Bayonne
Ollie was dozing off again, slumped on the backless stool with his shoulders pressed against the cigarette rack behind him, when the electric door swooshed open. He roused himself but only caught a glimpse of the man before he disappeared behind the end of the farthest aisle, by cosmetics. In the mirror that ran the length of the back wall, from the top of the shelves up to the ceiling, Ollie watched the man appear and disappear as he walked serpentine, up and down every aisle.
Doesn’t know where to find what he’s looking for, Ollie thought, and doesn’t want to ask. Had Ollie been asked, he would have gladly told the exact aisle where anything—playing cards, shoelaces, condoms, shampoo—would be found. He took pride in what he saw as his talent. At night, especially this late, he wished customers would ask. Liven things up, break the monotony, if only for a few moments.
The man finally stopped in aisle six—cold medicine, pain relievers, first aid—and in the mirror Ollie could see him lingering over the bandages, first Band-Aids, then Curad, then Band-Aids again. He took box after box off the shelf, replacing one and then taking another. Ollie couldn’t tell what he was trying to decide between—cloth or plastic, multipack or some specific type. Did he have an urgent need, a cut he had just inflicted on himself that he was holding tight with a folded-up piece of paper towel? Or at home did he suddenly realize that he was out of Band-Aids, and thought he should run to Rite-Aid to buy some, in case he needed one sometime in the future? The man finally chose a box and walked on, again serpentine, through every aisle to the back of the store, where he briefly disappeared from the mirror, then toward the front again.
There he was again, turning around the end of the second-to-last aisle—diapers, women’s hygiene, condoms. It seemed doubtful to Ollie that the man had any need for the first two items, and if he was in the Broadway Rite-Aid at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night, he probably had no need for the last item either. I can sympathize, Ollie thought. He decided that the man was wandering the store not because he was looking for anything specific, but because it was something to do in the middle of the night, a way to kill time. Ollie had long ago gotten used to being up all night—as assistant night manager, he had no choice—but he wondered about someone like this man who was up at this hour with nothing to do, awake enough to be trying to kill time when every other place in Bayonne was closed for the night, other than that one dive bar on Avenue F that never seemed to close. Ollie would pass the bar on his way home from work at sunrise, and the Ballantine neon sign in the front window would be on, the place presumably still open. He wondered about guys like this man—they were all men—who were awake at night but not by choice.
The man was taking a long time at the soda case, looking up and down the shelves. For the first time Ollie had a clear look at the man, in the curved mirror that hung in the front corner of the store. The man wore a knit cap, pulled down to his eyebrows—kids wore those caps even in hot June weather like now, but he was no kid—and a dark trench coat with those old-fashioned straps on the shoulders. What was that, London Fog? Ollie’s dad Otto used to wear one of those in rainy weather, but never on a sultry night like this. Ollie couldn’t see much of his face from this distance other than a dark beard. He remembered that crazed detective from Hill Street Blues. Belzer? No, that was on that other cop show, and it was the actor’s name, not the character’s. Belcher? No. Belker, that was it. Mick Belker, the animal, used to bite suspects.
The man opened the cooler door and pulled out a two-liter bottle, then turned toward the food shelves and grabbed something unseen, without even a pause, and continued toward the front of the store and, Ollie sensed, the cash register. He hoped to god that the man was nothing like Mick Belker. Ollie rose from his stool; Corporate said every cashier should be standing at the register as a customer approached, as a sign of attentiveness and respect. And Larry Severson, the night manager, said the same, aping the company line. Not that Larry seemed at all obedient to Corporate otherwise. While Ollie worked the cash register, Larry was supposed to roam the aisles, assisting customers, putting misplaced items back where they belonged, restocking shelves, being managerial. But instead he spent most of his shift, as he was tonight, sitting at the desk in the manager’s office, playing video games on the company computer. Ollie didn’t know which specific games Larry played, nor did he care. He willfully avoided finding that out, along with anything else about Larry’s personal life.
But despite his intended indifference, his thoughts now lingered on whatever Larry Severson was doing in the manager’s office instead of being managerial, so much so that he was startled to see that the man was now standing directly in front of him, and had apparently been there for a while, waiting.
“So, are you gonna let me buy this...Ollie F.?” he said, reading Ollie’s name tag.
Ollie glanced down at the tag, again grateful that it had only his last initial, and was too small to hold his full last name. Fartknocker, a name that was hell as a child and teenager and only slightly more tolerable now. Ollie’s dad always said their name didn’t sound nearly as bad in its original German, and in fact was a name held in great respect. Otto would even imply that the family was part of the gentry back in the old country, but Ollie doubted that, otherwise why did the family leave Germany over a hundred years ago, and why did Otto Fartknocker work at the refinery for forty-three years?
“Hello?” the man said. “Anybody in there?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Ollie said quickly. “Somehow I got distracted.”
He reached for the first item, the nearest to the register—a two-liter of Diet Dr. Pepper. He turned the bottle, read the sticker and keyed the price into the register without having to look. Then the same for a multipack of Band-Aids, but when he reached for the final item, a can of Bumblebee tuna, he paused. There was no price sticker—another thing Larry Severson should have taken care of—and though he had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the price of every item in the store, he came up blank. $1.79? $1.39? Probably less than two bucks, but he couldn’t say exactly how much.
He couldn’t leave the counter for a price check, not with all those cigarettes and pint bottles behind him, and knew that Larry wouldn’t respond to any request over the intercom. He could simply guess the price, but didn’t want to overcharge the customer by even twenty or thirty cents, just because Larry Severson couldn’t be bothered to do his job, but didn’t want to undercharge him either. Unlike Larry, the day manager—the manager of the store—was a young striver who was always eager to please Corporate, and wouldn’t hesitate for even a second to report a cashier whose drawer was twenty cents short.
“I don’t see a price sticker,” Ollie said. “Let’s call it $1.39. Is that alright?”
“Fine with me,” the man said, with obvious impatience.
Impatient now, Ollie thought, after dawdling over the Band-Aids for fifteen minutes. Strange. And also strange that someone could ever have an urgent need for Diet Dr. Pepper, Band-Aids and Bumblebee tuna at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night. Or, technically, Sunday morning.
Ollie dropped the items into a plastic bag, took the man’s ten-dollar bill and handed back his change, and just like that another customer—one not at all like Mick Belker—had come and gone, like the hundreds or thousands of customers Ollie had served as night manager of the Broadway Rite-Aid.
As the electric door swooshed closed behind the man, Ollie, worried, bolted out from behind the counter and rushed to the last aisle. Before the canned goods his eyes scanned and quickly spotted the tuna, and the familiar Bumblebee logo. $1.89, the tag on the shelf read. He rushed back to the register—no telling when a new customer might walk in, even at this hour—where he fretted over undercharging the man, his anxiety lessened only moderately by the thought that it was all Larry Severson’s fault.
He reached into his pocket, fingered a handful of coins at the bottom, and fished out two quarters. The register tape wouldn’t match exactly to the total amount of cash in the drawer at the end of Ollie’s shift—a reckoning done by the day manager himself, in the store early and eager as always—but he hoped that as long as all the cash was there, that would be good enough. It would have to be good enough. He punched the No Sale button, and when the door sprang open he dropped the quarters into their little bin, and pushed the drawer closed again. He sat back down on the stool and wondered when the next customer would arrive.
© 2020 Peter Anderson