The punk tattoo, possession, and punk powers

an excerpt

(this is an excerpt from my published novel PUNK MINNEAPOLIS)

Before Raven went back to the kitchen, in walked a young blond man in blue jeans, white button down shirt and thin black tie. “Cover your scab up,” Becky told Raven, looking at the guy the whole while. “We don’t want people to figure out that our pizzas look like big round scabs. We want to have some secret knowledge that’s only ours.”

“Don’t you think my scab is sort of the color of Cherry Coke?”

“Cover it up!”

“Why?”

Becky put her hand over her mouth. “It looks like you fell off your tricycle and got a big bad booboo. And I’ll never look at Cherry Coke the same way again.”

“Cherry Coke is now so punk.”

She said, “Just because you spent a lot of money on that thing doesn’t mean you have to try and make it sound better than it is.”

Raven went to the counter and thought the man looked nice, which amazed him, since he usually didn’t have opinions about guys walking in the door, unless they were punk or something cool. “Welcome to cholesterol pizza! Groovy tunes! How can I help you?”

The blond guy asked, “Your help wanted sign out front. You still taking applications?”

Raven raised his eyebrows. “Oh? So you’re not a customer?”

“I need a job.”

Becky asked, “Where you from?”

“South.” He looked at Raven. “You one of those androgyny people?”

Raven lowered his eyebrows.

Becky asked, like a snot, “You have a lot of friends in Iowa?”

“Nope. Southern Minnesota.”

“Where?”

He pointed. “That way. Can I have an application?”

“Are you a Christian? A Baptist or Lutheran, maybe?”

“Sure. Why?”

Becky rubbed her palms together. “Sometimes we have to have an exorcism on the front steps and it really helps to have somebody who knows Latin. The Mexican exorcisms are the best because they have the coolest props. The Texan exorcisms end up sounding rather violent. They shoot off a lot of guns. And the French exorcisms are the worst because everything said in French sounds so sexy, and an exorcism is not supposed to sound sexy. But I’m not prejudiced.”

“What?”

“Groovy tunes!” Raven said. “And the black exorcisms are done in rap.”

“Don’t be prejudiced,” Becky scolded Raven, and then turned back to the guy.

“Yeah. Don’t you know about uptown? It’s right near the lakes. So we’re a big magnet to witchcraft powers from around the world and all kinds of powerful magic stuff. But the best exorcisms have potato salad and stuff afterwards and I don’t think you make a good potato salad. The crap we get for this place comes from food service and I just glop it out of a big milk carton.” She glared at the salad bar as if it was evil.

“Eat my shorts,” the guy said. “Just give me an application.”

“Don’t have a cow.”

“Come on.”

“Don’t say we didn’t try to scare you off for your own good.” Raven pulled up on his bracelets and handed over an application. When the guy took it to a table to fill it out, Raven and Becky gave each other sour faces. “You didn’t scare him off,” Raven scolded her. “You told me once that you had great punk powers.”