At first, we are voyeurs here on the street, chilled, reluctant.
Inside, Alicia is tapping polyrhythms with her broken nails on the display case, her eyes oscillating wildly, like those of a malfunctioning robot. The beaded change purse she pulls from the pocket of her torn flannel shirt is open like a bodysnatcher’s mouth. Someone asks her if she’s being helped. She glowers, says nothing, takes out a matchbook from the same breast pocket and reads the scrawl inside its fold, her other hand tucking a stray wisp of dirty blonde hair behind her stud-and-hoop ravaged ear.
She mimes a phone, thumb and pinkie aggressively extended, but is rebuffed by bovine looks. Her eyes roll like faraway thunder. Her fleeting anger is a tiny lightning stab. It is there, then it is gone.
But they see it, these bakery workers, just as we enter the store. A small neat man appears, summoned from the labyrinthine recesses, from its brain department as opposed to its hands department. Ah, permission. A flint sparks in her eyes. Powder clouds of fine-ground sugar and flour float in the air. The aroma is as visceral as a diva’s swan song, powerful, melodramatic, tragically sweet.
However this plays out, frosted icing or lime filling, Alicia-baby will dine on something this afternoon.
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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.