Roll of Quarters

Short Fiction

Stepping off the bus was like getting pushed off a glacier.

His destination was a block away and it wouldn’t be any warmer there, from what he heard.

The soundtrack of the trip had been poorly planned, not planned at all really.

He had the wrong playlist on shuffle, some fluffy pop love fizz was tickling his ears and he wanted something topical. Angry. Or sad.

The pizzeria was torn down. 

He was almost certain it had been, but seeing the space was a shock.

He wanted to change the music but wasn’t gonna take off his gloves in this wind chill to do so.

A woman he barely knew had organized a musical remembrance of Anthony at a coffeehouse he never would have set foot in.

So Olivetti came to where he and Anthony met, freezing his dick, poorly dressed for the weather, not enough layers, poorly timed happy music, staring at faded yellow lines because Francesco’s Pizza was torn down to make a parking lot that wasn’t even a parking lot anymore.

Faded yellow lines looked like they had been painted to show faceless workers where to plant scraggly weeds and random clumps of dandelions.

Olivetti pulled the earbuds from his ears with one finger of his glove.

I’ll fucking hum Somebody Got Murdered if I have to.

He figured out where the front door of Francesco’s would have been based on the placement of the streetlight.