and they were both entranced by it a lot. Spiderman handed Wolverine a cigarette, and they lit up.
“Damn, do you ever look at the sunset and wonder how many other people are looking at the same sunset?” asked Spiderman.
“Well, if you think about, doesn’t everybody see a different sunset? I mean, even though I’m only standing like two feet away from you, all of the molecules that are hitting my eyes and going to my brain are totally different from the ones hitting yours,” replied Wolverine deeply.
“Yeah, dude. I know what you mean…and, like, what if each of our brains perceives colors in a totally different way. I mean, for me, sunsets are like orange and yellow and purple, but what if for you they are like, green and black…and purple? What then?”
“Well, I mean, no sunsets are orange and yellow and purple for me, but what if your definition of colors is totally different than mine? What if they way I see black is the way you see white...or vice versa?”
“No, I mean, that’s what I mean,” said Spiderman, exhaling some tobacco smoke. “There’s no way we can know that our perceptions aren’t totally crazy in terms of how somebody else sees them.”
“Shit, man."
“Fuck.” With that, the two intellectually reflective superheroes just stood there basking in the waning rays of that big beautiful star that helped run their solar-powered water heaters every single day. For just a brief second, everything was completely peaceful everywhere as they smoked their cigs and watched the sunset. It was almost Zen-like. Wolverine was the one who broke the silence this time, saying,
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Spiderman inquisitively.
“With my superhuman senses I have deduced that our order is ready because they are calling out our order number.” With that, the superheroes put out their cigs and threw them into a nearby bush.
“Order 169!” called out a crazy DQ bitch in a kind of a pissed off voice.
“Yeah, jeez, hold up; we’re here, you female jerk," snapped Wolverine as he grabbed the tray that was holding his and Spidey's deserts. Then he clacked and gnashed his teeth at the order number-calling gal and made her jump back all scared-like. “Mmm, this smells sooo good,” raved Wolverine, inhaling deeply the delightful odor of the frozen treats under his face.
“Yes and it looks good, too!” replied Spiderman. “Hey, be a pal and hand me my cone, would ya?” Wolverine fulfilled his request with a now-familiar wink, giving Spiderman his much-lauded chocolate soft-serve cone dipped in chocolate. Well, the whole thing wasn’t dipped in chocolate, just the soft-serve part. Wolverine and Spiderman sat down a relatively clean booth towards the back of the Dairy Queen and prepared mentally to eat. Spiderman was the first to dig in, cracking the perfectly smooth chocolate shell on the soft-serve cone with his nose. He proceeded to pick off the rest of the hardened chocolate and throw it on the tray. He then pushed the chocolate soft-serve through his finely porous mask, slurping and glurping and generally making a terrible racket. Wolverine, meanwhile, slowly and carefully peeled the plastic wrapper off of his yummy Starkiss thing.
“Mmm, chocolate!” said Spiderman, still smashing the soft-serve cone into his face. Both he and Wolverine cracked up at this comment. The Wolfman then slowly took a bite off of his cherry Starkiss, sending a single shiver down his spine.
“Damn, that’s good,” remarked Wolverine, rolling a little piece of frozen treat around in his mouth. “Absolutely delicious.”
“I’ve never had one of those before…mind if I try it?” queried Spiderman. Wolverine stared back at Spiderman, examining the large, brown mark that had been formed around Spiderman’s mouth-region as the web demon had strained chocolate soft-serve though his mask.
“Sure…why not?” replied Wolverine. He handed his Starkiss over, and then watched in horror as Spiderman hastily began to smear it all over his mouth-region, licking and spitting on the Stakiss through his mask as the blue-and-red bandit tried to get a taste of the much-lauded DQ dessert.
“Oh my, it is so good!” smiled Spiderman, though you couldn’t see it because of his gooey mask. He handed the now-smashed and chocolate tinged Starkiss back to Wolverine, who looked at it and sighed.
“You know,” said Wolverine, “this reminds me of that scene in Unbreakable where Bruce Willis is on the tarp over the pool and he is sinking down and struggling a bunch.”
“Why does it remind you of that?” asked Spiderman.
“I…don’t know…it’s just one of those things, I guess,” replied Wolverine. Spiderman and Wolverine quietly finished their treats and then left Dairy Queen, a place which actually doesn't sell actual ice cream even though it is an ice cream shop.