The Petty Bourgeois
Pop-In Jay Pomp arrived in Comport on a fine and sunny morning. He was young and ambitious.
He was hungry.
The sun-baked street was quiet and not many people seemed about. It was positively peculiar for a town of such proportion, especially on a Monday morning.
Driving down the street, flanked with tall trees, he spotted the Petty Bourgeois, which was nicely nestled on a picturesque piazza. Beautiful palm trees, planted in a pattern of square beds, provided a placid and shady atmosphere for shoppers.
Parking his fluttering flivver under the shade of a Sycamore tree, Pop-In Jay climbed out and stretched his short stiff limbs. He stood awhile, waiting for the molasses in his weary veins to flow. He then strutted lordly across the shadow-patched pavement.
Perhaps it was the thought of puff pastry and all sorts of sweet fillings that had persuaded him to stop, but it wasn’t puff pastry and sweet fillings he bought. He sated himself with an array of petit four offerings to satisfy his hunger. A Pepsi quenched his thirst.
Peter Patisserie, the young baker and owner of the quaint little shop, being a man of few words, politely helped Pop-In Jay Pomp and further minded his own business.
Pop-In Jay sat down at the square table in the middle of the shop and ravenously ate the petit fours, crumbs flying freely about. He downed the Pepsi with little grace, belched, bowed his head apologetically and smiled brilliantly at Peter Patisserie.
Eyebrows raised high and eyes wide open, the baker merely nodded – his feign smile making him look pasty-faced and all together not too becoming. Pop-In Jay turned and left the baker to continue his solo of tic-tac-toe.
Stepping out of the bakery, he sluggishly soaked up the warmth of the morning air. It had been an exiguous snack of sweet cakes and Pepsi and insufficient, so it seemed, for such an enormous man, but it would suffice for the hour and it had tasted very good indeed.
The little birds singing merrily in the trees irritated Pop-In Jay immensely. The heat made him admire, momentarily, small blessings such as shade.
It was the small gathering of townspeople across the sun-baked street that caught his attention.