The Daily Trope

Proecthesis (pro-ek’-the-sis): When, in conclusion, a justifying reason is provided.

I went to the bank. I didn’t have any money but I enjoyed going there and seeing all the solvent people busy with their money. I was sort of practicing for when my ship came in. Now, only my shit came in. My apartment had bad plumbing. Things returned that should’ve gone down to the river to feed the fish. Let’s just say, I’m poor.

I had a job, so I had some money, but not enough to bank. I worked at Pinelli’s Dry Cleaners. Some days I’d make good tips. At my job pressing pants, I would rifle pants pockets and keep whatever I found. In a way it was a gold mine. One time I found an unopened bag of peanuts. Another time I found a lighter. Another time I found a twenty-dollar bill. I bought my wife a fake Rolex. She cried and had sex with me every night for a week. But, the truly unbelievable thing I found was a severed finger with a ring on it with a huge diamond mounted on it.

I couldn’t get the ring off the finger, so my wife boiled it and the ring slipped right off. I took it to the pawn shop. When I passed it over the counter, alarms went off and police flooded the shop. They asked the usual questions, but when I told them I found it in Sal Tanelli’s pants pocket on a severed finger, they all started cheering and jumping up and down, and yelling “whooo hoo!” The ring belonged to Sal’s grandmother. She was wearing it at a recent wedding. So, using their sharp reasoning skills, they deduced that, since her ring was on the finger, the finger was hers too!

Sal was a criminal’s criminal. He dressed the part. He talked the part. He walked the part. He was the whole damn thing. His main enterprise was making slugs—fake coins that would trick vending machines into delivering their goods He could trick the whole range of machines, from tampon dispensers to laundromats, and car washes too. Sal charged $5.00 for $20.00 worth of slugs.

Slugs are a dream come true for people suffering from inflation and the high cost of gasoline. Sal’s was a noble enterprise.

So, why were the cops so elated?

Sal had taken a six week break at Mar-a-Lago & left his customers in the dark. Since he was on vacation, he suspended slug production. They were elated that he might be found now that his grandmother’s finger was missing and he was probably looking for it. He would start making and selling slugs again, and they could resume their cut-rate vending scam and live fairly decent lives.

Sal’s 92 year old grandmother was increasingly erratic in her behavior as she faded into dementia. She cut off her finger while thinly slicing some veal with a straight razor. She was holding it perpendicular to her fingers. She picked up a 20 lb zucchini and yelled “Bona cannoli!” and slammed it down on the razor and cut off her pinky and ring finger. They wrapped a towel around grandma’s finger stubs. Sal’s “doctor,” Chicky Cerillo, stitched her up and she’s was as good as new, minus two fingers.

The cops were so grateful, I got to pawn the diamond. I got $160,000.00 for it. Sal has since gone into Bitcoins, although he still does slugs. He’s sort of like Robin Hood. He’s a real hero to all the people who struggle financially every day. Now they can eat. They can keep a roof over their head. They can wear clean clothes.

The finger got into Sal’s pocket when he went to “Stiletto” Mosconi’s butcher shop to have the ring taken off. He got distracted along the way and went Swan boating in the town park. He never got to the butcher’s and the finger remained in the pants pocket until I found it—a little smelly, with the diamond ring still on it. Sal had run the pinky down the garbage disposal, but was embarrassed by of losing his grandmother’s finger and ring. So, he bought her a replacement ring and two replacement fingers from a Canadian firm that sells “well preserved” severed body parts. The two fingers that Sal purchased were severed in a beaver trapping accident, frozen, and shipped t New York. Of course, Dr. Cerillo sewed them back onto grandma. They looked light-years better than her stubs.

My ship had come in. I went to the bank and bought a stack of CDs.