By Roy Dorman
“I’d like the senior discount, please,” said Allan Pierce to the young coffee barista. Her plastic name tag proclaimed that she was ‘MARISSA’ and below that, the little shop was identified as ‘THE COFFEE MUG’.
“Whoa,” said Marissa. “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to see some ID before I can give you that.”
“Ha, ha, you’re pretty funny. Do you have a tip jar around here?”
“Sure, it’s right there,” said Marissa, pointing to the jar right in front of Allan.
“Where?” said Allan, looking everywhere in the room but at the tip jar. “I don’t see it.”
“Well, ha, ha, right back at ya; you’re pretty funny too. How about showing me that ID?”
“How do I know that you won’t memorize my address and have your nasty boyfriend come over and kill me in my sleep and steal all my valuables?”
“You’ve got valuables? What kinda valuables?”
“Valuables, you know, stuff. But I’m leaving everything I have to Brenda at the Shop ‘N Save down the street,” said Allan.
Marissa was pretty sure that this guy was putting her on, but the conversation interested her. “So, how come her and not me?” she asked with a demure little smile.
“Well, Marissa, if that’s your real name, Brenda is a little plainer than you and isn’t likely to ever have a nasty boyfriend who would knock me off to get her inheritance quicker.”
“Hey, Marissa, is there a problem? Customers are linin’ up; move it,” said Marissa’s supervisor, Ted.
“Sure, Ted, no problemo. All right, Mister No ID, you got the discount; here’s your change.”
Later that day, after her shift has ended, Marissa is in the checkout line of the Shop ‘N Save after grabbing a few items she didn’t really need. “Hey, Brenda, I’m Marissa from The Coffee Mug down the street. I was wondering if you wanted to go and have a few drinks at The Blue Dragon after your shift.”
“Sure, that’d be great,” said Brenda. “See ya around 5:30.”
“A nasty boyfriend? I need a nasty boyfriend like a fish needs a bicycle,” Marissa thought to herself on the way out of the Shop ‘N Save.
Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for over 60 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had flash fiction and poetry published most recently in Theme of Absence, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Cease Cows, Black Petals, Yellow Mama, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Flash Fiction Magazine, One Sentence Poems, and Gap-Toothed Madness. Roy is the submissions editor of Lake City Lights, an online literary anthology.
