Leaving So Soon?

By Anthony Long

          Toby Jenks looks up from his newspaper and freezes.

          Striding down the hill toward the café, laptop tucked under one arm and a sour look plastered across his thick, wheyfaced mug, comes Joel Kaplan, a thoroughly objectionable human being known around the place as the Human Air Vent. (“But does he suck or does he blow?” it was fairly asked.) 

          At the next table, a vagabonding young German couple have finished their coffee and are slipping the guidebooks into their haversacks and making ready to leave. She’s a pretty, dark-haired girl with a soft voice. Toby thinks she looks merciful.

          “Please,” Toby says. “Please stay. Don’t go.” She looks at him quizzically. In desperation Toby summons his dwindling reserve of high school German. “Bitte … bleiben Sie hier. Umm, uh, both of you. Nicht gehen, bitte. Nicht jetzt.”

          “I’m sorry,” the girl says, switching easily to nicely clipped British-accented English. “Is something wrong?”

          “Oh, yes,” Toby says, looking out the window. “In about ten seconds the worst person on earth is going to come walking in here and if you guys leave right now, he’ll sit down at that very table and my day will be completely ruined. Maybe my life. Please.” Toby gives her a beseeching look and another involuntary “bitte” leaves his lips. The Germans crane their necks to inspect Kaplan, and the young woman turns back to Toby with a distressed look of her own. Kaplan has that effect on people, even total strangers.

Tony Long lives in San Francisco’s North Beach, which serves as an inspiration for his writing. He may be reached at alittlechinmusic@gmail.com

Read more of Tony Long’s piece here: http://community.livejournal.com/chaos_zine/7500.html