Oooops! posted in the wrong thread! Sorry! - H
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Oooops! posted in the wrong thread! Sorry! - H
Like Paradise
Helen’s death had given her a new lease on life. She hadn’t felt this good in years, and no mortician worth his formaldehyde could have made her look this good. Somehow she had dumped a good thirty pounds between the Bronx and the Afterlife. Crow’s feet and what had euphemistically been called “laugh lines” had magically vanished. “Boy!” Helen exclaimed. “If I had known that death was going to be this much fun, I would’ve done it years ago!”
What a blast! It reminded her of the Caribbean cruise she and Herb had taken back in ‘03, only this time all the toilets flushed, and there were no nasty rumors about pirates.
The food was, in Helen’s words, “simply out of this world!” You had breakfast, brunch, luncheon, low tea, high tea, dinner, supper, and midnight snack, not to mention the free buffet available 24/7. The kicker was that you could eat like a pig all day long and never gain an ounce. “Wait till the girls hear about this!” Helen said. Then she realized that she could never again tell the girls anything unless they hired a medium – that is, if the idea ever occurred to them. Helen thought she’d spread the good news telepathically. She put her index fingers to her temples, screwed her eyes shut, and concentrated really hard on zeroing in on Angie Fusillo’s wave length, but it didn’t take. “ Maybe I’m doing it wrong.” Helen decided that she’d try again later. She made a mental note to locate a computer and type “ESP” in the search box.
This was no time for paranormal research, for an enormous seafood platter had been placed in front of her by a breathtakingly handsome man. The waitperson looked just like Errol Flynn, the movie actor whom Helen had seen on her favorite cable channel; of course, this version of Errol was from the early 1940s, before his days of dissipation when his looks went straight to Hell. Nothing seedy about the food, though: the lobster blushed scarlet next to a bowl of 100% real, clarified butter. Despite the oxymoron, the shrimp were larger than “jumbo,” accompanied by a cocktail sauce whose top-secret recipe -- according to a century-old legend-- had been dueled over by a couple of world-class chefs in New Orleans. Even the lemon wedges seduced and satisfied the senses, but, as an earth-bound infomercial announcer might put it, “That was not all!”
Errol proffered a misty bottle for Helen’s pproval. “Champagne, Madame.”His accent was vaguely continental. “Chateau Lafite Rothschild, seventy-five.”
Yikes! She just knew there had to be a catch. “Oh, I don’t have that much dough on me.” She was more than merely out of cash; the funeral director had also forgotten to pack her credit card.
“Pardonne, Madame. It’s the year of vintage – Eighteen seventy-five.”
“They knew how to make wine way back then? Imagine that!”
Helen was grateful that Errol poured her a glass without a lot of rigmarole. (Back on earth if a guy had ever asked her to sniff his cork, she would have slapped him silly.)
She took what she believed to have been a delicate, ladylike sip, but she couldn’t repress the “Ahh!” followed by the inevitable burp. “Wow! That’s pretty good stuff. You’d think it would’ve turned vinegary after all these years.”
Then came the fashion show. The minute the gorgeous gowns and the drop-dead sportswear came off the models’ backs, the clothes sailed directly into Helen’s new closet. Beside herself with joy, she tried on every last outfit with a nearly infinite combination of accessories. She preened and pranced in front of a full-length mirror that would have flattered an ogress. The fashions, nevertheless, looked much better on Helen than they had looked on the models, if she did say so herself.
Next up was a tea dance thrown in her honor. Helen’s dance card was completely filled with the manly names of various partners, each more suave, sophisticated, and handsome than the next. “Say, “ Helen asked, “no offense or nothin’, but are all you guys straight?” Not that it mattered. They all danced divinely, enough to make a lifetime full of snide remarks and snickers about Helen’s “two left feet” limp away.
Helen received so many ego-building comments that she confessed to one of the hunks that if he were trying to curry her favor, it was way too late for a mention in her will (not that her financial legacy had amounted to all that much.) “Besides,” she explained, “everything is - –was–- in Herb’s name.” Meanwhile the dancing went on. And on. Helen found she could dance all night without getting tired, without the benefit of support hose! She was having a ball.
During a band break, Helen sat down. “This place is a paradise,” she told Errol, “A dream come true.” Errol placed a wedge of cheesecake and another bottle of bubbly on her rose-strewn table. “What did I do to deserve all this? I mean, I feel like I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Errol laughed so hard that he fell down into a nearby chair and almost impaled himself on the corkscrew in his breast pocket. Wiping his eyes, he gained his composure. Then he turned the chair around and sat astride it. “Helen, let’s get serious for a minute, huh. Just you and me.” Somehow his accent had traveled from Cannes to Canarsie. “Think back on yer life. . .” He pointed to the ceiling. “Up there.”
“What do you mean – -‘up’?”
Errol held out a palm and starting counting off on his fingers. “Well, let’s start with Numba One. The first one deals with false gods. Idolatry and what-not, right?”
All of a sudden Helen’s mouth went dry, and despite all the wine, she started getting nervous. “Yeah, but what’s that got to do with –“
“On the evening of September 4, 1999 you visited a psychic, didn’t cha?”
Helen’s forehead scrunched. “Hmm. That was a long time ago. Oh, yeah-- now I remember! That gypsy. She specialized in past lives. But I only went there that one time, because she really pissed me off.”
Errol nodded. “I believe that she told you that you were the reincarnation of Judge Crater.”
“Yep. I said ‘How can you tell?’ and she goes, ‘It’s written all over your face.’ But I told you, I never went back there. But, gee, false gods? Idolatry? I don’t see how–“
“Ever been to Graceland, Helen?”
“Yeah, but–“
Errol turned the chair around again and sat up straight as a judge. “Helen, you know perfectly well that I could go through all ten of these commandments and find violations.”
“Hey! I never coveted my neighbor’s wife!”
“If you say so, Helen, but you know what they always say, nine out of ten ain’t–
“And I never murdered nobody neither!”
Errol waved his hand. “Well, maybe not all at once. By the way, you notice it getting a little too hot in here?”
Helen scratched her head. “I don’t get it. This place is so nice, I thought it must be–-It can’t be h–- the opposite. I mean, I feel like I belong here!”
Tilting an eyebrow, Errol said, "You certainly do. Listen, Helen, if this place is as nice as you say, just think how much nicer Heaven – the real one – must be.”
Helen took a sip of champagne and tried not to think about what she would be missing. Then, with her mouth full of cheesecake, proclaimed: “Close enough.”
Auntie,
This was rapid and witty and fun as all get-out. You invent a scenario, people it with endearing characters, and write it in such a way it begs to be read. Then you keep them hooked till the end. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read.
A great read Auntie!!! It was like an afterlife version of Sex in the City :) Very witty, playful, then making the reader think and question as the mood and the accent changes, before joyfully throwing it away at the end.
Maybe this piece also gives an insight into Auntie's idea of what would be heaven ...... :)
I really enjoyed it.
Thank you Steven and Jerry B. Actually I wrote the thing about 15 years ago and it somehow escaped the "purge" during our move this past September. It wound up on the LitNet after getting a slight makeover, with a couple of minor updates.
Well, no. Quite the opposite. For instance, there's a mention about the increasing temperature in the place, also described as ersatz, not the "real" Heaven. Besides, the conventional wisdom (title of Stanley Elkin's comic novel about the afterlife) is that both Heaven and its unpleasant counterpart are not really physical places, but states of existence. Some of us assume that after death, only one's soul survives--not the body-- therefore, none of the luxuries (food, wine, fashions) that delight Helen in the story could be possible. To imagine that it would be is absurd; hence the attempted humor in this story.Quote:
Maybe this piece also gives an insight into Auntie's idea of what would be heaven ......
Thanks again for your comments.
Dear Aunty
One of the best and most humorous pieces of yours that I have ever read. It was especially relevant, having got back on Saturday from the heaven of the Philippines to the relative hell of camp life in Papua New Guinea. Cheered me up no end, especially the alluded slap of the wine waiter for being overtly suggestive.
Warm regards
M.
Driven by Passion
The love of Wayne’s life was a real beauty.
Not only that, she was loaded. He used to love taking her out and showing her off, but eventually reserved the trips for very special occasions, only when the weather was 100% perfect. In any event, he’d gotten tired of decking anybody foolish enough to refer to her as a “pick-up.”
She had everything a guy would ever want: a sleek body as pristine as angel wings, awesome chrome wheels, and an incredibly powerful 5.4V8 engine. There was no finer 4X4 in the whole wide world.
Wayne took great pleasure in maintaining her immaculate finish. With an ultra-soft chamois (which he’d special-ordered from the Internet), he caressed and massaged her four or five times each day. Whenever her energy was running low, he’d feed her only premium gasoline, despite the sacrifice of the extra expense. During those rare times when he was forced to take her on some unavoidable errand, Wayne always chose the farthest parking spot away from the store’s entrance in order to decrease the chances of some clumsy shopper parking too close and injuring her. Owners of ordinary vehicles may have shrugged off nicks and scratches, but on Wayne’s pride and joy they were slashes and scars.
By his own request, Wayne worked the night shift. His hours coincided with a period when he assumed that the volume of traffic-- along with its inevitable accidents – - would be relatively low. Then one evening, just as he was punch out at the end of his shift, a crippling blizzard slammed down upon the city. Rather than take the risk of subjecting his beloved to the treacherous roads, Wayne chose to remain at his workplace overnight.
When he didn’t come home, his wife automatically assumed the worst: that he had run off with some floozy. Early the next morning when the storm had cleared out, she left, taking the kids and the entire contents of their joint banking accounts.
The dramatic change in his family structure didn’t faze Wayne one bit. He had what he treasured most in life, cultivating a deep, abiding love, which endured after he could no longer struggle with the payments, and the repo men took her away.
Hi Auntie.
This comes up a bit short in My opinion. It was looking to develop into an interesting little tale, right up to the moment it fizzled out in the final paragraph which arrived much too soon.. I was expecting a witty and amusing saga of boy gets car, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back and boy loses car - or any combination of potential developments, but it just stops! Feel a bit short changed and non-plussed to be honest.
Live and be well - H
Thanks for reading this, Hawkman, and for your comments. I see your point, as the droppings from yours fooly usually tend to milk everything it can out of a situation. This thing resulted from an attempt to write more quickly, as speed and finishing specific works have both been a prob. Also, this car thing was designed to make a very brief illustration of American materialism, as well as a reaction to a current TV commercial showing men attached to their cars to a most degenerate degree. (But the company wants to sell their cars anyway.)
PS Thanks for weighing in on the Owl and Pussycat parody, in which I substituted one bad joke for another one. Also for your comment on the anti-poetry. And at the risk of going to the proverbial well once too often, the Real Housewife of East Hogwash has posted her Easter blog in Auntie's Anti-Humor thread.
In an Alternate Universe
One Saturday afternoon as a middle-aged husband was watching a college football game on television a sudden thought tackled him. Instantly he leapt out of his recliner, raced upstairs, and rifled through the closet of the master bedroom. Wire hangers screeched, and their plastic counterparts tangled together as his hands pushed the garments along the rod. The longer he searched, the more nervous he became. Nothing mattered more than locating his tan cardigan. The urgency for finding it had arisen not from a compulsive desire to make a fashion statement but rather to retrieve a small but potentially incriminating item in the side pocket of the sweater before his wife discovered it.
After slamming the closet door shut with a couple of vehement backward kicks, the man turned his wrath upon the dresser. When he bent down to search through the bottom drawer, his backside stuck up in the air as he pitched the contents behind him: faded t-shirts mingled with various pieces of seldom-worn lingerie, cut-off jeans with stringy makeshift hems, and unmated socks. In no time the drawer was all-but-empty, except for something wedged between the back of the drawer and the main frame of the dresser. It was a piece of lined notebook paper folded into a perfect square.
With absolutely no qualms nor hesitation, he unfolded the sheet, which contained a single paragraph written in ballpoint pen. The penmanship was instantly recognizable
with its endearingly childish slant and feminine loops and curlicues. He read:
“Last night I watched a science show. It said that it was possible for there to be more than one earth, and these earths could be a lot like the one we’re living on but there also could be differences. There could be thousands or maybe millions of possibilities. For instance on some other earth I could be beautiful and smart. Rich, too! Everything I can’t do here I could do there, like swim, whistle, play the piano, and parallel park. But one thing wouldn’t change, and it would be true on any world, anywhere in the universe, and that is I would still be as deeply in love as I am right now, right here.”
The husband folded up the note, unfolded it, and read it again. He brought downstairs to the kitchen where he found his wife standing in front of the sink. She jumped when she heard him step right up behind her, and when he waved the paper in front of her face, she flinched.
“Did you. . .did you write this?”
She took the note and squinted at it. “What-- this? Just some foolish scribbling–“
When she started to crumble the paper up into a ball, the husband snatched it back.
“No! Don’t throw it away– - I want to keep it!” he said.
When the husband embraced his wife with a tight hug, he mistook her sigh of relief as a sign of affection. He also assumed that the piece of writing was all about him, but he was wrong.
So what became of the small but incriminating item which the man was looking for in the pocket of his cardigan? He appears to have found neither it, nor the cardigan. Are we to assume then that the wife had already found both? As a MacGuffin, it seems to have been a bit side-tracked.
Live and be well - H
I really like the style and how you handled this one. It's short but suspenseful and dramatic!
Maybe both items were teleported to a parallel world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hawkman
Thanks, Hawk and Steven for your comments.
Auntie
Dear Auntie,
One of the worst things about my electing to stay away from the forum for a while was the fact that I didn't read you.
I missed you, you crazy girl! :D
DH
Entomology
It was morning in America-- at least that’s what the President’s television ads proclaimed. The first thing Fred G. Upshaw did every morning was to retrieve his newspaper outside the door of his apartment. Even before he looked at the Page One headlines, he turned to the section indicating the winning lottery numbers of the previous night. The second thing he checked was the obituary page in order to assure himself that his own name did not appear. Were Fred’s number to come up on either page, that would be a signal to return to bed. Up to and including this particular day, there had never been sufficient evidence for Fred to cash in his ticket (or his chips.) Subsequently, Fred went ahead with his morning routine.
Items one and two on the agenda indicated a quick shower and shave. Next up: The Most Important Meal of the Day. Breakfast for Fred was one of his personal Laws of Physics: always extract the maximum of energy from the minimum of effort. More leisurely types (such as lottery winners) could afford to squander an entire morning by savoring each bite of lovingly coddled eggs and every warm sip of high-end coffee, whose custom-imported beans had been specially roasted and ground before brewing in a machine exemplifying state-of-the-art technology of the Eighties. Fred, however, had to get the 8:13 bus, so he gulped down a few ounces of half-sour, half-syrupy imitation orange juice from frozen concentrate, defrosted and diluted the previous night.
The entree was, as usual, cold cereal, but a brand-new, unopened box, perhaps a good omen for the start of the day. Into a plastic bowl, its inner surface flecked with minute, dark scratches, Fred poured a serving of Bite-a-mens, which claimed not only to provide 100% of nine essential vitamins and minerals but also to taste remotely like a grain actually grown somewhere on this planet. Note carefully, Reader, these little toasted morsels shaped like golden homunculi, for therein hangs our tale, for on the edge of the bowl hung a tail, or more precisely, the complete carcass of a creature not at all akin to a whole-grain or an edible manikin.
“What the hell is this? “ Fred asked. “Added fiber?” For all the world it looked like a cockroach, a perfect specimen of Blatta orientalis, but who wanted to re-enact Kafka at this hour of the morning? With his bare fingers, Fred picked up the creature by its delicate back legs.
Losing his grip, Fred dropped the insect whose fall was cushioned by the soft bed of cereal. “Good thing I didn’t waste any milk,” Fred muttered as he prepared to dump the entire lot--dozens of manikins and one roach--into the garbage. One split-second before he tipped the bowl, he gingerly retrieved the insect and set it aside. After grabbing the original box and dumping the cereal back inside, he carefully placed the roach on top, in its original spot. The box itself went into a paper bag, or if you prefer, a plain brown wrapper. At that point Fred left for work --without breakfast but not hungry, certainly not hungry for work.
As was customary during Rush Hour, there were no vacant seats on the bus. Fred found himself standing in the aisle with his waist hovering just above the eye level of two young ladies en route to high school.
“Oooh, he’s cute!” one of the pair exclaimed, quickly adding “Psych!” An alternate spelling of the word had been scribbled on the cardboard back of the notebook she was holding: “Sike!!!” which also could have been a brand of running shoes or a Japanese aperitif.
The girl’s companion yawned a rejoinder: “Nah, he’s a nerd. A tot-al poindexter. He’s taking the bus, so he ain’t got no car.” Having unearthed a metal cylinder from an suitcase-sized bag, she promiscuously sprayed some noxious fumes upon a feathery lock suspended over her forehead.
“Whatcha got in the bag, Mister?” the first girl inquired.
“Believe me, you don’t want to see.”
“Aw, we wanna to see what dorks eat for lunch. Come on, Mister. Please?
They bugged and bugged him until he surrendered. Since one hand was occupied with hanging on to the overhead strap, Fred experienced some difficulty rolling down the top of the paper bag and opening the box. Inside the box, where no one could read them were the immortal watchwords of packaging: “Contents may settle during shipment,” but this particular shipment of Bite-a-mens had not settled for anything. There, on the very top of the contents, the roach still rested peacefully on its flaky bed.
Fred thrust the open bag and box directly under the girls’ noses. With one quick glance they let out a shriek shrill enough to be heard by dogs in neighborhoods five miles away. Instantly the nymphets leapt out of their seats, pushed their way through the SRO crowd of commuters, and disappeared into the dark recesses of the rear of the bus. Their hasty exit left Fred with quite a selection of empty seats, not only the two vacated by the schoolgirls but also the ones behind and the ones in front.
The relative comfort was transitory, because the familiar landmarks passing by the bus window reminded Fred that his stop was next. He pulled the string, the buzzer buzzed, and the bus braked with a jerk and a flatulent whoosh. Fred watched his step as he disembarked, still clutching the cereal box in the paper bag.
The office time-clock made a mechanical reprimand as Fred punched in, three minutes late. After draping his jacket on the back of his chair, he opened the desk drawer in order to stow the package, but on second thought, he closed the drawer and placed the bag at his feet. That way he wouldn’t forget it at lunchtime.
Noon arrived, but Fred could not afford to spend the hour eating. Including travel time, Fred had approximately fifty-three minutes to conduct his business in the supermarket.Unwilling to waste precious minutes waiting for buses, Fred decided to ankle it.
In the Cost Cutter, Fred stepped in the least-populated check-out line, Lane # 14. Ahead of him stood a woman with a cart full of dozens of baby food jars, each with a different price, and a six-pack of beer. Brandishing a stack of coupons as thick as a gymnast’s neck, the customer sifted through all of them until she found the occasional live one, which the cashier subsequently deducted from the bill. Throughout the entire process, the child sitting in the apparently uncomfortable front of the grocery cart bellowed loudly. “My feelings exactly,” Fred told the baby.
Finally it was time to finish the transaction. After digging through her satchel-sized purse for three or four minutes, the young woman retrieved her wallet, from which she counted out singles as well as coins of various denominations, the sum of which did not quite cover the total tab. Another set of endless minutes burned away as the woman began a second search through her bag before finally finding the alternative method of payment, a personal check, which further consumed time being filled out, signed, and verified. At this point, the cashier, herself looking at least a decade past retirement age, noticed that the customer appeared to be a little young to be purchasing alcoholic beverages, though evidently old enough to be a mother. Once again the cashier demanded to see the woman’s I.D., this time for proof of age.
At last, Fred was up. With a scowl, the cashier yanked the cereal box down the counter and positioned her fingers on the keys of the cash register. Fred stayed her gnarly hand just in time. “No, no–don’t ring it up. I’m returning this. It’s tainted merchandise.”
The elderly cashier sighed in a way she hoped would express–-as well as cause–pain.“Ya got your ree-ceipt?”
“Of course I don’t have my receipt! Who saves grocery receipts?”
The cashier gave Fred a look that would have curdled the baby food checked out just moments before. She sighed a second sigh that could have been audible in Point Barrow, Alaska. “I hafta page the Assistant Manager,” she whined and then into the mike announced: “Mr. Cobol, Lane Fourteen please. Mr. Cobol, Lane Four-teen!” Instantly the shock of her amplified voice made everyone in the store jump. The actual words crackled and slurred, but their volume was enough to reverberate off the rows of canned dog food, the ice machine, and the meat counters in back of the store. Just above the cashier’s gray head an oblong sign reading “14" blinked on and off.
Behind Fred there had amassed a line of full grocery carts, each attached to a shopper with an expression as exasperated as Fred’s was when the young mother had been at bat. While everyone waited, the cashier picked up Fred’s box of Bite-a-mens and peered intensely at the box. “Two forty-nine, “ she muttered. “A lousy two forty-nine.”
Fred took issue with being so casually pegged as a cheapskate. He cleared his throat. “It’s not the two fifty-nine–“
“Two forty-nine.”
“Whatever. I just felt that the matter ought to be brought to someone’s attention. Really, it’s not the mon–“
“Listen, Mister, I’ve been in this business long enough to know that when somebody says it’s not the money, it’s the principle, it’s the money.”
A young man arrived at Lane Fourteen. In his long-sleeved white shirt and insecurely-knotted tie, he looked to be a few minutes out of high school, but he was indeed the Assistant Store Manager. “What’s the problem, Evelyn?”
“Mr. Cobol, this guy wants to return this here. He ain’t got no ree-ceipt.”
“Something wrong with the product?” Mr. Cobol asked Fred, who said nothing. Instead he opened the top of the cereal box and thrust it under Mr. Cobol’s nose. The Assistant Manager squinted, and his head jerked back as with an involuntary reflex.
Witnessing the scene, one of the waiting customers remembered that he himself was about to purchase a box of Bite-a-Mens. Immediately he removed the box from his cart and surreptitiously placed it on the rack behind the displays of sugarless gum and People magazine.
“We’ll discuss this in my office, “ Mr. Cobol said, as he led Fred, who was still holding the bag with the tainted cereal box, through a semi-secret door at the back of the Cost Cutter.
The Assistant Manager shared his office space with eight-foot high stacks of cardboard cartons, each with the word “Disposable Diapers” printed on the side. Under a sign by which one could barely make out the red “Exit” between the sections of broken glass, there was a partially-opened garage door, and next to it stood a wheeled bin the size of a foreign sports car. It was stuffed to capacity with flattened shipping boxes, wilted lettuce leaves, and crushed cigarette cartons of assorted brands.
The bin was color-coordinated with Mr. Cobol’s industrial gray desk, covered with employee schedules, various order forms, four-inch wide rolls of stickers printed with “59¢,” and the classified section of the local newspaper, opened and folded over at the “Help Wanted” section. A cheap photo frame displayed a color glossy of a woman with some children–-possibly Mrs. Cobol and the kids, more likely Mrs. Cobol Senior with the Assistant Manager’s siblings. The most prominent object atop the desk was a book, sneering and screaming its formidable title: Winning through Intimidation.
With an intimidating jerk of his head, Mr. Cobol removed an irritating forelock from his eyes. “Well,“ he said, “I suppose you think I was born yesterday.” As a matter of fact, Fred believed the Assistant Manager to be a bit of fallout from the Baby Boomlet.
“I’ve been working here long enough to have seen it all,” Mr. Cobol continued. “The phony food stamps, the checks that bounce higher than a bimbo’s boobs. Then you got your bums coming in with their deposit bottles. They stink up my store and then they piss and moan when we don’t cash in bottles covered with cobwebs and mud.”
Fred tried to get a word in. “I’m just asking for a refund, or a least a replacement box of cereal.”
The Assistant Manager gave his head another intimidating shake. “I tell you I’ve had it up to here with troublemakers. Like the lady who came in with a bottle of soda with a mouse floating in it. She tried to tell us it was like that when she bought it. Can you believe the gall?”
Suddenly Fred felt a wave of pity for the blind--in contemporary euphemistic terms, “the vision impaired.” How did they know when vermin had infested their groceries, how could they tell the difference between aerosol deodorants and air fresheners, cans of cat food from the tuna intended for human consumption?
Mr. Cobol droned on as if he were giving an oral report in social studies class, which no doubt had occurred in the extremely recent past. “I don’t know how she got the mouse in there. She must have practiced. Maybe she puts ships in bottles.”
“I wouldn’t venture a guess. Now about my refund–“
“I wouldn’t know either. I know your type. You’re probably the one responsible for all the product tampering, slipping poison into the medicine bottles.”
“Are you insinuating that I–“
Mr. Cobol shrugged. “You know how many thousands of dollars we sink into Public Relations? You have no idea how much it costs to maintain our Good Will in the community.”
“You can have your reputation back for two forty-nine.”
“Don’t give me that! You’ve probably got an attorney on retainer right now.”
“Actually, I didn’t consider any sort of litigation at all–“ Fred glanced down at his watch. It was very, very late. “Forget it. I’ll eat the two forty-nine. But I won’t eat this.” He considered dumping the cereal, roach, and all, on the Assistant Manager’s lap. Instead he put the box on top of Winning Through Intimidation. “Don’t put that back on the shelf!”
In the graffiti-splattered phone booth outside the store, Fred called the office. The line was busy, but his coin didn’t return. Neither did his second coin. He reached the receptionist on the third try.
“Kratchlow thinks you’re out getting drunk,” she said between snaps of gum.
“I’m not! I’m calling from a supermarket!”
“Yeah, well, he says to tell you not to bother coming back.”
“When? The rest of the day? Never?”
Since the pay phone had devoured all of Fred’s loose change, he had no bus fare. He considered – for a split-second– going back into the Cost Cutter until he spotted the cautionary sign on the front door: “No change without purchase.” Fred didn’t want to purchase anything, not even a pack of gum. So he ankled the twenty-five blocks home–-in the rain.
There wasn’t a morsel to eat in the apartment, and he actually wondered if he should have picked up something while he had been in the store.
Fred G. Upshaw sat on the edge of his bed and picked up the newspaper which had already informed him that he wasn’t a dead millionaire. First he read an article about insects:
Fred skipped to the Sports Page, which featured an article about a local college kid who could out-run, out-jump, and out-swim every similar athlete in recent memory:Quote:
. . .Pre-dating homo sapiens by millions of years, these predators are prominent on this planet. Even when they are prey, many species of insects, with the exception of some delicate butterflies, are virtually indestructible. Some, such as cockroaches, may be able survive any natural or man-made disaster, including an all-out nuclear holocaust. . .
“Stronger and faster, maybe,” Fred thought. “Not necessarily any nicer.”Quote:
. . .have consistently been breaking from the Fifties through the Seventies, with every indication that more records will be shattered as the current decade progresses. Skip Potterfield is yet another example of the Super Athlete, living proof that man as a species is getting better and better. . .
Although Fred realized that he would soon have to consult the Help Wanted pages, but during that particular moment he wadded up the newspaper into a ball. All the ink came off on his hands. “Survival of the fittest,” he said. “We can put a man on the moon. We can manufacture a breakfast cereal in the image and likeness of ourselves.” Fred scrunched the newspaper wad more tightly. He took aim at the wastepaper basket across the room, hurled the paper ball, and missed.