The Gorko Gazette

Frog

She received the divorce settlement one year ago to the day. She was grateful she was still able to keep her hobby shop, The Frog’s Patina. It didn’t do much business, but she found it pleasurable marking up items and making people really pay. Or, making them feel wanting because they couldn’t pay. She didn’t accept credit cards. That was cheating.

She found less pleasurable actually selling the items when someone had enough money not to care about money. The loss of the item made her feel uncomfortable. She would find the items at estate sales. She chose them with discernment and commitment. For guidance, she had her Art History degree from Vassar, and, she said to friends, her heart-body communiqués.

A man in his 60s wearing sunglasses entered her shop. He browsed casually, eventually approaching her at the front counter where she sat with the store’s titular frog. 

‘I want this brass frog,’ said the man.

‘The one thing I won’t let go.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s the store’s mascot.’

‘But there’s no patina on it.’

‘One day.’

The man looked the woman up and down, and then, while contemplating the frog, he said sadly, and factually, ‘Hand job without a finish.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Your stinky pyjamas need washing.’

She replied, bemused, ‘Your dingy sunglasses need a stronger sun.’

‘When Caesar entered Rome, the wolf moaned.’

She replied with an in-hand tone, ‘But then again, Lucan had a bad beginning and a worse end.’

‘Kuh-roak!’ loudly pronounced the man deep from his stomach, forcefully projecting the sound toward the woman as if pushing her.  

‘I’ll find a box,’ she said, shaking.

‘No need.’ The man picked up the big, brass frog and left the store.

She stood behind the counter touching the outline where her frog used to be.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Cover image generated on Magic Studio

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