milk_crate

He says something strange and then stares at me in the doorway. I look back without a word.

"You speak Arabic?"
"Almost."
"I thought you might. You maybe look--"
"I know."
"Yes."
"Are you new?" I say.
"No. I am old."

He laughs and repeats himself to himself. He only comes in one day of the week. I must come in on all the others.

"So tired. Sleep!" he says. His head is in the corner with the cigarettes and energy shots, rolling. He looks up at me. I nod.

I'm holding a small purple cabbage when he starts up again.

"Having good day yes? How's your work?" he says.

I find the question unusual for a stranger, and I wonder where I am supposed to stop. It will make it easier to know where to start. I really think about it and when I think about it I have to admit that I have had a good day, yes, and there ought not to be anything calculated about my telling it. I tell him so much.

"What your work?" he says.

I answer and remember why I should never answer without thinking of where it ends.

"Oh! I knew this is why I ask. I am writer too!" he says. I imagine stories in a sleepless tense.

We go through badly. He tells me what he writes, and I tell him I write short stories. I am pleased with the way that sounds. Serious enough without real commitment to anything. In truth it sounds good because it came after him talking and he can't talking.

He insists on telling me his story. Then he stops.

"No I afraid of plagiarism." he says.

He pronounces it with a hard G. Like the plague. I do not correct him. He continues. The story is in English, and he recites it from memory, does a dialog much better than his speech. It is between two house pets who feel discriminated against, by the man, and the woman. One believes the dog is in on it, too. Every now and then the shopkeeper flashes a mad grin at me. Finally I laugh. He takes this as a sign I don't like the story. I tell him I love the way he is telling it.

He turns and faces the wall, steps onto a milk crate and turns around. He is fourteen feet tall, at least.

"I am not the professional writer. I just do it for me." he says. "There is too much real. I don't like this. I like imaginations."

He reaches up and touches the ceiling.

"Stories are for making small things bigger yes?"

a_a