Dark Side Dry Cleaners

The old rabbi plucked a curly white hair from his charcoal colored coat and twisted it between callused fingers. He sighed for the days when his beard was black, when it seemed there was time enough for everything. He let the hair drift to the ground and looked to the ticket in his left hand. If he added it all together, how many days, how many weeks, had he spent in line at the dry cleaner? For that matter, how many sunny spring days had been spent sequestered in a quiet study brooding over the Torah while motes of dust drifted through slanting beams of light? Now that his beard was nearly all white, the answer felt like ‘too many.’

The customer at the counter moved aside, stuffing her wallet into a purse bulging with scraps of paper, and he stepped forward. He smiled warmly at the tired looking Chinese woman behind the counter--how many sunny spring days had she watched through the glass of the storefront--and stretched out his arm to give her the ticket. She reached to take it, and as her fingers closed on the end of the paper a cry rose from back of the shop.

“You’re not my father! That’s impossible,” cried a child’s voice.

“Search your feelings, you know it to be true,” answered another child, the voice dropped into a false baritone.

“No,” screamed the first voice.

A slight, dark haired young boy burst through batwing doors from the back of the shop, a fluorescent light bulb clutched before him like a sword. Seconds later, another boy, slightly older, followed, a similar bulb held before him in a defensive position.

The rabbi and the shop owner dropped the ticket at the same time. It fluttered down to the counter.

“Boys,” she screamed. “Stop now!”

“Join me on the dark side and together we will rule the galaxy,” the older boy said, having not heard, or ignored, the screams of his mother.

“Never,” replied the smaller boy.

They shifted back and forth, making whooshing sounds as they swayed the light bulbs from side-to-side.

The rabbi watched as the mother moved to stand between the two. She couldn’t move fast enough and the two bulbs finally crashed together. The glass shattered with a sharp pop, followed by the tinkling of tiny shards as they hit the linoleum floor. Fine white powder floated in the air.

The woman began screaming in Chinese so quickly and at such volume that the old rabbi winced. He looked at the chaos that had erupted behind the counter. The man behind him in line was already gone.

Maybe it’s time to savor a spring day while I can, he thought. My suit can wait.

He reached down and plucked his ticket from the counter. As he turned, he caught the eye of the younger boy and winked. He left as quietly as he could, replacing the screams of an angry mother with the melodies of song birds.