ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

I know it’s technically April Fool’s Day, and therefore that it’s possible you won’t believe my tale, but I have a strange, bewildering, and totally gross story about something that happened with a customer at work earlier this week. This is one of the more horrifying things that we’ve beheld as a result of working at a payday loan store.

This is the sad and rather disturbing tale of a very old gentleman who is a customer of the payday loan store where my roommate and I work. We see plenty of depressing spectacles of misbegotten humanity every day, many of them on a biweekly basis, but this really takes the cake. Let me start at the beginning.

Mr. Moustafa (not his real name, obviously) has been a customer at our store, and most of the other payday loan stores in town as well, for several years now. He is a very elderly Egyptian man who was educated in England in his youth and moved to the United States about 30 years ago. Every month he comes in and renews his loan with his social security check. Several months ago in December or so we chatted with him on an afternoon when we weren’t too busy. He seemed to be a very pleasant old man, who liked clever puns and plays on words, and who was at least somewhat educated, and friendly. He struck us as very lonely and desperate for a few kind words from someone, so after that when we saw him we would try to be friendly and personable to make him less lonely. Unfortunately he appears to have fallen in love with us. We plan to spend the rest of our tenure at this company making sure we never have to see him again.

I think our real mistake was the get-well card. In early January of this year he phoned up the store to tell us he would be late picking up his loan, and said that it was because he had pneumonia. He also said, half-joking, that he expected to be dead at the end of the week, but only after he picked up his loan. My roommate and I decided it would be nice to send him a card, because we doubted anyone ever sent him much of anything anymore. On the inside we wrote something to the effect of, “Mr. Moustafa, we were saddened to hear of your recent infirmity. We both hope that you feel better soon. Since we are very fond of you we would be dismayed to hear of your death. Get well soon.”

It was shortly after this that he began phoning the store regularly and asking to talk to us. He would get one of us on the telephone and tell us for as long as we allowed him to that he thought we were the most charming, loving, caring, thoughtful, etc, etc, etc, people who had ever walked the face of the earth. “Clearly you are gifts from God!” he would say. “You show me such fondness! I think you are very loving creatures!” This was a little annoying and odd, we thought, but since it seemed pretty harmless we just humored him by responding, “Oh, you flatter us too much!” or “Well, we’re very glad to hear you say that. That is most kind of you.”

On Valentine’s Day he visited the store with a box of chocolates for us. They couldn’t fit through the slots under the bullet-proof glass, so my roommate and I went out into the lobby to accept his present. “I couldn’t imagine leaving my two flirts with nothing on St. Valentine’s feast day,” he explained. The chocolates were purchased from the Dollar General down the street, I noticed, and felt sad. Still, there wasn’t much I could do about him being poor and lonely aside from being nice to him. So we gave him a hug and sent him on his way.

After this he began telephoning more often, and I began to be slightly sorry that I’d ever been nice to him, since he was acting a little oddly when he would phone, referred to us more and more often as “the flirts”, and sometimes would make vaguely sexually connoted remarks. Sometimes he would tell slightly off-color jokes such as, “What did the sky say to the ground? ‘I really like your mountains, but not nearly as much as your valleys!’” and giggle. This was awkward, but still we found this behavior more annoying than creepy, plus he didn’t call that often, so we left things as they were. Also I should mention that he less than five feet tall, so we consider him the square root of threatening.

Then last week he phoned to ask if we’d received his letter.

“Letter?” I asked brightly even though I was cringing on the inside. “How thoughtful of you to send us a letter! But I’m afraid we haven’t checked the post office box in a few days now. I’m certain we’ll receive your letter when we check it. In fact it’s probably already arrived.” I then promptly forgot about this until this past Tuesday when our boss gave me the key to the PO box and asked me to run down to the post office to check it.

His letter was waiting there, addressed to “THE TWO QUEENS, C/O [OUR COMPANY]“. As a masterwork of horror I expect it will remain singularly unrivaled to the end of my days. I provide a transcript below, since most of the letter is totally incoherent without even taking the handwriting and various pastel inks into consideration, and it took me several mortified readings to get all of it. For those of you familiar with any variety of Biblical scholarship, we felt that Mr. Moustafa’s letter struck a chord with chapter six, verse six of Song of Solomon, in which a wooed woman’s reaction to her suitor translates literally as “my bowels rumbled” for him. In deference to Mr. Moustafa’s near-Eastern heritage, we would like to mention that we felt much the same upon reading his song of songs. Literally.

My Very Dears [my roommate] & [me].

Never did I even contemplate or comprehend that you show me so much fondness (put all in a Nutshell I call it LOVE! Is not this the Truth? What I cannot understand why and what I have done that makes you horney or fresh with me. I love it. [Editor's Note: Oh, God! I don't! I don't!!] If you allow me to take you out some day no bars (I don’t drink no do I Smoke) - It’s so strange that, the two of your & names so similar, plus Bundles and Bundles over & over unendless affections, are you sure your vision of me is greater, than I can grasp it. I just can’t believe myself that Two (2) beautiful people are fond of me. If I said you have such a beautiful figuers, would you hold that against me?

[my roommate] I am sure has the same fondness. I also saw hidden beauty [Editor's Note: After many painstaking readings, we determined that by "hidden beauty" he means "tits"] - I hope you don’t think I am a [D.O.M. Dirty old man] I wish I was younger and not as old as I am - all what I am today is the remains of the fun of life, I lost in my youth. As far as I am now - I am useless as a

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man and that pains me VERY much. When both of you hugged and Kissed me. I did not feel your hidden beauty. (I know [my roommate] has BIG ones too.) [Editor's Note: Screaming. I am SCREAMING IN HORROR AS I READ THIS]

I am still coughing - this the worst I have ever been.

I just can’t find words and to express my appreciation for your concern and I sure do Love you as far as the East is from the West, and that too applies to you [my roommate] too. I only wish I had the energy as I had in my youth - most of it was taken away from me.

Sometime I will tell you what my late mother did to me in my youth [Editor's Note: No, no. PLEASE NO.] -(that is if you would like to know), How she Hurt me in my growing up-that gave me a complex. Thanks to her - I am steryll plus so I am useless. Just no Good. Useless.

Could I ask, when is your Birthdays? I want you To Know, you are not only aquaintance but only But Very dear and very precious Friends. If you would like to call me at home. I’d love to see and hear your beautiful sexy voice. [Editor's Note: I cannot bear it that an old man I barely know is calling me "horney" and "sexy". My soul withers within my body.] Here is a sexy or not sexy question What goes in dry and comes out Wet?

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So as I close my letter to you. On St. Patricks Day - I would have been in the USA 31 years.

So My Dear ones - thank you so very much for all your Love.

I sincerely hope and pray that our affection for one another will grow maturely [Editor's Note: Maturely? OH MY GOD what does that mean?!] & God Bless you both

Oodles of kisses & Hugs, your faith and true friend [first name signed]

XXXXXXX

10 Worst Things About This Letter

1. The word “horney”. No, no! We are not horney for you, Mr. Moustafa. Please do not call anymore.
2. Claims not to drink or smoke, yet seems too incoherent and lecherous not to be drunk or high.
3. The use of “hidden beauty” to mean titties.
4. Refers to us as having “big ones”.
5. So very, very mortifying and sad and embarrassing. I know he is lonely, but mostly now I just never want to see or talk to him again.
6. Ambiguous references to his impotence and to long ago molestation? incest?
7. It would have been enough if he thought my voice was simply pretty, but no, he thinks my voice is sexy. Awful. Just awful. I am just about going to die of embarrassment the next time he calls.
8. His “sexy or not sexy question”. We think the answer is “a scuba diver”, but considering the rest of the letter, we are horrified all the same.
9. He is hoping and praying that our affection will grow maturely…into what? Sex? What is this?! We sent him a get well card for godsake, not a box of dildos!
10. We did not kiss him! Never did this happen! It was a friendly Valentine’s hug, the sort you would give your grandmother on her birthday! Your grandmother, with whom you are not sexually active!

So, anyway. That concludes (for now) the tale of Mr. Moustafa. All I can say is, thank God he’s a monthly customer and that I’m supposed to be transferred to another store by the end of the month. We have a plan, though. If we have to see him again, we are going to pretend that the letter must have been lost in the mail. We will at the same time show him the rings we’ll be wearing on our hands and announce that oh joy, our boyfriends have asked us to marry them, and oh, we’re so happy! This might sound cruel, but we figure it’s better to hurt his feelings by letting him realize he misinterpreted our friendly gestures than to actually come out and reject his overtures utterly, which would be our only other choice being that there is no way we’d consider even slightly humoring a single goddamn thing in that strange and grotesque courtship letter.

Our manager can’t stop laughing. She is never going to let us hear the end of this.