Such end-of-the-shift customers were common on Saturdays, when people always seemed surprised by the 3 P.M. closing. The rest of the week, Ronnie’s shift ended without complaint, but Saturdays always saw some last-minute person, usually a woman, harried and disorganized.
For all that, and despite the crummy pay and early morning hours, Ronnie liked the Bagel Barn. On weekdays, once the morning rush ended, it was a gentle place that ran to solitary, undemanding folks who seemed to have a lot of time to sit and stare out the window while their coffee cooled. She worked the cash register, which paid less than the prep jobs, but she preferred it. She didn’t like the idea of touching other people’s food, because she didn’t want anyone handling hers. Sometimes, glancing over her shoulder, she would see Clarice place her broad hands on the back of the serrated bread knife and press it down through a fully loaded bagel. The tomatoes, so juicy this time of year, would spurt out the sides, leaving smears of red and small seeds on the cutting board. The sight made Ronnie queasy. Not the juice so much as Clarice’s black-and-white hands bearing down on the bagel, squeezing the life out of it. When Ronnie got hungry, she ate one of the sweet bagels, whole, like a cookie.
The best thing, in Ronnie’s opinion, was the limited menu. The Bagel Barn knew it was a place that sold bagels, and didn’t try to be anything else. After 11 A.M., you could get sandwiches-or sand-wishes, as Clarice called them in her lisp, which came and went depending on the fit of her dentures-but they came on a bagel. You could get an open-faced pizza, even, with tomato sauce and cheese, but you still had to have it on a bagel.
Yet there were always a few people who expected to be the exceptions, who asked for things they couldn’t have. Can I get that on whole wheat? No. Do you have French bread? No. Do you have focaccia? Ronnie didn’t even know what that was. Do you have lattes? No, no, no, she would say politely, trying not to show how much she enjoyed saying no. She did not understand where people got off, thinking they could have stuff that wasn’t on the menu. The menu was a kind of law, she thought, and people should obey it. Like a speed limit, or cleaning up after your dog. If they had allergies, they could go somewhere else. The menu should be-what was the word? The one printed on those fake checks that came in the mail, showing her parents what it would be like if they won a million dollars in a sweepstakes. Nonnegotiable, that was it. “Am I asking you?” Ronnie’s father had bellowed when his children expressed a preference for something other than the meal that sat in front of them. “Am I asking you?”
Ronnie could never yell at a customer, of course. The owners, who dropped in unexpectedly, would have fired her on the spot if they heard her being rude or disrespectful. But she had an ally in Clarice, who also disliked people who expected special treatment. Especially white people, suburban mothers like this one, who stopped by on their way to somewhere, forever in a hurry, always making special requests. Clarice hated white people, period.
Which was funny, because Clarice was more white than black. She was a black woman whose color had ebbed away, leaving splotches of brown and dark brown on her ghostly face and neck. Apparently she had whatever disease Michael Jackson was always pretending to have. Clarice hated Michael Jackson, too. She had confessed to Ronnie that she disliked white people in general, whereas she hated black people on an individual basis. She said everyone was this way, so it wasn’t really prejudice. You hated the people who were different from you as a group, but you hated people like you one by one.
“But I’m talking only on the other side of the counter,” she told Ronnie. “And mainly the women. The men are okay, at least around here. I used to work at the North Side Bagel Barn, near the big collitches, and everybody up there was bad. Saturdays were hell.”
Saturdays were slow at this Bagel Barn. On weekends, Ronnie had figured out, people could drive a little out of their way, go to fancier places with more choices. But that was good, too, because Clarice let her and O’lene, the kitchen prep girl, start close-up early so they could scoot as soon as the door was locked. She also let them take bags of bagels, although the Fuller family wasn’t much on bagels. Still, Ronnie liked bringing home that plastic bag of bagels for the freezer. It made her feel like her father, carting in cartons of sodas at week’s end, incomplete six-packs and forgotten-about flavors, like Mr. PiBB.
Ronnie had been assembling that day’s bag of bagels when the tapper had banged through the front door, pushing through with such authority that the bell seemed to ring a few more notes than usual. The woman wore workout clothes, almost always a bad sign, and she had her keys in her fist, another bad sign. Ronnie, stooped down behind the cases in order to make her selections, looked back at Clarice, who nodded. This was definitely someone who would want special treatment, who would berate them for being out of some bagels, even if it was fifteen minutes to closing. It had been agonizing, getting her to choose two dozen, but Ronnie finally had them bagged when the tapper straightened up as if startled by her own thoughts.
“I won’t have time to go to the grocery store,” the woman said. “So I might as well get some cream cheese here.”
“The spreads are in the refrigerator case on the far wall,” Ronnie said, carrying the two bags to the cash register. “Self-serve.”
The woman looked confused and glanced around, as if the refrigerator case were hard to find. Once she located it, she ran to it as if every moment counted. She pushed the prepacks around, disrupting the careful order that Ronnie had just established, knocking one or two to the floor and putting them back in the wrong places.
“But I need that-oh, the whatchamacallit, the special one.”
“Salmon spread?” Ronnie guessed.
“No, no, that’s not it.”
“Sun-dried tomato?”
“No,” the woman said, growing impatient, as if Ronnie should be able to name what she wanted, even if she herself couldn’t.
“Artichoke-parmesan?”
“Yes, that’s it.” She came back to the counter, carrying a plain and a veggie-lite. “Do you have any?”
“I can scoop some out for you,” Clarice said, using the sweet-as-pie voice that Ronnie knew she reserved for people she especially loathed. “Why don’t you make sure there’s nothing else you need while I do that?”
Clarice weighed and priced the artichoke-parmesan spread. The woman resumed tapping, deciding that she wanted yet another dozen. When Ronnie had peered at her through the glass, she had looked to be about thirty, in her leggings and clingy top. Close up, it was a different story. Her face, while surprisingly smooth, was tired and droopy. Her gaunt neck was beaded with lines. And with her head bent forward, Ronnie could see the gray roots in the chocolate-brown hair. She had to be forty-five, maybe even fifty.
Her order finally assembled, the woman began searching through her bag, looking for her billfold. It seemed to take forever for her to find it in the bulging canvas tote she carried, and when she did, she had no cash.