There exists among the crawling creatures of the Upper class a certain discontenting look of decided disinterest.

This was good Tret thought —this could certainly work. He let his eyes scan the sentence once more as it simultaneously ran silently over his lips. The flow and content seemed to be beyond agreeable. He read it again, just to be safe, and finally—after he was certain it was free of any possible grammatical or syntactical error—pressed accept on his new facebook status.

***

Tret was late for work. Again. Out of the week’s seven days—two of which he had had off—he had been late for five of them. He knew that transactions like this seriously hampered any future aspirations for promotion, should he seek it, and he was anxious about the kind of punishment he might receive for it.

He rushed in through the front doors and sped quickly past all the bodies engaged in their own manic movement. The air hung heavy with buzzing phones, and the clatter of keys felt as if they could be heard from half-way across the building.

“You’re late,” Tret’s co-worker Fred said as Tret approached his station, “You better go talk to you-know-who.”

Tret glanced over nervously in the direction of the head office. He feared what excuse he would give, as his truth “The Subway meter absolutely refused to read my card,” raised an eyebrow when first used, and—since it continued to prove true every single morning—Tret had had to come up with ever more increasingly sophisticated lies, especially since he was distrustful of the city’s bus system.

He knocked gently on the door. No answer.

“He must be out,” he said aloud, sighing a heavy sigh of ease.

“Who’s out?” his manager asked from behind.

“Assad, he’s definitely on his way out,” Tret said on his toes, turning quickly around on them as well.

“Who’s that?” his manager said as he opened his office door before quickly turning around, “Better question, why should I care?” he then said before walking into his office before quickly turning around again, “Best question of all, why aren’t you working?”

“I am, I had to…” Tret was stretched thin. So thin, in fact, that he just didn’t manage to say anything at all.

“Yes?”

“I’m not,” and Tret slugged back from whence he came. He knew then that it was going to be a very long day at Gallipoli’s Gourmet Grocer.

***

Tret felt the bead of sweat travel slowly down his forehead —would they be quick, or would they take their time? He tried to reflect, quickly given the impending circumstances, on all those golden nuggets in life that one experiences that makes it so worth living: the warm touch of the sun on a summer’s day; his first kiss with sweet Cindy Canel; his first A+ in college; his first(and only) blow job by Nancy Nohowl —yes, life so far for Tret had been grand. He wiped his forehead slowly and resolutely decided to take his fate like a man.

The French tourists approached the register. “How can I help you?” Tret said with a noticeable tremor in his voice.

“Eh, oui, kan we have too croissants pleaze?”

“Yes…absolutely.” So far so easy, Tret thought. Perhaps he had worried for nothing.

“Eh, also, I would lyke too cappuccinos.” He knew he wouldn’t get either of them dry enough, or the right amount of shots, and the second request was a bit impatient, but all considered this was going along smoothly —much more smoothly then he would ever have thought possible. He grabbed the two pastries and was turning around to start the drinks—in other words, his guard was completely lowered—when:

“Eh, hellow? I would also lyke eh one latte, too apple tarte, a shot espresso…”

Tret felt a soft stream of blood begin to drip from his left nostril.

***

The mid-afternoon had proved to be slow for Tret, with only a majority of old women complaining. Tret found himself currently placing a woman’s melons into a plastic bag when she said, “You like that, huh baby?”

Tret stopped in his tracts. “Excuse me?”

“I was talking to my baby,” she said as Tret peered downward to notice a large stroller with a pink creature drooling inside.

“Excuse me,” he said and continued to bag her produce.

“Now you really like that, huh baby?”

Tret payed the comment no attention as he tried to hand her her groceries.

“Now I’m talking to you,” she said impatiently.

Tret felt both sweat on his forehead and blood in his nose.

***

“Alright, you can go” someone said as Tret suddenly lifted his head from the register’s counter. A dark, shadowy figure impressed itself upon the blinding light of the ceiling’s florescents. Tret stared in half-amazement at the oddity, was it true?

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Sure, why not.”

Tret quickly picked himself up and for a half-second thought about jumping over the counter, but when the possible scenarios of injury entered his mind(not to mention how ridiculous he could potentially look) he decided against it and walked—briskly—around instead.

***

You can accomplish anything in life that you put your mind to, a giant poster for proscription socks told Tret. Next to it was a blown-up photo of a lingerie model that said simply “Live dangerously!”

“Nice melons,” Tret said softly.

“Thank you sweetie, see you tomorrow,” the woman from before said to him as she walked past with her stroller and bag full of produce.

She’s awfully nice, Tret thought as he began to stroll confidently down the street, wondering quietly what to do with himself for the remainder of the afternoon.

The sun glittered softly through the trees, with an entire milieu of interesting characters sprawling about the sidewalk; an older man with a large PEACE button held a tightly-groomed terrier by a taut leash; two garishly grinning school children ran one ahead of the other as they both flung dog poop around; a young man in a suit kneeled down as he presented a pretty young girl in a summer dress with a ring. “Oh Borge! Of course I will,” she said moments before a salvo of canine feces hit them both.

All these things and more Tret missed as he impatiently fiddled with his HIphone, an imitation product that he had been very much promised would match up to the real thing in every way.

“Stupid thing,” Tret said as he tried to access his messages and the phone, in response, began systematically deleting his contacts. “What, no!” Tret panicked as the number for his best childhood friend disappeared into the void forever. “Don’t do that!” and the phone cancelled his beloved Aunt Fanny’s digits. “Jesus, this is terrible! This is an abomination of the worst magnitude! Just do the other thing!”

As soon as the words left Tret’s mouth he felt a gentle hand land on his shoulder. “Huh,” he said as he turned around to grasp a middle aged woman in a power suit. “Can I help you,” he asked as somewhere in the distance a just-recently betrothed man spattered in pooch poo chased after two kids.

“Why, you already did. Me and my associate here,” she pointed to an obtuse man with horn rimmed glasses who pretended to smile, “were discussing whither or not we should run as today’s top story either the US government arming the Syrian rebels against Assad, or the heart warming story of a local man who taught a cat how to fetch the morning paper. And you must have heard the discussion because your rousing defense of the latter has quite convinced me,” she said, all of it in a mildly-hidden french accent.

“Thanks to you we’re going to run the cat story,” her associate said.

“You’re welcome…I guess?”

“You aren’t a person who guesses; you’re a person who knows! You’re exactly the kind of person I need for my website,” she said, her hand now lifted off his shoulder and extended horizontally for a shake. He took it.

“What do you do for a living Mr…?”

He hesitated for a minute before answering.

“Tret McDangle,” he said, finally, a name that appared on his birth certificate.

“And what is your current job mister McDangle?”

“Oh, well that’s easy, I’m a cash-…um, I’m a writer. Yah, definitely a writer.”

“Perfect! She squeezed his hand tight, “Come to my office tomorrow morning and we’ll get you set up.”

Tret felt the pressure on his hand increase tremendously—to a point of what seemed to be minor bone cracking—until suddenly there was no stress at all; she let go, smiled with her lips and an eye, and turned to walk away. Her associate followed.

Tret quickly tried to contemplate what had just transpired before it immediately dawned on him. “Wait!” he yelled, “who are you? What is your website?”

“Why I’m Madame Marianne, and it’s The Marianne Post, of course,” she said without turning around as Tret was left alone consoling his hand.

***

Tret wandered slowly down his street, hands in pockets, with the sun setting overhead. What a day today’s been, he thought. He had assumed it would be just an ordinary work-a-day(excluding that quite literally and dazzling facebook status), and had instead ended up meeting the most unique woman he’d ever known. She was puzzling; she was mysterious; she was graceful; and she was certainly very rich! Tret let the whole event play out softly in his head as he walked up his apartment stoop. He wondered what it would be like the next time he met her?

He sighed a sigh of serene indifference as he opened the door. Oh yah, he thought, he’d also been offered a job at the Marianne Post by that weird french lady.

TO BE CONTINUED: