Dave Himelfarb Sneezes

[The following is the first of five days of improvised ten-minute fiction writings. Some structure is being provided by an outside source - a detail or two from which to begin. I was going to write them all first and then post only the ones that I thought were good, but part of the idea here is to kill your inner critic, and one way to do that is to just post all five entries right after I finish them. This means that there will be no proofreading of any kind. As always, if you are unsatisfied with the quality of the work, you will receive a full refund.]

It is a slow day at Himelfarb and Grotsky Billiard and Gaming Warehouse. Co-owner Dave Himelfarb is staring into the glass case containing a wide variety of poker chip sets and cases, the prices for which have all been marked down substantially in the last six months as the Texas Hold ‘Em craze has faded somewhat. After all, once every trend-sheep in the city has purchased a set of poker chips, why would they need to buy more? Dave is staring at one particular case containing a 1000-piece deluxe set whose neatly printed original price of $199 has been crossed out and rewritten by a reckless, almost illegible hand in red marker. The new price is an absurd $79, which Dave knows is well below the store’s original cost for the set, but his partner in business, Herman Grotsky, has decided that such markdowns are necessary to move inventory. Herman is thirty years Dave’s senior, having founded the company in 1968 with Dave’s father, who died of a heart attack eight months ago. Herman’s handwriting bothers Dave almost more than his ridiculous business sense. Instead of “Marked Down! Final Clearance!” the price tag on the poker set appears to read “Marfed Dog! Finger Clap!” Dave breaks the stare and finds that droplets of sweat have appeared on his forehead and that he is breathing heavily. He stalks off to the employee bathroom at the back of the store to splash some water on his face. In the bathroom mirror, Dave considers himself. Substantially overweight at age thirty-five, he is clearly headed down the Himelfarb family path of obesity, stress, and early death. “Fantastic,” he says to his reflection. Aside from the substantial paunch, Dave’s appearance is nearly immaculate. His wrinkle-free khakis are perfectly creased down the front of each leg, the cuffs ironed to a razor-sharp edge above his brilliantly polished brown shoes. His Himelfarb and Grotsky embroidered golf shirt is similarly attended to, with nary a stain or wrinkle to be detected anywhere. His thick moustache is trimmed to perfection. If it were 1895, Dave would be a compulsive purchaser of moustache wax, but today’s moustache fashions would render such a choice far too eccentric, so Dave relies on five or six different trimming tools, the most precise being a pair of fingernail clippers. On impulse, he opens the medicine cabinet in the employee bathroom, pulls out his work-only fingernail clippers, and makes a few micro-trimming adjustments to the moustache. As he replaces the clippers, the draft created by the closing medicine cabinet door launches a cloud of dust from the top of the cabinet into the air. The dust falls into Dave’s eyes, and he explodes in a sudden and violent sneeze. Staring again at himself through the mirror, now blurry with snot and saliva, Dave realizes that the entire bathroom is filthy. Herman has not hired a new woman to clean the back of the store, having fired the previous cleaning lady last week because she didn’t speak enough English to carry on the endless, rambling conversations about county politics and minor league baseball that Herman attempted to make with her as she worked, the same mindless banter that Herman had dumped on their previous cleaning woman, a staggeringly tiny old woman named Marge Higgenbotham who had died on the job three years prior, succumbing to a massive stroke while dusting the softball trophies in Herman’s office. Dave finds himself in a deep and wordless fury. He stalks back to the glass case, opens it, takes the price tag carefully off of the poker chip set, wads it up, throws it on the floor, and stomps on it seven times with his shoe.