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they're sitting at an outside patio table at the neighborhood starbucks. by their feet are two, almost identical, gym bags. both bags are black. though bunched, you can see through the creases that one bag bears the nike insignia while the other bears the reebok insignia.

mark is the cleaner looking of the two. there is no visible sweat-ring around the neckline of his shirt nor anywhere else. rob is marked by tiny land masses of sweat in three places: under each armpit and along his neckline, which are made even more apparent against the light blue of his shirt.

they are waiting on a third party: their friend, tom, who has recently taken to calling himself "lord of lord and king of kings."

in each of their gym bags is a gag gift for their friend. in mark's is a sash. in rob's: a crown. not a crown of thorns. but a plastic crown with plastic jewels made to look like a monarch's. the crown is a toy marketed specifically to children, so they can play pretend to be queens and kings: which is why rob is so delighted to give the gift to tom. because, in one way or another, this is exactly what tom is doing: play-pretending like a child.

tom is apparently pretty serious about this king of king business. when he first requested that mark and rob address him by this title (it was at a block party hosted by gary, who was impossibly friendly but intolerable as anything but a neighbor and therefore never got invited to either play racquetball or drink sugary drinks at starbucks), they assumed he was joking--how some men call themselves "gods" when referring to their make-believe sex-skills because they don't really mean it and it's funny to be so immodest, but what they didn't immediately understand was that tom was being completely serious. he really wanted to be called the lord of lords, etc.

rob, the cynic, of course, believes this to be some sort of attention-seeking stunt. he thinks his gift is just what tom needs to realize: hey, the joke's old. it's no longer funny. he hopes that the crown will bring tom back to their former reality--sort of a passive-aggresive attempt at communicating to tom that, ok, we get the joke but this crown reflects how ridiculous this is. but he's not sure it will work. and mark doesn't care what the motivation is--he just thinks it's funny.