Archive for fiction

train of thought

November 23, 2009 at 11:55 am · Filed under fiction, flight, flying, poem, poetry, short poem, train ·Tagged ,

riding marta southbound
5 points to atl
drumming pit-pat rhythms
on a starbucks venti cup
tapping dit-dot code
echoes of a caffeinated heart
as the mind squints
to discern fog-
enshrouded semaphores
of a blurry world
rolling by

seems like the heart’s
always skipping
a couple beats
ahead
of the brain

you know
trains and planes
can make me
feel like something
‘s ending or beginning
again

airborne
i read a short story
a plane exploding
over duluth mn
138 bodies falling
& 12 more dead
on the ground
yet on this flight
to msp I’m too tired
to take notice
of the connections

someday I will
remember this day
and see from afar
like from the sky
what is signified
but for now
it’s like the train
with the present
slipping past &
no clear view of

what’s to come

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Short (One-Scene) Play

November 24, 2008 at 8:50 pm · Filed under Luddite, fiction, field hockey, leotard, love, play, prose, sex, sexual, short story, skirt

Fromage a trois

 

 

A one-act play

 

Characters

 

Larry – Wears black t-shirt, jeans; not quite as smart or as good a writer as his girlfriend makes him believe; not a very skilled liar either.

 

Julie – Wears baggy black sweatshirt, leather skirt, tights and Doc Martens; not quite as naive as Harry believes her to be; prone to mild jealousy and insecurity. 

 

Scene

 

A sparsely decorated “loft” apartment – futon on floor, floor lamps, stacks of books.  Harry sits on the bed as Julie gets ready for bed.  Harry reads from manuscript.  Julie brushes hair.

 

*  *  *

 

Harry: “He embraced her like clenched teeth.”

 

Julie: Like clenched teeth?  Whaddya mean?

 

H: Well, you know, tightly.

 

J: Clenched teeth doesn’t sound like tightly, it sounds more like tense or straining.

 

Okay, uh, let’s see, how ‘bout, ahem, he hugged her like wool stockings?

 

Yuck, makes me itchy.  Anyway, embraced isn’t right here either.  Too formal… I mean, it’s like the candidate embraced the proposed reforms…not sexy enough.

 

Well, maybe—

 

—Oh, I’m sorry Dear, just go on.

 

Okay, she had come to regard him as a Sexual Luddite.  The thought filled her with—

 

—I’m sorry, a sexual what?

 

A Sexual Luddite.

 

Oh, come on, what’s that supposed to mean?

 

You know, it refers to the English movement during the early days of the Industrial Revolution against what was perceived as the displacement of workers by technology.

 

Yeah, yeah, I know Luddite, but whatever does that have to do with sex?

 

Well, not just in matters sexual, but—

 

—But you’re the one who said sexual Luddite.

 

It’s a metaphor, Honeycakes.

 

For WHAT?

 

Jeez, you don’t have to yell. Hey, have some respect for my artistic vision.  My work doesn’t take kindly to this kind of scrutiny.  You can’t dissect it like a frog.  It has to live organically, at a distance where it can be felt for its overall effect.  This story isn’t about logic, it’s about feeling.

 

Aw, for crying out loud, if you can’t explain sexual Luddite, than it’s just plain gibberish.

 

Why are you attacking me?

 

I’m not, can’t you see, I think you’re a wonderful writer.

 

You don’t have to say that, you know.

 

I know I don’t, but you are, really.

 

Really?

 

Come on, Puddin, read me some more.

 

Okay.

 

Well?

 

I’ve lost my place.

 

Sexual Luddite…

 

Oh yes, ah-hum, “He wanted to teach her a purer, freer, truer love, but she worried that he would make her feel silly, like that time after her modern dance class when she and Dee Dee—

 

—Hey, whoa Buster, is this about me, about us?

 

No Dear, of course not, it’s just a story.

 

Yeah, but is this about that time after Dance?  That time when Dorothy and I—

 

—No, I told you, it’s a writing exercise.

 

Cause if you ever tell another soul, I, I’ll… Hey, you haven’t told anyone, have you?

 

Look, I told you, it’s a work of fiction, pure and simple. So what if some of the details are coincidentally—

 

—Which details?

 

Well, I must confess that it may bear some resemblance —

 

—WHICH DETAILS?

 

The hot glue gun—

 

—Oh my God—

 

—And how Claudio forgot his purse and came back upstairs.

 

Oh… my… God!  How could you?  I swore you to secrecy.

 

And I never told a soul.

 

Except your whole goddamn writing seminar, right?

 

They don’t know who it’s about.  They don’t even know you.  To them it’s just a story.

 

I can’t even believe it.  This is just fantastic.  Next thing I know, you’ll be telling the whole world.

 

I have been asked to read Friday night.

 

What?

 

I wanted it to be a surprise.

 

A surprise?  That’s a hell of a surprise.  You’re gonna blab my most embarrassing moment ever at Open Mic?

 

The story needs some comic relief.

 

At my expense?  It was humiliating.  Are you gonna tell them I was in my underwear?

 

Well, actually in the story Julia is naked with the shirt stuck over her head when Mario walks in.

 

Naked!  I was not!  Besides… Julia?  Mario?  You’ve hardly changed the names at all.  Everyone will see right through it.

 

Stop worrying.  No one will know but you.  You know Claudio and Dorothy are out of town.  And no one else will have a clue.  How could they?

Well, maybe not, but I’ll know.

 

Oh Julie, don’t you see, it doesn’t matter what happened.

 

It sure as hell matters to me.

 

But it won’t really, in the long run.  In a few years I bet you’ll be the one laughing and telling the story after a few beers.

 

You don’t think Claudio told anyone, do you?

 

Well, you know, I wouldn’t doubt it.  Maybe he and I will have a little laugh about it some day.

 

Uh-uh.  No fuckin way.  And if you ever so much as mention it to another living soul, I… I swear I’ll –

 

—You see, you’re such a little tyrant when you get mad.  Your repressed attitude, your need to be in charge – that’s just what I’m talking about in the story.

 

What?

 

The story… the story of you and Dot and Mario.  I’m satirizing the oppressive conventions of self-consciousness so we can realize the purity of… of not caring… you know, like the Luddites.

 

I thought you said this story wasn’t about me.

 

Well, no, not really.  A story is just a story.  But all fiction is autobiographical, it has to be, dontja think?

 

Yeah, well in this case it’s pretty clear who’s the author and who’s the libel victim.  You make Julia out to be an idiot.  Sexual Luddite was one of the smarter things she said… And by the way, since when do you call Dorothy “Dot?”

 

Huh?

 

Dot, you just called her Dot.

 

I did not.

 

You said the story of me and Dot and Mario.

 

I don’t think so.

 

You did so.  I know what I heard.

 

Well, maybe I did.  Dot’s the name of the character from the story.

 

No, Dee Dee’s the name from the story.  You just said “Dot.”  I never call Dorothy “Dot.”

 

Maybe I knew a Dot once.

 

Maybe?  Whaddy mean?  Did ya or not?

 

Well of course I did.  That’s what I meant to say.  There was a Dot who played field hockey at my high school.  I think my brother went out with her once or twice.

 

And I think you’re lying.

 

I am not.

 

You are too.  You’re making this up.  I can hear it in your voice.

 

I am not lying.  Dotty Huber.  Tall.  Freckles.  Looked great in a plaid skirt.

 

Oh yeah?  Better than me?

 

No, not better than you.  Jeez, you know I love your knees.

 

Yeah, but I see how you look at those athletic types with their legs up to here and their tight little asses.

 

Julie, first you say I made up Dot Huber, and now you’re getting jealous of her, and I never even went out with her for Christsakes, Jason did.

 

Well, it’s not what you did but how you felt that matters, isn’t that what you always tell me?  Anyway, maybe I am feeling a little insecure about my body lately, especially since you exposed it to your whole class.

 

Julie, it’s not you in the story, it’s Julia.

 

Is she pretty?

 

Who?

 

Julia.

 

Yeah, I guess so.

Prettier than me?

 

Oh, come on, she’s a character in a story.  She doesn’t even exist.

 

Yeah, but she’s modeled after me.  Did you make her pretty?  Prettier than me?

 

I can’t compare her to you. 

 

Why not?

 

Well, because… for one thing, she’s just a few minimal lines of description.

 

Then I’m prettier?

 

You’re more real.

 

But who’s prettier?

 

You’re way prettier, Honey.

 

Really, in what way?

 

Well, Julia doesn’t have much of a figure.

 

Poor girl.  She’s kinda dumpy?

 

Well, no, uh… actually… here it is… “She pulled the black leotard over her slim, almost boyish hips and furtively studied her own long, slender legs in the mirror with a certain feigned nonchalance.”

 

Ah-ha!  I knew it.  She’s gorgeous.

 

No she’s not.  She’s a stuck-up dancer type, not at all womanly like you.

 

Admit it, you love that athletic type.  You wish I looked like Julia, don’t you.

 

Come on Julie, it’s just a story.  I never thought you’d react this way.  I guess Dot was right.

 

Dot Huber?

 

Huh?

 

You just said Dot again.  You said, “I guess Dot was right.”  What did you mean by that?  Were you talking to Dorothy?

 

You know Dorothy’s in Bayfield with Claudio.

 

But you said, “Dot was right.”  Right about what?  And when did you start calling her Dot?  I thought you hardly knew Dorothy.  You’ve got some explaining to do… Big time.

 

This is crazy.  You’re acting like Ken Starr.

 

And you’re lying like Bill Clinton.

 

Come on Julie, be reasonable.

 

Tell me the truth, and tell me now.

 

But there’s really nothing to tell.

 

When did you talk to Dorothy about this story?  I thought you only wrote it yesterday.

 

Well, Dot dropped by to borrow some CDs on her way out of town Thursday.

 

Why didn’t you tell me?

 

She just stopped in for a few minutes.

 

So she stayed for a while?

 

A little while, I guess.  We sat on the couch and chatted.

 

Chatted?  You and Dorothy?  About what?

 

Well you know, just the usual B.S.  Then I guess I read her a few pages from the story.

 

Oh.  Which part did you read?

 

The part where Harry sees Dee Dee for the first time.

 

Harry Meets Dee Dee?  I didn’t know that, Larry.  Why didn’t I know that?

 

I guess I might have skipped reading you that part.  It’s not very well written.

 

Let me see that.

 

Julie—

Let’s see… “She floated into the room like Botecelli’s Venus—

 

—Jules, Honey, give that back to me, you’re reading it all out of context–

 

“—and he knew then and there that he had to make love to this woman.”

 

Come on, Julie, give it back.

 

This is about you and Dorothy, isn’t it?

 

It’s just a story.  I swear it.  Nothing’s going on between me and Dot.

 

Fuck you.  You’re lying.  I’m going home… Shit, where’s my skirt?

 

Jules, sweetie, come back to bed.  You’re blowing this whole thing about Dot and me way outta proportion.

 

So now there is a thing about you and “Dot”?

 

Okay, so I slept with her one time.  Besides, she told me you slept with her too, so I guess that makes us even.

 

Oh, you’re such a prick.  Dorothy and I were together two summers ago, in Europe, long before I met you.  When did you fuck her?  Last week on the couch?

 

It was about a month ago.  Just that one time, and this really is the truth.  When you were at that gallery downstate.  It was a stupid thing to do.  I told her so that night, before we did it, but she was so upset with Claudio, she practically insisted.  It was a stupid moment of weakness for both of us.  I swear it will never happen again.

 

Well, it’s still shitty, especially the way you tried to hide it.

 

Yeah, it was a shitty thing to do.  I’m guilty as charged.  Don’t think it’s been easy living with the guilt, trying to protect Dorothy, because it hasn’t.  That’s why I had to write this story, to exorcise the demons.  Now, how can I make this up to you?  Do you want me to throw the story away?

 

You’d do that for me?

 

Anything, baby.  You say the word.

 

Well, tell me how it ends.  Does Harry end up with Julia or Dee Dee?

 

Actually, neither.

 

Huh?

 

Harry gets hit by a taxi and loses his legs.

 

That’s awful.

 

Yeah, it’s darkly comic.

 

But it’s a little drastic, don’t you think?  I’d never wish that on anyone.

 

It’s a metaphor, you see.

 

Well, how about if I suggest a few changes?

 

Okay, but I’d rather not change the ending.

 

Oh no, I mean how about changing the way you describe Julia – a little fuller butt, not so tall, and while you’re at it, could you change Dee Dee from Botecelli’s Venus to, say, maybe one of Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon?

 

Whatever you say, Sweetcheeks.  Now come back under the covers.

 

I don’t know if I feel like it now.

 

Come on, my goddess, let’s kiss and make up.

 

You’re such a Sexual Luddite!

 

Julia, peel off that black leotard and come to Harry!

 

Oh, embrace me like clenched teeth!

 

 

END

 

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Fragment

October 14, 2008 at 12:25 am · Filed under fiction, prose, short story

The Swillings

 

            “What has twenty-four legs and nine teeth?” my husband Kevin whispered.  The backs of my legs and my pink linen suit were starting to stick to the white Naugahyde pew near the rear of Stall Two of the Little White Chapel Wedding Parlor.  Up front, Kevin’s sister, Loretta, towered over her soon-to-be third husband, Dwayne B. Swilling, Jr., like a mountain of white lace, daisies and baby’s breath next to a bipedal weasel. 

            “The groom’s family,” Kevin said, and I choked back great spasms of laughter that spilled past my pink-lacquered nails and squinched-up cheeks in salty tears and snorts, so that everyone thought I was overcome with heartfelt joy.  I dug in my hand bag, pulled out a tissue, and blew long and loud, as the guests turned their eyes back to the tragicomic spectacle before them.  For the time being, I regained my composure and some sense of dignity, although both would be tested severely before the blessed day was through.

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Are you curious?

September 10, 2008 at 8:07 pm · Filed under criticism, fiction, freud, prose, sex, short story

Curious Kai

  

            “Daddy, daddy, yet’s read dis big big big dump truck book.”

            Kai climbs onto my lap and nestles in for a story.  I study the cover of Margret and H.A. Rey’s classic work, Curious George and the Dump Truck, an acknowledged picaresque-genre masterpiece and a defining treatise on the “collective psyche,” if you will, of mid-20th century America.  As Truly Composte states in his noted essay on post-World War II literary currents, “Atomic Age Lit” (1954), “Curious George is the optimist’s refutation of (Arthur) Miller’s Willy Loman.”  Kai is unaware of literary criticism and the subtextual themes in this great work.  Like its protagonist and title character, the young chimpanzee, Kai is innocent, and out of this innocence arises naturally in him curiosity.  When you’re young, you taste the fruits of the garden in great gulps, peel and all, the whole banana.

            As I open the book and read those familiar, fateful first words, “‘I have to go to town, George,’ said the man with the yellow hat. ‘You can come along,’” Kai pulls on a cherubic blond curl.  He is so much like young George, of whom Till Itchy writes, “…a Christ-like goodness, a saintly countenance upon simian features” (Animals of the Gospels, page 29).  Itchy regards the Curious George series as “a modern collection of parables written in an updated style, but with subtle echoes of the Greek translations of early Christian texts” (34).  I see George as more of a man of the world, albeit a very small man, and I refer you to Gnome Chimpsky’s excellent postmodern analysis, “Hesse’s Sidhartha, Rey’s Curious George, and Sabu the Elephant Boy: Three Buddhahs.”

            Many scholars have previously expounded on the psychosexual imagery of the Curious George series.  Who among us can deny that H.A. Rey compensated for his personal doubts about virility and gender identity by bestowing (equipping?) the “man in the yellow hat” with the tall, (always erect!) yellow hat; the blue convertible sports car and the freedom and promiscuity it implies (where was he always driving off to when he left George alone to get in and out of trouble: the classic absent father); the phallic symbols that decorate the page like fezzes at a Shriners convention. 

            This text is no exception.  In fact, the male symbol is a central plot device of Curious George and the Dump Truck.  When George climbed into the dump truck, he “was curious.  What were all those levers?  He pulled one after another”(9).  (Many Freudian analyses have identified George as in the Oral Stage of psychosexual development, while missing the fact that his comfort food is the banana.  Clearly George is in the Phallic Stage, commensurate with his other character traits typical of a 5 to 6 year old boy.)

            George’s curiosity (or the fulfillment of the urges of the Id) leads him to the discovery of pleasure, climaxing in the spilling of the truck’s contents onto the street (10).  Accompanying the text (“It dumped sand all over the street.  The sand spilled over a lady in a flowered hat” (11)) is a scene of blatantly sexual imagery.  Trapped by the spilling sand – the product of George’s autoerotic awakening – are a woman clutching groceries, a man with bow tie and umbrella, a girl, and a dog.  Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Chapter 10 of Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis will surely recognize the bow tie as male genitalia and the flower as  the  corresponding  female  symbol.   The hat is  half sunlit and half shaded, suggesting the Pre-Conscious State as it embodies equal elements of the Conscious and Unconscious.  In the background are two storefronts.  One store sells pipes, an allusion to Freud’s own oral fixation as manifested in smoking; the other sells books, including a barely visible copy of The Interpretation of Dreams.  I leave it to the bolder among my fair readers to consider how the girl and the dog relate to this graphic scene.

            But, as I said, Kai is unaware of all this, at least on a conscious level.  Would we expect a two year old to understand why Hamlet’s Oedipal lust for his mother, Gertrude, impels him to plot against Claudius –

            “– Yook-it daddy, I’m a big fast dump truck!”

            Does he mean that the protagonist is not George, but actually the dump truck itself?  I realize that H.A.’s sister, Doe (Rey) Mead, wrote the famous deconstructionist analysis of the role of Marxist ideology in the underpinnings of the theory that the Mississippi River is the true protagonist of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in her essay entitled “A Deconstructionist Analysis of the Role of Marxist Ideology in the Underpinnings of the Theory that the Mississippi River is the True Protagonist of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”   As Huck and Jim float farther away from innocence down the proverbial River of Experience – but wait! – I see something on page 17.  Look at the laborers.  They remind me of WPA workers pouring concrete for the Hoover Dam.  And there, on page 23, doesn’t the red van used in the jewelry store robbery look a lot like the elephant on Hoover’s 1932 campaign pin?  And the green bandana on the face of the robber on page 25?  I’ve always wondered why Margret Rey strayed from primary colors on this particular illustration.  Now I see it.  It’s Woody Guthrie, who wore the same green bandana in the cover photograph of the original edition of Bound for Glory.  The policeman on page 26 even resembles young FDR when he was governor of New York.

            “Hey Daddy, yet’s yisten to some moosic.”  I know just the song.  I go over to the records and choose “Planet Waves.”  I think about when my father used to read the Sunday comics to Sharon and me, and make funny voices for the characters.  He read Blondie’s parts in falsetto.  This was before anyone had heard of Deborah Harry’s band, before I recognized Mr. Dithers as John D. Rockerfeller, before I knew why they called the artist “Chic” Young.  Before, for that matter, I had heard of Neil Young, and his sad farewell to innocence, “You can’t be twenty on Sugar Mountain, though you’re thinkin’ that you’re leavin’ there too soon.”

            Seeing Woody’s face has made me nostalgic, and so I drop the timeworn needle into the pre-digital groove and feel the raucous rhythms of Dylan and The Band fill the room.  A harmonica whines above the din like a sour wind blowing down the hills of old Duluth, and then the voice of my generation, the Bard of the North Country, joins in:

            May God’s blessing keep you always, may your wishes all come true, may you always do for others and let others do for you, may you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung, and may you stay forever young –

            “Yook at me, Daddy”

            – Forever young, forever young –

            “Yook at me”

            – And may you stay forever young.

            “YOOK-IT DADDY, yook at me, I’M DANCING!”

 

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Lake Effect

August 25, 2008 at 5:38 pm · Filed under fiction, lunch, short story, snow

 Late lunch after a quick swim at the college.  I come out of the cold into the neighborhood sandwich shop to grab a sub for the office.  There’s one customer ahead of me: short woman, fortyfiveish, dull brown hair, talking to the big, cheery blonde who works weekdays.  Looks like snow.

“Think we’ll get much today?” the customer says, nodding vaguely toward the door, then squinting up at the sandwich maker.

“S’posed to,” answers the sandwich maker.  “Lake effect.”  She pauses from her work, absentmindedly wipes her hands on her green apron, brushes wisps of half grown-out bangs from her cheek and tucks them behind her ear.  I’ve been coming in here for almost a year and never asked her name.  Call her Donna.

“Ha!  Doubt it.  I been walking every morning.  S’been a good winter,” says the short woman.  Faded jeans.  Sorels.  Parka patched at the elbow.  Call her Liz, no, Jerrie.

Jerrie’s going on kind of loudly about a movie she saw last night.  Maybe a little drunk.

“…at the Lode.  Bad movie.  Well, good director and all, lots of quick action, sorta like what wazzit called?  Oh, ya know, with those two people.  Woody Harrelson and that girl…”

          “Natural Born Killers?” I offer from over by the cold drinks.  I never actually saw it.

          “Yeah, it was like that, only bad.”  She smiles at me and then resumes her story, a little pleased that the guy in the coat and tie had joined the conversation.  “I fell asleep.  Actually, I closed my eyes when there were these two guys fighting.  I hate it when men are fighting – they were hitting each other in the face.  Blood was spraying all over.  I closed my eyes and missed about a half an hour and woke up and it was almost over.  I hate that.  Donchya hate that?”

          Definitely been drinking.  And it’s only a quarter to one.  We’re the only three people in the shop.  It’s starting to snow.

          “Yeah, I just saw a movie at the Lode, too,” Donna says.  “ Mayonnaise, mustard, oil?”

          “Mayonnaise.”

          “Salt and pepper?”

          “Yeah, thanks.  Whadjya see?”

          “Oh, um…I can’t remember.  Geez, what was it?”

          A brief silence.  Jerrie picks up the slack: “And didjya notice them seats?  When they made it into three theaters, how small them seats got?  I mean, ya gotta hold your arms like this ‘cause that’s all the room ya got.”

          “Not like some of those places with, like, rocking chairs.”

          “Oh, and I got some Dots last night!” Jerrie declares excitedly.  A wide grin appears like a new moon through broken clouds, and her small eyes twinkle.  “They were all chewy and got stuck in my teeth.  Isn’t that great – you know, candy they only have at the movies?”

          “Yeah, and what’s that other kind…Snowballs or something?” I chime in.

          “Snow Caps,” Donna says.

          “Yeah, I was just thinkin’ of them, too,” Jerrie says.  “Idn’t it funny that you can only get ‘em at the movies!”

          “Then there’s that whole other class of candy that you associate with the movies but you can also sometimes find in vending machines, like Raisinettes or Milk Duds,” I add, now fully engaged in the repartee.

          “Life is just so great, idn’t it.  There’s always something new to think about,” Jerrie says.  We all nod and smile.

          “I work in the deli at the IGA,” Jerrie says, as sort of an introduction.  “I make 180 sandwiches a day.  I’m quite the chef.”

          “That’s a lot of sandwiches,” I say.  “ I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t make sandwiches, professionally that is.”  I hope that didn’t sound condescending.  I order a tuna on whole wheat, with jalapenos.

          Jerrie turns and walks toward me.  “What’s on the bottom of the tie,” she asks, and begins to reach for the front of my coat, then softly brushes her thumb along her fingers, like she was about to grab my tie and then pulled back at the last instant.

          “Oh, nothing, just a picture of a fishing lure…and I don’t even fish,” I laugh.  I pull out the tie and hold it up for her to get a better look.

          “I collect vintage ties, ya know,” Jerrie tells me.  “I love ‘em.  Fashion accessories are great.  Old purses, scarves, especially ties.  Know what I mean?”

          “I get mine at thrift stores.  They’re twenty-five cents at Vinnie’s in Hancock, but seventy-five in Houghton,” I say.  “What’s up with that!”

          “I know, I saw a great tie the other day – classic Seventies wide tie with paisley – but it had a big grease stain on it.”  Jerrie grabs a quart of Budweiser and heads for the register. 

          “Be with ya in a minute, just gonna finish this,” Donna says.

          “’Sokay, today’s my day off,” Jerrie replies.  “Goin’ to a friend’s house for lunch.  Beer and a sandwich.  It’s gonna be a great day.  Ya know, a hug would feel great right now.  He’s a stranger…he’ll give me one,” and with that, Jerrie puts the beer on the counter, strides over to me, arms outstretched, head tilted slightly to my left.  I take the last step forward and bend down to meet her, reach my arms around her, and our bodies meet in front of the sliced turkey breast.  The sweet smell of beer breath and the feel of hair against my face pull me to a faraway time and place.  I glance toward the window.  Then Jerrie turns, pays, and walks out.

          By this time, my sandwich is done.  I grab some pretzels and a Diet Pepsi and put them next to the cash register. 

          After I pay, I pull out of my pocket a folded-up flyer for a credit card company.

          “Look at this,” I say to Donna, “They pay you two dollars for every referral you make, and two dollars for every one those people make, right on down the line.  It says here that if you refer ten new people, and they each refer ten, and so on for ten levels, you can earn twenty billion dollars.  Only problem I see is there’s not ten billion people on Earth, and I’m probably not even getting in on this at the top of the pyramid.”

          “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Donna chuckles.  “And I’ve never even had a credit card.”

          “Really, a business owner like you?”

          “Well, I’m not the owner, just the manager.”

          “Oh, I always figured you were the owner.”

          “No, the owner mostly works weekends.”

          “Was he in here last week, helping you at lunch time.”

          “No, that was probably my husband.  Just taking orders and working the register?”

          “I guess so.  I didn’t really notice.”

          After that there isn’t much else to say.  On the way out I wish her a good day.

          “And you have a real good day, now, too,” she answers.

          It’s snowing harder now, big wet flakes, but I don’t mind.  I turn the corner, head straight into the fresh north wind, and lift my face to the snowflakes, each one perfectly unlike every other.  

         

         

February 2001      

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