(2004) Citizen Vince Read Free Page B

it only confuses and irritates Tic when someone else talks and so Vince has learned to treat his young assistant like dissonant background music.
    “Hate the apple fritters. Hate the whole fuckin’ fritter family. I don’t want pesticides in my weed, and I don’t want fruit in my donuts.”
    Four years ago, if someone had told Vince he’d actually enjoy the routine of a job like this, he would’ve laughed his ass off. You spend your first thirty-six years trying to avoid this kind of life. Then you find yourself plunked right down in the middle of it and it’s more than bearable—it’s thrilling in a way you could never explain to your old self. And yet Vince wonders if a person like him is capable of change—real change, the elemental parts, the hungers and biases.
    The donut shop warms to morning, and at ten till six the waitress Nancy comes in without a word, spends ten minutes on the toilet, then comes out in a waitress shirt and slacks and a lit Virginia Slim and starts humming songs off-key. They are a symphony of irritation, these two. Tic brings Vince a tray of cinnamon rolls that Vince looks over without disrupting Tic’s newest rant, about a government program to—
    “—perform experiments on monkeys and people and shit underground probably at the poles or in Canada or Greenland which is smaller than it looks on maps explain that to me Mr. Vince why they always make Greenland look bigger on maps unless they’re doing something they don’t want us to know about so you want me to frost the holes or just powder ’em?”
    “Powder.”
    “See with the dead humans they gotta be careful obviously so they burn the bodies to get rid of all traces of the disease and the implants and shit but do you know what they do with the monkeys, Mr. Vince? Do you? Do you? Do you know?”
    Vince keeps his mouth shut.
    “With the monkeys they grind ’em up and put ’em in the meat supply so you don’t even know. You get a taco at half the restaurants in this country you got any idea what you’re eating?”
    Vince knows better than to answer.
    “Monkey, man. Mother. Fucking. Monkey.”
     
    SO YOU CONSTRUCT a life from what’s there. Patterns emerge—fry, frost, and fill with jelly—and comfort comes from order, especially on a day when you can’t stop counting dead people. (Ardo Ginelli. Forty-eight.) Fry, frost, and fill. No reason such a sequence should be any less satisfying than some other sequence—say, scalpel, suction, and suture. Load the cases, seal the boxes, and greet the guy from the wholesale van, who always, always says how good it smells in here, as if he’s forgotten since yesterday.
    The “Open” sign comes on with a spark and then the lights in the dining room snap on white-hot. The first wave is men: garbage guys, cops, widowers, and drunks—blowing on their hands, removing knit gloves and stocking caps. Vince abides with warm fritters and maple bars and steaming black coffee and awaits the next wave of regulars—deeper sleepers: men with wives, retired guys,office workers with regular donuts and regular coffees with regular amounts of creamer and sugar, sitting in their regular spots at the Formica tables, smoking their regular cigarettes. Vince likes the sameness of their chatter even as he ignores the content, a trick he learned from his old girlfriend Tina, who was an actress when she wasn’t working as a paralegal for her brother Benny. Tina got most of her acting jobs in old rat-and-roach houses in the Village and SoHo, but one time she landed a small role in a big off-Broadway thing, in the background of a couple of scenes. Vince was so proud he went every night; loved that play more each time he saw it, loved the predictability and the small differences within the sameness—an actor might pause before a line, or change the inflection, might come in a second earlier or later. One night one of the regulars came in with a cup of prop coffee. Just like that! Coffee! And while the