Thanks for your kind words.
Dennis
Short Story / Skinny Cappuccino to Sit
Curmudgeon’s Coffeehouse.
“Mind if I sit here?” Sarg Thomlison stood behind the empty chair across from Telli and tapped the thick newspaper she held in her hand against its back.
Telli looked up from behind two stacks of paper. The pages on the right stack were print-side up; those on the left print-side down. He frowned, leaned forward and put his thick arms on either side of the stacks. “Sorry, I need room for my work.”
“You’ll have plenty of room,” She pulled the chair back and sat down. “You won’t even know I’m here.”
Telli scrutinized her slowly—erect, head high, a classy woman despite baggy jeans and a gray sweatshirt with T. B. COUGH centered in a burst of stars across the front. He looked around the room. Every table was occupied; most had every seat taken. “I need the whole table,” he said. “I spread pages out. There’s an empty chair there by the window. That woman clearly needs company.”
“I won’t take any space at all. I’ll hold the newspaper in my lap.” She opened the newspaper and looked down at the front page. “That looks like either a novel or a dissertation. You work for the University or you’re under-employed while you wait for readers to love you.”
Telli drew his thick eyebrows together and down. “T. B. Cough? What’s that, some sort of medical alert?”
Sarg smiled. “He’s a rap singer.”
He rubbed his index finger under his nose and sniffed. “You like rap music?”
“Not his music so much. He’s a social critic and I admire social critics.” She examined her glasses, half-moon rims hanging from a leather string around her neck, blew on the lenses and put them on her nose.
“All social critics?”
“Almost all. Certainly there’s no harm in social criticism expressed through art.”
“You mean like rap music?”
“Da man outside my door, he lookin’ for trouble; Lookin’ for a reason to knock my door in. Won’t be happy ‘til my door be rubble, and I’m in dat cage where da light neva shine in. That’s T. B. Have you heard him?”
“Dangling preposition, isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be into which da light neva shine?”
Sarg smoothed the hair on the side of her head. It was dark, coarse, straight hair, with silver strands throughout, pulled back all around into a ponytail held together with a rubber band. The overhead lighting in the coffee shop highlighted her high, prominent cheekbones, giving her face a noble elegance. She turned the top page of her newspaper, looked briefly underneath, turned it back.
“Do you know how Rap music came to be called that?” Telli asked.
“I guess I never thought about it.”
“It’s short for crap.”
Sarg smiled grimly. “I see you’re not a fan.”
“There are other chairs. That woman by the window—”
“She’s waiting for a blind date. She answered one of those personal ads. Romeo’s half-an-hour late already. I asked her.”
“Then surely she’d like some company.”
“She hasn’t given up on him yet. Hope still springs, maybe not eternal, but longer than you’d think for some loser in the personals ads.”
“There’s another empty seat by the counter.”
“I won’t take any room at all. You won’t know I’m here.” She pulled the outside section of the newspaper free from the rest and opened it wide, drawing a curtain between her and Telli.
“Fine.” Telli rubbed through his hair, black-gray curls cropped short, thin on top. “Fine.”
“I won’t say a word. Go back to your work. You never said which it is: dissertation or novel, non-fiction or fiction?”
Telli picked the top sheet from the right stack, turned it over, put it on the left stack. “Neither.”
“Neither fiction nor non-fiction? Is it one of those made-up non-fiction books?”
“This”--Telli tapped his knuckles on the top of the left stack--“is Hell on Ten Dollars a Day.”
“A religious work?”
“A travelogue.”
“I see. Well, good luck with it.” She raised her newspaper curtain again and focused on the page.
Telli pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and scratched a note on the top sheet of the right stack. He thought for a moment, shook his head, scratched out the note. He leaned his head on his hand and studied the page.
Sarg lowered her newspaper, looked over the top, turned the page and raised the newspaper again. “We have a larger percentage of our population in prison than any other country on earth. Over one million, seven hundred thousand. We have almost four million under supervision, probation and parole.”
“What?”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“What did you say?”
“And these aren’t even today’s figures. It’s worse now. Three percent of our population are under control of the criminal justice system. There are--what would you guess?--forty people in the coffee shop? That would be…” She looked around the room slowly.
“One point two people.” Telli rubbed his finger under his nose, looked back to the stack of pages in front of him. “Must be that swarthy man by the door; him and his naughty little boy.”
Sarg leaned forward and studied the newspaper. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“Skinny cappuccino to sit!” the young man behind the counter called out.
“That’s me.” Sarg closed her newspaper, stood, moved through the tables to the counter. She returned with a steaming cup of coffee, sat down, put the coffee down on the corner of the table and opened the newspaper again. “One out of three young black men, eighteen to thirty five, are in prison or under supervised release. We have more black men in prison than college. Can you imagine? It’s a social tragedy. Nobody wants it, but there it is, inescapable.”
Telli looked up. “What does this have to do with me?”
Sarg peered over the top of the newspaper. “This affects everyone.”
“I don’t send black men to prison. I don’t send black men to college. I don’t send black men anywhere.”
“Of course you do. You pay taxes, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you vote, or you don’t vote. Either way, you could vote, so the government that results is your responsibility.”
“I didn’t vote to put any black men in prison, or college.”
“No? Did you vote for someone who talked about zero tolerance, or the war on drugs, or tough on crime, or just say no, or three strikes and you’re out?”
“That’s different.”
“The burgeoning prison population is the result of those policies. Vote for the people who advocate them and you vote for the results.”
Telli moved another page from the right stack to the left. “I didn’t come here to talk about voting, mine or anybody’s. I came here for a quiet place to work.”
“There’s nothing quiet about this place.”
“Not since you sat down.”
“Or before. Obviously, you’re not here for the quiet. If it’s quiet you’re after, there are a hundred better places. I think you’re here for the company.”
Telli frowned. “Do you own a cell phone?”
“No. God, no.”
“You look familiar.”
“You know everybody who owns a cell phone?”
“Of course not. I work at a cell phone store. I know some people because they own cell phones, although I have no other reason, which is to say, no good reason, to know them. I thought you might be one, since I can’t think of any other possible way I’d know you.”
“Perhaps you’ve seen me here. I’ve seen you here, always at the same table, always by yourself, always writing.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“My name’s Sarg Thomlison. Perhaps you’ve had some trouble with the police. I work at the station house up the street.”
Telli shook his head. “No.”
“Or reason to call on the police.”
“Not lately.”
“Now that I’ve told you my name it would be common courtesy for you to tell me yours.”
Telli consider this for a moment before responding, “Telli.”
“Perhaps I look familiar because I resemble someone you know.”
Telli nodded, considering this before changing the subject. “This laissez-faire, smoke-em-if-you-got-em view you have, it’s not common among people in your line of work, is it?”
“You’d be surprised. I’m not saying the government shouldn’t be involved with drugs at all; I’m saying we need a rational approach. When drug users aren’t hurting anyone else, there’s no reason to make them criminals. Many of them are victims. Drugs are a public health problem, not a morality problem.”
“Criminals or victims, they choose to take it up.”
“You would have your government prosecute people for gambling, prostitution, pornography, polygamy, failure to wear helmets, seatbelts, drunkenness, loitering, jaywalking, vagrancy, all of those crimes where the victim is a willing participant?”
Telli squared himself. His thick legs made straight right angles at the knees; his pelvis a straight right angle at the back of the chair. His settled his thick, round torso over his pelvis, a barrel on a sturdy bench. “I don’t have the government do anything at all.”
“Maybe you should. By sitting by in silence you achieve the same result.”
“But not my result.”
“Whose, then?”
Telli smiled. “I don’t come here to talk politics. Maybe some do. I don’t. I’m sure if you look, you’ll find someone. The coffee shop is full of people. I came here to work.”
“By yourself.”
“That’s right.”
“In a coffee shop full of customers? If you’re not looking for company wouldn’t it be easier to stay home and write in the kitchen?”
“In the past I was always able to keep a little privacy, even when the shop was full. Not today.”
Sarg raised her newspaper. “Sorry. I don’t mean to disturb you.”
Telli studied the page on the right stack in front of him, and shook his head. “Of course you meant to disturb me. You’ve meant to disturb me since you sat down.”
Sarg continued to look into her newspaper. “No more. I’m done.”
Telli turned the top sheet on the right stack over, placed it on the left stack. “So, you work at the police station? Is that what you said?”
Sarg lowered the newspaper. “The station house up the street.” She raised the newspaper again.
“Are you familiar with the Paine Street Branch Bank robbery?”
Sarg lowered the newspaper again. “Armed robbery and quadruple homicide, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, but one of the murder victims started out the incident as a robber.”
“That must have been ten years ago.”
“Eight years ago next week.”
“The remaining perpetrator was never found, was he? It’s still an open case?”
“That’s right.”
“Why are you asking about it?”
“Because, if you’re attached to the police station up the street, a taxpaying citizen might think you’d be working to solve a case like that, not hanging out in a coffee shop trying to convince people that the laws should be pared back, so you’d have less work to do, or less work to not do, if that’s more accurate.”
“Paring back the victimless crime laws has nothing to do with the work load for police; there will always be plenty of police work. As it happens, I’m not on duty, but you’re making my point for me. If I were on duty, I wouldn’t have time to work on a cold case like the Paine Street Branch Bank robbery. I’m too busy chasing down participants in the commercial sectors we’ve decided should be illegal.”
Telli resettled himself on his chair. “Are there any new developments in the case?”
She looked puzzled.
“The Paine Street Branch Bank Massacre. Are there any developments at all?”
“I wouldn’t know. That’s a question for the cold cases team. It’s an eight-year-old crime. I’d be very surprised if there were fresh leads.”
“Surely someone—”
“You’re interested because you worry your police force isn’t using its time wisely?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s bullshit, isn’t it? I think you have a personal interest. What is it?”
Telli sat back in his chair. “I cover it in my book.” He patted the left stack of papers. “I want my account to be complete.”
“Ah. It’s a book about crime?”
“It’s a book about many things. Hell, Tours for the Cost Conscious. Crime is just one of the topics it covers.”
“Didn’t you say the title was Hell on Ten Dollars, or something like that?”
“I changed it.”
“And what do you say about crime in this travelogue with the changing title?”
“That real people get hurt. Maybe it seems that it’s all statistics, and percentages, and investigations, and perpetrators, but that’s only until you’re one of the victims. Then everything changes. Then you’re not jabbering about this or that shouldn’t be illegal at all, all that theoretical crap.”
“It’s not theoretical, and it’s not crap. Of course there are real victims of crime. My point is the criminal justice system, from legislation all the way to probation, should focus its attention on cases with real victims. Our preoccupation with victimless crimes is nothing more than cowardice. We’re afraid to deal with situations, so we make them illegal. We’re afraid to deal with people, so we make them criminals. We’re afraid; that’s all.”
“I think we agree,” Telli spoke without looking up. “This would be a good time to shut up.”
“If our society is to attain justice, we must fix three other virtues in place first, and keep them in harmony. Responsibility, courage, and wisdom. We expect to find justice, but we won’t take responsibility. That’s illogical. We want justice, but we base our laws on our fears. Illogical again. We look to instill justice through simpleminded answers to complicated questions, not on our best professional analyses of the factors at work in our society. Again, illogical.”
“An excellent time to shut up.”
“Here’s an example. Last month we got a call at the station house. The nine-one-one center dispatched an intercept team to a robbery in progress at the World Cellar Discount Liquor. They connected the caller, a citizen across the street calling on a cell phone, to the police who responded. I talked to her while the patrol cars converged on the liquor store. She said she saw a man go in, a man with long hair and a beard, a man wearing a white robe. He was carrying a cross.”
“A cross?”
“That’s right, a Jesus impersonator. We come across them occasionally, especially around Easter. The liquor store clerk, who is Palestinian and only knows enough English for regular transactions, was startled to see Jesus dragging a cross through the front door, but he figured, hell, it’s some crazy guy who will lecture me on the evils of alcohol, and I’ll tell him to leave, and that will be that.” Sarg took a sip of her coffee, watching Telli over the top of the cup as she did. “Then, according to the clerk, Jesus leaned the cross against the counter and told him, ‘Friend, I’m battling the devil today. I need the money in your cash drawer to go on with the battle. If you give me the money, I’ll drive the devil from the earth forever and peace and prosperity will bloom everywhere. If you don’t give me the money, the devil wins, and the earth plunges into darkness and despair.’ The clerk said he was frightened, not by Jesus with his cross leaning against the counter, but by the enormity of the situation. If he gave Jesus the money, or if he didn’t, the possible outcomes were immense, colossal, the stuff of scripture. He wanted to run away. The choice was too much for him.” Sarg took another sip of coffee.
Telli leaned forward in his seat. “What did he do?”
“He handed over the money, every penny of it. He didn’t believe the impersonator was Jesus, of course, but the thought that he might be the cause of the world plunging into darkness and despair was more than he could consider. He panicked and handed the money over.”
“And then the police converged on the liquor store and Jesus was taken away in handcuffs?”
“No. Then Jesus put the money in a pouch slung around his waist and said, ‘Bless you, Brother,’ and left. When he came out of the store, that’s about the time the citizen called in from across the street.”
Telli shook his head and grinned. “Tell me you didn’t let him get away. A Jesus impersonator carrying a cross? Surely you didn’t let him get away.”
Sarg sighed. “In fact, that’s exactly what happened. He got on a bus in front of the liquor store. He sat in the back of the bus. The driver remembered him getting on, of course, but he never noticed him getting off. When they stopped the bus, they found the cross in the back with no sign of Jesus.”
“What about the other passengers?”
“They didn’t see anything or wouldn’t talk about it. Our impression was that the driver and the passengers had sympathy for the suspect and abetted his escape.”
“You never caught him?”
“No.”
“What I don’t understand is the store clerk. Why would he hand over the cash? What was he afraid of?”
“He was like a three-year-old who has sat down on Santa’s lap on a fake sleigh in the entrance to a shopping mall the week before Christmas. Santa leans over and says, ‘Ho! Ho! Have you been a good little boy?’ and suddenly the enormity of sitting next to this eternal, white-bearded, red-coated icon of the culture closes in. Who can blame you, if you’re that little boy, if you lose all control, including bladder control? You cry, you reach for momma, and you let everything you’re holding inside flow out onto Santa’s lap.”
Telli picked up the top sheet from the face-up stack of pages in front of him and started to read. “What was the point of that sad little story?”
Sarg smiled. “My point is that the line that marks off criminal, punishable behavior from everything else, especially the more bizarre ranges of everything else, that line isn’t always clear.”
Telli shook his head. “I don’t see any difficulty.”
“No? Do you think the Jesus impersonator committed a crime?”
“Of course he committed a crime. He held up a liquor store.”
“He never threatened use of a weapon. As far as we know, he didn’t even have a weapon, except for the cross, which was more an encumbrance than anything else.”
“He came in; he took money that wasn’t his; he left. Case closed.”
“Did he take the money against the will of the clerk?”
“What will? The clerk was a fool.”
“I suppose he was. Perhaps he’s guilty of a crime. If he’d given all the money to a girl scout selling cookies, he’d be guilty of taking the money out of the till for his own purposes, wouldn’t he?”
“Maybe he was guilty of something as well. Did you think to charge him?”
“Then there’s the bus driver. It’s beyond belief that a man dressed as Jesus got on and off his bus and he couldn’t tell the police where he got off. He added up the accounts, the likely appreciation he’d receive for contributing to the investigation against the cost of being a person who turns Jesus over to the police, a modern-day Judas, and the answer came back, why risk it?”
“He decided to keep his mouth shut?”
“Of course he decided to keep his mouth shut. What is that, withholding evidence? Aiding and abetting a getaway?”
“Whatever. Did you charge him as well? You certainly should have.”
Sarg leaned back in her chair. “There’s my point. Here we have a penny-ante crime, fifty bucks taken from the till at a liquor store, nobody gets hurt, nobody is even threatened with bodily harm, yet you’d have us arrest and prosecute three citizens on felony charges, to set the matter right. The social cost of those arrests greatly exceeds the social value.”
“What do you do? Let everybody go?”
“That’s right. They’re small change operators, not hurting anybody very much.”
“Regular people don’t want to be around criminals. It’s as simple as that. Ask anyone.” Telli raised his hand and swept it in a broad arc.
Sarg laughed. “If I announced to the room that I’m a prostitute, do you suppose everyone would abandon their cappuccinos and clear out? Do you think people would hustle their children to the door? ‘Don’t look, Honey, she’s a whore!’”
Telli studied page on the top of the right stack. “Probably.”
Sarg smiled, stood up from her chair, turned slowly as she spoke. “Everybody! Listen up! I’m a chronic, unrepenting prostitute!” She sat down. The room fell silent.
Telli put his hand over his eyes. “Everybody here thinks I’m spending Sunday afternoon having coffee with a whore,” he said.
Sarg laughed. “It’ll enhance your reputation. Do you see anyone leaving? Anyone who looks shocked? Repulsed? Anyone on the verge of rising up in moral indignation?”
“They don’t believe you.”
“Of course they believe me. Why wouldn’t they?”
“Because you’re holding the Sunday New York Times in your lap. Whores don’t read the New York Times.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I’m finished talking with you. If you must sit there, fine. Sit there and keep quiet. I have work to do. This book won’t write itself. You keep quiet and I’ll keep quiet and we’ll get along fine.”
Half an hour later, Sarg finished her coffee, thanked Telli for sharing his table, and left the coffee shop. A few minutes after that Telli left as well. The street outside was busy and congested with cars parked on both sides, channeling traffic into the two remaining lanes. Telli looked across the street at the grocery store, walked to the corner, looked at the traffic coming, looked at the crosswalk marked on the street, and stepped off the curb. A horn blared to his left. “It’s a crosswalk, idiot!” he shouted. “Pedestrians have the right-of-way!” He stepped forward. The screech of tires on pavement replaced the blaring of the horn. Telli put his head down and took another step forward.
A Champaign-colored Volkswagen beetle bore down from the left. The nose of the car plunged as the brakes grabbed. The driver, Lisa Chisholm driving home from work, peered over the steering wheel. Her back was rigid, pushed back by her pressure on the brake. She gripped the steering wheel tight.
Telli swung his right leg forward and turned to face the Volkswagen. Lisa’s alarmed face glared out through the windshield. The beetle’s bumper hit him on the lower shins, pushing his feet up and out from under him. He lunged forward onto the hood of the car and slid up, coming to rest with both hands and his face pressed against the windshield. He glared through the glass, two dark, angry eyes set in a pool of flesh spread out over the glass. “Goddamn it!” he shouted through the windshield.
“Jesus!” Lisa said.
“There’s a fucking crosswalk here!” Blood dripped from Telli’s nose onto the glass.
Lisa pressed her head against the restraint at the back of her seat. “I thought you were going to stop.”
Telli put his hands on the hood of the Volkswagen and lifted his face away from the windshield. He looked down at the blood dripping from his nose, large, red drops falling on the glass and sliding down, making thick, pale red lines. He shook his head, casting drops left and right.
“You’re bleeding on my car,” Lisa shouted.
Telli slid backwards down the hood and, when his feet reached the pavement, rolled off the car. He sat on the pavement with his back against the bumper, his feet drawn up as close as his thick legs would permit. Lisa opened the door and hurried to the front of the car. “There wasn’t anything I could do!” she shouted. “You walked right out in front of me. I thought you were going to stop. Who walks in front of a moving car?”
“I’m hurt,” Telli said. He leaned forward and poked at his shins. He pulled up the cuff of his pants over his right leg to mid-calf, stretching the fabric.
“It’s not my fault,” Lisa said.
Several cars stopped behind the Volkswagen. The last in line honked its horn.
“My legs are broken,” Telli poked gingerly at his right shin.
A small crowd gathered on the curb. Sarg pushed through to the front. “It’s you!” she called out. “What happened?”
“I was crossing the street in a plainly marked cross walk,” Telli said.
“He walked right in front of me,” Lisa said.
“This girl has the irresponsible driving habits for which her age-group and sex are well known.”
“Are you hurt?” Sarg stepped off the curb and stood over Telli.
“Yes.”
“Badly?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not my fault,” Lisa said.
“You’ll need an ambulance,” Sarg said. “Do you have a cell phone?”
Telli looked up. “I wouldn’t own one of the goddamned things if they came free in packages of gum.”
She turned to Lisa. “You?”
Lisa crossed her arms, leaned against the car and began to cry. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said.
“Of course you have a cell phone. Use it, damn it! Take some responsibility here. Call the police. Tell them we need an ambulance.”
The sound of a siren arose in the distance.
Sarg turned back to Telli. “Your nose is bleeding. Here, use this.” She held out a wad of tissues. Telli took tissues, unrolled them, looked carefully, held them against his nostrils. “Tilt your head back,” Sarg suggested.
A police car, lights flashing and siren blaring, rolled up to the crosswalk from the right, stopped directly in front of Telli. The siren wound down to silence. An officer jumped out. “Do we need an ambulance?” Sarg asked Telli.
“My legs are broken,” Telli said.
“Hang on,” the officer said. He hurried back to the patrol car and spoke into the radio.
“Your legs don’t look broken,” Sarg said. “It looks like you have your shoes on the wrong feet.”
“I don’t”
“It looks like you do. Did that happen in the accident?”
Telli shook his head, sputtering. “I rotate my shoes. Like tires, understand? They wear longer that way. They’re not on the wrong feet because they’re on the feet I put them on this morning. That has nothing to do with this. My legs are broken, not my shoes; that’s the important thing here.
“How do you know they’re broken?”
“They hurt like they’re broken.”
“You’ve had broken legs before?”
“No.”
“I’ve seen broken legs before. Yours don’t look broken, except for the shoes.”
“That’s how they feel.”
The officer returned from the patrol car. “The ambulance is on the way,” he said. “You,” he said to Lisa. “You’re the driver of this car?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Lisa said. “He stepped right out into traffic.”
“Wait in the back seat of the patrol car,” the officer said. He bent over and looked at Telli carefully. “Where are you hurt?”
“My nose,” Telli said, holding the wad of tissue out. The bleeding had stopped. “It might be broken.”
The officer looked at Telli’s face closely. “Maybe. I don’t think so. Looks like a simple bloody nose to me.”
“And my legs,” Telli said. “She ran right into me, here in the crosswalk. The bumper hit my legs, here.” He pulled at the cuff of his pants but the fabric was stretched to the limit and wouldn’t slide up higher.
“Don’t constrain the blood flow,” the officer said. “We’ll need to open up that pant leg. They’ll have scissors in the ambulance.”
“These are new pants,” Telli said.
“Your legs don’t look broken to me,” Sarg said.
“Sarg, did you see the accident?” the officer said.
“No.”
“You just happened to be close by?”
“That’s right.”
The officer turned to the crowd gathered on the curb. “Anyone who saw what happened, I’ll need your statement. Please wait right there. Sarg, would you collect names before anyone runs off.” He turned to Telli. If you’re okay where you are, we’ll just wait. The ambulance will be here in a minute.”
The sound of a siren rose in the distance. Sarg stepped onto the curb, pushing her way into the front rank of the crowd standing there. “Is he hurt badly?” a man next to her asked.
“I don’t think so,” Sarg said.
“He’s as big as that Volkswagen,” the man said. Sarg turned. He was a short, thin, bald man in a red and orange running suit. “He’s the one who’s always by himself writing something in the coffee shop, isn’t he?”
“That’s right.”
“Except you were sitting with him earlier today.”
“Right.”
“I was there too, earlier. I was hoping to get a chance to talk with you before you left, but I didn’t.”
“What did you want to talk with me about?”
The little man looked over his shoulders both ways. “I was wondering, how much?”
“How much what?”
“You know, how much do you charge?”
“For what?”
The little man raised his eyebrows, moved his eyes left and right, smiled. “Don’t be coy,” he said. “You know what I mean.”
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Deadsage reviewed Version 1 -
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The start was a bit too wordy and clunky. It almost put me off from the whole thing. I’m VERY glad it didn’t. Once the dialog gets going it makes the whole read worthwhile! I found the conversation fun, relevant, and thought provoking. It defined the characters, created a flow, and made me want to finish reading the story. So you get 9’s instead of 10’s only because the beginning needs sharpening. Hone that to a fine point and this would easily be publishable.
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jaynedough reviewed Version 1 -
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Even though this work was pulled out of a novel, the story works as a short story overall by itself because it has a beginning, a plot, and an ending that satisfy the reader. The story line left me no puzzling questions about what happened before the coffee shop or what happened after the accident. I thoroughly enjoyed the banter of the two main characters and loved the humorous punchline at the end.
MalevolentUrge reviewed Version 1 -
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RoFL! That was very cute, easy to read and the characters were well developed. I did get a little lost with the dialog on page 6? but that may have been just me ;) loved it.
VoicesInMyHead reviewed Version 1 -
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I love the piece. At first I thought it was a little preachy with the rap music stuff and black men in jail, but then the conversation between sarg and Telib got very interesting. I thought when I first read it that Telib was aware of the robbery and had something to do with it. I thought Sarg was pressing him for information because they both knew he had something to do with it, or was aware who id it. I love the accident scene, because it seemed natural, and the dialogue flowed naturally. I was curious about the old man in the orange suit and what he meant about what Telib charged. I went back to see if I missed something but was unable to put my hand on it. Very nice work.
trouten_m reviewed Version 1 -
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Over all, it’s very good; but, yes, it does seem incomplete as a short story, simply b/c the scenario of the car accident isn’t resolved. On the other hand, I love the twist at the end—”how much do you charge?”. Sarg has his first potential client. lol. You did a good job also of maintaining a fairly balanced account of whether or not some crimes should be crimes. Sarg thinks they shouldn’t, but Telli thinks they should. Telli is considerably less vocal about it; but, then, he’s busy, and the bugger won’t let him get his work done. Keep up the good work. —Mandy
chrisnightbird reviewed Version 1 -
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This is almost perfect for a short story. It just ended on a strange note.
Maybe you could go back to Telli, and end it on something he says.
I love it. I’m sure I’ve been in that coffee shop before. Hell, I think I’ve met Sarg before!
Please write more.
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