Tales of a Broken 19 Read online

  Chapter 2

  The odds and ends home improvement store, just off 93rd street, was where I spent the majority of my time that summer, ringing up people’s crap and throwing it in bags. That’s what I did, as well as spending my whole day listening to old people who all told the same jokes, every single time they came in.

  “Oh, no bag, please. Save a plastic tree.” (Giggles!)

  “Oh lookie there! Exact change! Now how often does that happen!”

  More than you would think.  Let me tell you that right now. 

  “You workin’ hard today, young lady?”

  From the repeatedly bad jokers, to the uptight middle-aged women who questioned everything on their receipts, asking me to double check the price of every item, as they rifled through their expensive Coach purses (holding up entire lines), looking for coupons, I was beginning to understand serial killers like Ted Bundy a little more each day...I was starting to see how someone could just snap. I practically needed half a bottle of pills and three cups of coffee, not to mention a prayer that I would not go to jail that day, just to get through an eight hour shift.

  “You know what sweetheart?” I had a sixty-something year –old man ask me one day as I counted carriage bolts and washers out of as plastic sack to ring him for.

  “What’s that?” I asked reluctantly, as I had come to realize that, as a cashier, people often told you things could have gone without knowing. Anything and everything. Intimate details about their lives, their families, and their gruesome medical conditions. Sometimes they’d fill me in on what their children were doing, how their divorce was going, and what their psychologist had to say about it all. I figured out it was easier, depending on the customer, just pretend you were listening, and meanwhile go back to that place in your mind where evil couldn’t touch you. The world must be a pretty lonely place when the cashier at the hardware store is the only person you have left to confide in.

  “I think I’m gonna stop my age and wait for you.” He revealed a half-toothless smile and sweat beads clung the edges of his matted beard to the edges of his wrinkled face. He was a regular in the store, always carrying his contractor pencil over one ear and an old cigarette butt just over the other ear. Always smelling of cigarettes and coffee.

  I’d heard this one before, probably from that very same man at some point, so I just went along with it like usual.

  “Awesome, I'll be here,” I replied flatly, trying to pretend it wasn't real. It was another one of those traumatic moments in my life. When you realize how far you’ve fallen. From reading stories about Santa Clause to having him flirt with you, tragic slacks and all, in your line at the cash register.

  “You don’t believe me?” He asked me, laughing.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course, I do. I can hardly wait,” I said.

  He laughed again, “And she’s funny.” He turned to the man behind him in line, another regular, whose BS I was about to hear for the next five minutes of my life.

  “Think I’ll hang on to her.” With that he winked, paid, and was on his way.

  Just like always. Just like the rest. There, interacting in my life for maybe a minute and a half, and then gone. Maybe to return, maybe not. Didn’t matter. Maybe I’d remember them, maybe I would be cursed with the inability to forget them. Didn’t matter because karma was real and he'd probably be one of my angry customers at the return desk on Monday and he wouldn't want to marry me then.

  That same day, during the hot afternoon heat, when the store had died down a little, like was usual on a Sunday, I reached into my pocket for my cell phone to check the time and realized that it was glowing with a text message from my friend Jolene. Jolene had been my college roommate. We had gone to high school together, only having known of each other at the time. We’d met again at college during our freshman year, when we got placed in the same dorm room. Jolene was from a very typical American family of four. Two parents, two children, 1.5 dogs, and a house with a two car garage in a cookie-cutter neighborhood. Her parents had met in college, as they were both pursuing degrees in teaching. Probably your very typical, sappy, love story, and they were still married even as they sent their own children away to school. Their strong belief in a good education had put both of their children, James and Jolene, on the fast track to college, where it was assumed that afterwards, they would attend grad schools to pursue law degrees at high ranking institutions. Despite their perfectionist ways, their constant complaining about their “messy house” that was never messy, and the fact that, deep in their hearts, they all lived with the knowledge that the whole family should have been taking medication for OCD tendencies, the Martins were nice people. Jolene was simply Jolene. There was no other way to put it. She was short, right around five-two, black, and loud. She was the type that never knew a stranger and said exactly what was on her mind. I always joked that she was built without a filter. Many a time, we had passed some cute guy, on campus, and without waiting for him to get more than two feet away, she would announce to the world, “He was FINE!” I could always count on her words to be the unedited version. I always admired the fact that she was never afraid to say what she felt needed to be said. She was never afraid to be Jolene. She was also the first one to suck up to everybody's parents. It was the same way with teachers and professors, as long as I had been in school with her. She was both the first to win them over and the first to talk shit when they walked away.

  I remember one time after Christmas break, we were carrying some heavy laundry baskets and things back into the dorm that we had taken home over the holidays, and the guy in front of us let the door swing shut, without even looking back. Jolene dropped her basket, opened the door, and yelled across the lobby of our building, “HEY THANKS JACKASS! WE GOT IT!” All of a sudden, all eyes were on us as she flashed a smile at the now red-faced guy. That was the moment I thought to myself “Yep, we’ll be friends for life.”

  During our days in Stu Hall, she had made it her God-sent mission to teach me, what she called her “ho rules,” along with many other things she claimed she needed to school me in so that, I too, could survive in the cruel world out there. She claimed that girls had to learn to think like guys so they wouldn’t “get played.” Usually after some random encounter with a guy at the library, or a text, or just about anything she could relate back to the ho rules, she would declare out loud, “Did you see that, Laura? That was a perfect example of rule #....” And she was always serious about it. I didn’t care about the whole guy chasing insanity so much, but it was entertaining. She said it was like a game, and you just had to learn how to play it. And for what it was worth, she played it pretty well. It seemed like every time I turned around, she was talking to a different guy. She had football players on campus, smart guys from her lecture classes to assist her at the drop of a hat, and even guys back home so she wouldn't be lonely during Christmas and Summer breaks. She told me it was best to keep the most serious ones in different area codes, if at all possible. Once, a guy from our building had texted me while we were sitting in the student center saying that we should come over to the pizza place where he and some friends were, and Jolene had declared, “NO! Rule #5, Laura. We don’t travel. They come to us! Girl, I know I taught you better than that!”

  She was always quizzing my knowledge of her teachings. One evening, we were sitting on opposite sides of the dorm room working on projects for finals week, when she randomly asked me the question, “Do you want to know the most important concept for keeping a relationship alive today?”

  Since we hadn't been talking for at least an hour, I remember wondering if it was some kind of a trick question, or if it had something to do with her project for her Interpersonal Relationships course.

  Feeling puzzled, I decided to go ahead out on a limb and guess, “Trust?”

  She dropped her pen on the notebook she was writing in and exclaimed, “PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY!”

  Not feeling any clearer on what exactly we w
ere talking about, I took a pause from my own assignment and looked over to find out where the hell that had come from.

  She must have been able to see that I was lost and cut me off before I could even begin.

  “They're teaching these college kids some straight bullshit girl. Talkin' bout how trust is the basis of a relationship...Shiiiiiiiiittttt.” She matched her facial expressions and tone to the same level of politician for a moment, going on a twenty minute tangent about how no one is safe anymore if we don't teach people to love defensively. With answers like that, it was crazy to me how she was the one who wanted to get married and start a family immediately after college. I didn't have to say a word. I knew it was better if I didn't, not that I had an opinion one way or the other, because I was too zoned in trying to finish my assignment so I would have the weekend to just work. Jolene was good at keeping things lively, but I often had to remind myself to stay focused and not get sucked into her eccentric ramblings.

  After scoping the area for managers, I laid the phone down on the counter and read the message:

  “hey saddle tramp! whatcha up to?? (=”

  I pretended not to notice a woman wandering aimlessly around the register, reading aisle names aloud as I typed back:

  “nm, skank. u?”

  The woman began to make sighing and coughing type noises, obviously trying to catch my eye, probably hoping I’d ask her if she needed help finding something. Finally, annoyed at the obviously lost in so many ways customer, I set my phone back into my pocket and asked, “Can I help you with something ma’am?”

  She looked at me, squinting exaggeratedly up at my register light, which was clearly on, raised her eyebrows, and asked, “Are you open at that register?”

  It seemed like every time I went to work I got that question. No, I was waiting for a bus, I always wanted to tell customers. It got to the point where the word “open” ranked right up there on the list with “coupon”. After hearing those words all day long, every day, they began to produce a reaction in me; the same kind of reaction that my grandmother must have experienced when she found out Bush was reelected for a second term. That sudden need to take pills and drink large amounts of alcohol. After a long day of stupid questions just like that one, I finally let that little voice I’d been suppressing throughout my entire shift speak.

  I let out a long sigh, before saying, “Yes, ma'am. I've been excitedly waiting all day for you to come in so I could ring you up, right here.”

  She then went on a long rant about how the credit card companies were tracking her and how that would be the last time she gave her phone number out to a retail store. The whole speech lasted for at least fifteen minutes, but I guess I walked into that one.

  The rest of the day didn't get much better. I got moved to the return desk for the last two hours of my shift, which was inside, to cover for someone who was going home early for the day. I got to spend the end of my day getting berated by customers who didn't have receipts or the credit card they had paid with, or commons sense still present in their heads. I also had the joy of getting to explain to one particularly stingy regular, why we couldn't return a two pack of light-bulbs, when clearly only one bulb was still in the package.

  “That seems like poor customer satisfaction,” She had stated. “I only needed the one light bulb, and I just want a refund for the other.”

  I remember thinking how much money she had probably wasted driving back to the store, just so she could make a dollar. By the time five-thirty rolled around, I found myself in the employee breakroom, hanging up my vest, right before popping a few more pills, and making my run for the door with car keys in hand. I made my exit through the main set of automatic doors that led out to the parking lot As soon as they slid open, I felt the warm summer breeze upon my face. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It felt good to finally breathe. I remember mumbling to myself about how I hoped I would never get old and irony still haunts me to this day.