pissed with the store
Last time it had been so. Easy. They were in a car and dipping beneath the horizon on a summer day that spoke of tennis shoes and cigarettes, possible vomiting into the grating in front of the car’s air ventilation system.
Janie was crabby. The last time she’d had any water was three or four days ago. The clerk could tell, too. She knew it was going to trigger the fall, a seizure, something animalistic or numb in her that never ended until she passed out from heat exhaustion or inhaling pretzel salt.
The teacher was only boring once. He could drone on and she would be happy as a lobster. Straifing runs, they called it. They moved things from one location to another, and that was their JOB.
She handed her glasses to Tim so he could bottle them with the blue cleaner. Where were you this morning before noon, she wondered, when I had all that coffee and nobody to drink it with me? Why do I think I should be paranoid? Why do I try so hard to love?
The teacher wasn’t trying. Janie pressed on her carotid bifurcation. Cough, like she was supposed to event though Tim said rude. His phone number, but he saw her earlier in the morning, but still five minutes late was too late even for her.
If she added up all the cost of the materials, counted all the calories, and counted all the seconds waiting for the spiraling daisy of waiting on the computer, she knew what he said was anathema to what she actually was. He said she was that, though. Pick a side, she thought. Stop playing me for a fool.