Sex and Denim

An old woman is calling the cashier a racist. “You a racist. Miller Outposts a racist. Y’all racists up in here.” The old woman is black.

The cashier is also black and she is young and she is pretty and she makes $4.25 per hour. The young pretty black cashier pushes buttons on a phone that is sitting next to the register. “Soldier of Love” is abruptly interrupted by the words “Stephanie to the cash-wrap please, Stephanie to the cash-wrap.” There is the hollow sound of a receiver banging against plastic and there is a brief silence that ends as Donny Osmond's awful song promptly resumes.

Stephanie is a Floor Supervisor. She is a Floor Supervisor at Millers Outpost and she is a perfect A-cup with wild and dark eyes and thick lips and she is brunette and she makes $8.40 per hour.

Stephanie is not coming to the register because she is in the count room.

I am Stephanie’s boss and I am the cashier’s boss. I am the Assistant Manager and I make $13.80 per hour and tonight I hate my job because I am placing a half-folded sweater on a cart and I am walking to the cash-wrap with slow and deliberate steps to deal with the old black woman because Stephanie is in the count room.

“We’ve been through this before,” I say.

“But I juss bought these lass week and now look at ‘em. Juss look at ‘em,” she is saying. The jeans are shredded and they are faded and they are yellowed. I take the jeans from her and I tell her “one moment” and I find what’s left of the code on what’s left of the tag that is inside of the jeans. The Microfiche indicates that the code isn’t in the database.

I put the jeans into a bag and I hand the bag to the old black woman and I say, “The code on the jeans means they were made prior to 1980. They are too old to be in our system, so we can’t do a return.”

The old black woman snatches the bag and she points at me and she calls me a racist. She points at the black cashier and she calls her a racist. She makes a sweeping movement with her hand and calls the whole company a racist. And then she leaves.

At five minutes before nine I lock the glass doors and I pull the metal gates across the storefront. I have three tills in my arms and I tap the count room door with my foot. Stephanie lets me in. I place one till on the low counter in front of her and I begin to reconcile the other two.

“Nervous?” I ask.

“About the wedding? No. Yeah. Yes. A little. You coming?”

I shrug.

“Oh.”

Stephanie stands and she reaches for a deposit slip and she pauses and she turns to me and she is saying, “I had the craziest dream.” She is wearing a short electric blue skirt and she is not wearing tights. I look at her long and smooth legs and I look into her wild and dark eyes.

“…?”

“Never mind,” she says. She sits on the counter and she says, “It’s nothing.”

I say “what” and she says “never mind” again and she is going on about how she’s getting married in a few days and about how we work together and about how I have a girlfriend and about how therefore whatever it is she isn’t saying isn’t appropriate. I count the last till and she opens the safe and she is crying. A shitty Bad English song is on and she is asking me to hug her and she is saying she doesn’t know what to do. Her thick lips have parted and I taste nectar. Her bra is white with small pink flowers. Her underwear is beige.

I am walking to my car at ten. The wind is warm. A police car whizzes by on Lake Mead, sirens off.

There is a trash can strapped to a light pole out in the parking lot. My car is parked a few spaces away from the trash can and the light pole. Sodium arcs cast splashes of amber. I can see my car and I can see the light pole and I can see the trash can. I can see the old black woman. She is peering into the trash can and she finds a magazine in the trash can and she puts the magazine into the bag with the jeans that are shredded and faded and yellowed. The old black woman notices me and she smiles. “God bless you,” she says. Her voice is gentle.

I smile back and I nod and I start up my car. The tape deck repeats a Duran Duran song I have heard many times. I eject the tape and I let the car go quiet. I can smell Stephanie’s perfume and I can smell Stephanie’s vascocongestive residue. I can still taste her. The smells of Stephanie and the memory of Stephanie are triggering an erection. I roll down the window and I light a smoke and after an ambulance blasts by to the east I make a left and I head west on Lake Mead. Into the direction of the warm wind.