Eyelids press record and the eyes begin in motion. The mind tries to wait anxiously to rewind and to go forward. Blinking is a cause for rewinding. Missing what you cannot see and can only imagine is a cause for muddled clarity.
The emptiness of the liquor store hovers over me, a rare moment, but a still one noted by eyes. I glance over to the empty black chair in between the vodka and the cordials, next to the barrel who a tops sits the displaced Jim Bean bottles. A chair fit for the Jim Bean man who sips his coveted whiskey with concise aggression. Places it down every 128 seconds to then lift it up to his lips without exhaustion, whiskey flooding his peppered mustache. We judge you not on the content of your character but on the bottle you slug to the counter. He doesn’t watch Netflix, he watches what’s familiar. Change is for those who fear themselves. He could pass for the Marlboro man’s 3rd distant cousin. He might not exist at this very moment, but when he holds the 750 mL bottle in his hand and I tell him it’s 32.99, he exists.
The aisles are evenly spaced. Did my boss know that people fear closeness? Space is a prerequisite to wine and spirit purchases. I count how many blue tiles are connected with white tiles. There are 9 blues but I don’t like the way the white tiles are covered by the items. It doesn’t feel right. Growing up in a Pentecostal Caribbean church, the only next step for me was divine superstition. If I stepped on a blue tile by mistake, I condemned myself. I was more horrified when I learned that I wasn’t the only child that had these weird superstitions about stepping on tile cracks and staying in the lines. If I am not the originator of this, then who is? I swore I reached the peak of enlightenment after age 5; every thought I mustered originated behind the abstraction of my eyes.
At the counter, I survey the security monitor, looking for nothing. I begin to recount how just a few hours ago there was sea of customers gleaming at the sight of having total autonomy over attaining craft beer, port wine, and cases of Budlight. I recall my silent resentment when someone would purchase Twisted Tea. I don’t know if it’s my recurrent experience with that annoying guy that is always on his phone at my register who buys two 16 ounce cans of Twisted Tea and leaves crumpled up money on the counter that creates this sentiment, but I highly suspect it is. I judge thereafter. Once an item reaches my scanner, it’s our shared experience and I carry it over. There lays the blue counter of scattered nips and the Great Wall of pints and half pints. Vodka and whiskey are neighbors but rarely bother to ask the other for a cup of sugar. The rums that were once coupled are now uncoupled and left to be dark and white. There’s a lonely chair behind the counter, who has deviated from its companion angled and angered, that we are not allowed to sit on, in case our customers reach out and grab a bottle and it becomes super-glued to their hands and we miss the moment, because our eyes were sitting on its ass.
My eyes, wandering swiftly as my thoughts, start to scatter over to the wing of the wine section. All signs point to its respective country. When people ask me about a particular wine, I ask them the wine’s nationality and then point. They typically pace back and forth, running out of breath and I then call for help.
Yet now, there is nothing but immobility in this place as time tries to coast by. I cast my eyes to the automatic door in my heavy pursuit for a customer, but nothing, I’m regulated again to the ground, whose blues and whites satisfy me with boredom.
I am impatiently waiting for familiarity to make its way through the glass door. The late risers who have risen from the events of last night. The unhappy lover and the happier lover who always argue over whose going to pay for the 2 bottles of chardonnay and the case of Magners. Their shyness and inability to make lasting eye contact with me as they leave the scene forces them to consider that my strokes of keys pushing on the keyboard and my scanning are heavy sentencing.
The lady of the night has arrived. You never hear her come in nor do you see her in the store until she graces my counter. Sometimes she comes in the middle of my shift, sometimes the beginning. I never can call the exact time because I’m too preoccupied with creating her story in a 5 minute span while glaring at the ceiling and my Facebook news feed. I stare at her, wondering if she knows. I’ve never asked permission to inject her with contrasting agent, but yet I inject and examine her unsure of what I’m looking for. Is it bleakness, hollowness, material? She used to come in more frequently.
There’s nothing telling about her. She’s quiet. She’s simple. She’s not readable. She’s the ironic muse of writing. I don’t really understand my fascination with her. It could be borderline weird perhaps absurd, but I live in the absurd. The hardest part in interacting with people is trying to stay focused. The mind is a curious thing that is hard to be tamed. I am victim to routine and am appeased when I can muster its diversion. I ask people “How are you?” twice. I work these part-time jobs where I have to interact with people so much and yet I never forget I was the person that my mother had to urge the school to not keep back in kindergarten because of my lack of social skills.
There’s nothing remarkable about her on the surface. Her glasses serve as the intermediate. Her clothes, conservative. Her face, a moderate conservative. Her outfit is a mix of the career section in T.J. Maxx and then I’m left wondering if T.J. Maxx did their layout with the modern working woman myth in mind and I’m overreaching. She’s quite shy. Sometimes she orders her two nips of Smirnoff red so sheep-like that I am convinced I’m a bootlegger and we might cross paths on the boardwalk.
I diagnosed her using WebMD’s list of symptoms.
Primary signs of her include:
- Flushing. Many people who purchase vodka have a history of frequent blushing or flushing. The facial redness, which may come and go depending on the cashier, often is the earliest sign.
- Persistent silence.Persistent silence may resemble flushing.
- Glasses. Sometimes the frames may resemble Clark Kent’s and are being careful to create a barrier between my eyes and reading yours.
She finally walks up. She has wine. Wine. What is she doing with wine? She’s breaking the routine. Someone told her. She’s not playing along. It’s not fair. Not only that, she’s not wearing her glasses. This isn’t fun anymore and before I could clock out of our subjective admiration, she asks “could I have two nips of Smirnoff green apple?” I should give her a name so she isn’t spoiled with she’s but again I don’t know.
Ordinary makes her perfect. Her nightly runs in the liquor store are a part of a grand routine. I hate routines but I was almost doubly pissed she almost broke ours. It must have seemed like an hour passed before she uttered those words. I was waiting for those words, well I was waiting for the other color, but two nips of vodka is enough to keep the machine going. I said on the surface, she is nothing remarkable. She lives by herself. She watches the same show every night. She eats the same flavor yogurt, downing Yoplait before downing her 2 nips. Her routine tastes like singularity. I’ve primed her and then waved vivid strokes of regularity. I am convinced that a stone cold face is still an expression. I don’t believe that I am great at reading people but in my head I draw up stories of their lives and cross out anything that resembles logic. There is always the unsettling feeling that as I am doing so, they are doing the same to me. The unsettling feeling will eventually settle down and stay at a low simmer.
I walk into to the liquor store, there is this cashier that never smiles. She’s tall, a bit overdressed at times which means she’s either fashionable or coming from somewhere else. She’s always looking down or across so she probably misses when I walk into the store. She doesn’t work here full-time. Who would? She’s probably a student that could explain why I see her mostly on weekends. I purchase the same two nips of Smirnoff to help me fall asleep. I only buy two so I don’t over drink. Ambien doesn’t quite do it for me the way that vodka does. My job is quite mundane but I travel enough to rid myself of regularity and routine. I’ve made the switch to contacts. I moved last year and so I don’t come in here that often. This is a last minute run. I need to grab some wine and head over to a friend’s house close by. Since I don’t live near this place anymore, I’ll just buy my nips now. I come to the counter. The cashier is giving me these weird glances. She typically doesn’t make eye contact. What’s her deal? I’ve probably studied her a couple times, but she is at times unreadable. Could she be busy reading me? Probably not, I’m quite ordinary. It was like she was waiting for me to say something. I ordered my two nips and left familiarity.