Griping About the Priest (A NYC Short Story)

Junk shop owner: No coffee?
Lady #1: We’ll have coffee tomorrow. Thursday.
Junk shop owner: Coffee at Starbucks is $5. Special coffee. Why don’t you go to your house, then your house, and your house?
Lady #2: Why don’t we come here?
Junk shop owner: You pick a date. I’ll sell you 4 chairs, $5.
Lady #2: What, you sit on them, they break?
Junk shop owner: We don’t sell chairs that break. How many people were in church? 10? I hear he’s gonna start counting how many people are going. What are they gonna do, close the church? Doesn’t anybody have a hook in the Father, know what’s going on?
Lady #1: Nobody goes anymore.
Junk shop owner: He has no activities for the people in the neighborhood! No card parties, no bingo…$150 per kid to make communion! Where the hell do you come off making a price like that?
Lady #2: I never heard of that.
Junk shop owner: Well, you heard it now.

–Carroll Gardens