A Collection of Strange Circumstances

Waiting for the Twinkie Man

Between twenty-five and thirty or so Thomas Quincy Redmond, or Tommy Q, as his friends called him, was waiting for a man at the subway. This nameless underground train station was like any other: disgusting, bustling with working men and women, and their seediest counterparts, which sat against the dirty brick walls that were no longer white and wandered aimlessly, and/or drunkenly through the labyrinth that to any sober person would have seemed like a straight hallway with only two doors at either end.

Tommy Q was alone, as with the majority of Twinkie junkies, waiting for the man to deliver the goods. He'd been fresh out of Twinkies for four days straight, and he was getting desperate. This was the year of the Twinkie scam, when Hostess supposedly went bankrupt in 2012 and caused a national frenzy and scramble to nab every Twinkie off the shelf. Had it not been for the Twinkie shortage, Tommy Q would never have been here, waiting.

He didn't look like the sweet-toothed Twinkie devourer as one might expect. In reality, he looked disheveled, but not quite thin enough to look malnourished. Tommy Q was no pushover, as beaten down in life as one can be to resort to waiting in a subway station going on half an hour now for overpriced box of creme filled sweets. In his hoodie, scuffed jeans, and unshaved face, he didn't look like a man on the way to work, but he wasn't tipsy or grizzled as the bums giving him dark looks that made most of the working people squirm. He was somewhere between the two, and he didn't belong in this part of town or this station at such an hour. His eyes drooping, and his hands twitching and restless to get a grip on that fresh box of twinkies in exchange for the hefty sum in his right front pocket.

He stood by gate twelve as people boarded the blue line, beginning to think he missed him. No, he reminded himself, the man is always late, I'm always early. It might be fifteen minutes, it might be two hours. He'll come.

Tommy Q was sick of standing around, but there was nothing he could do if he wanted his Twinkies, and that was exactly why he hated waiting for the man.

Three minutes and a dark haired man who noticed him came up to Tommy Q, who hadn't done anything but think and stare while his hands twitched for want of Twinkies.

"Hey, what are you doing uptown, standing around like that? Are you a narc?"

"The opposite. I'm waiting for my man to bring a box of Twinkies."

The man eyed him suspiciously with his dark brown eyes. "I wouldn't advertise that around if you've got as much money as a fat box costs these days."

"Sorry, sir, I'm only waiting and then I'll be gone."

"What's your kick with Twinkies?"

Tommy Q adjusted his weight more comfortably against the concrete and steel boned pillar with a thick blue band running around it. "One bite of that delicious golden loaf and the sugar blows my mind, just because."

The man talking to Tommy Q stepped out of his personal space and tipped back his head. "Yea, you be careful. Nothing good comes from making deals with sweets in a dirty subway." He put a hand to his chest. "But as for myself, I go for CupCakes."

"Sometimes my girlfriend likes to have a bite..." Tommy began, but the man was walking away. "...But she doesn't like it as much as me--oh, he's gone."

For ten minutes, Tommy Q put his jittery hands in his pockets and didn't move much besides.

Yes, he was still waiting for that man.

Certain women came by that talked rather flirtatiously to Tommy Q, but they left after one minute each because they were off to work, and Tommy was no fun to talk to, had a girlfriend, and didn't need any company because he was still waiting for the man.

A homeless man came by, styrofoam cup and hat pulled low, talking earnestly about his situation, but after Tommy Q dropped fifty-six cents, a minute went by and the homeless man left, because Tommy was no fun talking to, and didn't look like he had more money to give, but that was alright because he didn't need company and was still waiting for someone and knew he would come.

He could have been standing there an hour and a half by now, but he made no indication that he knew exactly how much, and his patience remained unbroken. This was when a particularly heated situation arose down the subway tunnel within Tommy Q's field of vision. In essence, one man wanted money from another, but it would not be given, because his last paycheck was blown at a seedy bar in a seedy sector of the seedy city. Tommy Q did not perceive this, though if he did, he might have donated some of his Twinkie money to the angry man himself to settle the dispute, and though he could not make out what either was shouting, he did notice the vulgar use of words and the flailing of angry hands before the gun was drawn.

For reasons Tommy knows, he didn't think a gun should ever be drawn in a subway station where CupCake lovers, friendly working women, and pleasant mannered homeless men came through so often to stop and talk with him in so honest and kind a manner before their business inevitably pulled them elsewhere.

Such Tommy was thinking as he tapped the man on the shoulder, the one with the gun, and, could it have been another day, that man might have shot Tommy, but it was such that someone politely tapping him in the midst of his rage as if the gun were a mere toy stunned him so that Tommy Q had the chance to say, "On behalf of the station, we would appreciate it you put that away and calmly went on your way."

The shock had passed, and the man's wrist jerked up quickly, but Tommy was fast and deflected the weapon over his head as the gun went off and screams echoed across the dirty brick walls from working and seedy people as they ducked in tandem. The armed man shoved Tommy down and had thrust his fists into his rival, but Tommy got up, and as the gun was preparing to blow a hole in the chest of his debtee, Tommy Q intervened and wrestled the gun free as police came flooding into the station.

It was alright for the victim who only suffered a bloody nose, and the police quickly made heads from tails as they booked his aggressor. Tommy Q was asked and answered many questions, his hands twitching all the while for want of Twinkies. During the interview, his man finally arrived in his notorious straw hat, (which was his favorite, for reasons unknown) but when he saw the law personnel, he turned on his heel back the way he came, because selling Twinkies for outlandish prices in a dirty subway was looked down on nonetheless. Tommy Q was disappointed, and his jittery hands would not relax, but the police didn't talk long because though they wanted to know the cause of the violent altercation, Tommy didn't know the answer, and he was no fun to talk to, besides.

At the end of the day, Tommy Q got his name in the paper under Good Samaritan Stops Shooter in Subway with details of his heroic actions and kind words of the press asking, What horror, what tragedy would have occurred if Tommy hadn't been there? (not knowing he had only come on account of his sweet tooth and Twinkie obsession, which only he, his girlfriend, and his man knew) but his name was never mentioned, and therefore those three were the only ones in the world to ever know the identity of that hero. The Hostess company, meanwhile, was bought out of bankruptcy and its production of sugary sweets thus restored to its former glory, so that Tommy Q no longer waited in a dirty subway for any man and bought the boxes by the cart load, occasionally a few going to his girlfriend, though truthfully, she preferred HoHo's.

Tommy didn't give himself much credit to the prevention of one man's death by gunshot wound in the subway station, but his girlfriend thought if he should ever die from an overpowering of Twinkie creme, she would make sure to have Good Samaritan engraved beneath his name on his tombstone with the beautiful etching of a Twinkie right beside it.

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Eventually, Thomas Quincy Redmond did die, and his girlfriend, who eventually was his wife, couldn't afford to put Good Samaritan on his grave, but she did splurge for the etching of a Twinkie cut into two picture-perfect halves with creme oozing out, although no one that ever ventures past his grave and sees it was any idea what it is or what it means, though few either have speculated he was a baker or thought the Twinkie was a fried mozzarella stick.

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