Seems like what you’re supposed to be doing.
No one says anything.
Hearts beat.
Blood does whatever it does.
Sour Cream says, “Shit,” to himself — typing in more numbers on the laser gun, beeping sounds. “Wait, he died here you mean? Like, in the store.”
The electronics employee looks up, his lips still folded inward. He raises his eyebrows and says, “What — no, somewhere else. Not in this store.”
Your ex girlfriend says, “Alright guys. I’m going to get some Kleenex then.”
You look at her and say, “Ok, go all the way down that side of the store, and they’ll be on your left, towards the corner.”
“Thanks,” she says.
“Yeah.”
She makes a very subtle motion forward with her face as if to kiss you and it’s almost undetectable but you see it and counter by moving backwards, keeping the same distance the whole time.
“You lose,” you say.
She looks at you like she’s telling herself something.
Then she walks away.
Sour Cream watches her. He says, “Man she’s fucking pretty, jo. You’re lucky. I bet her pussy smell good as hell.”
And you find yourself nodding, but also silently terrified you won’t be able to resist the urge to try swallowing your own tongue throughout work.
*
After punching in, you walk back to the stockroom.
You pass by the section of the store where there’s romance novels and magazines.
There’s one called “The Rebel.”
You stop and look at it.
On the front cover, there’s a guy wearing a tanktop and sunglasses.
He’s sitting on a ledge with his elbow on his knee.
The blurb at the bottom refers to the male character in the novel as ‘…scrumptious….’
Walking to the stockroom, you just want everything to be scrumptious from now on.
You don’t want to be brave, honorable, reliable, important, significant, likable, trustworthy, confident, or anything other than scrumptious.
*
In the stockroom, someone comes out of an aisle, rolling a garbage can in each hand.
“N’Hey man, hm, what’s up,” he says, monotone.
“Hey Theodore,” you say.
Theodore is the person who walks around the actual store area mopping things and cleaning things.
He pushes a large device that holds a lot of cleaning products and towels.
Theodore always has pink eye.
He’s short and on the back of his head there is a large growth.
It’s like a really big mole — flesh-colored and hairless.
The size of half a plum maybe.
You’ve wanted to bite it for so long.
Just once, to test the consistency.
Theodore.
He adds an “n” or “m” sound to a lot of words.
It makes everything he says hum.
“N’I got really sad last night, hm,” he says.
“What happened man.”
“N’I was watching my singing show’m, with my mom, hm. M’There was this freaking four year old girl, hm, and she lost. Yeah me and my mom, uhh, really liked her.”
He’s been telling you about this competitive singing show he watches every week with his mom.
“M’It was just so bad because, m’because everyone got sad for the four year old, and she could sing,” he says. “She had talent up the wazoo, hmm.”
You imagine Theodore playing an instrument called the “wazoo.”
The instrument is like, a box with a long bagpipe-like mouthpiece and a crank you turn.
“M’She could sing so good, and only four freakin years old, hm,” Theodore says, throwing his hand up into the air a little. “But she still lost. And my mom n’was sad too when we were watching it, hm. So bad.”
“I mean, she probably still makes money off singing though,” you say. “Like people will still give her money to sing. And the show was probably a nice experience for her.”
Theodore makes the “ch” sound, stares for a little bit.
He says, “N’I found a whole boatload of flies in a lightbulb by the trash compactor today. N’It was filled with flies, hm.”
“Were there flies up the wazoo.”
He rolls his eyes, sighing dramatically and making the “ch” sound.
He says, “N’Yeah up the wazoo. Those hundred watt bulbs, hm, can hold n’a lot of flies, boy. Jeez, hm.”
“Yeah.”
“Ok. M’See you later man,” he says.
“Bye, Theodore.”
He waves goodbye in a way that looks more like he’s trying to shake something off his hand that’s biting him.
He rolls the garbage cans away.
*
Later on you decide to request a day off.
Not for any reason other than being able to know that that day will be off, no matter what.
To request a day off, you have to use the computer in the breakroom.
It’s a major move because it entails walking past the roomful of people to silently declare a need to use the computer.
It’s like, who the fuck are you to use the computer.
Are you like, some important person who just needs to use the computer that other people might need to use.
What if a woman is waiting to use the computer to request a day off to go to the doctor and find out if her son has terminal cancer.
What if someone is waiting to request a day off to propose marriage.
What if someone is waiting to use the computer to request a day off so he or she can bring a gun dowtown and shoot people.
Things like that.
You pull the chair closer, sitting down at the computer.
The chair makes a loud sound sliding across the tile.
It embarrasses you.
Someone has left an email account open on the computer.
You pick a random email address from their inbox and email this message: “Alright — the gun is in locker F8 at the gym. You know what to do. No way out now.”
You close out the email account and fill out the day off request form.
The form seems very difficult.
No focus, it melts together into a grid, or some horrible graph.
A grid-graph.
A horrible looking grid-graph.
You try to read.
Afraid the whole time.
Something could easily go wrong.
A spelling error.
A neglected box.
A computer virus.
A bomb.
A grid-graph.
A stroke.
A seizure.
Organ failure.
You imagine yourself at an expensive restaurant, saying, “One of each please” to an elegantly dressed waiter after the waiter recites the above list.
The day off form is right in front of your face.
You try to focus.
What if you don’t fill out the form correctly.
You’d think you had, and then not come to work, then get fired, then not have money, then get discouraged and die.
It’d be the exact same thing as right now except you’d have a better reason to get discouraged and die.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
You fill out the form slowly.
The first couple parts are easy.
Sometimes to refocus, you take a very deep breath and hold it in then blow it out.
Behind you, someone in the breakroom helloes another person.
Which begins a conversation.
One says, “Ey girl, is they a such thing as a baby rock. Lawanda said they was but she always lying.”
The other says, “I’on’t know. Fuck I know about rocks.”
“Shee-yid,” you say.
People laugh.
Staring at the computer screen, you repeatedly think—“I’on’t know.”
Feeling distracted.
You see yourself staggering into a hospital emergency room and then collapsing into a nurse’s arms — and when he or she says, “What happened, sir” you weakly whisper back, “I’ve, been, distracted” and grip the nurse’s shirt with a bloody hand.