On your lunch break you’re eating an apple, sitting at a table with an uncomfortable amount of other people at it.
There’s a lower level manager, a girl sitting next to you, a bald man with a beard, and some other people.
The girl next to you is reading a magazine for women that talks about exercising, and has sexual quizzes, and advertisements, and other things.
“‘Right before his very thighs,’” you say, reading off the magazine. “‘How to find secret pleasure spots on him, pg. 43.’”
The girl opens her eyes wide and starts turning pages. “Ooh, should we read ‘The top five signs he’s an alpha male.’”
“Yeah, top five signs,” you say.
The lower level manager is eating food from the food area at the store.
It’s a pizza made small so as to be for one person.
A miniature pizza.
He picks up a piece of the miniature pizza and bites it.
Then he takes a napkin from the stack in front of him and wipes his fingers and goatee.
“Wow this is the first time I’ve bought a pizza here that actually had sauce on it,” he says, to no one. Then he addresses the entire table, and says, “Alright so, if you absolutely had to, would you be able to eat another human.”
The bald man with a beard is also eating a miniature pizza and there’s sauce on his moustache.
When he hears the question, he lowers his eyebrows and nods.
“Oh hell yeah I would,” he says. “Hell yeah. No question. Don’t be stupid. But it’s like, what part would you eat though. Like in what order. I think the ass probably has the most meat. The ass is just all meat, man.”
The lower level manager says, “The legs seem appealing to me for some reason, I don’t know. It’s weird.”
You straighten up in your seat, elbows on the table. “Albert Fish said ass meat was his favorite. He wrote letters to his friend about it.”
The girl reading the magazine says, “Ass meat”— still turning pages looking for an article.
The bald bearded guy says, “Well, are we talking about kids or what are we talking about.”
The girl reading the magazine says, “We’re talking about ass meat.”
Chavon is sitting at the end of the table.
She’s sharing a set of in-ear headphones with the guy next to her, and he’s got his head down bobbing to the music.
Chavon says, “Me, I’m straight eating fingers right away.”
Then she makes — what you decide to be — a “gobbling motion” with her hands and mouth, and the headphone falls out of her ear.
You laugh.
Chavon laughs.
She points at you and says, “Texas knows it. Look at’yo special ass. This motherfucker special.”
The lower level manager delicately bites a portion of his miniature pizza and repeats his napkin wiping routine.
He says, “Yeah I’d do like, the calf muscles first, I think. Get a good meal out of that first.”
You think about biting a calf muscle as hard as you can.
Getting on hands and knees and crawling out into the store, finding someone who’s looking at a product on the shelves, then biting their calf muscle as hard as you can, shaking your head a little to make it rip.
Stomach swollen with blood and muscle.
The girl next to you puts the magazine on the table.
“Here it is— top five signs. Are you ready. Or no, let’s take this quiz instead. It says, ‘Beach Quiz.’”
“Beach quiz beach quiz,” you say in an excited voice, slapping your thighs.
The other people at the table start talking about whether or not the show on the breakroom tv has vampires in it and the girl reads you the quiz.
You watch her face as she reads the quiz.
She says, “Ok, question one—” then looks somewhere else on the page, “Oh wait. Oh this article’s called ‘The naughtiest thing you’ve ever done.’ Should we read that instead.”
“What did the person do,” you say. “If it’s too naughty, don’t tell me.”
She scans the article, pushing her glasses back against her face.
“Oh god,” she says, “This is retarded. It says, ‘I stole my roommate’s man in college.’”
“My roommate’s man,” you say.
“Yeah,” she says. “It says, ‘I stole my roommate’s man, for a dormroom fling.’”
You say, “Wait, what happened — there was a dormroom fling you say.”
She reads from the magazine. “‘We cut class, but he still gets an A+ in my opinion.’”
“It’d be funny if someone confessed to a brutal hit and run accident, in vivid detail,” you say. “Like if that was the naughty thing the person did I mean.”
The bald bearded man says, “Hah, it’s like, ‘When I drove away, I could see him clutching a bloody crack on the top of his skull, crawling in the street.’”
The lower level manager is staring at the tv, holding a miniature piece of pizza up to his face.
He says, “‘Broken glass clung to his face and he crawled blindly in the street over his own blood.’”
No one says anything for a little bit.
“That’s not funny,” says the girl reading the magazine, turning to another page.
A skinny guy with razor scars all over his arms is typing something into his phone. “It’s funny, sweetie,” he says, snapping a baby carrot with his front teeth.
You hold out your apple to the girl with the magazine.
“Do you want some of this apple. It’s great.”
She takes the apple and bites it.
She hands it back, not looking up from the magazine.
You watch her wet mouth chew.
This is beautiful — you think. This is 100 %. This is freedom.
The way she’s bending the magazine, it looks to you like one of the articles on the front cover says, “College Hernia Blood!? Hwqja!”
Sounds like a good article — you think, feeling the impossibility of knowing where to look.
That’s a recurring feeling for you: Where should I be looking.
On the back cover of the magazine there’s an advertisement.
You read it out loud. “Max-out your volume, with Aloe and Avocado.”
The girl turns a page and says, “Max-out, bitch.”
Chavon says, “We live maxed-out.”
The guy sharing headphones with her rhymes: “Maxed-out/fact is, crack’s clout/and we smash clowns/stash cash-mounds in mattresses here in Uptown.”
Chavon says, “Nice.”
The lower level manager sets down a piece of his miniature pizza and says, “Hey did you staple the receipt to the magazine cover.”
The girl looks up from her magazine. “What.”
She flips her hair to the side.
Anger.
You feel in love, for however long a half-second is.
Knowing a half-second is long enough to be in love.
The manager wipes some grease off his goatee.
“You’re supposed to staple the receipt to the cover so we know you didn’t just take it,” he says. “Otherwise how do we know.”
The girl immediately gets loud. “What. I’m not going to ruin the magazine I just bought. I paid for it earlier. Check the fucking security footage if you need to. God.”
You hit the table with your fist and say, “Check the footage”—in a way meant to encourage animosity between them.
The bald bearded guy says, “Check the footage.”
“I’m just saying, that’s policy,” says the lower level manager. He wipes his fingers on a napkin. “You’re supposed to do that.”
You look at her and say, “You’re supposed to do that.”
“Ok fine, now I know,” she says, flipping her hair to the side and looking at the magazine again. “Fuck. I’m not going to steal a fucking magazine this stupid. God.”
The lower level manager looks at his miniature pizza, then you.
He says, “Hey, before I forget, can you certify the new stockroom trainee before you go home today.”