When you make a piñata you blow up a balloon and layer it with wet strips of paste-soaked paper until it takes shape and stiffens and then you pop the balloon. If you wrapped only one coat of paper around a pear-shaped balloon and popped the balloon while the paper was still wet so the whole bubble jiggled and shook in the slightest of winds and then you turned it into a person, you’d end up with the guy who comes in every night after the bars close to buy cigarettes. His T-shirt is too short to reach his belt and his pants droop too low to meet it halfway, and his eyes are so bloodshot I’m always afraid they’ll start bleeding.
“Dude. Dude,” Mr. Mâché mumbles, gripping the edge of the counter in front of him as I pull down a pack of Marlboro Reds. “Dude, every night I come in here, and… and, like, every night I come in here and I’m like so fucked up and you sell me my cigarettes and you’re like working and you help me out and like, dude, I feel bad for you ‘cause you’re so cool to me and you have to work and I wish you could be fucked up, too.”
“Well… thanks. That’s actually the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all summer.”
“Dude, we should totally party some time.”