San Diego - Bread Crumbs 4

"Oh. . .I can't remember their name," Tony said as he squinted his eyes and looked upwards, as if straining to remember the name of the band. "Hmm. . .I can't remember."

"Oh well, have a good time man." Bill said as he smiled and held out his hand, which Tony shook before walking out the door.

Once outside, Tony opened up his wallet and counted fourteen dollars: the five that Bill had just given him and nine ones. He headed up the street towards the local pharmacy. He needed to buy toilet paper, industrial strength cleaning solution, a sponge, and lotion. Over the course of the past three months, his bathtub had managed to acquire a layer of smooth black filth and Tony decided that the time had come to take care of this problem.

He walked through the CVS and began to examine the signs that were hanging above each aisle. Feminine products, toiletries, stationary, he couldn't believe that Bill had tipped him out at a measly five dollars. Bill had eight tables throughout the night. Tony had taken the food out to the tables, and he knew that the total bill for each table would have hovered around ninety dollars, which meant that Bill would receive around twelve dollars/table. Twelve dollars times eight tables equaled ninety-six dollars. And ten percent of ninety-six was nine dollars and sixty cents, not five dollars. Where the fuck was the toilet paper?

Tony found himself standing at the far end of the CVS pharmacy, right in front of shelves filled with vitamins. Vitamin B would help you to improve your circulation, it was good for stress and would make you a happier, more relaxed person. Vitamin C would help to bolster your defense system, it would make you a healthier person. Vitamin E would help your body to dissolve complex fats, it would give you smoother and less oily skin. It was really quite simple actually, the solution to all of your problems was more or less encased in a small gel cap. The problem was that Tony couldn't really afford to buy these vitamins, so he would have to go on with his sickly, stressed, and oily existence.

"Where the fuck is the toilet paper?" he thought to himself. He began to walk back toward the entrance of the pharmacy, promising himself that he would pay careful attention not to walk by the toilet paper this time.

Dry foods, soda, liquor, magazines, he hated the way that actors looked on the covers of magazines. He grabbed the latest issue of GQ off of the shelf and examined the cover. A happy, go-lucky all-American bastard was standing in the water with his shirt unbuttoned. His abdominal muscles rippled beneath his million-dollar grin.

Tony opened the magazine and began to flip through page after page of images that were so sharply attractive, that they began to make his heart cry. His eyes lingered over a cologne advertisement. A man wearing a dark suit was sitting in front of a roulette table. He had an angled jaw and piercing eyes. Behind him stood a thin blonde woman, wearing a filmy black dress that clung to her figure like saran wrap. Her fingers were delicately place over his shoulders as she leaned forward to observe his endeavor. The front of her dress hung seductively, revealing her cleavage. She had a slight smile on her face, as if she knew that no matter what, her man would always come out on top.

On the most palpable level of his consciousness, Tony felt the couple's self-satisfaction like grinding agony. He closed the magazine and placed it back on the shelf. He stepped back and for a single instant, he was filled with great sadness, as the hundreds of beautiful faces on the shelf all seemed to laugh at him in unison. Garbed in turtleneck sweaters, suits, silk dresses, bearing six-packs, silicone breasts, angled jawbones, and long thin legs, they stood like an army against him and it was all he could do to turn his head and stumble in the direction of toilet paper and lotion.

Saturday - 11:30 PM

Tony entered his apartment with a sigh of relief and dropped his supplies on the ground. He headed straight for his miniature refrigerator, and took out a packet of bologna and two slices of bread. He smeared some mayonnaise on the bread, placed the bologna between the two slices, and sat down in his recliner and turned on his television. Tony's favorite show consisted of a situation in which two strangers were matched up and sent on a date. As the date progressed, small notes would pop onto the screen, delivering witty commentaries regarding the current situation. Tony enjoyed the show because more often than not, the girl would be extremely dissatisfied with the guy because the guy would inevitably be either too crude or too boring.

Tony enjoyed watching the show, and then turning the television off and imagining what he might do if he was in the same situation as the guy. The fantasy normally started out the same, with him being coy and a little show at the beginning of the date, but eventually becoming more and more charming until the night culminated with the two of them returning back to her place for a nightcap. Eventually, his fantasy would become interactive in nature and result in him being completely sprawled out on his recliner, feeling the electricity throughout his body gradually ebb into nothingness.
Tony lay back in his recliner as he faded away.

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