“I like your hat,” Sally says to the handsome customer on the other side of the counter.
With the classy mustache and the stylish straw hat, he looks more like a hot movie star in disguise. He wears his black, titanium ring on the index finger, which means he is available.
So is Sally. It is great not to be attached. With so many hot guys swarming around, who in their right mind would want to be stuck with one?
Following up on her flirtatious comment, the customer detaches his gaze from his wallet and looks up at Sally standing behind the counter.
The moment their gazes meet, Sally wiggles her eyebrows and flashes an inviting smile, two flirting techniques that she has mastered thanks to the many hours of practice before her bathroom mirror.
“Yeah, thanks,” the hot guy responds, his tone dismissive and his face blank. Dropping his head, he gets back to looking into his wallet, going back and forth between a gold and a red credit card.
Sally knows well what this is. This is called snubbing when a guy pretends he is not interested in a girl in order to seduce her. Dating 101. A lot of guys have attempted to pull off this trick on her, recently more than before. Alright, good looking, Sally thinks and sneers. You wanna play? Let’s play. I too know the game.
“Is that made of straw?” Sally asks, gently touching his hand and flashing a smile of hers that has been known to be irresistible.
Pulling his hand back, he says, “Yeah, how much was it again?” not bothering to even look up at Sally.
Like a campfire extinguished by a bucket of cold water, in a matter of a second Sally loses all the heat that was keeping her alive. What an arrogant douchebag! I hate men. I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. Here we go again. Yet another rejection from someone she doesn’t even like. I hate men. It must be because she is just a cashier. It sucks to be a cashier. She hates her job. And she hates men.
As she slowly retracts her hand back to her space, Sally looks at her reflection on the glass pad covering the cashier’s desk. Or, could it be because of my face? she wonders, her confidence sinking to a new low. She hates her face. Although she has barely completed 36 years, she looks more like 45 or even 46. The light that reflects off her cheek gives away how much face cream she has put on. She would have aged better if this freaking life had taken it easier on her. She hates her life.
Sally comes back to attention when the guy snaps his fingers near her face. “How much?” he asks again.
A gorgeous Asian girl cuts into the line, throws a box of BareSkin condoms on the counter—as if Her Majesty owns the place—and stands awfully close to the hot guy, almost pushing him aside. The saucy girl looks only 20 years old, or more, or less. Sally could never guess the age of Asian people, especially their women. Those sons-of-bitches, they never age.
As the cashier, it is Sally’s judicial duty to put that bitch in her place, and Sally will take joy in doing that. “Ma’am,” she says as if she addresses an elderly woman, “please go back—”
“Look what we almost forgot?” the Asian girl tells the hot guy, obviously cutting Sally off on purpose.
“Thank God, you were here, babe,” the hot guy says, puckers his lips, leans in, and gives his…girlfriend—apparently—a noisy kiss on the lips. Without looking at his wallet, he brings out a credit card, which turns out to be the gold one, and waves it before Sally’s face. “Excu-u-use me-e-e,” he says, almost singing as if he is still drunk from the kiss.
Feeling dizzy, Sally blinks. The image of the credit card waving before her face gets blurry. She blinks a couple of more times and opens her eyes wide to get them focused again.
The pretty Asian girl slightly wrinkles her nose, giving Sally a condescending look. The bitch must’ve overheard Sally’s comment about her boyfriend’s hat. There is no coming back from that.
“The box too,” the boyfriend orders Sally while tapping the condom box with his credit card, and then he holds it up again.
Sally would spit on his face and yell, ‘I’m not your servant!’ if she were not too goddamn tired of everything. Everything. Every…thing. There is no fight left in her, nor any light for that matter. She looks away from the happy couple, picks up the BareSkin condom box, which feels as heavy as 100 pounds, and scans its barcode. “Forty-six dollars and three cents,” she says without looking up at any of them.
How did this happen to me? Sally asks herself. How did I end up here in this shithole, pathetic and desperate? I don’t deserve this. Or do I? No, I don’t. What happened to me? What went wrong? Maybe if that asshole didn’t crap into my heart like I am a piece of… How could he do that to me? I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. Where are the pills? I need my pills.
Frantically opening the drawer, Sally snatches the bottle of Valium, unscrews the lid, and pops one of the large capsules into her mouth. It hurts to swallow it without water, but that is not comparable to the resurfaced pain that is crawling into every neuron of her brain. Closing her eyes, she takes a couple of deep breaths. Wouldn’t it be nice if she did not have to open her eyes to this damned world ever again?
What if that asshole storms in through the door now? What if he sprints toward Sally, gets down to his knees, and apologizes for all he has done to her? And then he would beg Sally to take him back. What would Sally do? Sally would smirk and spit in his dirty face. She doesn’t need an asshole in her life. But, then he would cry his eyes out, tightly hug Sally’s hips, and admit he is nothing without her. Then, and only then, Sally might forgive him and absolve him of his sins.
“Excuse me,” says the voice of an old lady.
Let’s get this shitty day over with, Sally thinks. Taking a deep breath, she opens her eyes with so much difficulty though if her eyelids are glued together.
The hot guy and his young-looking bitch are already gone. They didn’t even wait for the receipt. In their place, is an old Black woman who has given up fighting the expansion of gray hairs. She looks even more screwed-up than Sally.
Sally crumbles the receipt and squeezes it hard into nothing. “How can I help you today?” she asks reluctantly, throwing the receipt into the garbage can, where it belongs—along with the memory of her latest rejection
“You can help me get my son back,” Ms. Freeman says with tearful eyes.
“Oh, Ms. Freeman!” Sally recognizes her ex’s mother. It’s been about 10 years now since the last time they met on Thanksgiving. Ms. Freeman, who has always been a source of inspiration, brings color to Sally’s despairing day, quickly replacing that initial surprise with the feeling of excitement and—knock on wood—optimism.
“I can’t,” Sally tells Ms. Freeman and takes another drag on her cigarette. The threshold she is standing on is still partly covered with red paint from last week’s incident. Leaning against the wall, she pretends to watch the cars on the highway to avoid awkward eye contact with Ms. Freeman while turning her down. “Sorry, but not sorry.”
“Why?” Ms. Freeman asks, her voice trembling. Facing Sally, she leans in so that their gazes meet.
“I just can’t. It’s been too long, OK? It’s over between us—”
“Not for him,” Ms. Freeman snaps and then lowers her voice. “He’s…ah…he’s not over it yet.” She gulps.
“With all due respect,” Sally sneers and takes another drag, “how would you know?”
Ms. Freeman turns her confused gaze from the cigarette back to Sally. She stands before Sally, her eyes squinted. Biting her lips, she touches the cross necklace on her chest and takes a deep breath. And then another. “He told me so,” she says in one breath.
“Jesus told you that?!”
“Yeah,” Ms. Freeman responds, squeezing the cross necklace in her fist.
“When?”
“When?”
“Yeah, when?”
“Ah…y-y—yesterday. Yeah, yesterday. He called me. First, he apologized, of course, for…ah…for…ah”—Ms. Freeman’s gaze darts between Sally and her cigarette—“since when do you smoke, my dear?”
Sally watches the motherly look in Ms. Freeman’s eyes. It has been a long time since anybody worried about her. She likes the feeling. Tears prick in the corner of her eyes. “It’s good for me,” she says and breaks the gaze. “It calms my nerves—” Sally interrupts herself with multiple coughs. The last cough is barely settled when she puts the butt back into her mouth and takes another drag on the cigarette.
“Sally.”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me, my dear,” Ms. Freeman says, her voice trembling, and touches Sally on the arm.
The cigarette is reaching her lips for another drag when Sally glances at Ms. Freeman, who is staring at her with tearful eyes. Touched by Ms. Freeman’s pain, Sally impulsively drops the I-don’t-care act. Lowering her hand, she skips the next drag and turns all the way to Ms. Freeman. She gulps to swallow the tears that clog her throat.
“This is a mother begging you,” Ms. Maria Freeman says while a single tear escapes her eye. “Jesus was a good boy. He’s getting worse and worse ever since he lost you.” When her eyes are no longer able to contain the tears, she bursts out crying. “If only he can see you again, that’s all it takes.”
Touched by the sincerity of the moment, Sally drops the cigarette and pulls Maria into a hug before bursting into a sob herself.
“He can heal,” Maria says through tears. “I know it. Jesus can heal. Jesus can heal.”