today's teaser from PUNK MINNEAPOLIS

this is an excerpt from my published novel

Raven hung up, punched in his time card, and then went out to the salad bar to help Sandra and the manager get all the pots of food in before opening time. He wanted the manager to go away so he could pour himself a little hair of the dog.

The manager felt under a pot of baby peas with her fingers. “Does this feel cold enough?”

“Does it matter?” Sandra asked.

“There’s a rule,” the manager explained. “Food has to be kept cold enough or hot enough or we get in trouble. I get in trouble.”

“Ah, forget about it,” Sandra said. “There’s too many rules. Laws for food. Laws for my body. Laws for who can drink what where. Rules that keep us from being able to have a cool person for president. I protest rules. And laws. They oppress us.”

“Laws protect us from idiots.”

“What?”

The manager maintained, “Yeah. Laws are reactionary. A stupid idiot or a mean person does something bad and then you’ll get a law for it. If we were all smart nice people we wouldn’t need laws. Nobody would even think to think of them.”

“Reactionary?” Sandra marveled. “I didn’t know you knew such big long political words. Where did you get such big ideas? Are you stoned? You’ve been in the basement a long time. God damn, that beauty chair down there has your butt prints in it.”

“I was down there plugging in a new box of pop.”

Sandra teased, “You were not!”

“Don’t question me!”

Three cops walked in the door and they didn’t look hungry. The manager said,

“We’re not open yet. A half hour.”

“We’re not here to eat, ma-am. Who’s the manager?”