#bc i am like $100 overdrawn and aint got a jooobbb!!!

[soundwavefucker69]

a casual observance of the apocalypse

There’s an old man in line. He’s got laugh lines around his eyes and a disposable medical mask on his face. He’s clutching a bottle of laundry detergent like it’s the last shred of dignity he’s got, and you can hear keys and coins jingle in his pockets with every step. His shoulders are a little bowed, but not enough for the girl in the floral mask to notice.

She’s got gray joggers with old stains on the knees and a pink Army jacket that’s seen better days. There’s a crop top under her jacket, bright and floral, with bunnies peeking out of leaves, and her hair is shorn close to her head in a way that can’t be anything but a woman who isn’t one to let men run their fingers through it to soothe her. In fact, from the pin on her lapel, she’s not the type to let men do much of anything, and if she didn’t look so lost under that floral face mask, I’d think her adorable. It would be difficult not to; she’s juggling about six different items and trying to peel four twenty ounce bottles of soda out of the little fridge at the front of my aisle.

“Looks like you just got here in time,” the old man says, friendly and bright, like he’s talking to a girl that reminds him of a granddaughter he hasn’t seen in quite some time. “I haven’t moved in five minutes.”

“What?” The girl says, distracted but not rude as she struggles with the door and the plethora of things she really should have gotten a basket for.

“The line. You got here when it’s about to move,” he says, patient, understanding, because she looks stressed and he’s a little lonely.

“Oh!” She says, and lets out a tremulous laugh as she gives up and waits until she can get to a spot where she can set down her things. “Yeah, I think so. I’m sorry you’ve been waiting.”

Silence passes for a few minutes as I try to ring up the mountains of Christmas gear. People always wait until the last possible minute to get their wrapping paper and presents and bags and bows. It’s a chronic affliction of the human psyche: procrastination. The woman in front of me I’m only half paying attention to either has a lot of adults she’s living with, or I should be thankful for the piece of cloth over my face, because it’s beginning to look like quarantine for her is only a polite suggestion. I don’t say as much, of course.

“Maybe this wasn’t the right line,” the girl, young woman, perhaps, finally says, and the man turns to look at her again, a laugh falling off his lips that makes me wonder if he just has the humor of an easily appeased puppy, or he’s just that lonely and in need of a pretty girl in a floral mask to pay attention to him.

“Yeah, it probably wasn’t,” he agrees, and the girl pauses, uncomfortable, eyes a little unfocused.

“My roommate is a diabetic,” she says, unprompted, and my eyes are drawn to the top ramen and animal cookies and more-sugar-than-flavor generic candy orange slices taking up residence in her overburdened arms. “She starts her new job tomorrow, but...”

The unsaid goes there: we have no money.

“Ah. Bottoming out backups?” The man asks, and she nods, helplessly. Something in his shoulders eases, like he’s coming home, and he nods. “My wife.”

“I don’t start my new job until next month,” she blurts, and then laughs, a little high, a little shrill, and I catch myself wondering just how close she is to crying. There’s a tremor in her legs, and her hands are tightening on plastic wrap so it crinkles in her grasp, a repetitive noise like she’s trying to soothe herself. “She doesn’t get paid for two weeks. We don’t have much food left and this is the last of my EBT and the food ban---”

The filthy, taboo words are cut short, and I preoccupy myself with wrapping paper and bells for a tree that should already be decorated. I know what she means; the food bank has had less and less and less food lately. At least, the one you can walk to from here.

“Covid got you, too?” He asks, gently, and there’s real pain in his voice, like covid got someone else that looked an awful lot like her.

“Yeah,” she says, breathless and terrified, and the man nods in sympathy.

“Me, too,” he says, like he should be working at his age at all, and the girl clutches her groceries closer to her chest, impossibly young. I wonder if this is her first financial crisis as an adult. It has to be. With the mask, I don’t know if she’s late teens or early twenties, but she’s around there somewhere.

“I was working at a pharmacy tech, and so was she, but she’s got diabetes and I’ve got Crohn’s and together we’re a mess of---” She cuts herself off again, a mess of emotion she’s trying to hide under polite conversation, like she hadn’t admitted to being immunocompromised in a pandemic. Maybe admitting it will make it real. I don’t know.

“Yeah? What are you doing now?” He prompts, and she actually, really laughs at that, like the world is insane and she’s just seeing it.

“Contact tracing for covid,” she spits out, like covid is a primordial god and she’s got a sword and a death wish. “Kinda funny that I lost my job because of covid and now my next job can only happen because of it. At least it’s not like the insurance job. All I gotta do is tell them they need to take a test. I don’t have to tell them we’re not covering their chemo anymore.”

I wonder how desperate you have to be to work the kinds of jobs she does with a disease like that. Or maybe she’s just a spiteful little beast. It’s hard to see the spite right now. It’s all desperation wrapped up in a pink jacket and grease stained joggers that look like they’ve been tossed on the floor of a mechanic’s shop.

“Yeah? I bet it’s real easy to get hired for that sort of thing,” the man says, maybe a little wistfully, and she shakes her head no.

“No, I was scouted. You can’t even find the listing. You need a fingerprint clearance card just to be considered, and they’re, like, a hundred dollars. I don’t even know how they found my info.” She sounds calm about that, but then again, it’s 2020. Things like resumes and phone numbers aren’t private, haven’t been since... Well, who knows who bought what politician first? Floral mask girl doesn’t care, and neither do I.

The woman takes her receipt, and the skin around floral mask girl’s eyes bunch up, like she’s trying to smile. The man sets his laundry detergent in front of me, carefully counts his change, and gives her his own skin scrunched around his eyes as I ring him up and give him his receipt.

“Well, good luck with the contact tracing,” he says, kind, immeasurably kind, and it’s a miracle he is as calm as he is, because all I can think is it’s an unnerving sort of thing to talk to someone you’ll never meet again who just needs one unlucky day to die.

“Good luck with your laundry,” she says as she juggles out her sodas and sets them on the till.

The old man leaves, his shoulders tightening with every step he walks away from human contact, and the girl looks at me with eyes threatening to water.

“Do you take EBT?” She asks, and I give her a warm smile, the warmest I can, and nod.

“Yeah. We take EBT.”