The Smoking Gun

When Dustin and I moved into an apartment building with a little courtyard patio with some deck chairs and a barbecue, we didn't think we would ever use the grill. It seemed to much like apartments with a lap pool in the middle, pools that inevitably were always too cold and and too chlorinated and just collected leaves. But we were wrong. We grill steak tips and shish kebobs and burgers when the mood is right. I go on runs and walks in the evening and appreciate how many neighborhoods smell deliciously like grilling. It was all becoming so absolutely ordinary that I might not have noticed the grill outside a nearby apartment building had someone not said, "Hey, look! A gun!" Pistol might be more the word, revolver if the chambers could move, but sure enough it was a grill fashioned to hold coals where the cylinder would be, and then accessorized with a barrel and a backstrap and a supporting post to keep it level. I feel better that it is pointed away from traffic, but that consolation is tarnished by the fact that this gun grill is strangely diminutive, low to the ground, like a child's toy.