Veronica says, “We had some real good times.”
I don’t say anything. I go over what I need to say to customers:
May I help you?
Greetings, welcome to Elite Aesthetics, where trends are born!
Hey, how’s it going?
Looking for something in particular?
Every single query should be met with a genuine grin.
I practice that genuineness like I always do; I visualize the transfer, how I need to be someone else to be genuine. At work I am Zachary the employee, on the street I am Zachary the person on a street, at the apartment I am Zachary. On the computer I am Meurks. I see the relationship clearly, and to be Zachary the employee, I am basically what I know to be, and that’s enough to have worked here successfully for two years.
Two years is a long time.
Two years isn’t that long for a lifetime of work.
There’s more to work, and there will likely be no change. Veronica’s return is a change that is unexpected.
Someone I knew that was fired from her job, someone that I have a past with, has miraculously returned, got her job back, and I’m all knotted stomach and dry mouth, more than usual anyway.
I don’t look for an understanding, but I am given one. I am given over fifteen of them. But she’s still talking and I am still having a hard time listening.
Zachary the employee cannot function well if he has to listen about everything he’s done.
She knows me more than I seem to know myself.
“Zachary, do you remember that one time we got lost in the bad part of town looking for authentic Japanese sushi but we didn’t even know what that meant? Do you remember?”
“I don’t care.”
Two more likes.
“Lay off the act. You do care.”
Someone commented, an understanding.
She keeps talking about the past like it wasn’t ruined at a later date; she thinks we can just pick back up where we left off.
I don’t look at her, I look straight ahead, imagining where the customer will stand. I go over the possibilities once more in my head.
I feel my heart beat faster when I think about the likely average, the amount of customers Zachary the employee will serve over the next eight hours. The number varies but on a Monday it can be:
40.
60.
80.
But not 100. All numbers take on a density that makes me dizzy.
Ever thought about how much of a person is judged in the first encounter, the first ten seconds, maybe twenty seconds? How much of a person is remembered from first encounters even after they become an active part of your lives. How much of this requires our best performance? How much of what we do is an act, and who is really genuine anyway?
I don’t delete that one even though I should.
It isn’t something that can be monitored, not with the few minutes I have that remain.
“You’re so strange,” says Veronica.
I hear that.
I say what I said before.
I don’t care.
“You’ve always cared before — you just don’t like showing any feeling. But you and I are the same. I just know you better.”
I look at her and she looks at me.
The shift begins when the first customer walks in.
The shift ends and with it everything that had happened during those hours seemed to be marked in a logbook, a record, and closed, set aside. I had already removed myself from the store. I had already begun my commute home.
Veronica’s voice over the car parking lot in a shout:
“Call me when you get home!”
It makes me go over whether or not I remembered to take my phone charger with me. I feel around in my pocket. My index finger taps one of the metal prongs. I look down at my phone.
I have gotten used to walking in a straight line.
I no longer need to look when I walk.
A lot of the time my effort is placed on trying not to think about the occurrences. Those thoughts, always seek more thoughts. And it goes nowhere. Thinking such thoughts just makes it so you can’t do anything but think and think some more. Can’t do anything but think, and that’s not a good way to spend an hour or afternoon.
It’s not a good way to spend the time I have left before work in the morning. This is routine.
I stop at the bodega but I only walk in if I need something.
I don’t need anything.
I make a second stop — Hard Times Café.
Like the fridge at work, the booth in the far corner of the café is where I walk, and it is where I sit. And it is where the café is emptiest, all 37 customers congregating in booths closer to the bar or the bar itself.
I set my phone down in front of me.
Meurks must catch up.
Someone sets a beer in front of me.
They know what I like and that I don’t talk to them.
If I am paying for the beer, for the food, for the time spent at this booth, much like when I use a taxicab, I get to choose the configuration.
I get to set how we socialize, or not.
As frequent customer, I know Hard Times and Hard Times knows me.
We occupy the hour and that is all that is needed.
The bar on Mondays feels so much like the bars on Sundays; there’s this sense that people are trying to buy back some of the hours they lost. They are looking for a second wind. They want to find something new, a change; or some look for everything that used to be. They look for the same.
They look to enjoy something for even one moment before it resets and starts again. And I guess the feeling I’m trying to type out here, the seemingly obvious of any post-workday bar setting, or social setting, is that everyone seeks some way to relax, some way to hush the worries, the stress, the anguish that proliferates rampantly around the work week, making the weekend that much more a pressure to do something opportune, something to make up for all that was sacrificed to make a living.
Social creatures are people sipping lagers.
Today I can type well using the phone.
Some days, I have noticed, are more troublesome.
I can feel the effects of the alcohol after my second beer.
I have 2.5 beers left before I will leave.
Mondays are beer days. Tuesdays are sober days. Wednesdays are liquor days. Thursdays are caffeine days. Fridays are days without Hard Times, where I make a trip around the next corner and see glimpses of the end of the week.
Expecting my third beer, I find something new.
I wasn’t expecting this.
A man sits down across from me. I don’t look up from the phone.
I clear my throat but I don’t speak.
He doesn’t say anything until I glance up at him. He nods, that’s a grin I think. Is it genuine?
Without looking I type but delete what comes to mind but doesn’t register because now we are both looking at each other and if I look away that might imply that I’m lesser, that I am not the one that occupies this booth—personal space is something to be valued; why would a person sit where you don’t want them to sit? Why do I feel this way? I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s in my right to say, without any hesitation, “Excuse me, but I was here first.” From work, use what Zachary the employee said 14 times: “Excuse me, may I help you?” to every loiterer, everyone that really wasn’t a customer and I should be able to say that but I don’t say that … I don’t say that because this has never happened before. When you fail to manage the social situation, what do you do? Starting to get worried because he isn’t saying anything and—delete.