Retort Magazine

You Have to Leave Wanting

The girl stood on the street outside the shop. It was closing time. He could let her in and watch her browse the poetry section. This could possibly bump up the day’s takings by a whole eighty cents. He pecked at his phone. Pretending to be absorbed in a message from Hot Topic at the Plaza advertising a weekend sale. When he looked up she was still staring at him or not at him. She was staring at something beyond him. He had to swivel around to make sure, to realize that it was the poster behind the counter of Michael Madsen as Mr Blonde in Reservoir Dogs. He had turned the entire bookstore into a shrine to Tarantino partly as a way of cashing in on the retrospective over at the Ken Theatre and mostly because he had a lot of time between customers. The Ken owed him, he told himself, although for what he wasn’t sure. Think of him as without hair. He discretely slid the empty register drawer shut. The girl raised her hand and pulled the trigger on an imaginary gun.

Continue reading ~ Micro-fiction + a poem by J.S. Breukelaar →