Free How to Get Into the Twin Palms by Karolina Waclawiak

tattooed on his neck and he was always strung out. He had a dog with him again. It had fur missing from his face and one eye was blue and the other was brown and it just sat there and glared at me like I did something to it. So this time I was smart. I brought dry Polish sausage and fed some to the beast while the man got my cigarettes for me.
    I watched people zoom around and around looking for parking spaces, make U-turns, rub their bumpers against the cars in front and behind theirs as they tried to parallel park. People were getting out, congregating in front of the Silent Movie Theater. They had well-manicured haircuts and pegged pants. They didn’t live around here. The windows in the neighborhood stayed dark and uninviting, only alive during the day.
     
    “Marlboro Lights, please.” I didn’t want anything fancy today. He grunted at me and leaned to get the pack. “Hard pack.”
    I tossed the sausage to the dog. He ate it up without question while I perused the magazines. The lights from the magazine stand were bright. Bug-killer bright. I was all alone with the dog. The man with the sparrows on his neck scratched at his arm like there was something under his skin. He was really getting in there, really looking where he was scratching. The dog took a seat next to me and waited for more sausage. It wasn’t happening, but the dog didn’t get it so he just kept waiting.
    “Are you going to pay for these?” The man was still scratching, breaking open the skin and letting the blood pool.
    “In a minute,” I said.
    “You’re going to crease the pages.”
    I stared down at the magazine, holding it so I didn’t give my still-pink hands any papercuts. “I’m being careful.”
    He looked at me, then at his dog at my leg. “Do you want a smoke?”

    “I’ll pay for them in a second.” I purposely ripped the front page as I pushed it back in the rack.
    I didn’t even put it back where it was supposed to go.
    “No, I mean, I’ll give you one of mine.”
    I walked over. He was opening a pack behind him. Newport Lights. I scowled.
    “What’s your problem?” he asked me.
    “Those have fiberglass in them.”
    “That’s a myth. ” He spent extra time saying myth . “I work at a cigarette stand. I should know what’s what,” he said.
    “You work at a magazine stand. It just happens to sell cigarettes.”
    He pulled back the cigarette he was offering me and looked at me like I smelled like shit. “No need to be a bitch.”
    I shook my head. It was either apologize or walk back to my apartment empty-handed. “I’m sorry. You definitely should know what you’re talking about.”
    “Thank you,” he said.
    He shoved the Newport Light toward me and lit. “I see you here sometimes.”
    I wasn’t listening to him. I was staring at people walking in and out of Canter’s. I was salivating thinking about their carrot cake. Their cheesecake with the strawberries on it. The strawberries always looked stiff, always safely enrobed in red gelatin. The bear claws, the rugelach, poppy seed cake, black-and-white cookies, apple turnovers, cherry turnovers, five kinds of cheesecake, latticed cream cakes, sharlotka . Like my grandmother makes. I wanted to have one of each.
    “How much are those cigarettes?”
    “Eight dollars,” he said.
    That’s a pound of carrot cake, I calculated.
    “I’ll come back for these.”
    I looked both ways and crossed Fairfax into the beaming spaceship of Canter’s. On the right were pickles in brine
and gravlox and layers of cream cheese in tins that looked like marshmallow whip. And pickled herring.
    To the left was what I wanted. The smell of yeast was overwhelming. The carrot cake came in loaves, white cream cheese frosting in tufts on top.
    “Whatever I can get of that for eight dollars,” I said.
    The man behind the counter with the heavy black mustache pulled it out of the case, cut it, weighed it, made a face, put it in a pink box, wrapped it with string, and gave me a