flash point

He sat in his car across the street. Not exactly his car. The bank's. Which is true for most people. He was in the parking lot at the corner, the Sunoco station with the convenience store. It's rare if not impossible to find a gas station that sells only fuel. This one had diverse offerings: candy, dip, cigs, flavored coffees, flavored creamers, beers, sodas, bottled waters (including those with artisanal ingredients of purity, longevity, superiority), chips, cookies, beef jerky, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, lotto and scratchies. He hadn't bought gasoline. He was about to text a reply to someone, anyone, when he looked to his left, across the street where the strip mall offered cigars, coffee, discount groceries, and ultra-cheap everyday stuff. DOLLAR TREE. Its green display light kept flashing the AR. It made him wonder if it was a personal coded message directed at him, just him, that he was the only one seeing this. He kept staring at the flashing sign. He did not stare at it before he recognized it was flashing on and off, like you see in film noir movies but it's typically a movie marquis, a hotel, or an all-night restaurant for the lonely and lost in Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" 1942 painting. And now he was hypnotized if that's the word. The blinking AR was just a distraction. Visual background noise. The flashing AR was the metronome for his trance. And his trance incessantly said DOLL TREE. That's what he saw. That's where his personal coded message was, where it had to be, in the words DOLL TREE. If it was said that money doesn't grow on trees, surely dolls didn't either. Not Barbie dolls or living, breathing beauty queens sometimes called dolls but not so much these days. What about TREE? Something to aspire to, to climb? Someone inordinately tall? Someone with great stature, fixity, and bearing? He shook his head, as if it were swatting flies. He shook his head, rousing himself from a reverie. He changed the mental channel. He went back to texting. But he forgot what he was texting, forgot to whom, and forgot why.