The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 251

In his private life, Jack Benny could not have been any more the opposite of his on air persona. He was a generous, thoughtful man.

Exiting the “lunch” counter area, Sam Shovelin was in the section which sold tropical fish. He always hated this area, as the store workers always removed a few of the fish from the tank, and placed them in plastic bags full of water. This didn’t seem to serve any purpose, didn’t look like it did any wonders for the trapped fish, and he didn’t even want to think about the sick predators with needles, though he had seen their work two or three times, and found it a difficult image to forget.

Sam scooted through the long, straight aisles of the store cursorily viewing the myriad of items for sale, each section presided over by an attendant who with head down was fussing with something that was ostensibly in need of some altering “enhancement,” more likely a function of their down-to-earth wish to appear as busy to the strict, self-important floorwalker, who aggrandized his position when he constantly and smugly considered his ambulatory guard duty job as being part of upper management.

Sam went to the toy section. He found that there were still roscoes which shot soft plastic bullets and/or caps, dolls for