8:35 p.m. in Jersadelphia

8:35 p.m. in Jersadelphia reminds me of how when my buddy Rick and I talk, we schedule hourlong calls with one another on “Turner time,” five minutes after the top or bottom of the hour in honor of the TBS programming we watched as kids. Now, after almost nine years apart, we’re sitting opposite one another eating dinner while talking at his kitchen table on the final night of my five-day trip. It is July 4th and I’m soaked in sweat.

“We did it!” he says with a bite of sausage and olive pizza tucked inside his cheek. “We went to the World Cup on your birthday!”

We’d planned the outing for a year. What we hadn’t planned for was the 101-degree temperature, a heatwave we endured for my entire time in Jersadelphia, a term I’d coined years ago for the area just outside Philadelphia where he lives.

“How’s that Waldorf salad, baby boy?”

“Pretty good. I like that it’s chicken salad, not just chunks of chicken, in here. It’s like they knew it was my birthday.”

“How many times are you gonna mention that it’s your birthday?!”

“As many as I can until it’s not my birthday.”

Sweat continues running in agglomerative tributaries off my scalp as Rick claims my cucumber and mint-scented deodorant somehow makes me smell worse than I should.

“It’d be better as a seltzer flavor, admittedly,” I tell him.

Prior to the game starting, we sat on a shaded cement bench with an intriguing view of a parking garage across the street. I glimpsed two horses standing in place while a man walked a third one back and forth in a line, as fascinated with the scene as I was later by the soccer match’s convivial atmosphere, telling Rick that the ponies were the real story the local news wouldn’t be covering. He disappeared during the game’s first half to cool off, but beating traffic, finding key lime pie at an open grocery store, and arriving home before 8:30 reinvigorated him, a man prone to gloating about logistical success.

“You wanna hit this?” he says, extending the smoldering bowl.

“Sure!”

“It’s still burning. Cheef the bowl! Cheef the bowl!”

“Gotta take a shower after this. I love a high shower.”

Throughout the trip, Rick’s inability to properly back into or pull out of tight parking spaces has me in stitches. I return to the living room refreshed and suggest we watch something to wind down.

“A series? A movie? Stand-up? What?”

“The scene from Austin Powers. You know the one.”

Rick vows to stay up until midnight, but by 10:30 he’s fading on the couch and says he’s going to bed.

“Thanks for the above average birthday, angel face.”

“Would you shut up?” he says after he laughs. “And don’t go squirreling around the house cleaning up again, okay? It’s your birthday, after all, in case you forgot!”

Around 11, I search for the following morning’s bagel of choice, and when I reach for another seltzer can I spot a lemon-lime-colored three-inch thick layer atop a quart of milk. The expiration date says May 1st. Another one with a June 1st date sits behind it. Certain Rick isn’t making his own cottage cheese, I dump them then pick up various bottle caps on the floor along with single strips of crumpled paper towels, harmless breadcrumbs Rick leaves on countertops habitually, a lonely, sometimes irascible man reminding himself that he’s free to do things his own way.

I don’t pick up because I need the order for myself. I do it because Rick took multiple days off work to patiently read NBA articles on his phone while I shopped for records. I do it because he stopped at a sweltering roadside stand so I could buy a basket of peaches and a massive heirloom tomato. I do it because he took me to see Lucy the Elephant, his homoerotic jokes about the hour he booked for us alone inside America’s largest pachyderm gradually losing their comedic edge but still yielding laughs because we’re dedicated brothers in absurdity. I do it because I’ve texted him daily for fourteen years and care about him as deeply as I know how, his authenticity the quality I most value in my fellow man.

The subsequent morning, I eat slices of that tomato salted with cream cheese on an onion bagel, staring at his backyard. There by the shed is the rodent he’s told me about for weeks.

“Lil Ollie North sighting!” I text him about the gopher he nicknamed. “Trip completed.”

“Yessss!” he replies.

“Loading the .45 for the Deer Hunter exit.”

He arrives home and announces how he’s drawn the short straw, his employer shipping him to northern Jersey for a week. Then, in untraditionally positive form, he states that he’ll see one of his best friends up there and hesitantly allows himself a moment of glory, patting himself on the back because the trip is recognition for how well he’s done his job.

We go to his hometown diner for our final meal, an argument between two employees prolonging our exit, the mutual exasperation palpable as we fight to get in the first comment as soon as the door closes behind us. When we leave his house the final time, it occurs to me that I’ll now have context when he describes the van parked across the street in perpetuity or the “creepy crawler” insects I squashed in the guest bedroom, Rick repeatedly stating that he doesn’t know where they’re coming from, not that he’s formulated any plan to deter them. Our ride to the train station concludes with him standing outside the passenger door, arms spread wide.

“Let’s not take a decade to do this again!” he says. “I’m sure I’ll see you in the chat box in the next ninety minutes.”

He does when I text him a thank you and tell him I love him. I don’t mention how hot the train station is or that I regret not applying deodorant. I save it for our next call.