Three Course

Part One: Starters

The first part is the trickiest.

The sun is high up in the sky, on a simmer, slowly boiling the sinners down here on their way to hell. Me, I am an obedient one. No rebellion, no getting out of line. No being Joan-of-Arc on afternoon television commercials between the games. If you want to take them off so bad, go do something about it outside your living room popcorn bowl. Hell, go to the stadium for chrissake.

I am not watching the game on television. I am watching a man in the shop watching the television. He owns the place. This time of the afternoon, most of the places are empty. You can walk around the shop, pick things up, put them back, like you own the place. The owner is too busy watching the television to notice if you want to shoplift. Anything that you might want to pickup here would probably be worth dirt.  

There are knick knacks on the shelves, stuff that was dictated by consumerism and customized for no one. Fruit smelling detergents. Flower flavoured disinfectants. City flavoured eating things. Someone had a wild roll at match-the-following and came up with zilch on the report card and a shelf full of things.

Rad.

I hang around for about half an hour and finally leave the shop with a bunch of mints. I feel tempted to filch something from right under the guy’s nose and I know that part doesn’t come under the close circuit camera. Figuring out a thief from a total of one person shouldn’t be too difficult. I let the matter rest. During this time, no one else comes into the shop. It’s been a thirty minute waste of time in the back alleys of a degenerate departmental. I get out and decide to move into another.

Exeunt.

If you have ever decided to wander around a nondescript locality in a sunny afternoon, especially if there was a game on, you would know two things for sure.

One, you don’t have anything much to do, or you have possibly exhausted all other means of passing time.

Two, anyone else who might be doing the same also doesn’t have much to do. He is possibly not even doing a job. Or having a family. Or decided to solar fry himself while the rest of the world was on its way to televised nirvana.

One of those afternoons, I struck upon a plan and put it into action, but more on that later. For starters, I need to find inspiration; and the kind I look for lies in one of these shops. The question is which one?

I find it in a shop selling utensils. My inspiration for the moment. My afternoon muse. I wish I knew the French word for it.

 My muse is looking at Teflon coated frying pans and trying to figure out the size which would help him sort out his frying woes. Should he deep fry his way into hell or soft serve his guts so that they can find their way into a reality show based heaven, where every health conscious freak that ever lived cooks his balanced calories diet on a low flame at a fairy made oven? You get a shallow pan free if you buy that deep dish you have been looking for. Leave it to the manufacturing guys to help you find into the dirtiest, fattiest hell.

Always a short cut, never a highway.

I go and stand by him, passing a smile wide enough to let a truck pass through. Winning them over is important, and with the kind of timeline I am on, you got to be fast. If you dally your way around, your afternoon is wasted. Never let one pass you over, he might come around and bite you on your way back. Make a Christmas present out of every single one, nice and wrapped up.

When I am walking out with him from the shop, it’s already half time at the game on television. I find out that the guy is a bachelor, has moved into the neighborhood recently. Are there some good watering holes around here? Could he sight see maybe? The place he is working is really boring; hardly people to talk to. Maybe I could come along with him. He is pretty good at fried stuff, especially making it. Haha.

Sometimes it’s easier than you think. We head to his place. Even better. I make it a point to stay away from the close circuit cameras. Playing safe is a part of the game. My face would be pretty different if anyone comes looking for it. I would make sure that it is. On our way out, I spot a bunch of those fresh stainless steel carvers that are flooding the market. Steel, the favourite way a metal ever came to you. No gold or silver. Steel. Pure, shiny, raw and naked.

My prince in shining armor.

There are no cameras focused here so I quickly slip one as the guy goes about chattering, a little distance ahead of me. The shopkeeper is still head on into the game. He would not know if a nuke hit his shop and everything turned post-Jurassic in the blink of an eye. Television whores.

The starters fixed, I realize. Its time to order the main course.

[First part of a three part story. Stick around for the rest if you like it. Even if you dont, lemme know!]