The Spark
Sam Zaslow-Braverman '23
The chair collapses with a loud, irritating CRACK, depositing me on the ground before I can brace for the impact. Despite having fallen in the middle of a library, packed far beyond its maximum capacity with some of the world’s best novelists, nobody seems to notice. A splinter about four inches in depth sticks out of my right leg, and upon noticing it, I scream due to the sudden onset of pain combined with the shock of having fallen in the first place. They don’t seem to notice this, either. Their eyes are fixated on the main speaker, a man who stands at a cheaply-made podium far too tall for him to feel comfortable standing at.
I continue screaming as the man, with his large white beard and highly noticeable Napoleon complex, begins to announce the recipients of some award for Fiction-writing. As he goes down the list of names, pronouncing each and every one incorrectly, I begin to realize that I am at the Pulitzer Prize award ceremony, and I’m up for an award in this very category!
This is a special occasion, I figure, so I begin to scream even louder. The man continues to list the nominees.
“Rayshel Will-I-ams… (Rachel Williams)”
“AAAAAAAAHHHHH!”
“Par-kar Smieth… (Parker Smith)”
“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“Win-stone Edeeson (Winston Edison)”
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!”
When I hear Winston’s name, I begin screaming even louder. Not because I’m losing blood rapidly and am beginning to die, unbeknownst to the many people in this cramped room, but because I’ve always considered myself a fan of his work. His collection of essays, I Am Winston Edison, and This is Edison Winston, was a true masterwork, a daring manifesto that explored addiction, famine, and war; subjects I’ve always been too cowardly to write about.
“Kevin Waller… (Kevin Waller)”
The pain vanishes instantaneously. The flow of blood from the splinter hole ceases just as quickly. I stop screaming, as if someone pointed a remote control at my throat and hit the Mute button. I am rapt with attention.
“And finally, Fred Andreas. (Michael Wurst)”
The man stops speaking and reaches for a glass of water on the podium. He downs the entire thing in one gulp. As if on cue, every nominee in the library reaches under their seats and collects a glass of water. I attempt to do the same, but when I look under my chair, there is nothing but air. The writers all down their glasses in one gulp, but I can’t, because someone forgot to put a cup full of water, or even an empty one, under my chair. I start screaming again. This time, everyone turns to stare at me.
I jolt awake. It’s 5:24 AM, and I’m shivering in bed, drenched with sweat, in my one-bedroom in the heart of New York City. That was as good an alarm clock as any.
Swearing under my breath, I roll out of bed and throw on a t-shirt and sweatpants. I can’t tell what either one looks like, or if they match, because it’s dark as pitch in this place and the light switch is all the way on the other side of the room. I stumble over to it like a zombie reaching for brains, occasionally tripping over rotting takeout cartons and discarded magazines. I reach the switch, flick it on, and discover that I’m wearing denim jeans on my torso and a relatively expensive suit jacket on my legs. I let out a long, exasperated sigh. Once again, I’ve completely misremembered the texture of relatively expensive suit jackets compared to that of jeans. This happens to me far too often. On more than one occasion, I’ve thought of getting a doctor to examine my nervous system, but I’ve always cancelled the appointments out of fear that the doctor might find something wrong with my nervous system.
There’s no chance I can fall asleep again. I’ve had this dream far too many times for me to count, and whenever I do, I’m up for the day. I throw a few frozen waffles in my toaster and open my laptop. There is nobody named Winston Edison. Of course, people named Winston Edison exist around the planet, but as far as I know, there simply isn’t a published author by that name anywhere on the globe. When I google the title of his collection of essays, I Am Not Winston Edison, That Edison is Winston, I discover that it is the name of a small deli in Maryland. Not many people have reviewed it, but those who have are fans of their Cuban sandwiches.
The toaster waffle goes off without warning. The unprovoked beeping sound sends a quick, sharp jolt of fear through my body. I’ve searched the web for a far less invasive toaster in the past, perhaps one that will clear its throat politely before beeping, though my attempts to find such a machine were in vain. As I chew on one of the waffles, I open the Word document containing the book I’ve started working on just one month ago. There exists only one piece of writing on it, a to-do list. Under the words To-Do List, there is only one objective: WRITE NOVEL.
I begin typing with almost no goal in mind, and for a moment, the words seem to flow out of me. As the story takes shape, I can feel an age-old sensation taking hold of my stomach, chest, and upper pelvis; it’s The Spark.
The Spark is at once easily explainable and impossible to fully grasp. It’s the feeling of knowing your art is going somewhere. You might not understand where that “somewhere” really is, but if you feel The Spark, you’ll be happy to go along for the ride. As I hit the keys in rapid succession, it grows, enveloping me in its endlessly giving glow. I am one with the page.
At 9:47 AM, I stop typing. The page reads:
Some eggs are round. Most are, actually. It's a real shame. It would be nice to see a cube-shaped egg somewhere in a Whole Foods or something. That's a good business idea. I should write that down for later.
I begin weeping. Tears hit the table. Many of them slide off the table and fall onto the carpet, since the table’s surface is at a 45-degree angle. As I sob, I can feel The Spark leaving my body. It isn’t a mental construct. It’s a palpable feeling, one you’re capable of missing once it’s gone. What I have put out, over the course of four full hours, is perhaps the worst compilation of sentences ever committed to writing. I should call Winston Edison; I think to myself. Maybe he’ll know what to do. Shortly thereafter, I remember he doesn’t exist.
The day’s completely ruined, I decide. I throw on my coat and leave my apartment. As I walk down the narrow, decrepit hall leading to the lobby, my stomach pulses. Is it back? Could it be The Spark? It takes three more pulses for me to realize it’s actually just indigestion. My shoulders slump, and I exit the building.
I’d like to say that the city takes my breath away every time I leave my apartment, or something romantic along those lines, but that’d be a blatant lie. I think that somewhere down the road, I started getting used to all the skyscrapers, to the bodegas every three feet, to the gaggles of people walking around in their suits and ties and Snuggies with some purpose in mind. Living in New York is like watching a beloved movie for the eighth time, in that once you’ve understood and interpreted the whole thing, its flaws begin to stand out.
I walk six blocks, observing everything but taking in nothing, until I reach Coffee Area. The last time I counted, there are about fourteen Coffee Areas in the city. This one, however, is my favorite chapter.
What makes this specific Coffee Area such an intriguing and unpredictable establishment is that occasionally, they don’t serve you coffee. Of course, they serve most people coffee, and the coffee they serve is decent. They’ll occasionally give you a free croissant, if you ask nicely. Every sixth person that comes in, though, doesn’t get coffee. Sometimes they’ll serve you a cup of sewer water and tell you it’s coffee, and sometimes they’ll be completely honest and tell you exactly what it is. Sometimes they set you on fire and then fire-extinguish you after five seconds. Every so often, they lock the door on you. I’ve been the sixth person twice, and I’ve seen about four people set on fire. The strange thing about this specific Coffee Area store is that it’s the only one that has this policy. No other Coffee Area does this, and in the end, that just makes this one all the more special.
Immediately upon walking in, a teenage employee with a ratty goatee and about fifty zits produces a flamethrower from under the counter and sets me alight. For three seconds, it feels merely as if they’ve raised the thermostat a few degrees. For the next two seconds, I feel a searing pain greater than any I’ve felt throughout my existence. My life flashes before my eyes. I see myself as a toddler, tripping over my own feet as I practice walking. I see myself as a teenager, tripping over a large rock on an unsanctioned camping trip. I see myself, a few years ago, tripping on the leg of a table as I exited this very Coffee Area. I have an illustrious history of tripping over things. Finally, the teenager appears to take pity on me, and douses my body in cold water. The fire melts away, and I am left hyperventilating.
“Have a great rest of your day, sir,” the teenager says, dropping the fire extinguisher and making a small tally mark in a nearby notebook. I nod politely and exit the store. I wait ten seconds, then walk back in. The best thing about Coffee Area is that once you’re the sixth person, you can leave, wait ten seconds, walk back in, and they count you as the seventh.
“Welcome to Coffee Area, sir. May I take your order?” The kid asks.
“I’ll take one coffee, please.”
“Coming right up.”
He disappears into a back room for a little while and returns with a piping hot coffee.
“Can I please also have a free croissant?”
“Sure,” the teenager says. “Would you like a small, medium, or large?”
“I’d like a large, please.”
“I’m sorry, but we only have small and medium today.”
“Then why did you ask if I wanted a large?”
“It’s the polite thing to do.”
“Fine. I’ll have a small.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a medium? A medium is closer in size to a large, whereas a small is closer in size to a medium.”
“Come to think of it, you’re right. I’ll take a medium.”
“I’m afraid we’re all out of medium.”
Rage courses through my veins. This disrespectful jerk set me on fire not three minutes ago, and now he doesn’t even have the decency to give me a large, or even a medium, croissant. I feel like crying. I almost do, but at the last minute, I shut my eyes hard to stop the tears. “Fine. I’ll have a small.”
“One small croissant, coming right up.”
He walks into the back room and comes back out with a baked good roughly the size of the fingernail on my thumb. I pop it into my mouth dejectedly, put three dollars on the counter, and walk out.
I’m back at the apartment, and the phone’s ringing about as loud as it ever has. A few soaking wet tissues are on my kitchen table. I waited until I got home to cry about the croissant debacle. My tears have ceased, but the more I think about it, the angrier I become. If a business is out of their product, they have no reason, none at all, to offer this product to a loyal customer. I want to punch something right now, I decide. I stand up, position myself in front of the back wall of my living room/kitchen/dining room/mudroom, and pull back my fist, when the phone abruptly stops ringing, transitioning to voicemail.
“Hey, Kev,” the man on the other end says. “This is Max. I just wanted to see how the book’s coming along. The deadline’s in three months. Have you made any progress yet? You’re running out of time. Please, just call me if you’re having trouble thinking of a title, or dialogue, or even a plot. Bye.”
Max disconnects the call. Dread fills my skull. You are a worthless, idiotic, imitation-writer moron, I think to myself. You have no life outside of this pursuit, and you’re screwing up the only thing you have going for you. Now you’re self-loathing again. It’s not cool, or funny, or original, to self loathe. Why in hell would you think that self-loathing makes you special? Stop self-loathing right now, you tireless hypocrite! Maybe you aren’t capable of not self-loathing. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes you special. There are thousands, if not millions, of up-and-coming novelists in this city, and all of them are better than you, and they probably don’t hate themselves, but you do. It’s your shortcoming. Your fatal flaw. Your—
I slam my right fist into the wall. As soon as my hand connects with the hard surface, I hear the crunching of my knuckle bones shattering into a million pieces. The wall, however, is completely undamaged. In fact, it looks cleaner than it did before. Perhaps the punch knocked some dust off the wall.
My hand is in excruciating pain. And because my hand hurts, the rest of me does, too. I scream louder than I’ve screamed in years. I scream for my busted hand. I scream for my pathological inability to write. I scream for a world full of so-called creators who try and try and try to produce tangible art, to no avail. I’m mostly just screaming for my hand, though, because it hurts very much. With my other hand, I dial 911. After explaining the situation to the operator, the pain overtakes my consciousness, and I pass out, right there in the middle of my living room/kitchen/dining room/mudroom.
This time, the chair makes a squeaking sound, much like a rubber-ducky. I tumble to the ground once again. I look at my leg, and sure enough, the splinter is back, and I’m bleeding out of my leg. I sigh, take a deep breath, and scream. At least, I try to. No sound escapes my mouth. I can still feel the pain in my right hand, although it is significantly less pronounced than it was when I was awake.
The short old man is back at the podium, as is Winston Edison, the writer of my favorite collection of essays, titled I Winston Edison, Is Edison Am That Winston And. Everyone else in the room, however, is completely unrecognizable. I turn to Winston and begin speaking. “Hi, Mr. Winston. I’m a huge fan of your work.”
Winston looks taken aback. I can tell by his posture, by the way he’s fidgeting with his hands, by his facial expression, that he doesn’t get compliments like this one very often. “Why, thank you. That means a lot to me. Are you Kevin Waller?”
My eyes light up. He knows me by name! “Yes, that’s me.”
“Personally, I found your novel to be a brilliant psychological dramedy that existed as an apt critique of both the postmodern movement and the idea that artists are only driven by blind inspiration. However, many of my colleagues hated it, and thought it was as ostentatious, pretentious, rambling, long-winded, and hypocritical as the concept it attempts to skewer.”
“Well, I’m glad you liked it. I thought your collection of essays, titled Winston I Am Edison That Edison And Winston Is, is a truly insightful look at addiction, famine, and war.”
“I appreciate that.”
In an instant, I am back at my apartment, sitting at my kitchen table. My laptop is open to a blank Word document. The computer’s clock reads “11:37 AM,” but when I look at the closest window, I see the pitch-black night sky and a full moon. All of a sudden, The Spark returns. It envelops me once again. All of my surroundings fade out of existence, save for the laptop. I rest my hands, one aching and one eager, on the keyboard. I begin typing. I begin typing the best story that has ever been written, and will ever be written.
The book is a neo-noir-mystery-surrealist-thriller-horror-fantasy-drama about a Pad Thai chef in New York who is murdered in cold blood. He becomes a ghost, and must solve his wife’s murder, because she was also murdered by completely different people at generally the same time. In addition to the neo-noir-mystery-surrealist-thriller-horror-fantasy-drama plot, the novel (which will be well-over 2,000 pages, nearly double the length of my last one) will be punctuated by my own personal essays, which include both a history and criticism of Pad Thai, as well as over 100 recipes for the dish. The Spark grows as I type away. In this moment, it is so great and so giving that it almost feels as though I’m on fire. It takes me another thirty seconds to realize that I am, indeed, on fire.
Suddenly, I am in my local Coffee Area, and the teenager behind the counter is blasting me with his flamethrower. I run out of the restaurant, screaming, covered in flames, and nobody in all of New York seems to notice me. Just as I begin to feel my human form burning away, the flame vanishes.
I am holding a spatula. The thought occurs to me out of nowhere. I am holding a spatula, and in my other hand, I am holding a box of Pad Thai. I drop both of them on the ground, and they promptly disappear. I feel something fuzzy on my head, and when I lift my arms to remove it, I discover that it is a chef’s hat. I am the Pad Thai ghost I so fervently wrote about. My wife has been murdered, and it is my sole responsibility to avenge her death. This is why nobody notices me during the Pulitzers. This is why nobody tried to help me while I was on fire. Because I was never truly there. I pick up the spatula from the street, and discover that it has morphed into a flawlessly-constructed broadsword. I breathe in and out. I have a job to do. Then, without any semblance of a warning, my vision goes dark. White, blocky text appears in front of my eyes. “The origin of Pad Thai can be traced back to Thailand, where it was first invented in the nineteen-thirti-”
I jolt awake. I am lying in a hospital bed. The lights above me are white, cold, and unpleasant. There is a cast on my hand. It makes my hand look like a bandaged stump. The pain, which felt dull and necessary during my sleep, is now piercing and intolerable. I cannot find the energy to scream anymore. Instead, I moan quietly for a doctor. After what feels like millennia, a red-haired woman walks into the room.
“I see you’re awake. Based on the x-ray, you have indeed broken your hand,” she says.
“Can you give me pain medication?”
“There’s no need for that. If you’d like, you can pick up some over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol or ibuprofen, but I’ve done all I can. One more thing: While we were poking around inside your arm, we found that you have a rare, neurobiological disorder that appears to manifest itself in your nervous system. It causes a discombobulation of various textures. Oftentimes, the two most prominent symptoms are an inability to tell the difference between the feeling of denim and that of relatively expensive suit jackets, and an inability to tell the difference between the feeling of harsh flashlights and that of fire. You’ll be discharged shortly.” She leaves the room before I can ask any questions. I sigh heavily. The teenager behind the counter had simply pointed a flashlight at me. There was no flame, much less any flamethrower. Looking around, I notice that there’s a television in front of me. I pick up the remote from the bedside table and turn it on. To my dismay, the hospital doesn’t pay for any channels whatsoever. There’s nothing for me to do but lie here.
A day has passed since the unfortunate wall incident, and in my left hand I am holding a brand-new tape recorder. Since I can’t feasibly type for the next few weeks, I figure I might as well talk about my ideas for the book. I vaguely recall an idea I had a day or two ago. It may have been about Pad Thai. For a moment, I consider chasing the idea, but decide against it. I don’t remember enough about the thought to waste time pursuing it. Before I even turn on the tape recorder, I notice that something is off. A few seconds of deliberation tell me that it has to do with The Spark. Well, really, it’s a lack thereof. For the first time in years, I have begun writing without the benefit of the creative force that’s driven me to write my first novel. Nevertheless, I figure, I have a deadline coming up. I have to at least try.
“Hello,” I speak. “My name is Kevin Waller. I am a novelist. These are my ideas for my second novel. Idea Number One…”
All of a sudden, I stop speaking. This isn’t my choice; if it were up to me, I would be speaking about my novel ideas instead of not being able to speak. I wrack my brain for something else to say, something simple. I settle on “lovely weather we’re having today.” I clear my throat… and nothing comes out. I begin to sweat. My eyes dart back and forth around the room. The toaster beeps with an abrupt and intolerable BEEP, depositing the waffles that I had put up five minutes earlier. In my heightened state of fear, I yelp loudly and fall out of my chair. It hits the ground at about the same time I do, and one of its legs breaks off. Can I talk anymore? Am I mute for the rest of my life?
“I CAN NO LONGER SPEAK!!!” I wail, effectively answering my own question. I stand back up and turn on the tape recorder and try to say “Yes, hello, I will have the Number Eight sandwich with coleslaw and fries.” Nothing comes out of my mouth. I shut off the tape recorder, and attempt to speak.
“YES, HELLO, I WILL HAVE THE NUMBER EIGHT SANDWICH WITH COLESLAW AND FRIES!!!” I shout.
The phone starts ringing, making me painfully aware of its presence in the corner of the room. Everything in my apartment beeps. Nothing plays any sort of lullaby, or smooth jazz, or anything that might be even slightly more digestible than a beep. A beep is not a positive sound. It carries an air of menace. Whenever a toaster goes off, the resulting beep contributes to my pathological anger surrounding toasters, which makes me use them less. The less I use my toaster, the lower chance there is of it breaking. If my toaster doesn’t break, I definitely won’t pay the toaster company money for another toaster. The beeps are actually a horrible business strategy, for any appliance company. Whoever came up with the idea that appliances should beep ought to be—
The phone stops ringing. I curse myself, knowing that I could have gotten to the phone in time, had I not been distracted by my own endless, self-indulgent babble. I sit back down and turn on the tape recorder. Still nothing. The phone beeps again. I scream in shock. The downstairs neighbor screams back. I run to pick up the phone.
“You’ve reached Kevin Waller.”
“Are you a sadist?”
“What?”
“Did you mishear the question?”
“No, I heard it very clearly. I’m just confused as to why you asked me.”
“Well? Are you?”
“No. No, of course not.”
“Very good. I’m calling on behalf of the New York Society for Psychosomatic Maladies. We’re administering a survey for New York residents who identify as non-sadists. You seem to fit that bill.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“We were established eight hours ago. First question: How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Second question: Do you believe in God?”
“How does that relate to psychosomatic disorders?”
“In roughly 94% of cases of the twenty thousand people we’ve surveyed, the devoutly religious report fewer psychosomatic disorders than less religious or completely nonsecular individuals.”
“The way you phrased that statistic is completely nonsensical.”
“Psychology is a complex area of study.”
“You were established eight hours ago. How did you have time to survey that many people?”
“Psychology is a complex area of study.”
I consider hanging up on them. These people are hacks. They’re probably conducting the survey for the sole purpose of collecting data. They’ll sell the data on the dark web, and for a mere $250,000, every degenerate browsing the black market will be able to tell whether or not I’m religious. Or maybe they won’t. I didn’t answer that question. Regardless, it’s a horrifying thought.
Then I remember the tape recorder. I remember how I cannot for the life of me say anything into it. Maybe that’s psychosomatic. I’m fully aware of the risk I’m taking, but I have so much to lose by letting it slip by.
“I’ve been having a problem that I think might be psychosomatic.”
“Really? Please elaborate.”
“I’m a novelist. I came out with a novel a few years back. It was a brilliant psychological dramedy that existed as an apt critique of both the postmodern movement and the idea that artists are only driven by blind inspiration. However, many of my colleagues hated it, and thought it was as ostentatious, pretentious, rambling, long-winded, and hypocritical as the concept it attempts to skewer.” I slap my forehead. Where did that thought even come from? It almost felt pre-written.
“It seems you think very highly of this novel. How does it relate to your condition?”
“Well, I’m trying to write a second one. It’s going to be 2,000 pages. Twice as long as my last one.”
“So then would that mean your first novel is 1,000 pages?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on. I have to write that down.” I hear scribbling at the other end for a few seconds, after which the fraud gets back on the phone.
“Please continue, Mr. Waller.”
“Whenever I try to talk into a tape recorder, my voice completely stops,” I tell him. My eyes well up the slightest bit. “My voice seizes up, and I have no ideas about the novel at all. And my due date for the novel is in three months, and my literary agent calls all the time asking to see my progress, and every time the phone rings, there’s this DAMN BEEPING. I have nothing to write about, and no motivation. It almost seems supernatural.”
There’s a pause on the other end. It continues for at least two minutes. Just as I move to disconnect the call, the fraud returns.
“I highly doubt that you’re dealing with anything psychosomatic,” he says. His voice seems weighed down by nerves. “I have never, in the eight hours that the Institute for Psychosomatic Investigation Within and Around New York has existed, heard anything as strange as what you just described to me.”
“I thought you said you were called the New York Society for Psychosomatic Maladies.” The line suddenly goes dead. I put the phone down. Perhaps I called his bluff.
Over the next week, I sink into an unfortunate rhythm. I wake up, eat breakfast, ignore calls from Max, watch hours of garbage television, eat lunch, watch hours of Hallmark movies, eat dinner, watch hours of Lifetime films, and go to sleep. Throughout my day, I carry my tape recorder in my pocket, in the hopes that I might be compelled to use it at any point. I never am. I’m fully aware, over the course of my seven useless days, that I’m wallowing in self-pity, and I continually berate myself for it. Yet, I am complicit.
I often think of the man on the other end of the phone, the one who was almost definitely a fraud. I know he was a fraud, and I have no doubts about it whatsoever, but his words stayed with me. Maybe it isn’t imagined in the slightest. No matter how hard I try to push the thoughts out of my head, I always arrive at the same conclusion.
The Spark is gone, and it cannot be refilled.
Even as I bury myself in meaningless entertainment, even as I watch people stalking people stalking people, to the tune of an incomprehensible screenplay and inept camerawork, the idea is pervasive. I’ve already used up all of my Spark, and unlike the rest of the world, I can’t get it back.
Beyond the obvious torment that comes with an inability to create anything as long as I live, I have a somewhat positive perception of the situation. It’s comforting to know that I am alone in my struggle, that I will forever have something to hold above people’s heads whenever we compare miseries. Not only am I a self-pitying wretch, but my life is terrible.
One morning, I wake up, and without thinking, throw on my coat and walk six blocks to Coffee Area. I can’t figure out why. I’m hardly in the mood for coffee, or even a fingernail-sized croissant. As I walk, my head is both full and empty. It’s stuffed to maximum capacity with hot air, and the question “why?” I am acutely aware that these thoughts have no depth. I’ve already made it very clear that I’m upset. If anyone were to have a definitive look inside my brain from my perspective, they would want me to stop monologuing. Nobody wants to hear my ramblings. Hearing all of my ramblings would be like reading a low-quality short meta-story published in a high school literary magazine: highly unpleasant and mentally grating.
The moment I walk through the door of Coffee Area and the same pimple-faced teenager looks up at me with a slight and sadistic grin, I realize that I am the sixth person. The boy reaches under the counter and retrieves the same large, flamethrower-shaped flashlight.
“Please, not this time,” I try to tell him. “I have a condition that causes me to misinterpret--”
“Enjoy being flashlit,” he interrupts sarcastically, clicking the button and sending a ray of excruciating light to meet my skin.
I scream again, and just as the doctor reiterated, I feel as though I am on fire. As I scream and writhe about where I stand, and as the boy stares at me with a mixture of pity, confusion, and amusement, a sensation arises in my stomach, one full of hope. I recognize it immediately.
It’s The Spark.
My screams take on a grateful quality. They almost feel like prayers. At long last, The Spark is back, and I feel a pressing desire to write about… eating a croissant at this very Coffee Area. The idea hardly aligns with my tastes, but it’s a start. The teenager turns off the flashlight, and The Spark immediately vanishes. I am disoriented, confused, and most of all, euphoric.
“I’d like to buy that flashlight off of you,” I tell him.
“That’ll be eighty-seven dollars,” he responds.