A&P Redux

          So this is a writing exercise I did in college back in '99--we'd read John Updike's A&P, and had to write our own version of it.  If you're familiar with the story, it takes place in a grocery store, so it was a pretty easy for me to adapt to, having been in the grocery business for close to a decade at that point.  I dusted this off tonight, and realized that it's held up remarkably well, if I do say so myself.  I think I've changed a total of half a dozen words (usually adjusting for present/past-tense), and a couple of punctuation marks before posting on here.  Let me know what you think.....

Thank You, Have a Nice Day

           It was early, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be there.  Despite the cold and rain of a dark winter morning, I’d hesitated before walking into the half-lit warmth of the grocery store where I worked as a cashier.  As on most mornings like this, the obnoxious buzz of my alarm clock had come way too early, and dragging myself out of bed and into the shower was a fuzzy dream state.  The drive in hadn’t been bad; I’d spent so much attention to channel surfing, trying to find a station that actually played music at six a.m. instead of some morning show host yammering, that I’d pulled into the parking lot without even realizing that I’d even gone anywhere.

            So there I was.  I almost turned around.  I was looking at other jobs anyway.  I didn’t really want to be here, but I didn’t have any other jobs lined up yet either.  Not for sure.  But man I hated this place.  The people I worked with were cool, but god, the customers!  Resigning myself to the fact that I’d never quit without giving my notice anyway, and consoling myself with the fact that morning shifts were much more bearable than mids or lates, I manually opened the electric sliding glass doors and let myself in.  I should have just gone home and gone back to bed.

            I shook the morning rain out of the creases in my jacket and headed toward the back of the store.  I muttered a few hellos and good-mornings to people as I passed them, making my way toward the lockers in the back room.  Fumbling through the ten thousand keys on my key ring, I finally found the one for the cheap padlock on the #5 locker door.  The lock was purely for appearances; if anyone wanted into my locker all they had to do was pull down on the lock with a good jerk.  But, either nobody else had ever tried this or nobody cared about the contents of my little gray box, because it had never been messed with. 

            I fished in past the junk food that were my diet most days, and the name badges of former employees--which I had taken as some sort of battlefield souvenirs, and grabbed my folded up apron to put it on.

            As I finished tying the apron strings behind me, I walked back toward the front of the store, just as the lights started coming on.  Damn.  It was time to open already.  I rushed to get my cash drawer in the checkstand before the manager opened the front doors.  I managed to look like I’d been ready all morning when the first customer strolled in at 7:01. 

            The first half-hour or so was the usual crowd: cup of coffee, some donuts, pack of cigarettes.  People running late for work, kids running late for school, graveyard shift running late on sleep, and people in ugly spandex pants that had been just plain running. 

            Next came the interesting ones.  I’d watch them as best I could and make judgements on them.  Usually some of us that worked there would sit in the lunchroom and see if our assessments of them jived.  By 7:45 a great mix had already come in.  Down aisle 8 a white trash couple was arguing about money while they dropped beer into their cart.  The husband, a scrawny little guy wearing LEE jeans and a wife-beater T-shirt, kept yelling at his wife about the electric bill.  The wife, wearing sweats that looked about ten years old, argued back about the water bill.  With each exchange they got louder and louder, not caring that everyone in the store could hear them by now.

            At my end of the same aisle, a college kid looked up from the sports drink label he’d been reading, saw that the couple was heading his way, and suddenly decided that would be a good time to check out the magazine rack.

            I looked around to see if anyone else was watching the show, and caught Jeff on aisle seven, trying to mop up a broken bottle of pancake syrup that someone had done a hit-and-run on.  I nodded my head toward the white trashers, and Jeff pointed down to the mess at his feet.  He then turned and flipped them off from behind the safety of the shelves and went back to mopping.

            The others floating through the store were two old women that could be heard every once in a while jabbering about church gossip, a fat dude in a cheap suit and too much hair spray up by the Hostess snacks display, and a little hottie wearing a tight sweater and a really high skirt.  Legs. 

            I lost track of white trash, but could hear them on the back aisle somewhere.  The college kid was still over by the magazines, but he didn’t look too interested in them; he kept looking around like he was waiting for someone.  The cheap suit came and went pretty fast.  Cup of coffee and some Twinkies that he paid for with his credit card.  Thank you, sir.  Have a nice day. 

I didn’t notice which way Legs had gone; last I’d seen she was over next to college boy by the magazine rack.  Lucky bastard.  I headed over to aisle seven to ask Jeff if he’d seen her, but he was gone, a shiny wet patch on the floor and a bright orange cone warning customers not to fall and break their necks the only sign of civilization on the aisle.  I peeked down two more aisles looking for her, but all I saw were the two old women standing in the middle of aisle five, discussing recipes and pointing at boxes of Jell-O.

            College boy picked that moment to head for the checkout.  Mr. and Mrs. White Trash cut him off, though, as they popped out of aisle nine.  They drove right toward the register, and college boy went back to the sports drink he’d been eyeballing earlier, still sneaking glances our way every once in a while.

            Mr. and Mrs. Trash bought two half-racks of Coors, a carton of generic cigarettes and a ton of candy bars.  They gave me their check, which I figure will probably bounce, and told them ‘Thank you, have a nice day’ as they walked out the door.  I was so busy watching them argue as they got in their car that I didn’t see the college kid step into my checkstand. 

He had both hands stuffed into the pockets of his baggy khakis, and his forehead had little beads of sweat building up on it.  I wondered what he wanted, since he hadn’t dropped anything on the checkstand, and I was just about to ask him when he ripped his right hand out of his pocket, his fingers wrapped around the biggest damn gun I ever saw.  He glanced around a lot as he pointed the gun at me, and in a low, rapid, blur said, “All the cash right now, man, or I’ll cap you where you’re standing!”

I couldn’t believe this crap.  You’re supposed to rob stores at night, when they have lots of money in the tills, and the ‘cap you’ line just killed me.  I almost laughed out loud.  As I hit the No-Sale key to open the drawer, I did a quick guess of how much cash I’d made that morning.  It hadn’t been that much; a lot of people had paid by check or credit card, so most of what was in there was what I had started with.  I started stuffing money into a paper sack, and figured that altogether he’d get less than two hundred bucks.  I stared at him across the counter, even though they tell you not to do that in a robbery.  I couldn’t help it.  What a goddamn dork this guy was. 

I felt a smile just start to creep onto my face when we both heard something.  We turned as one toward the sound; Legs had finally shown up again, in one hand a fashion magazine, which she held in front of her face as she read it, and a Snapple bottle in the other.  She hadn’t seen us, and college boy took that as his cue to leave. 

Snatching the money-filled paper sack, he backed toward the door, the cannon in his hand still waving in my direction.  I guess Legs finally looked up, I don’t know, I was too busy watching college walk out the door, that little smile trying again to find it’s way onto my lips.

There was a sound of shattering glass and splashing liquid, the Snapple bottle, I guess, when Legs finally looked up from reading 20 Tips On How To Get Mr. Right and saw College standing there with a gun pointed toward my head.  He jerked at the sound, which was followed by a much louder one.  The smart-ass comment I was gonna make to the idiot in front of me was temporarily forgotten as the bullet buzzed past my head.  It sounded like some high-pitched bee on crack, and I wondered morbidly how close it actually came. 

I just barely caught sight of the dude as he ran out into the parking lot and jumped into a beat-up little green Honda.  I tried to get the plates, but the rain was coming down in buckets, and there was no way.  By then everyone in the store had heard the gun going off, and were bunched up around my checkstand gawking at me like I was Jesus Christ himself.

After two hours, and six times telling the story ( I counted ), everything finally started to calm down.  The cops had spent a lot of time trying to get me to remember the license number that I hadn’t even seen, and I could hear Legs trying to say the same thing to the cop talking to her.  They finally left us alone and went over to wrap things up with my manager.  Legs and I stood there together in silence, watching them as they all talked, and I couldn’t help but stare at her.  She looked like somebody you’d see on TV, her long blond hair looking just like the model’s on the cover of the magazine she’s been reading, and her clothes the kind you’d never see at Wal-Mart. 

The cops finally split, and my manager came walking over to us, his stomach pushing his shirt almost out of his pants, his polyester red tie sticking out at a weird angle as it reached the paunch around his waist.  He thanked Legs for sticking around and giving her statement, then all but told her to leave.  I figured he’d let me go home for the rest of the day--getting shot at seemed like a valid reason to me.  I started to pull my apron off, hoping I could catch up with Legs before she split, when he turned to me and said, “Go take a ten-minute break.  I’ll cover your register until you get back.”

I just stared at him, amazed.  Jeff paused from cleaning up the broken Snapple bottle a few feet away and turned to the boss, using the same look he’d used on the White Trashes what seemed ages ago.  Legs stopped by the exit doors and turned to watch. 

“I was kinda hoping to take the rest of the day off,” I said, trying to let it show in my voice that I wasn’t just hoping, but expecting to get out early.

“You can handle the rest of your shift,” he said, as if it was final.

“What a jerk,” I heard Legs mutter as she turned back toward the door and started to leave.

That was all I needed to hear.  She was right; the guy was a jerk.  I pulled the apron off, taking the name badge and tossing it to Jeff, who was obviously pretty cool with what I was about to do.  The grin on his face was a mile wide.  My manager just stared at me, the top of his head glistening beneath the few strings of hair he’d combed over from the side of his head to cover his bald spot. 

Dropping the apron onto the checkstand, I turned to him, the thought of what I had wanted to yell to College as he left flashing back into my head.  Smiling, I looked at my boss and said, “Thank you.  Have a nice day,” as I turned and walked out the door.