Pool_1

>> Piper Sunset <<

It was early evening when Marcus returned with the truck, not by accident but deliberately planned, during the five o'clock shift change. This is when the volume, the real selling of ice cream begins. The early peak hour. Trucks never return now. As he expected, there was a mustering of the curious from those finishing up and those being updated, including all the team chiefs. An incremental gathering of the very curious initiated the further gathering of the less curious and both together brought in the otherwise aloof. All together they streamed around the errant Piper truck as would a macrophage enveloping a bacterium. It was a gathering of smirks. It was envelopment charged with assumption, sarcasm with an expectation of embarrassed entertainment. Fragments of, "should seen 'em ...on his ass in the street" and "..'sgonna blow," floated in the otherwise quietly phagocytosing cell that they had become. Marcus mused, "These bastards think I'm dinner." "Well?" voiced the general hum from the curiosity driven hangers on. "You still got rum banana up to your ass? We don't take it back, you know," one chief jibed. "Even Sloan Eberhart couldn't unload rum banana," to a roar of guffaws. Here, standing in the open cockpit of the Piper fighter was a new downed victim of the flavor of the month, obviously returned in frustration, choking with the stuff, needing a flavor change. These bombs won't drop. Ready to beg. To watch somebody beg and squirm was the main attraction, at first. Then the deals would begin. It was all so visible in their faces. He had seen the same calculating looks on the faces of bookies that populated the boxing matches to which his brother Chuck dragged him. Their conspiratorial looks only