Image courtesy of Town and Country Magazine
The collection of items in her hands falls in front of the cashier in a tumble of plastic that crinkles when it hits the hard surface. The boy behind the counter wears a blue baseball cap backwards, and is swallowed in a large yellow sweatshirt. She wears baggy clothes too, but it isn’t cool in the same way the cashier dresses. He looks ready to be photographed in magazines, and she looks like her clothes aren't her own. He chomps loudly on a piece of gum, and each time he pops a bubble, her jaw twitches. She tries to ignore the sound and motions to the stands behind him. He points to the cheapest pack. He doesn’t even turn around, one hand sliding across a brightly colored screen and the other grabbing blindly behind him. She stuffs her hands into the pocket of her cargo pants, and when she pulls them out, her nails are black and broken, her wallet matching the tips of her fingers. The beep of the scanner makes her twitch, and she swears she only has, at most, five things, but the sound keeps playing in her head relentlessly. Beep, beep, beep.
“15.89.”
She glances over to the screen above the register, double checking the prices. She shakes her head, it’s wrong. He sighs with his entire body, as if she were inconveniencing him. He starts over, the scanner restarting, beep, beep, beep. “15.89.” She doesn’t have it. Even without looking in her wallet, she knows there's only a handful of ones. She glances over the other items, a bottled water, a box of pads, a bar of soap, and a 99 cent granola bar. Oh, and the cigarettes. She debates not getting the granola bar and soap, but she’s been waiting for her paycheck for two weeks. She almost laughs at that thought. Paychecks are for people who have real jobs, and make real money. She shakes her head at the cigs, and he pushes it away into a separate pile, seemingly taunting her by keeping it within reach. He starts to ask her if she wants a bag, but she throws her last few dollars onto the counter and collects her things before ditching the 24-hour gas station.
It's dark outside, but there's a car at pump 2 with blindingly bright white headlights. There's no other street light though, and the light from the store doesn’t shine upon the back parking lot where she left her car. She jumps at the sound of a honk and a revved engine. She feels her grip loosen on her objects, and she falls to the ground in an attempt to pick them back up. A black truck pulls up in front of her. The closer it gets the louder she can hear the hyenas laughing. They snort and roll onto themselves, flashing their lights at her and showing her their true grotesque faces. She ducks to the side just in time to avoid being run over as they speed away. She glares at the gas fumes that are left in their wake, and it isn’t until they're long gone that she notices the flattened box in the middle of the road. Her ovaries would just have to deal.
~
The bell rings when she forces the door open to the gas station's store. It's an annoying resonance that makes her left eye twitch. Her right eye catches the boy mopping the floor directly in front of himself, stepping over the clean water with his dirty, steel-toed shoes. She takes a long, big sigh. She walks quickly towards the bathroom, her gut clenching with every step she takes. The door is chipped with paint, with a white piece of paper taped to the wall and “out of ordder” written in messy Sharpie. She rips the paper off and tears some of the paint off the wall with it. She crosses through the aisle of bagged candies and chips and finds him still stepping on the clean-now-dirty floor water. She holds the paper up, and when he doesn’t look at her she pulls the strings of his headphones out. He makes a noise of complaint but she cuts him off by shoving the paper into his chest. His eyes barely glaze over at the wrongly spelled words. He shrugs.
“Out of order, man.” His words slur together and she wonders if he’s high. Maybe she should smack him. “But hey, if you know a plumber, let me know.” The paper crinkles in her hand as she clenches it between her fist. “Why are your eyes twitching?” He raises a hand towards her face and her vision blurs from the force behind her glaring eyes. She holds the paper between her two hands and rips it in half, then in half again. Each time it tears, it lets out a satisfying sound, and even though it hurts her ears, she continues to rip. When it’s nothing but confetti in her hands, she drops the pieces into the dirty mop water and storms out.
~
She stinks. She smells of rotten eggs and puke, and even in the store that constantly smells of diesel, she knows she stands out. She only has another jug of water left in her car. She could use it to shower, but then she wouldn’t have anything to drink. She cruises down the aisles until her stomach grumbles and almost sends her falling to the floor. She’s starving. She looks up at the aisles of junk, her clothes are big enough to take things, she could tuck them between the waistband of her pants and the fabric of her shirt, but still she hesitates. She pinches herself but still she doesn’t move to grab anything, her hand freezing as if someone was hovering over her–watching her.
Someone taps her on the shoulder and she jumps and knocks a packet of Ritz crackers to the ground. She feels like her eyes are going to pop out of her head, but then her glazy eyes refocus on him. “You smell really bad.” He has a drawl to his voice, like the ones rich people have in TV shows who drink martinis and wear unbuttoned shirts. She motions a hand to the bathroom that is still out of order. “Uh, you could go to the McDonald’s down the street. Or, like, a YMCA.” He sounds disinterested. The McDonald’s is at least a forty-five minute walk, and she was put on the YMCA’s most-wanted list when she stole a child's pass to use their showers last month. He doesn’t seem to catch on to her disinterest in either of those choices. His phone beeps, a loud, annoying roar of a lion. Her opinion of him seems to only go further and further down the drain, what kind of psycho has a lion as a ringtone? He pulls his phone out. “Ah, sweet,” he looks up at her and shows her a gummy smile with a perfect row of uniform white teeth. “I got into Columbia.” She blinks. He blinks back. College. He really is as young as she thought he was. She would think he would want to call his parents, but he’s telling her, a customer who tends to frequent the 7/11.
It's usually dark outside when she visits the gas station and she typically is the only one inside with him, but now she feels very aware of his presence as he leans up against the counter. “It’s not really a shock though, my dad works in admissions.” She turns her head away so he can’t see her crooked smile. “I’m Erik.” She raises her left hand in a sort of greeting, and he laughs at her. At least he was amused by her disinterest. “You might be wondering what a guy like me is doing working here, huh?” He plants two hands firmly on the counter and pulls himself up to sit on it, pulling out a blue slushie from behind the counter. She had an ugly feeling he was going to tell her a lot of things she didn’t need to know. “My parents thought it would be good, for building character and what not.” He takes a long, annoying slurp and she almost drags her hands up to cover her ears. “My uncle owns this joint, and I just got stuck here, I guess.” She nods slowly to let him know she understood, it doesn’t seem like he would be stuck here for long, though. “You seem cool.” When he says the compliment, it feels like he’s speaking an entirely different language. She almost laughs, she could play him like a dog if she wanted to, but he’s a puppy. “Why don’t you take a slushie, on the house.” He gestures towards a twirling machine of blue, red, and purple. She grimaces but quickly covers it up with a smile. She grabs a large cup and fills it all the way to the top with blue raspberry. She gives him an awkward wave as she walks to the exit, and knowing he’s going to Columbia almost makes the guilt go away when she carries at least forty dollars worth of stolen goods out of the store. Almost.
~
Knock, Knock, Knock. It’s relentless, it pounds against her ears like the beat of a drum and traps her in a cage of reverb. She crosses her arms over her head to make the pounding stop, these sounds were always the loudest. Even now, she can’t tell where it’s coming from. The click of a pump, someone opening and shutting the door to their car, a dog barking?
“Marza. Marza Kruel.” She sits up and bangs her head against the roof of her car. She recoils and both of her hands fly to her forehead, pulsing from the impact. She hears the voice again, it’s deep and causes goosebumps to rise on her arms. She throws the blanket off her lap and rapidly taps the top of her head to pat her hair down. Her windows are blocked with gray drapes, but she can see the outline of a man. “Police, open up.” Her body tenses, and on instinct she grabs a pocket knife and tucks it into her back pocket. She opens the door slowly, and a man in a blue uniform and a hat way too big for his head stands with his arms crossed in front of her red Volvo. He says her name again, but she has trouble paying attention with his hat and multicolored sunglasses combo. “You can’t stay here. The owner called in a complaint, there's plenty of other empty parking lots.” She isn’t thrown off by his bluntness, she’s been here for at least a month, in fact she’s surprised it hasn’t happened sooner. “People like you should know that by now.”
Heavy uneven footsteps. Stomp, stomp, stomp. “Wait!” She’s never seen him outside in the natural light, usually it's just the fluorescent, bug-ridden overheads. Instead of the staple yellow sweatshirt, he’s wearing a blue and white sweatshirt with Columbia embroidered in big bold letters. There's a lion on the back. She drops her chin and smiles. “I’m Erik.” He takes a few deep breaths and leans over to catch his breath. He’s panting over and over. There are papers in his hand and they crinkle when he hands them to the officer. The officer takes off his multicolored sunglasses to read over the papers and then mumbles incoherently, and she suddenly feels like a child, like a small toddler watching the grown-ups talk about something she couldn’t understand.
“Erik Simson!?” The officer suddenly shouts, “I read about you in the paper, you’re going to Columbia.” Of course Erik was in the paper, she thinks. She debates crawling back into the car and locking the doors when the officer says, “If this situation gets too out of control give me a call.” He hands him a card that she only just gets a glance of, he’s wearing the sunglasses in his ID photo too.
Once he’s gone, Erik turns with a prideful smirk that makes her feel like vomiting. “You’re welcome,” he sings, pressing out the last few syllables. She turns away from him and is intent on shutting the door to her Volvo in his face without a single pleasant note. “Nice to meet you, Marza.” She hesitates at the sound of her name, the door in her grasp, and when she turns towards him, he takes it as an open invitation to see what’s inside. The inside of her Volvo, her home, everything she had laid open, tissues, blankets, and food wrappers.
“What did he say to you?” She asks suddenly. Erik looks disturbed, his eyes still focused on the inside and she watches his nose scrunch up at the smell.
“Oh.” He coughs and she flinches. “I wasn’t really following. Something about how I can’t take in strays. I don’t have a dog though.” She stares at his sweatshirt and pushes him away before grabbing the handle and closing the door. He wasn’t allowed to see.
~
There is smoke reeking out of the Volvo. It’s coming from the back and the front, it may as well be coming out of her too. She can feel the smoke exhaling from her throat and swirling up high into the sky in a cry for help. The Volvo is sinking, melting into the hot asphalt of the parking lot. The tires have been scratched and there is a long line drawn across the car that has ruined the outside. This car was never perfect, it had its flaws and she was never partial to its looks, but the doors are thrown open and falling off at the hinges. The inside of the car is emptied, ransacked, and torn apart. She hears footsteps approaching, loud taps against the road smacking onto the asphalt.
“Did they take everything?” She nods. Erik pants. He must have run here. “Can we call him? He’ll help, right?” He pulls out a card and tries to push it into her hands, but she just steps away. “I'll drive you to the police station!” He sounds panicked, and he rushes around, circling around her like a dog before running in a different direction. She sinks into the pavement, her plastic shoes melting into the ground. She feels so dry, so empty.
The rev of a car engine doesn’t make her flinch this time. A white Tesla pulls up alongside her. The window pulls down and reveals a child in a bucket of cash. “Get in.” She walks around the car towards the back where she sees a Columbia sticker near his license plate. She scans the doors looking for the handles. She can’t see any.
Why don’t rich people cars have fucking handles?
He presses a button, and with a pop, the passenger's side opens. Black leather and clean seats, no crumbs, no plastic, no blankets.
His car is empty.
She feels her guts churn like the machine of the slushies, feels her breath like hot coffee chugging down her throat. Chugging like her car that would never start. She didn’t have a phone though, would she just leave it here? Abandon it next to the 7/11?
She glances inside her car, the ripped fabric of her seats and the emptiness, the void of her home. She fishes out her keys and takes a few steps back before running forward and throwing it into the street. A car drives by at a high speed and crushes them beneath its weight. She turns back to the boy, a rich boy in a rich car.
She gives him the finger.
Then she goes to find a new car.