Chapter 1
The last customer left after the shop closed at 10 p.m. It was 72 minutes after the shop closed when the customer finally happily lifted his buttock from the chair and went to pay for the usage of the cyber games.
Papol unlocked the door for the customer to leave the premise. As usual, he would have to greet the customer:
‘Good night sir, come again tomorrow.’
The greeting was so routine that there voice almost as if was coming from the tape recorder or the CD pre-recorded for the announcement at the train station or the airport. He did not smile to the customer. The customer would not mind at all as this routine could have bored him for nights from the shop opened day 1 till now.
Stressing his hands to the back, Papol knew the collection for the day was not good. The rain kept pouring from dawn to dusk. Unless it was a necessity to go out, most people would prefer to stay at home. The television programmes though were boring sitcoms and the talk shows, however, it was better than taking the umbrella rushing through the roads and maybe went into the cyber café with half the body wet from the unkind drivers who sped through the pots of holes that were filled with dirty rain water.
Papol switched off the light, leaving a dim night light glaring in the dark with shadows of moths flying from wall to wall. It was unusual tonight ; he did not go home immediately after the customer left the shop.
Night was seemed to be a solace for Papol. The world had shrank from the widest possible to the lane and road from home to work place. It was unfair for him to shoulder all the blames as Papol always thought it was a share responsibilities.
The rain kept falling outside of the shop.
‘Should I go home ?’ Papol ask himself a question.
‘Why not stay in the shop or sleep in the shop?’ Papol suggested to himself.
The clock which had hung on the wall for almost two years beginning to strike midnight. Papol made himself a cup of 3 in 1 coffee. He just could not stop taking this brand of coffee, Kopi Janda, which meant widow coffee. At times, Papol wonder why the manufacturer had such a low taste using the name of widow. It was the choice of the producer, it targeted the community of its owe race.
If ever Papol had a chance to produce the instant coffee, he jokingly said to his friends, he would named Duda Tua, which meant Old Widower.
