Sterling's Weekly

So, at first, I’d thought the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge had said the sacred horn of St. Anvil.  I don’t know.  There’s plenty of artwork out there depicting angels blowing trumpets and such, so I figured this was related somehow, that perhaps this St. Anvil fellow had a thing for brass instruments, that the thing in the box was the shard of a trumpet, or a trombone, or, hell, maybe even a tuba.  It was tiny and a rusty yellowish, like a raw kernel of corn, or the decayed incisor of some long-dead neanderthal.  Honestly, though—and I wasn’t sure how or why this image had gotten stuck in my head—but what it really looked like was the head of a Lego man, at least one that had been chewed, swallowed, and shat out by a dog, perhaps an ultra-rare piece to some niche, religious Lego set, which is a thing, believe it or not.  But no, Al had confirmed that inside the box was the sacral horn of St. Anvil of Severny Island.  Let me explain. Firstly, the sacr...

Well, the Reverend Father Alabaster Fudge had gone viral.  A video of his catch was making the rounds on the internet, every social media platform, all the late-night talk shows, you name it.  Even those turkeys on Fox News and CNN had gotten hold of it and, can you believe it, were trying their best to spin the situation into an abortion issue (of all things)—like, “Did you see the blue and pink brooch pinned to the backside of his pants? A universal symbol that this brave priest is staunchly pro-life!” No, yeah, I’m pretty sure he just sat on a wad of bubble gum—or, “See the way he grips the ball as he proudly displays it to the crowd? An evocative gesture of the closed, raised fist that has come to embody the pro-choice resistance!” Yeah, no, he just made the luckiest catch of his life, that’s all.  Word on the street was that the state’s March for Life chapter wanted Rev. Al to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the annual game between the legislature’s anti-ab...

And the last of many, too, apparently—days of gainful employment, that is.   Turned out, I had, in fact, misheard Meelod.   I was back in line at the food truck for my third wiener when he called me, right on the dot at 1:00 p.m., and said he assumed I was almost back, yes?   I tried to explain myself, that I was on my way back to the kiosk now (I did not mention the two hotdogs I’d eaten, or the one that I was currently waiting on), but Meelod said don’t bother, that I was fired, that he’d tried to tell Omar it was a bad idea, admitting an infidel such as myself into the sacred confines of their kiosk, their livelihood.   Ah, that’s too bad, I said, but, speaking of, I asked him if he’d heard anything from him—Omar—yet.   How was his cousins’ staycation going?   Were they stuffed on breadsticks yet?   Was Nadia still unaware that she was more than 5,000 miles from Italy?   That, Meelod said, was complicated, and he left it at that and hung up. ...

  Meelod turned out to be Omar’s cousin.   He greeted me cheerfully—too cheerfully for the mall at 9 a.m., some might say—and that was pretty much the high point of our relationship. “Welcome friend!” he bellowed, bowing and then clasping my one hand with his two, pumping it vigorously.   The bangles and chains around his wrist jingled and jangled, and the dark tufts of his arm hair poked out from underneath his shirt cuffs like hay from a busted scarecrow.   “We have been blessed with a beautiful morning for merchandising, yes?”   Oh yes, I agreed, a beautiful morning indeed.   I couldn’t wait to enjoy it from the ground floor bowels of the shopping mall.   A lovely view we had, triangulated between the food court, the T-Mobile store, and Lids.   Meelod proceeded to give me a tour of the kiosk, made a real show of it, considering it was the size of a handicap stall, a compact emporium of crap wedged onto crowded shelves and packed racks, shit...

I did, in fact, hear from Omar.  He called the other day and confirmed that, yes, he was looking for an assistant, and that he would explain the ins and outs and the what-have-yous of the job once we met in person.  He also found it necessary to mention that he was a “hard-nosed, no-nonsense entrepreneur” and that he only did business face-to-face, that it was a travesty how much of it these days was done over the phone and on the computer, that—could you believe it—people were actually “working from home” nowadays.  Desperate to avoid a telephonic debate concerning the pros and cons of remote work with this dinosaur who made a living pestering passersby and slinging shitty jewelry and Hello Kitty phone cases, I asked when and where I should meet him, to which he responded tomorrow at noon at the Barnes & Noble in the shopping center across the street from the mall.  So, I went there the next day, as instructed.  An interesting spot to spend your lunch break...