chase scenes serial #14
a sprite, one soy latte‡, for which I coyly asked if Coffee Break had soy milk. Although in Bismarck, Rapid City’s ‘simple’ cousin, and we had not even seen a grocery store from which one might buy soy milk, the man behind the counter, probably in his early to mid forties (40s), was pierced beyond the capacity one might have to recognize his human form. One would think that such a man would carry this elixir, or at the very least, some soy milk syrup. When I ordered the drink at last he asked me in mild shock if I did not want some flavour. I said no. But immediately a textual theme was cemented for this description. I was ably prepared to remark, perhaps in passing, about the hundreds of syrups bedecking the shop. Perhaps I would have even tied it into the man’s obsessive, no, apparent obsessive behaviours foregrounded on his half-metal visage. But now I am free to discuss the intrusion of syrup into this man’s world view. It was in fact the lynchpin of fine coffee beverage drinking. Every person that then came in proceeded to order bizarre concoctions which have been more eruditely satirized in other avenues by intellectuals such as Steve Martin and probably someone on the
