Sell me your dreams read the sign held by a figure on the quilt.
The father clutched the boy's hand tight, steering him across the way—away from the peddlers strewn across the cobblestones. The sun's last rays filtered by fog to mire in streetlamps flickering alight above pools strewn across the square. Tiny temptations to which the boy did yield, leading his father to follow. The two stomped in slow circling kicks.
Water made three.
Drumbeats stacked atop footfalls beneathcreststeps as the wind whispered secrets in between guitar strings. Time dropped a tone. One last cloud lingered over a giant sundial, elevated upon a pedestal in the square's center.
The boy chased his father round the center while the father chased the boy in reverse. Their shadows danced. Clouds of smoke churned over the quilt as a stone pipe made its slow circle.
A bottle fell in the distance. There was no crash. I was never there. And the music, the music never did stop.
I walked in to make groceries and grab a little something something from the deli. There was a sign reading Jambalya. I saw someone I knew, from before, waiting in line. I let him go before me as I was in the midst of a debate with a tall boy I hadn't seen in even longer. I shifted. My identity wavered and held, somehow. I scanned the aisle for the Reese's. Big cups, pieces, nutrageous, tiny bites and even that stuff in the jar. Somehow all were on the same shelf, waiting for me to walk by and select one. A friendly voice intoned that there was only one—only one before the third person returns.
It was a long long time for the queue to do its thing. The jambalaya was in a giant black kettle. Or a black pot, the reflexivity of the fluorescent lighting made it hard to tell. The bodega needed an overhaul but at the same time did not, its charm being in its being out of step. A thread hung from the balance beam the butcher used, atop the counter. The butcher grinned and said the jambalaya was good and cheap— just three dollars and fifty nine cents. All I had in pocket was a dollar and was about to say so when all of the
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outside, the bells rang in the cathedral. Had to pee and woke up in three quck successions, a minute shy of a fourth.