Bobbing for chicken

He rings the bell. She comes to the door, dressed in... What, polyester? Yes, polyester pants, pink and yellow. She greets him friendly, asks about his day, apologizes for leaving so quickly, wishes him well, and is out to the curb, in her car and gone.He walks in. The smell of scorched butter hangs in the air, filmy, like truckstop concrete. He greets his friends, notices a pan on the table in the middle of the kitchen. It is lined with foil."What's this?" he says, as he peeks inside."Chicken," says Tim, "for the bitches."Chicken for the bitches. He grins at this, says nothing. He reaches in for a drumstick and it bobbles under the surface."What'd you do to it?" he asks."I cooked it," says his friend. "what'd you think?"Cooked it. Can you fucking believe this guy?"How?" he asks, seeing perfectly well, but wanting to hear Tim explain it.They were about to become roommates. In fact, that was the reason he was here. He came over to talk about some of the apartments they had looked at, to see if he had an opinion."In butter," says Tim.Does his Grandmother know he did this? Probably not, he concludes, she'd never let him do this to Chicken."Where'd your Gram go? " He puts the chicken back in the pan, watches it sink under then slowly rise back up."She went to play bingo," he replies, "and we've got some bitches coming over for dinner. We're making them chicken and corn."As he says this, he pulls four cobs of corn on a cookie sheet from the oven in the kitchen. He sets the them on the counter next to a plate of biscuits, which look ok."How'd you cook them," he says, "in what? That pan?""Yeah. I just put 'em in the pan with the butter and put it in the oven."He examines the pan on the table again. It is about 4 inches deep, oval-shaped. Inside he sees seven drumsticks, mostly black on the outside, floating around lazily in a greasy pool. He pokes one again. It dips under the surface and re-emerges. He thinks it may be the same one he just picked up, but isn't sure."Shit, man, how much butter did you use?""I put in a stick for each leg," he says. He is putting the corn and the biscuits on a large platter. The platter has blue geese painted around the edge, looks Asian.A stick for each leg! "Dude, that's like almost two pounds of butter," he says, and his friend laughs.