He has the fingers of a syphilitic, crooked and grasping.  He knows precisely where my order receipt is, I am sure, but he must make a show of the stack, each paper a patron, a trusting patron.  He coughs, and I see him as a bag of spirochetes waiting to burst all over the counter. 

            Another moment, and he is a man again.  I know I saw that receipt before... the handwriting too large, with a void stamp across it... a new hire, doubtlessly, tampering in matters beyond his ken...  yes, it has to be the same one.  He's going around for another cycle, drawing out the moment.

            It occurs to me that he is a man who still takes the morning paper, but who gets all his news from the networks in the evening.  He uses the morning paper as a cubicle, a shield, a sanctum, not a news source.  A typical syphilitic.  It occurs to me that he must think I am terribly important, if he thinks it necessary to go through his stack of customers twice to impress me.  Without thinking about it, I throw my shoulders somewhat further back and scan the store with the eyes of a man contemplating a new business venture. 

            "You haven't lost the jacket, have you?" I take my time to say, as the Lords must have done.  I wonder when the old man's upper teeth will fall out, if there will be blood, if he has a procedure for dealing with it...

            "Everything is a mess today.  The computer is down, and we're back to these.  Nobody remembers how to use pen and paper, apparently.  We'll find your jacket though."  He spreads the invoices like cards in front of him, demonstrating the end of the world through a series of twenty five yellow slips. 

            I take it into my head to lose patience with him.  "Damn it, that is not good enough, not good enough by far!  I must give an important political speech tonight, and I need that jacket!"

            It is a lie, but it allows me to be justifiably furious.

            "Well, maybe you can describe it..."

            "The jacket belonged to former Vice President Hubert Humphrey," I sneer, and consider the matter closed at that.  Still, he does not show any comprehension.  I pull a receipt from my pocket, borrow a pen from him, and write something very quickly on the back, careful to shield my words from him. 

            "Did you imagine you could keep it from me?  Who put you up to it, I wonder?"  I growl at the man while writing.  Pocketing his pen, I look deliberately past him, scanning the four corners of the room, looking for his accomplice.  He has hidden him.  The existence of the accomplice is as good as proven in my head now.

            The first four axioms are unassailable.  The fifth unlocks the universe, but only after it is broken.

            "Why would I want to keep you from your jacket?  Just calm down..."

            "Reasonable?!" I roar, deliberately mishearing him.  "I suppose you think it is reasonable for a man to give an important political speech in front of five thousand people in shirt sleeves and suspenders?  There are five hundred miles of sewer lines to be repaired within the fiscal year, and you talk to me about what is reasonable!"

            A woman enters the store, short, old and Asian.  Her eyes are cunning.  They demand caution.  The whole thing can be overturned by eyes like those.

            "Hello Mrs. Chou.  Can you wait a moment while I look for this man's jacket?"

            Confederates.  Perhaps she is the accomplice, after all.  All the more reason, then...

            "I have no jacket here," I insist, and smile broadly at the woman, the Mrs. Chou, if he chooses to call her that, though I know better.  She smiles back, acknowledging the game.  "I have come to check on a pair of gloves sent in by my wife, last Tuesday as I recall... perhaps you remember them?  They were off-white, fuzzy, with a yellow stain on the right index finger.  Mustard, you see..."

            "But you said very distinctly you were here for a jacket," the old man wants me done in.  There isn't a sympathetic bone in his body.  I gave him his chance, but he will have his petty revenge.  The old woman coughs.  She is waiting to see how I react.  I will not beg for the jacket, not in front of her, I decide.  I'll go without it.  I'll say they lost it if anybody asks. 

            "Pardon me, but you're quite mistaken.  Well, mistakes will be made.  I'll have my wife come in later for the gloves." 

            I leave the store quickly, jarring against the old, short, Asian Mrs. Chou on the way out.  The collision jiggles the molecules attached to her blouse, and I smell smoke and rot, a choking scent that doesn't leave my nose until I have taken three large gulps of the outside air.  Walking quickly, efficiently, to the corner, I sit down and let my head and shoulders rest against the cool Pine Green of an electrical transformer.  I listen to the buzzing, the productive hum of magnetic induction. 

            It was a draw, I reflect after my heart quiets down, after the four youths pass safely by, relieving me of the need to concentrate on looking confident, on looking like a man who has an important and indisputable claim to a recently laundered jacket. 

            Impossible... you make things horrifically difficult! they'll say once I tell them, once they drag from me why I am not wearing a coat tonight.

            But everything is difficult... No, everything is difficult until you receive an education.  Then everything becomes impossible.

            A numbness in my left ass cheek.  Reaching to my back pocket, I find a tin container.  Two mints remain inside.   The hum of alternating voltage stepping itself down.  The liquid candy is warm and merciless.  Blinking, the traffic signal is still a hazy streak of light.  It is nice here, and so I will stay until they force me to come to a decision. 

            Then I will decide.