A greasy-skinned man in a trench coat smeared with the kinds of stains you don’t ever want to be able to identify on sight lingers at the magazine rack, flipping through Redbook and People until all the other customers are gone. Then he advances on the counter, arms pumping up and down at his sides like he’s working ski poles, and at the top of his lungs he screams, “SWANK!”
I check the magazine rack under the counter and tell him, “We’re all out of Swank. How about Barely Legal? Or Just Eighteen?”
He raises his arms over his head so bits of old food and scraps of paper spill from his coat and he shakes his fists in the air, yelling, “SWANK! SWANK!”
While the loyal reader is still dancing, Pete wanders in with a look on his face like he expected to arrive somewhere else when he stepped through the door.
“Pete…,” I say, shrugging my shoulders and pointing toward Mr. Swank.