The Gala Event Of The Season [FICTOID]

The food came from the finest restaurants in town.

The planners dumpster dove for days before the big event to find the best discarded delectables and half-eaten meals.

Dozens of nearly empty bottles of wine had their dregs poured together to make a few full bottles.  Coffee grounds were carefully dried for re-use, spoiled and wilted food carefully trimmed to leave only the edible parts.

The architecture of the overpass gave the planners enough space in the cool area under the highway abutment to store their delicacies until the event.

They gathered roses and lilacs and lilies from the local park and cemetery to mask the heavy gasoline and sewage smell.  They were careful to blot out all graffiti that might make the authorities suspicious.

When they were done, no one could imagine what they accomplished without money.

Well, no one other than the homeless coming to the event.

Every year, the homeless staged a big gala event to celebrate being alive in defiance of society’s attempts to marginalize them out of existence.

This year Two-Toe Flo was in charge, and she felt obliged tp make it the best gala ever.

It’s not like old times, she thought.  Not like three or four years ago when it was just our original crew.

Now there are too many nouveau pauvre, too many families with children living on the streets.

Still, it’s not my fault they’re here, but damned if I’m not going to show them the best time I can!

Two-Toe Flo recruited musicians from the ranks of homeless street buskers, she drafted cater waiters from fast food franchises where the workers couldn’t afford rent off their minimum wage jobs.

Everyone invited had a good time -- well, everyone except for a few formerly rich people who couldn’t understand why poverty happened to them.

Their switch in status left them agitated, confused.  

The gala lasted until midnight when the police came through with their traditional goon squad.

The older, more sympathetic officers made sure to turn their lights and sirens on several blocks away to give the homeless plenty of time to scatter before they began tearing down the improvised tables and cook stands the homeless set up.

One of the nouveau pauvre approached the police, perhaps trying to reason with them, bargain with them, get them to understand that he really wasn’t like the rest of them but was a citizen of substance, an important person --

The older cops let the younger cops burn off their testosterone by truncheoning the nouveau pauvre protestor into the pavement.

Not my problem, thought Two-Toe Flo with a yawn from her vantage point half a block away.  Get with the program, baby.  Be here now.

And with that she trundled off to find a dry spot where she could sleep the sleep of the just.

© Buzz Dixon