This microfiction displays all of my worst tendencies

but I’m going to post it anyway, before I get scared. Too many links recently. I wrote it this morning, like, fast, and it’s 40% fact.
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The fourth night after I moved back into the house of my parents, I went out by myself. I didn’t have a job, and I was recovering from a nervous – not breakdown, but setback. On a scale of one to eight, with six and above historical pain or suffering that happens outside of the United States, like watching your cousins die in the Holocaust or being forced to work in a factory sewing sweatshirts with licensed characters on them and being raped at night, every night, my pain was a three, and it passed. In those first couple of weeks home before I found work, my main pleasure was getting out of the house and driving around Burbank and Studio City and North Hollywood with my digital SLR, taking photographs of local signage. Given the checked, expansive nature of the San Fernando retail landscape and the amazing weather – nothing rusts or molds in the dry desert heat, which is why it’s kismet for classic car motorheads (they meet at the Bob’s Big Boy on Friday nights to buy and sell and trade wives) – there were tons of 70s and 80s signs in perfect condition – I’m talking about neon, backlit translites, even painted murals on brick, and I was determined to collect as many of them as I could on disk.

That night, the fourth night after moving back home and the eighth day since my meltdown, I was out driving around and I got hungry. It was about nine at night. The next restaurant I find with a good sign, I told myself, I’ll stop, take a picture, and eat. That turned out to be H. Salt Fish and Chips. The sign was white and blue, with just the name of the place in a sans-serif font, but somehow it worked. I parked and went inside and was hit with a blast of depression. A good sign totally presages the inside of the place it advertises – a good place lives up to its shingle. But the interior of H. Salt was all pale yellow light the color of human fat and orange tables and booths made out of the Formica-treated pressed crapboard. The fish and chips and fried shrimp and zucchini were tanning under heat lamps in a long glass case.

There was a man in front of the counter and a girl behind, in an apron. At first I thought he was German – he had dark, thinning hair, big fat glasses, and this dour look infused with worry that is characteristic of someone who was a child during the firebombing of Dresden and educated in the aftermath of World War II. No room for pride in country, no room for personal pride. Sounds glib, but I had seen it firsthand during my high school homestay in Kiel and talked to that family’s parents and their friends extensively about their frustration and deep sadness or deepsadness, as you’d say in German.

And the jeans he was wearing: dark blue, the waistband with elastic vents pulled up just above his hips, flat in the ass, with unlikely cargo pockets above the knee, with a bulge in one that looked like a spinal knob.

He had already ordered, and the girl behind the counter was shoveling his food into a paper bag with an all-over newspaper print with a metal scoop sized to the bag mouth. Her name according to her name tag was Karen. She was wearing the H. Salt uniform, which apparently was a blue apron with an H. Salt screenprint in white and a matching blue-and-white ballcap over a hairnet. My guess is that she was Korean. She was my age. She had a fine face, but wore too much sparkly green eye-shadow, and was sweating from the lamps and the heat of the kitchen.

The man spoke. “I have an album coming out.” I strained to place his accent, and then realized that he was slurring his words. I was wrong about him being German. “Really?” Karen said, rolling up the top of his bag. “What kind of music?”

He handed her a ten dollar bill. “Church music. I’m in the choir. It took a long time to record.”

She entered his payment into the register and the drawer sprang open. She started withdrawing bills. “How long?”

“Four – five hours, I think.”

“That’s wonderful,” she said. She gave him his change. He bent at the waist and put it in the empty knee cargo pocket. When he came up, she held out her hand. “Congratulations.”

They shook. “Thank you,” he said, took his bag, and made for the exit.

“Hello,” Karen said to me, distracted. She was watching him go. I wanted to tear her clothes off and cry into her breast.

I pulled up the zipper of my hoodie. “Hi. Could I have the one fish plate and a Coke?”

“Sure,” she said, and assembled it for me in a bag. “Would you like any condiments besides tarter sauce?”

“Ketchup?”

She put two packets in my bag. “Anything else?”

What else is there? She was looking at me like she wanted to give me something. I should have opened a conversation. Does he come here often? Do you know his name, or where he lives? Does he ever bring anyone else?

“Do you have malt vinegar?”

“We do!” she said, and again added two packets to my bag.

“Thank you,” I said. I paid and got my change and took my food. I walked outside and around back, where my car was parked, passing the cook, who was squatting beside a dumpster talking on a tiny cell phone. The handset glowed blue, illuminating the side of his face. I got in my car and put the key in the ignition. Then I noticed that the man in the jeans, in the choir, was sitting in his car, an 80s Volvo sedan, to my left, with one parking space between us. He was sitting at the wheel, eating fish and chips.

I set my f-stop to 22 and took his picture.