Floater by Susan Tepper
Marvel who works the photo booth at Ye Olde Health Mart tells you that she feels sorry for Ron Pecan. She describes him as a sad raccoon. “It’s around the eyes,” she says drawing circles around her own opalesque eyes.
“I don’t get that,” you say feeling cranky. You think she looks ridiculous in the Santa hat, but of course it wasn’t her idea.
Bending, you look left to right before taking a Milky Way from under the counter and shoving it in your apron pocket. Enough with healthy living. You scorn the dairy case which you believe they stock with past-date yogurt.
Today you’ve got on a red bib-apron with green frills. Hideous. The guys get to wear a red suit that looks like long underwear. In keeping with the season said John Fegus the store manager. He gave you a plastic holly wreath for your head– to go along with the apron. As soon as he walked away you tossed it in with the gift wrap.
You’re a floater. You float from job to job within the store. Today you’re on food demonstration. You are expected to greet all customers who walk past your table in a cheery manner. You are expected to offer them a morsel from the food demonstration table. It varies.
A cheese spread with crushed olives on wheat crackers is today’s offering. You had to smear each cracker with the orangey-green spread before the store opened. One time they made you night manager but that was only out of desperation. John Fegus basically said so. He said, “Help us out here, hon, we’re desperate. I can’t do it, my wife’s gone into labor.”
Who was desperate? John Fegus or Mrs. Fegus? He did say we, and we, as everyone knows, implies at least a twosome. Maybe they were both desperate, in their own special way. She certainly looked desperate whenever she came in to buy a pack of cigarettes, bulging like she was carrying twins. Maybe it was the unborn twins who were desperate. Cigarettes they may have been thinking recoiling in the womb. Cigarettes she never paid for, by the way; which started me on my own wayward course. I’d never taken anything until I spotted Mrs. Fegus and her free cigarettes. As for him, he was never happy unless he was stoned.
This afternoon the store has that dusty particle feeling to the air. Floaty. Too much red and green? You wonder how it got started in the first place, why not blue and yellow or pink and orange? Sweet colors, rather than these clashing cymbals that make you feel weepy and want to cover your ears and hide in a corner like the lost children in Scrooge.
Last night you had this dream you ran screaming up and down the aisles (1 through 14) tearing down every red and green bauble, laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing. Then you worked the auxiliary aisles, tearing stuff down in those too.
“…Enough with healthy living. You scorn the dairy case which you believe they stock with past-date yogurt…”
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When you woke up the bedroom had become the moving barrel at the boardwalk. You went wobbly to the kitchen and tripped over the cat. Now she’s limping but you don’t have money to spend on a vet. You have very little money. You tell her to buck up. Stiff upper lip. Things like they say on British TV during films of the Nazi bombings.
But now you’re saying, “Here you are!” to a heavy-set male shopper, and you dip a little like a curtsy while handing him one of the tiny fluted paper cups containing a cheesy morsel.
“What’s in it?” He sniffs.
Arsenic you want to tell him smiling wider.
“You happy with your teeth?” he asks.
Instinctively you raise a hand in front of your mouth.
The guy starts to laugh. “I’m not going to punch you.” He’s laughing harder. You stare at him then down at your morsels.
“You are a very pretty girl,” he says.
Feeling your back stiffen you think here we go.
“But that space between your front teeth…” he’s shaking his round head and you can picture yourself bouncing it, hand to hand, in front of a basketball hoop.
He’s saying, “That’s a wide gap. I could wave a palm tree through it and out the other side.”
Ha ha ha you’re thinking.
“I’m a reconstructive dentist, a little bonding…”
You clench your fists. Then begin folding up the sides of the red felt tablecloth so it covers all the morsels. Hiding them. Sparkly hanging balls sewn to the bottom of the tablecloth jingle.
Using your palm you smash the cloth. Smashing and smashing until you’re pretty sure there isn’t one morsel left in decent condition.
“Help yourself,” you tell him. He looks stunned, ashen. You turn on your heel and walk past the card rack and the bin of travel samples noticing that it’s running low on Crest toothpaste. But that’s not your job today. You’ll probably lose your job.
“What’s so funny?” Snake-like, Ron Pecan slithers around Eye Care. Shaking your head you brush past him a little too close.
“Nice,” he says getting a spark in those raccoon eyes and mooing at you.
“Silent night means shut your mouth,” you say, pointing to the Muzak coming out of the ceiling speakers. Please don’t love me you want to tell him.
But Ron Pecan has dropped his head and he’s mooing and mooing. And all you can feel is empty. Like lowing cows coming home at night sounding their voices into the shadows.
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Susan Tepper is the author of Deer & Other Stories and the poetry chapbook Blue Edge. She hosts FIZZ a reading series at KGB Bar in NYC, and is Assistant Editor of Istanbul Literary Review (online journal based in Turkey). Susan has received 5 nominations for the Pushcart Prize. A new novel is forthcoming.
© 2010, Metazen. All rights reserved.
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Susan,
You are SO good! I am terminally jealous. I laughed and laughed. Poor Ron Pecan. Poor everybody!
Jack, thank you and I’m glad it made you laugh