A little Friday fiction...
“No Ted, I will not go bowling with you after work.” I repeated this sentence to myself over and over in front of the lady's room mirror, trying to make it sound firm and definitive. I’ve come to dread Friday evenings, as they always involve the same horrifying scenario. My creepy coworker Ted sidles up to me in Dolls, and attempts to ask me out. He always uses the same line, “Hey Cookie, want to go out bowling with me after close? Afterwards we can go back to my place and, well, we’ll see where the night takes us.” It mystifies me that this same tired encounter has repeated itself for the past eight Fridays. Even on days that I hadn’t seen Ted at all, from the beginning of my shift until the end, he appeared at five to nine as I straightened boxes. Not many people buy dolls late at night, so I was usually free to start my closing stuff early. He always seemed to find me, though.
Finished washing my hands and gearing myself up for what was to be the ninth time I would turn Ted down, I emerged from the employee washroom and headed over to aisle two, the pink aisle, Dolls. There was no sign of Ted, but I was confident that as soon as I started straightening the boxes, as soon as I successfully tuned out the muzak blaring quietly out of the ceiling and was able to sink into the unfocused stupor that was the best for straightening, he would materialize and ask me to go bowling. I had been straightening for a full ten minutes before I realized that it was five after nine, and Ted was late. Maybe he’s sick, I thought, and allowed myself to blur back into straightening.
Some people might call it zen, the way I am able to simply think about nothing while my hands front and straighten all the boxes in Dolls. Unfortunately, I know that what it actually is, is the slow deterioration of my brain, one closing shift at a time. I’m 20 years old. I graduated high school but chose to pursue a relationship rather than go to college, which in retrospect turned out to be a mistake of catastrophic proportions. The hardest part of my new Friday night closing ritual is that I’m increasingly faced with the realization that one of these nights, I’m going to agree to Ted and his bowling. Maybe I’ll be able to resist the “Afterwards we can go back to my place,” business, but sooner or later my defenses will crumble on that one too. That’s the problem with me, with all of us.
I heard the vacuum going in the row next to Dolls. Action figures? Games? I can never remember, as these aisles don’t concern me. Everyone hates vacuuming, and before Lil started working we all used to take turns at it. The reason everyone hates it so much is that the cord is only about fifteen feet long which, when you’re trying to vacuum a toy store with six (seven?) aisles, is woefully inadequate. The most you can reach is maybe two thirds of an aisle before you have to unplug the vac and look for a closer outlet. I have no idea where this vacuum came from, or why the cord is so short. It’s not my job to think about those types of things. The quick, cheap solution would be an extension cord, and a new vacuum would probably be a good investment, but that’s not the way our store operates. Anything other than inertia is beyond us all, even the manager. I can go as far as thinking of possible solutions to the vacuum’s midget cord before I turn and say to myself “Why bother?” When the ironically named Lil Hoover started working, I was spared the burden of even going that far. Lil is slightly…dim, and she doesn’t mind vacuuming one bit. In fact, she likes it. On her first closing shift, Mark thought it would be funny to make Lil do the vacuuming. He can be an asshole that way. Surprisingly enough though, Lil did a fantastic job, plugging and unplugging that vacuum as if it were the most natural thing in the world. On her next shift, she vacuumed without even being asked, and she does a much better job than any of us. It just goes to show that everyone has something they can do well, with very little thought or effort.
After work, I went to a no-name diner downtown, to celebrate the fact that I wasn’t bowling. Closing on Fridays always makes me crave fatty food, I think it’s the way the cardboard boxes dry out the skin on my hands. I usually go for a burger or fried chicken, just something that’ll get my hands nice and greasy and get rid of the Dolls smell. Sometimes I go out with Rita and Lacey, but Rita had to watch her sister’s kid tonight, and Lacey was in the throes of a new love affair that I was pretty sure wouldn’t last. Sitting on the swiveling bar stool, I noticed a woman sitting in one of the booths against the wall. She had really long hair, so pale it was almost white. The rest of her was unremarkable except for her fingernails, those nasty acrylic things, painted bright orange. They were awfully tacky, even for a customer in a tacky diner. Just then someone entered the diner and a large moth flew in the open door. The thing flew around crazily, disoriented by the sudden brilliance of the artificial light. The moth finally landed on the window, next to the orange clawed woman’s head, and suddenly fell to the floor where it lay unmoving, dead. I was wondering if perhaps peroxide fumes from the woman’s hair had asphyxiated the creature,when a soft, pruny voice beside me said,
“Don’t be stupid. You know exactly what just happened.”
***************
Okay, I know this isn't one of those creative writing journals, where I post self-indulgent story after self-indulgent story and expect everyone to gush and tell me how "OMG, this is rly gr8", but I just found this on my computer. I wrote it months and months ago, when I first got here. I have no idea why, as I don't really write stories, but I kind of like it. Enjoy!
Finished washing my hands and gearing myself up for what was to be the ninth time I would turn Ted down, I emerged from the employee washroom and headed over to aisle two, the pink aisle, Dolls. There was no sign of Ted, but I was confident that as soon as I started straightening the boxes, as soon as I successfully tuned out the muzak blaring quietly out of the ceiling and was able to sink into the unfocused stupor that was the best for straightening, he would materialize and ask me to go bowling. I had been straightening for a full ten minutes before I realized that it was five after nine, and Ted was late. Maybe he’s sick, I thought, and allowed myself to blur back into straightening.
Some people might call it zen, the way I am able to simply think about nothing while my hands front and straighten all the boxes in Dolls. Unfortunately, I know that what it actually is, is the slow deterioration of my brain, one closing shift at a time. I’m 20 years old. I graduated high school but chose to pursue a relationship rather than go to college, which in retrospect turned out to be a mistake of catastrophic proportions. The hardest part of my new Friday night closing ritual is that I’m increasingly faced with the realization that one of these nights, I’m going to agree to Ted and his bowling. Maybe I’ll be able to resist the “Afterwards we can go back to my place,” business, but sooner or later my defenses will crumble on that one too. That’s the problem with me, with all of us.
I heard the vacuum going in the row next to Dolls. Action figures? Games? I can never remember, as these aisles don’t concern me. Everyone hates vacuuming, and before Lil started working we all used to take turns at it. The reason everyone hates it so much is that the cord is only about fifteen feet long which, when you’re trying to vacuum a toy store with six (seven?) aisles, is woefully inadequate. The most you can reach is maybe two thirds of an aisle before you have to unplug the vac and look for a closer outlet. I have no idea where this vacuum came from, or why the cord is so short. It’s not my job to think about those types of things. The quick, cheap solution would be an extension cord, and a new vacuum would probably be a good investment, but that’s not the way our store operates. Anything other than inertia is beyond us all, even the manager. I can go as far as thinking of possible solutions to the vacuum’s midget cord before I turn and say to myself “Why bother?” When the ironically named Lil Hoover started working, I was spared the burden of even going that far. Lil is slightly…dim, and she doesn’t mind vacuuming one bit. In fact, she likes it. On her first closing shift, Mark thought it would be funny to make Lil do the vacuuming. He can be an asshole that way. Surprisingly enough though, Lil did a fantastic job, plugging and unplugging that vacuum as if it were the most natural thing in the world. On her next shift, she vacuumed without even being asked, and she does a much better job than any of us. It just goes to show that everyone has something they can do well, with very little thought or effort.
After work, I went to a no-name diner downtown, to celebrate the fact that I wasn’t bowling. Closing on Fridays always makes me crave fatty food, I think it’s the way the cardboard boxes dry out the skin on my hands. I usually go for a burger or fried chicken, just something that’ll get my hands nice and greasy and get rid of the Dolls smell. Sometimes I go out with Rita and Lacey, but Rita had to watch her sister’s kid tonight, and Lacey was in the throes of a new love affair that I was pretty sure wouldn’t last. Sitting on the swiveling bar stool, I noticed a woman sitting in one of the booths against the wall. She had really long hair, so pale it was almost white. The rest of her was unremarkable except for her fingernails, those nasty acrylic things, painted bright orange. They were awfully tacky, even for a customer in a tacky diner. Just then someone entered the diner and a large moth flew in the open door. The thing flew around crazily, disoriented by the sudden brilliance of the artificial light. The moth finally landed on the window, next to the orange clawed woman’s head, and suddenly fell to the floor where it lay unmoving, dead. I was wondering if perhaps peroxide fumes from the woman’s hair had asphyxiated the creature,when a soft, pruny voice beside me said,
“Don’t be stupid. You know exactly what just happened.”
***************
Okay, I know this isn't one of those creative writing journals, where I post self-indulgent story after self-indulgent story and expect everyone to gush and tell me how "OMG, this is rly gr8", but I just found this on my computer. I wrote it months and months ago, when I first got here. I have no idea why, as I don't really write stories, but I kind of like it. Enjoy!