I work at a grocery store- lit like a grave, gorging families that shuffle over linoleum and dust. My feet always hurt and my hands stay dirty no matter how much soap or scrubbing I commit. But that’s all I’ll say about the misery. My woes of minimum wage, I’ve learned, find no sympathy with an older or perhaps more wealthy crowd.
Carts, sun, perpetual collection. Walk an old woman out like you’re supposed to and get rewarded with endless laps around the lot looking for corporate property. But though my feet stay on its track, (no matter how much they wanna just walk right off, right around the corner and never come back again) I let my mind wander whichever way it likes.
And I’ve been thinking.
There are a couple things you can get away with here. Somewhere along my time bagging- between the triple bagged in paper for the wine please don’t mind all the wine and oh no I forgot my totes op here they are why don’t you just go ahead and take my stuff out of the plastic and repack everything and I’ll wait outside for you- I always have the same contemplation of robbing a cashier.
I don’t mean anything personal; I mean robbing the company stuff, that is. The Man, the abuser. I would never think to take 80-year-old Darlene’s purse when she goes on break, oh no no. No, I think of the cash in the drawer one could so easily take and be gone.
And it’d be so easy. All you’d need to do is tell them to give it to you. We’ve been told to obey, even if there isn’t a weapon. They just never know; they won’t take that liability. They make too much money to really care about a couple hundred, anyway.
You could come through the lane, buying a small item that’d need one of the paper bags. Come early in the morning, right at opening. Slip the cashier a note, typed, and remind her to stay quiet. It’d look just like she was giving you cash back.
You’d wear a disguise. Nothing crazy, of course. Simple, insignificant. Something to let you blend back into the static as you’d walk away. Preferably, with me.
And I’d be bagging it. That’s the most important thing, that’s what excites me, the bagging. Helping you rob the store, helping you out to your car like I’ve been trained. Maybe I’d come back in a little while afterwards, tears slipping down my ruddy cheeks as I shook Sir, Sir, there wasn’t anything more I could do. Or, maybe, I’d be your captive across state lines, a figure in the backseat as the sirens wailed behind you.
I think about that the most. You couldn’t rob the store if you wanted to get away with me, the police would be too quick on your trail, but it’d be even easier to steal me, their dedicated little first-job girl, than their profits.
Come at night. Haggard soccer moms are always the last ones out, bag of chicken in hand and a creased frown, but the parking lot stays almost entirely empty. Come in on a scooter. We have to go out after the scooters; nobody would bat an eye.
Buy something small, maybe, or, if you’d want to, go all out and get everything you’d need: trash bags, the little coiled ropes by the front, bleach, a knife. Make me watch you purchase it, make me bag up and organize my own weapons. Give me that first thrill of fear as you smile and the cashier can’t think of anything other than her own dinner.
Park out at the furthest spot, in the back corner. Our cameras only extend to the third row. The lot is so still in the dark, anyways. Most nights it’s just me and the lonely rattle of cage on pavement for hours on end. Because nobody wants to be out in this area without the sunlight and public to protect them. They fear the dark, the bogeyman snatcher. They fear exactly this. But I’m right behind you, wheeling down farther and farther than I’d ever wish to be following.
Don’t make it obvious with a van. I’d expect something a little more discrete from you, something a little smarter than that. I know how you’d toy with me.
And you’d tell me to set your things in the trunk. And you’d tell me to put them far back, the witch in the oven. And as I reached in deeper into the aged leather, you’d rise up from that scooter and loom, phantom shadow, right behind me. I’ll keep what happens next strictly in my imagination, a beastly little detail I’ll turn over later when it’s dark and quiet and just me again.
Why would you want me? I’m not the most beautiful thing to set upon, but I am young. I know how it is we must wreck through you, yeah? New-minted women are a fickle thing. Winking at the construction man as we pass on the street, horrified at the thought he’d peep in through the window later.
And maybe I am. Maybe I know what I wore that red lip for. Maybe I know you think a school girl in ballet flats dancing past you in traffic makes you lose control. Maybe I’m trying to bait the monster; maybe I really am as wholly twisted as you are. But I’ll never digress. That kind of confession I’ll always smile to myself as your torture, a little withholding against your zip-ties and pacing about the motel room.
Kill me, keep me, whatever. I’d never know much of a difference. Perhaps one tired night you’d be too loose with me, slip a little and forget to check how tight I’m tied to the bed. I’d finally break that one rope around my wrist I’d been working on all week, and kill you. Stab you, screaming for help, while you sleep.
I’d come back out into the world covered in your blood and ready for my 20/20 tell-all. It wouldn’t be just a legal murder, sweetie, I’d be a goddamn hero. Memoirs and meeting with celebrities and not even one more shift in Hell.
But I could never really know how it’d end. Maybe I die by your hand, or by accident, or you die by my hand, or in prison. Or maybe we sit there in wherever, holding each other captive until the end of time. Either way, in any way, I’m sure it’d be a real nightmare.
I close tomorrow night.
