Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Contents
Prose
Turnpike…………………………………………………………………………..………..3
Turnpike (revised)………………………………………………………………………....17
Poetry
Pencil…………………………………………………………………………...…………33
Pencil (revised)…………………………………………………………………....……….34
Orange Mocha…………………………………………………………………………….35
Orange Mocha (revised)…………………………………………………………………...37
Trinket and Us……………………………………………………………………………39
Trinket and Us (revised)…………………………………………………………………..43
Mellow Spring……………………...……………………………………………………..47
Fat Man…………………………………….……………………………………………..48
The Fall……………………….…………………………………………………………..50
3
Turnpike
The toll way, ever since its completion, had been a great blessing for Valley Forge. It was
because of such things in life, as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that people like Stan could earn
an extra buck or two, every now and then. For him, now and then were Tuesday nights and
Sunday afternoons. Stan was definitely a part time person. He went to auto-mechanic school
part time. He went to church part time. He even did his laundry part time, and at times it
showed. He also worked part time. Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, he worked at the
Mobil gas station just off of Finkle. Tuesdays and Sundays, he worked the radio station. The
rest of the week, he lived just about as free and productive as the yellow, fuzzy sparrows he
watched pretty much all the time through the radio station window on Sundays. Tuesdays
however, he couldn’t really see much out of them; he worked the night shift.
WPAP, or “The Daddy” as it was sometimes called by the grand total of six employees that
worked there, cast its telegraphic spell over whatever parts of Pennsylvania fell within 5-6
miles to either side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, between about exits seventy-four through
seventy-nine. Not that WPAP had a short transmission range; it was just that there really
wasn’t much civilization between the stretch, hence only the handful of exits. Valley Forge
was exit seventy-four, and the next exit, well, who cared about the next town; Valley Forge
was sizzling and happening enough. With 2 bars, one of which had been closed for the past
four months in the name of renovation, one Seven-Eleven (which was miraculously not run
or owned by an Indian family) and but a single record-, not CD; record-store, Valley Forge
had a nightlife bettered by perhaps only a handful of cities. Perhaps. The Mobil gas station
Dr. Sawyer was the only medical practitioner around, and the only reason the men of Valley
Forge ever risked going to him was to hit on Nancy, an early thirty-something spinster with
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nice teeth, blonde hair, a fine waist and a sensual way of touching patients’ chests with both
fingers and cold metal of stethoscope. She was the only woman in town that came close to
being an entertainer.
It was in this town that Stan Reijko had grown up; the only child of immigrant parents that
both met early, but dignified deaths. Bernard and Sharon Reijko once left little Stan home
alone sleeping; all two and a half years’ worth of toddler still cuddled in the middle of the
bed. The bar that was now closed for renovation; that was where they went. That was where
they drank that night. That was where they celebrated; celebrated nothing, really. They were
just happy to be alone once again; there was no baby Reijko between them. Things got
steamy once the bar closed, and the two decided to drive far from town that night…the urge
to make love in nature was strong. Heck, the urge to make love anywhere is always strong
when you’re drunk. The weather was colder than the two found hospitable, and decided to
Attempting a maneuver that later proved too erotic to be tried on the cracking blue leather
of an Oldsmobile backseat, Sharon’s wild left hand slapped the left door handle hard,
throwing it open far and wide. What came in was cold February air. What came out first was
her nude back, with only her lacy black bra rolled together into a thick band just below her
breasts. Slipping out of the car (leather and sweat are such a poor combination for traction),
Bernard was caught off guard (who wouldn’t be in the midst of such heat?) and slid out with
his significant other’s legs beneath him. Falling to the gravel beneath the car, one wrong turn
on Sharon’s behalf is what ended the whole game for the two. The trouble you see was the
romantic location Bernard had chosen for their session: a cliff overlooking rural
Pennsylvania, somewhere close to where exit eighty-something on the Turnpike would now
be. Her little twist matched their twist of fate; they both rolled over the edge, then down the
hill with increasing speed. They were both dead long before their bodies tumbled to a rest
5
some two hundred feet below, and the only being that noticed their synchronized final
performance was an owl in a tree that noticed the dust cloud they left in their dying wake.
Stan got the coffee brewing in Old Faithful. He had given the coffeemaker that name
because the gurgling noises it made reminded him of a fountain the people at Yellowstone
National Park called a geyser, that he visit last year, or some considerable amount of time
like that ago. WPAP broadcast at 1530 kilohertz, and was responsible for keeping Turnpike
motorists up to date only with weather and traffic news. For the most part, Stan new knew
his listener ship consist of only himself; nobody really used AM these days. And even if they
do, it’s not long before the same news repeated over and over again about traffic congestion
and weather patterns bore them into changing stations. The only times more people tuned in
The Star was a bright orange push button located beside the main transmitter. Toggling it
turned on two flashing yellow lights some three miles down the Turnpike, towards
Philadelphia that is, that were mounted on a large reflective-green sign that looked smaller
from a car windscreen than it was in real, reading “TUNE TO AM 1530 WHEN LIGHTS
FLASHING”. Yes sir, Stan and his crew knew how to grab attention when they needed it.
The shifts here at the radio station were long and not surprisingly, phenomenally boring, but
they paid a soothing eight dollars and thirty-five cents per hour worked.
Walking over to the black fax machine, he tugged out two sheets’ worth of fax paper that
had comfortably rolled into each other. The Central Turnpike Services office just outside
Philadelphia faxed, at regular intervals, weather and traffic updates specific to each satellite
radio station along the route. Stan began to unroll these on his desktop. Pretty soon he
realized it would take both hands, so his cigarette moved into the ashtray on the desk for a
while.
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Central’s weather sources spoke of nothing but wind, rain and whichever of the elements
were brave enough to come out that night to take on Pennsylvania. Temperature was
predicted to be around the forties the rest of the night. Stan worked eleven to six in the
morning, and these days the sun came up after he got back home, which was a good thing.
There was no bigger loss in his mind than the sun rising above the horizon before his pulling
Traffic didn’t seem much of a problem at all, since the radio hadn’t quite crackled to life that
night. The most he’d heard over it was stuff like “4-door white Toyota parked in service
lane…engine seized. Tow truck en route.” or “red semi with flat, three hundred meters from
The radio station itself was about ten minutes from the outer limits of Valley Forge, but was
still a part of its municipality. Stan didn’t really have to change any of the radio
settings…Kelly had already had the right ones from the last shift. The walls of WPAP were
painted a shade of dirty pistachio, with cracks running up and down them like river
tributaries on geographic maps you’d see in say, ninth grade as opposed to fifth. Though
Stan himself could have cared less, the Turnpike authorities had chosen to install austere
tube-lights in all their buildings that cast a noticeably bland shade of neon white over all the
rotting wooden tables and aging electronic equipment. The toilet didn’t have a urinal, which
had proved to be a constant thorn in the side of Kelly and Cindy, the female members of
The Daddy’s crew. The men, basally unrefined and uncouth as could be, never showed
enough courtesy to lift the seat when using the bathroom, and confidently marked their
territory during their shifts. Naturally, the women couldn’t help but complain. It had been
resolved in the way that Kelly and Cindy now brought in cleaning sprays and cloths to work,
even though it did look very stupid. But what else could they do?
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Stan clicked his lighter shut as soon as it set fire to another cigarette. The last one had died
out while he’d set papers and things in place on the sturdy but decaying wood of his desk’s
top. Breathing in dense nicotine fog, he licked his lips out of dryness and pulled a
microphone close. The Star was flipped to the STROBE position. “Motorists, Be aware of
heavy rain pours,” he began in his deep-throated drawl, “that are poised to bring significant
lack of traction on road surface between the hours of twelve midnight and three AM.” He
still didn’t know what ‘poised’ meant; he wasn’t too bothered, though. It’s not like he ever
heard it once he left the radio station. “Motorists are advised to maintain speeds well within
He was done reading the whole two pages of triple-spaced warnings and what not in one
minute flat. Now that his job was essentially done, he fixed himself a cup of creamy coffee,
almost emptying the plastic creamer bottle in doing so. Then he sat back and began to stare
intently at nothing out the window, through the rising steam of fresh coffee and smoke of
dying cigarette.
Once the coffee had cooled enough to sip, he turned his attention to a three-day old
newspaper, and parked his eyesight right below the headline drawing his attention to a recent
As promised, the weather came in guns firing and all. Lady Rain brought Thunder with her
to the party, and they danced together in perfection, and made sure everyone around them
noticed. Wind came in and blew everyone away too with her performance. You should have
seen it…it was quite an amazing performance by the three of them. Alas, not too many paid
As his eyes followed the words of the Olympic tragedy in the newspaper, what he failed to
Rain pelting down on the window; it came in at an odd angle to begin with. What really
would have caught his attention would have been how hard the wind was blowing. Drops
streaked downwards at first, as they always do. Wind blew harder, and the water drops
obeyed. They shift their streaking; and angled sharply down the windowpane. The wind was
insatiable, or so it seemed. It blew harder, still. The drops now streaked across perfectly
horizontally in unison, the way they would along the window of a speeding car. This all went
unchecked by Stan, because he was still trying to reach the end of the sports section.
The drops kept angling further and further. In the end the wind had died down, but the
raindrops, no, they had not had enough. They began to come harder and harder onto the
glass, splat…splat SPLAT…splat. Pretty soon they began to streak slightly upwards. The
water drops continued to angle upwards until they rose vertically instead of drop, their very
A light on the counter started to blare madly, but silently, in Stan’s face, but he kept sipping
his off-white, sugarless coffee at the same rate. He didn’t really tend to it until he was done
reading his outdated horoscope. Folding massive newspaper sheets as noisily as he could, he
then tried to understand which light it was that was screaming for attention. Drats. The
goddamned antenna was messing up again. It wasn’t uncommon, especially with such
horrendous weather outside. Luckily, he knew just enough to get the job done.
Hang on, it could wait for a little while couldn’t it? Who was watching? He certainly didn’t
have any problem pretending that he wasn’t. Who could blame him; the weather outside
wasn’t exactly a summer Caribbean invitation. But, BUT if Central called and he was still
there with the light going off, it would be worse than bad. He’d been caught late for shift so
many times, and had even been caught when he skipped duty one night for Jake’s birthday
party at the Grouchy Hippo. Since whenever a light on his console went off, a light on their
console went off, it was in his better interests to get up, put on the Big-Bird-yellow raincoat
9
and drive to the antenna. He radioed Central and let them know how efficient he was going
to be that night.
The cloth seats of the white Mazda truck were damp with moisture, and the water dripping
off his raincoat onto them made things worse. He had the heat knob turned full, but the heat
just wasn’t there quick enough. The antenna was about a two-minute drive from the radio
station itself. It was planted into the side of a small hill that apexed into the Turnpike, and
rose a good two hundred feet over it. Red beacons winked at the clouds periodically, and
there were several aerials and dish antennas sticking out every face of the towering structure.
What usually happened in stormy weather, Stan had once been told, was that excess ‘electric
flux’ was generated between the clouds and the tip of the tower, and the clouds would let the
innocent tower have a little taste of their overzealous electricity with a spark of lightning.
Most of the time this didn’t upset the tower and its workings too much, but once in a blue
moon the enormous amount of electricity was enough to trip a few safety fuses. Then, they
The road between the tower and station was unfinished, and was more unsettled gravel than
tarmac. His best time down it had been a minute and twenty-seven seconds, as timed by the
Her eyes just refused to leave the ground. It didn’t even look like she was blinking, and the
rain wasn’t a bother to her at all. Raindrops were pounding down on Stan’s raincoat. He’d
been pleading and calling out to her for so long now that he was just about ready to get back
But what help did she need? She clearly wasn’t hurt. Nor was she bleeding, as best he could
see in the strong spotlight of his torch on her. What had Stan’s mediocre-intelligence-
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quotient-brain running haywire with fear and confusion was this. The girl wasn’t wet. Not
one bit. Not one bit of her looked wet. Her perfectly done up hair was what had caught his
attention, as he’d just reset the fuse box. He was climbing down back to the ground when he
noticed someone perched up on one of the rungs of the tower, perched upside down. She
hung absolutely upside down, the metal cross bar of a rung squeezed tightly between the
backs of her flexed knees, between her lower thighs and upper calves. She had on no
clothing, and her arms hung down out of proportion, as far as he could see.
Did Stan really need to be there? He should have just turned the flashlight off, got in the
truck and driven off. He had stayed just because he’d never, even in his wildest
hallucinations on ‘shrooms, seen what was about to come to him that night.
Her long black hair fell perfectly onto her shoulders; it fell assertively upwards from her head
despite her absurd position. Stan only realized this was all too much when he moved the
Completely backward.
They pointed inwards like some creatures might have in a fable about a far away place in a
far away time. It overcame Stan, ferociously, that this was all happening in the now. There
was no fable here; no storybook, no television to turn off, or no bad dream to wake from.
They began to move not unlike wings, but she stayed in place. She didn’t even swing or
Whatever this living, absurd phantasmagoria God had painted was, Stan felt the highest urge
to not know. He quietly stopped calling out to offer her help the moment she spread her
‘wings’, and shone the torch on the truck parked two hops away.
The key turned in the ignition even before the door slammed shut, and Stan put the truck in
gear long before he turned the headlights on. He didn’t look back, he didn’t want to, and
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couldn’t even if he wanted to. It was too dark to see anything behind him. Tonight, it
seemed he would better his best time of a minute and twenty-seven seconds for this road.
The scrawny four-cylinder engine shrieked in pain as it jostled the truck and Stan back home,
He thought at first his mind was playing tricks on him again, but the steadily dropping
His foot was damn near strangling the gas pedal, but here he was, slowing down like a rock
hitting pond water. Seconds later the truck was standing still. The engine was still screaming
at several thousand revs more than he’d ever pushed it before, but he wasn’t going
anywhere.
He spared the gas pedal for a moment, and watch the revs drop to a piddle. The truck began
to coast backwards for a few seconds then came to a rest. Stan sat benumbed. For the
second time over the past couple of minutes, he didn’t want to find out what the problem
Cursing his fate, he stepped bravely out of the car. The antenna tower could be seen in the
distance. It was a safe distance he thought, safe from whatever he’d just seen. He looked
over the back of the truck for trouble…for a sign to tell him why the hell he was standing
only halfway between the antenna tower and radio station. He wanted to be home right now,
He scurried to the back of the truck torchlight dancing on the gravel. The damp, muddy
gravel glowed red under his tail lamps. He could see two slender sticks hooked onto the
tailgate. Stan traced his torch along them away from the truck. This night was getting longer
with every breath of cold air Stan drew from between pelting raindrops. The two sticks
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extended into the darkness he had left behind, and their length he couldn’t determine; they
Desperate to be driving again, he felt the inside of the tailgate to unhook them. He first felt
his fingers feeling some more fingers holding the inside of the tailgate. Stan’s heart was
about ready to explode with the fast tribal beat it pumped into his chest. Feeling back up, he
swallowed almost his whole neck inwards as his fingers came across what definitely felt like a
hand. It was hairy and narrow, and pointing light inwards proved it. There was another one
beside it, holding fast to the tailgate the same way. These hands were each connected to the
slender sticks stretching out into the darkness; they stretched out towards the antenna tower.
With palms that were wet with rain and the sweat of fear, Stan attempted to pry the fingers
loose. They refused to give up their hold, and he noticed how the fingers were pulpy towards
their ends; they were all missing fingernails. There was no blood though. What there was a lot
of was hair. The knuckles were almost covered with it completely, and so was the upper of
each hand. The bones of each hand ridged out through the skin sharply.
Raindrops falling in nature can sound so lovely if the temperament of the listener and
Stan’s heart however, was beating faster than the rain drops ‘splatting’ towards their ends,
and now, in between these soft sounds came one that was far from soft, peaceful or placid.
A sound that was so sharp, so uncannily high-pitched that it sliced through the Pennsylvania
weather, and brought its own horror. It drew closer through the darkness, invisible to the
torch light that swung like a lighthouse’s into the dark, pointing towards the antenna tower
instead of a sea. The two sticks, they grew slightly thicker, then thicker, and thicker still.
They kept getting thicker and wider until they began to resemble hairy arms with no end.
It stopped all of a sudden, and Stan dared to breath. He wheezed incessantly as he turned to
dash into the cabin again. But as he did, he heard a loud thud come from where he had
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stood only an instant before, and the truck jerked forward. He threw a look back over his
shoulder.
She was with him again, only closer: the girl from the tower. She was still as naked and dry as
she’d been the first time he’d seen her. He could only see her jawbone in the meager red
light of his brake lamps. There was nothing odd about her looks or torso. The feet; they
must have been hiding behind the truck. She held the tailgate with her arms fully extended,
but her neck was slumped at an angle. Keeping the same upper posture she took a step in
Stan’s direction.
* * *
Stan was grinding gears; he was shifting now without the clutch. He had not waited one split
second at her step in his direction. He just got in, locked the door and stuck the gear in first,
jerking the Mazda violently into motion. The gas pedal being at the floor once again kept it
from stalling. Stan had run once again. This time, there was no slowing. The engine shrieked,
The dim and few lights of the radio station passed his window in a blur as he drove past
them at eighty. They could fire him for he cared. Actually, he didn’t care now about the
incomplete shift he’d clocked into. He didn’t even care about calling Central, for anything.
Stan was definitely going to beat the sunrise this time. Definitely.
14
Turnpike (Revised)
The toll way, ever since its completion, had been a great blessing for Valley Forge. It
was because of such things in life, as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that people like Stan could
earn an extra buck or two, every now and then at service exit franchises and the like. For
him, now and then were Tuesday nights and Sunday afternoons at the Mobil gas station at
Stan was definitely a part time person. He went to school part time. He went to
church part time. He even did his laundry part time, and at times it showed. He also worked
part time at the Mobil. The rest of the week, he attended auto-mechanic school. They were
currently working on diesel engine repair, and at times Stan found even the shifts at the gas
It was in this town that Stan Reijko had grown up; the only child of immigrant
parents from Hungary that both met early deaths. One ill-fated night, Bernard and Sharon
Reijko had left little Stan home alone sleeping to get groceries. Their only child remained fast
asleep the whole night, and word of their death came only when a police officer standing
alongside a priest turned up at Zeeti’s front door at four o’clock the next morning.
Aunt Zeeti had later told him how a drunk driver had “sent his parents very
peacefully up to Jesus”. Stan had been too young then to comprehend fully the tragedy that
fate had carved into his life, but it was for the better. Stan had never really found himself
missing them terribly, since he’d never really known them. Stan spent the rest of his pre-
adolescent years with young Aunt Zeeti, who herself had emigrated from Bucharest only a
couple of months after his parents. While trying to do the best she could, Stan had, at one
time while smoking a joint filled with too much ganja for his liking, come to the conclusion
that she had tried too hard. He’d never really taken her daughters in as real sisters, because
they themselves had always kept a distance from him at home. He felt he’d grown up in the
15
company of three women, without ever coming to know any of them. After all these years,
he still couldn’t hold a decent conversation with the opposite sex, and the chance to do so
Stan got the coffee brewing in Old Faithful. He had given the coffeemaker that name
because the gurgling noises it made reminded him of a fountain the people at Yellowstone
The shifts here at the gas station were long and not surprisingly, phenomenally
boring. At least they paid a soothing eight dollars and thirty-five cents per hour, and they
Stan picked up a scratched brown clipboard off its hook beside the bathroom door.
Sunday was inventory day at the Valley Forge Mobil station, and he never bothered locking
the main door when he left the main desk, except during bathroom breaks.
Grey clouds had parked themselves in the surrounding skies, and it was quite gloomy
Stan worked behind the cash register and cigarette-pack holders inside the mini-mart
of the station. For the most part, customers were people that were just passing through, on
their way either to or from Philadelphia, only a few hours’ drive from Valley Forge.
Inventory taking was boring, and Stan detested counting and tallying the insignificant
numbers of snacks, cookies, soft drinks and other trivial items sitting on the shelves all
around. He poured himself a plastic cup full of fountain Dr. Pepper and made his way up
and down the three aisles of the store. Unappealing fluorescent lamps all around help
A shiny red import pulled up beside pump number three as he took count of the
thirteen “Fire” flavored beef jerky sticks remaining by the ice cream freezer. He paused his
counting and looked up to find two slender, long legs poke out the drivers’ side door of the
16
car. He waited for the rest to come, but inside the car a girl seemed to be fumbling through a
A pretty girl was an uncommon sight for Stan’s eyes, and staring at this one was
definitely more entertaining than inventory taking right now. The girl wore fresh white
running shoes on her feet; with socks so small they could hardly be seen. She finally stepped
out with a stocky wallet in one hand and her car keys in the other. Stan saw her step towards
the pump, and knew that her next move would be to come inside the mini-mart, right after
she would read the sticker above the pump handle that read “Please pay inside before
pumping”.
Stan propped his clipboard against the candies on the shelf in the middle, and
quickly ran to the counter. He managed to part his hair down the left just as he heard the
door swing open, as an electronic chime sang in the back. Stan was busy counting change in
the cash register as the girl walked towards it. He deemed it a successful ploy; she didn’t
seem to have noticed him dashing behind the counter. He was sure he looked ‘busy as usual’.
“Ten dollars on pump three please,” the girl said, looking square at her car out the
large windows. “Premium.” Stan kept his eyes down and counted quarters he had counted
several times before, and only pretended to acknowledge her once he had noisily slid them
back into their part of the drawer. “Sorry about that,” Stan started. “Just trying to stay
She didn’t say a word, and stuck a crisp ten-dollar bill under a downward opening arc
in the cashier’s window. The large Plexiglas box surrounding him never really help
communicating with customers. Her lack of concern for his words instantly blew the
smugness off his face. Resentfully, Stan pulled the note across the plastic counter surface,
punched the register, and the fuel pump beeped into action.
The girl was wearing a heather gray sweatshirt with three large Greek letters
emblazoned across the front, striped nylon running shorts and the white shoes he had first
17
noticed. Her brown hair sat short cropped around her shoulders, and the brow above her
left eye was pierced magnificently with a huge silver ring. She wasn’t exactly like those girls
he’d spend hours staring at on the covers of Cosmopolitan magazine, but she definitely
appeared very attractive to him. Watching the cents add up, Stan decided to break the silence
before the fuel pump stopped, before she left, and before it would be too late.
“Umm…can I get a pack of Marlboro menthols?” The girl was looking straight
His social skills defeated once again by her lack of interest in him, Stan complied like
a dog fetching a bone for a hundredth time. Standing on his tiptoes, he jerked upwards and
grabbed on to a box of menthols and tugged it out of the holder. He managed to undo a
clasp on the edge of the plastic cigarette holders in the process, and brought tumbling to the
counter top ten or more so boxes of the same cigarettes. She fished her wallet for change,
Stan had almost swiped the card when he remembered the ‘credit card minimum’
was five dollars, and the Marlboro’s were costing her only three dollars and fifteen cents.
“We have a five dollar minimum here, Ma’am,” Stan said, flipping the card over.
From its mute but business-serious colors, it seemed to have been issued by a rich man’s
bank, probably one of those in the tall buildings in downtown Philadelphia or even New
York.
“Oh alright.” Stan couldn’t tell whether the look on her face was one of indifference,
or annoyance. “I’ll take two then.” He swiped the card as suavely as he thought impressive,
and waited for the verification to come through. Looking over the front of the card he ran
his index finger along the gold, capital letters across it.
“What’s the F in the middle stand for, Nicole?” he asked her, raising one eyebrow
“My middle name. Duh.” Nicole spat back. “Can I have my card back now?”
She had knocked the wind out of him, and it had taken his confidence with it on the
way out. Before he could even begin to feel stupid, the cash register started chugging and
spitting dots and digits onto the receipt. He ripped it out and aligned the yellow copy below
the white one as best he could, and waited for her to sign. His eyes were locked on the large
X beside the ‘signature required’ line, and refused to move out of embarrassment. He
pushed down on the receipt with his index and middle finger, and couldn’t help but notice
her perfectly shaped fingernails, painted deep red. The nails and the mood their color set
“I’m sorry,” Nicole said in a tone that sounded quite genuine to Stan, or perhaps he
“I didn’t mean to be so rude. I guess…I guess I was just surprised by your question,
considering I’ve never met you before.” There was a hint of indecision in her voice now, but
“That’s okay I guess. I’m sorry; I was just trying to be friendly. Don’t see too many
Silence ensued. The receipt was signed, the card returned and Stan then handed the
yellow carbon copy to the girl and wished her a pleasant day. He began to play with the
chain attached to the end of the pen, doodling it in circles with his finger. His eyes had
grown tired of staring at the white plastic of the counter, and now wished the girl would just
be on her way.
“What’s your name?” she blurted out. Stan looked up for a brief moment at the girl,
“I’m on my way to Phila. I go to school there.” Stan raised his head as she said,
“Listen, umm, I’m not really as rude as I just was. I guess it was just…”
“Yeah well it doesn’t matter…it’s okay,” Stan said, trying his best to move his self-
She took a step back and asked if she could smoke right there. Stan kept doodling
for a few seconds, and then slowly pulled out a black ashtray that had Winston written on
the side of it, and slid it to her from under the Plexiglas.
From unwrapping the plastic off the cigarette pack to her matte black lighter clicking
shut, Stan followed every move of hers closely; every twitch. She seemed to be enjoying him
“Economics. I deal with businesses and stuff.” Stan wasn’t a college graduate, but
her answer offended him. At least he knew more about economics; enough to describe it
better than little Miss Nicole just had. For want of maintaining conversation, he played down
his humiliation by acting calm, and buttoned his left shirt cuff. Noting the ketchup stain on
it from a burger of two nights ago, he undid the button and began to roll the sleeve up
instead.
“Oh no. I couldn’t imagine living there except for school. It’s too hectic and busy for
me.” She stuck her credit card into her wallet, and folded it shut. “I’m actually from King of
Prussia.”
Stan raised his eyebrows and let out a lame attempt at a whistle. “King of Prussia!
Woowee! Rich girl huh?” Nodding to her car out the window he said, “So I suppose Daddy
dearest paid for that piece outside?” King of Prussia was one of the most upscale ‘burbs of
Philadelphia, and Stan’s assuming Nicole to be rich wasn’t wrong in the least.
20
“My parents bought me the car for my twenty-first birthday,” she said, also looking
out at her car. The cloud cover was almost gone by now…gray skies were only in the
distance now. Sunlight glazed beads of rain on one side of the car. “But I’m not rich!”
Nicole’s lips broke into a smile. Guilty as charged, it said. At least she’d admitted
defeat this time. More importantly, she was talking, sans attitude.
“You smoke?” she said, pointing the soft cigarette pack at Stan’s like a reporter
would a microphone.
“Sure, why not?” Stan pointed to the hole in the window. Letting out a giggle of
embarrassment, she slid the pack across the opening. Stan decided to unman the counter
now. “What the heck,” he thought, “she’s the only customer that’s been here in the last two
hours.” He stepped out of the cashier’s ‘box’ and lit his cigarette with his own matches,
“I usually don’t smoke. Especially menthols you know, they’re uhh…bad for
the…you know…” Nicole almost rolled her eyes, but in a friendly way and pulled a crooked
smile.
“Hey…it’s not like one little cigarette is gonna like, totally kill your count.” Stan
managed to breath out a whole puff of mentholated smoke before he murmured a simple
“True”. Nicole only took a few more drags before she snubbed her cigarette out, like she
had done with Stan’s confidence a few moments ago. She glanced at her watch, not long
enough to actually tell the time, but to let Stan know that she wanted to be on her way.
“Well, I’ve got to make it to a ceremony at college tonight, and I’d better get going.”
She crumpled the credit card receipt and tossed it into trashcan next to the replacement
windshield wipers.
“Hey, no problem. It was nice meeting you.” With that, Nicole turned and started
for the door. Stan watched her noticeably large hips wishy-wash in their owner’s wake, all the
way until she got to the gas pump. Stan went back to the counter to put his cigarette out.
An unfamiliar set of keys lay on the counter top. The key ring had three separate,
metal letters dangling from it. They were stainless steel on one side, and bright pink, each
with deep blue outlines on the other. They were the same letters that he’d seen on his lat
He met Nicole at the door again, just as she was coming in. She saw the jumble of
keys and small Greek letters in his hand and breathed a loud sigh of relief.
“Thank you…thank you so much. I thought I’d lost them in the car. Then I’d never
find them!” Stan propped the door open with his right shoe and held the keys up, just above
her forehead.
“Excuse me?”
“Your what?”
“Sorority. It’s like a house where girls with common interests live together. It’s a lot
Stan knew about economics. He knew about college; and even knew the names of
the bigger ones up in Phila. This sorority thing however, this was something new.
“So there’s more, where you came from, huh?” Stan said with a sly grin. “Everyone
as hot as you?”
“Oh COME on! I’m not hot! You’re just trying to be nice”. Stan was just trying to be
nice. He was surprised by the drastic change in her attitude, and wondered whether she
22
possibly thought him good looking enough to be pleasant to. Thinking the ball was in his
“Hey Nicole, what’re you gonna gimme for these keys, huh, huh?” He dangled and
shimmied the keys like a butler would a bell to announce dinner. She smiled back. Stan felt
himself on thin ice now; he’d pulled a stunt that would test his self-confidence more than
hers. He smiled as he tingled the keys, but thought in his mind whether he was being just a
Nicole swung her head down, grinning ear-to-ear as she did so, and stuck her hands
on her hips. Stan felt stupid now. He felt stupid not because he had to, but in anticipation of
her response, whatever it would be. He couldn’t tell right now whether she thought he was
“How about another menthol?” she said as she tucked her hair behind her ears.
Stan was relieved; she was in a joking mood. He vented his relief with a loud, hollow
“Nuh uh.” He now flexed every bit of his brain, trying to come up with something
to shoot back at her. It had to be sharp, it had to be quick and ‘off-the-bat’ and most of all, it
had to be just shocking enough to catch her off guard; enough to make her do it.
“I really find you attractive, Nicole. I’d like to stay in touch, and I want your phone
number.”
Nicole cocked her head slightly to the side and made a face that said, “Come again,
PLEASE?” Stan’s pulse took a turn and head straight for the hills. Even his annoying key
But from somewhere in the depths of his gut came strength, strength he’d just be
getting to know, then forget. Strength that, had he known and used, would have saved him
from the eight-grade soccer field fight with Tommy Keady, and the trip it had sent him on
to Waters Hospital. It could even have saved him the embarrassment of being forced to pull
23
out a Hustler magazine from under his shirt, by Counselor Hinrichs at band camp, if he had
“Nicole. It’s nothing too much for an economist-to-be college girl to understand. I
Nicole couldn’t wipe the smirk off her face now, and now Stan’s confidence told him
to not give a hoot why. Her hands slipped off her hips.
“Or? What?”
Nicole sighed, stepped into a side pose, sighed again then faced Stan again.
“Stanley, please! I should have been on the road ten minutes ago! First the cigarette
“Ohhhh. So you offered me a cigarette because you felt sorry for me, huh?”
“Well, the sooner you gimme your number Nikki, the sooner you’ll be on the road.”
He’d just stepped overboard he thought, by calling her Nikki. Now was the time to
feel stupid, and indeed Stan did; the red rash growing all over his face bear witness to it. He
could tell he’d shot himself in the foot now, because she didn’t even look like she’d take a
swing at grabbing her keys out of his now limp-with-lack-of-confidence left hand.
“Stan, I don’t even KNOW you. And let me be honest, I probably will not ever see
you again. Philadelphia’s a big place.” Stan felt the energy drain out of his left arm, and it
The game was over. His super-confidence-drive came to a powerfully retarded stop,
and he was back to square one. His mind flashed back to the ten or so minutes ago that he’d
felt the exact same way behind the counter, stunned by her first words. This girl was not
He stared at her shoes, and the cute white socks; he could see them from where he
was now, snuggled deep inside the shoe. He noticed how she’d double-knotted her shoelaces
as well. The sun was out now, but it was still a gloomy day for him. He stuck out the keys,
still staring at her shoes and heard them change hands. Her fingers were soft and cold. But
Stan felt her nudge the ball of his left shoulder and looked up. Her lips were pulled
inwards, and a few strands of her short hair were trying their best to blow in the wind.
“Hey, hey!” She angled her head. “I’m sorry Stan. But what are you gonna do with
my number anyway?”
“Hey. Ok, well at least I KNOW you’re nice.” He was now looking her in the eyes.
“Don’t make me say things that aren’t true…I know you’re nice. Even if YOU don’t think
so.” His eyes fell back to the ground and his lips twitched, starting from the left.
Nicole grew back a little smile, he could see through the corner of his eye. But Stan
“Got a pen?” Stan raised his eyes to meet hers, and all they told him was to shut up
and get a pen. Quick. He fished his pant pockets but came up empty. As he was about to run
back inside his right hand came across a plastic pen cover hinged in his pocket.
He drew the pen out of his pocket as if he were about to sign papers to accept
lottery money he’d just won, breathlessly and without thought. He started hunting again, this
time for paper. He finally handed her the pen and stuck out the palm of his right hand.
In some places, Stan felt numb from the rise and fall of adrenaline he was going
through. But his right palm was tingling and shaking. This, Nicole noticed and smiled at
25
while drawing out large numbers. There were an awful lot of sevens and fives on his hand,
It was all over sooner than it had started. Stan walked her to the car and closed its
heavy door behind her. As she turned the key in the ignition, Stan held up his hand.
Nicole burst out laughing. “You don’t give up, do you?! Frederick. It stands for
Frederick.” She slid the car’s wooden shift lever into ‘D’. “I hope that made your day,
Stanley.” He gave her a confirmatory smile and slapped the roof goodbye. He watched her
car until it turned onto the exit, back on to the Turnpike, back in to her life and out of his.
He walked back to the mart. Looking at the clock, he only had forty minutes left
until Stacey; the next worker would come in. He quickly jot down the digits from his right
palm onto the back of an unfilled inventory sheet. He did this twice, so that there would be
no mistake about the number once he washed his hands. He tore the paper off the
clipboard, stuck it into the small coin pocket of his jeans and went back to taking inventory
* * *
Now in his pajamas, Stan was almost ready for bed. He scratched and exposed the
card number out on the phone card he’d bought from the mart just before Stacey had come
He carefully followed the instructions on the back of the card and entered the same
numbers he’d worked so hard on getting out of Nicole. He was a bit nervous as the phone
started to ring. It kept ringing, and Stan thought perhaps she wasn’t back yet from the
ceremony she’d mentioned. To his dismay, he had dialed the wrong number, and wasted
precious units on his calling card while doing so. He dialed the numbers again, and kept
waiting. Again, the same recording began playing, something about a bookstore being closed.
26
The message ended with details of its working hours. Stan tried again and again before he
admitted defeat to the recording. The number he’d copied down; there was no way it could
have been copied wrong. He checked several times, and could still make out the same digits,
Nicole, could she have intentionally given him the wrong number? She seemed
awfully nice towards the end though, even if she had lied, he thought, as he pitied himself,
lying under his quilt. He clicked the lamp switch off, and wondered whether her middle
Pencil
Pencil (Revised)
Orange Mocha
Confounded I am.
I built this house myself; yet a foundation
Seems absent.
What had become of all her emotions?
The ones she admit I had stirred once,
with letters that smelt of musk
and tulips as red as
Hawthorne’s famous Letter itself.
Second Cup.
Trinket and Us
Note: Due to unforeseeable conversion problems, this original copy of the poem will appear poorly
formatted . All attempts made to rectify the errors with formatting were unsuccessful.
Metallic sounds my
Metallic sounds
My father makes every day till Maghreb1.
The chisel engraves each pound into
the stone
lining my mind.
I tell him
“We can sell these too, Abbu2”,
pointing at the gems
we have left over.
“No beta3”, he replies,
“Blacksmith I was born,
Blacksmith I shall die.
You too.”
A romantic smile punctuates his
soft
words. I smile back, today
pulling my lips a little
lighter than before.
* * *
* * *
“Smoother still”,
Abbu says.
“Do your best, quickly.
Mém Sahib4 will be here soon”
She stitched
me this handsome shalwar qameez
for Eid7,
two days,
three and a half nights
before her lungs met
pneumonia for the last time.
My shoulders shrug:
No.
It is alright. Even Ammi’s
darling shirt is worth our
favorite Mém Sahib’s patronage.
Abbu is as usual,
all smiles.
Humble should be his middle name.
Mém Sahib seems in a rush,
She tells us she has a ‘paarty’ to be at.
Clasps close sweet and flush.
Her pretty ankles are officially
prized now.
* * *
40
Notes
1. Maghreb: In this case refers to the Muslim prayer offered at sunset.
2. Abbu: Commonly used to address a father in Urdu
3. Beta: Commonly used to address a child in Urdu
4. Mém Sahib: Madam
5. Punjabi: A resident of Punjab, one of the four provinces of Pakistan.
6. Ammi: Commonly used to address a mother in Urdu
7. Eid: In Islam, there are two ‘holy holidays’, comparable in festivity to Christmas.
8. roti: ‘chapatti’/ local pita bread
9. Laal’tain: lantern, commonly used in poorer areas in Pakistan.
41
Mellow Spring
Grass shards, the wind tries to sway your faith in your roots; hold fast!
My strong aunt, eight years she and cancer argued, fought, sometimes wrestled.
Starry, striped flag, you may be lower than usual today, but crisp as ever.
My quiet aunt, she prayed and worshipped to the last whisper
Prairie wind, you are pretty on my face but please spare the grass.
My aunt dined well at the eatery of life, but had now asked for the cheque.
Rusted fence, there is a small hole in you today; don’t worry it shall be fixed.
My aunt wore maroon the day our Lord whisked her away.
42
Fat Man1
It is such an
elegant night
for dinner here
in old Frankfurt.
Cobblestones are
the additive
in their romance
couples walking
beside me do
not know about.
A petite blonde
waitress pours in
my wine glass some
of the cellar’s
oldest, smoothest,
most sparkling wine.
Bubbles rise as
once again they
meet air and find
at last the peace
green glass bottles
and dark wine cells
have denied them
for much too long.
I think of all
the hunger in
the world; his could
some day offer
competition.
I want to get
43
I watch, appalled,
a spaghetti
strand dangle from
the side of his
mouth. I must ask
for the cheque now.
So much for the
refined dinner
I had promised
myself all week.
44
The Fall
My hairline is as bold
and sharp
as a late night talk show host.