Plasma

Gift Cards

The temp job was hauling garbage out of some warehouse someone was making into a table tennis bar.

They called it Ping Pong when he was a kid.

His left knee had been bad since freshman football at Inkster High, felt like the right one was trying to catch it in the pain department.

Used to be a newspaper box, a bunch of ‘em actually, that he could rest his back on after the temp truck dropped the crew back off at the strip mall.

Now all the news was online, no papers, no paper boxes, no backrest unless you wanted to sit in the pigeon shit by the wall.

Only paper left was a free entertainment guide, sitting in a little wire rack that wouldn’t work as a backrest.

Larry Stannion belched, though he couldn’t remember the last time he ate anything belchable.

Coleman’s Stacks was gone, no foot tall sandwiches and no loud Greek man with a rake to scare the pigeons away.

The Plasma Center was still there, nearly empty.

Larry pulled an entertainment paper from the rack.