pastiche

To say nothing of its placid lanes, devout populace, and proximity to public transportation, the private sector of the quarter of P--- was wholly devoted to its children. Sometime between the earthquakes and volcanic eruptions endemic to the neighborhood, two separate vendors peddling mobile children's attractions chose to pedal their businesses up and down its moderately shaded streets. None of the residents could pin down the why or the when of the phenomenon and, as a general rule, inquiries of any sort were regarded with the same air of the heaping helpings of rice chips that the locality's other capitalists, the food stall tenders, piled onto plates of lotek or soto every lunch hour.

The first, a mustachioed man with a near perfect half circle void rotted between his two upper front teeth, spent his days steering, from underneath a greasy baseball cap, a mobile version of the sinusoidal ridable animal attraction such as one might see in a shopping mall arcade. His contraption had two sets of pedals, one that drove the whole mechanism and another set that could be engaged to set its mighty team alee. These pedals also provided the power for a small speaker that played a small catalog of 'children's favorites,' musical accompaniment that during the height of the day's heat often cracked and hiccuped for want of power as the legs of it enterprising operator struggled to keep up with its greedy demands. By many impartial accounts, this was more of an attraction for adults than children. The casual passerby, non-indigenous to P---, might note the concerned and in some cases terrified look of the treated tots, but the music always clutched to a halt, like a phonograph going quite reluctantly over a cliff, money was exchanged and all parties moved on their way.

The second, a mustachioed man with a voracious appetite for dark clove cigarettes, had somehow come into possession of a pastel steel half-cart with benches, such as one might be in during the visit to the amusement park when first realizing dirt's capacity to transcend the visible light spectrum. The operator sat at the front of the cart on a pedaled contraption that was retrofitted to resemble a locomotive. The whole mechanism had been rechristened 'Fantasi Train' and its main attraction was the deluxe car alarm wired to its roof. The 'train' would creep through the streets (owing to the immense weight attached to the pedals) blaring a loop of the car alarm's greatest hits at 83 decibels (a short debate had erupted when the local Muslim Homeowner's Association (PIsCO) had claimed the decibel scale in the name of the holy and this value was a compromise, whereas the mosque was allowed to continue operations at the round number of 85) and make a round of the neighborhood before depositing its cargo of concerned looking youngsters back at their homes.

It was a truly lovely little place to live and an even better place to bring up children. What no one could ever explain was the near spontaneous appearance as well as equally mysterious withdrawal of the tallest child anyone had ever seen--actually, owing to the bright sun, no one ever got an honest look at him--standing in the lane asking quietly to ride the 'fantasi train.' Most people are sure he did not exist, but a few contend that his inability to roll his 'r's was unmistakable, irrefutable evidence to some sort of durability.