Retail Therapy
Kylah Balthazar
Robbie fiddled with a pen as she watched Kathy tighten her high pony once more. If she pulled it any tighter her entire scalp would come off in
her hand. The two of them were posted behind the cash counters waiting
for Hobby Lobby’s morning crowd to flood in. Robbie would rather that it didn’t, but her co-worker’s hunger for some human interaction rolled off her in waves. Kathy’s auburn hair swung like a pendulum as her head swiveled from side to side while she tried to sniff out a target. Tick-tock, tick-tock, Robbie mentally sounded as she watched her co-worker’s head stretch away from her shoulders and arch menacingly over her place at the info desk. An unsuspecting woman carrying a few bundles of yarn walked into their line of sight.
“Hi ma’am, could I offer you a basket?” Kathy swooped down from her perch, the green plastic carrier shoved into the woman’s abdomen, preventing any further movement. Kathy’s “customer service” smile was plastered across her face as though it were drawn by a left-handed child forced to use their right in Sunday school. The woman’s gray hair was jostled from behind her ear at the sudden appearance. She made to grab the basket handles, but Kathy maintained a tight grip. “Is there anything I could help you find?” The way she said the word “anything,” sounded as though she really meant anything.
Kathy had been the one to train Robbie when she first started out and they had hit it off at first. Of course, that was nearly a year ago and by now Robbie knew that it was more than just Kathy’s being a Capricorn that made them incompatible. At this point, Robbie just pitied the woman, who, only
a few years her senior and an ex theatre major, was left to collect dust in the store like the fidget spinners that had fallen out of popularity in less than two months.
Robbie recognized the mania, even identified with the desperation to a degree, but she didn’t have the energy to carry on the way Kathy did. Working there was bad enough without actually caring about it. It looked as though the woman shook her head no, but Robbie’s vision was blocked by a large head.
“Miss me?” Frank winked, before seating himself on the counter.
“Can you get down?” Robbie tried to sound annoyed, but truthfully, she was relieved.
“Por qué?” He smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask me how my vacation was?” he asked, reaching down beside her to open up the drawer that sheltered his name tag. He handed it to her, “Would you do the honors?”
“How was your vacation?” she asked drily as she pinned the faded clip to the pocket of his crisp, blue button-down. Management had long since turned to distributing lanyard name tags, but he refused them, said that his tag would fight the strength of time (she never corrected his misquote). He often spoke fondly of how the store used to be when he first started there, before the hype of technology and new age-y things; Robbie couldn’t relate, she had been too busy graduating from elementary school.
“Glad you asked,” he said. He smelled of cigarettes and sawdust. “I
finally finished building that model airplane I was telling you about.” Robbie searched the recesses of her mind, but couldn’t find anywhere she would have retained that kind of information. She vaguely recalled his laborious account of the proper hammering methods, so as to avoid injury, but even that existed in a hazy, garbled state; she might have even dreamed it.
“Huh, cool,” she responded.
“I know nobody here cares, I mean ever since we started carrying those remote-controlled drones and whatnot… it’s like everybody is afraid to get their hands dirty.”
She looked down at his hands. They were fairly clean and rough and she wondered how they would feel around her neck. “You like getting your hands dirty, do you?” His quip in response was cut short by an elderly woman’s approach. He hopped down and made a show of sweeping away where he previously sat. Clapping his hands together, he told Robbie, “I’ll catch you later, the puzzles need tending to.”
“Did you find everything you were looking for today?” she asked the woman without thinking about it. Her motions were so routine, Robbie didn’t know what she would do should anybody not find what they were looking for. She wondered if anybody truthfully ever found what they were “looking” for. The very idea that anybody was actively in search of anything seemed absurd to her.
“Why yes, thank you.”
“Would you like to become a Hobbyist today, or are you already a member?”
“Oh, oh, no thank you,” the woman waved her thin, varicose-veined hands as though swatting a fly. “I don’t come here often enough.” This was the third time this week Robbie had rung her up. Wordlessly, she manually punched in the price of the items spread before her: a handful of tea candles, a bag of miscellaneous buttons, and a jar of modge podge so large the old woman would certainly need help carrying it out.
“What does the membership include?” the woman asked, as she had previous times. Robbie automatically began listing off the benefits. The 10% in savings, the coupons mailed home, express shipping —
“Oh, oh, yes… no I don’t come often enough,” the woman repeated.
“Right,” Robbie muttered. If she could just get through one day without having to waste her breath, her life expectancy would increase. “Okay, your total is $28.35.”
The woman began fishing around in her tote bag; Robbie made eye contact with the cross-stitched cat on its front. She heard clacking sounds and wondered what exactly the woman had in there. She finally retrieved a paisley wallet with a broken zipper and handed over a crumpled ten- and twenty- dollar bill. Robbie smoothed them out and opened up the register.
“Oh wait, dear. I have the change.” She began digging around again, setting her bag on the countertop this time and almost disappearing into it. A line began to form behind her. Only once her frontal lobe and elbows were swallowed by the muslin did she resurface with a little coin purse shaped
like a sock — or maybe the woman was just bad at knitting. Either way, she popped open the metal prongs and dumped out a clusterfuck of coins. A
few of them went flying off the counter. Ever so slowly did the woman begin to count them out. Robbie wondered the likelihood that she would get arrested if she filled the purse back up with the coins and slapped the woman across the face with it. Certainly, the customers in line were having the same thoughts. She could’ve sped up the process by counting them herself, but all she thought was, I don’t get paid enough for this.
“Thirty-five!” the woman’s index finger stretched before her like E.T phoning home as she slid the last coin into her counted pile. Robbie swept them into the cash drawer without counting or sorting and handed the woman her bag and change. The woman struggled with the bag that held the modge podge; Robbie noted the way it drooped and bulged like a ball sack. She didn’t offer to help.
“Next!” she called out before the woman had fully left the counter area. Kathy was back by her side at the second register to help with the growing line. Robbie made sure to speak as little as she could get away with while finishing up the line of retirees and Cub Scout troop leaders. Nobody wanted to become a member.
When the line fizzled out, she turned to Kathy and said, “I have to use the bathroom.” Kathy hardly looked over at her, but her head bobbled up and down like the figures in the front window display case. “Okay, make sure you hurry back, your membership conversion rates have been really low this — ” Robbie stalked off before she could finish.
She didn’t have to use the bathroom but entered anyway. Sitting on the toilet seat in her khakis, she scrolled down her Facebook feed: someone from her Life Drawing class freshman year just had a show and sold most of her pieces. She recognized a few of her other peers in the tagged photos from the event. Robbie hadn’t spoken to any of them since graduation. Possibly since even before graduation. She friend requested the ones she was semi-sure would recognize her. They shouldn’t have too hard a time, she thought, in her profile picture she bore their cap and gown. On a whim, she decided to like
a few of the pictures and commented on a group photo: Wow, miss you guys. Def need to meet up for coffee soon. Congrats btw! Ily gal pal. She stared at the words, the white light of her phone reflecting against her face mockingly, illuminating something unsettling.
Someone knocked on the door. Robbie stood, pretended to zip up her pants and flushed the empty toilet. Stuffing her phone into her back pocket, she let the sink water run for a while before exiting. Instead of returning to the cash counter, she made her way to the back of the store, past the board games and fishing tackle and figurines, where the puzzles were located.
“Working hard or hardly working?” she asked. Frank, who hadn’t seen her coming, straightened up quickly and gave her his characteristic boyish grin.
“Well, what do you think?” He gestured to the stacks of puzzle boxes around his legs.
“You building a fort back here?” she asked, almost wistfully.
“I’m organizing,” he said as though it was obvious from his place in the disarray. “I could use your help actually. I’m trying to color code and arrange according to puzzle count. But I’m not sure if I want, say, the red to contain all of the reddish boxes from lowest count to highest, or just start with the lowest count and color arrange them and then move onto the next count up and do another color code until — ”
“Sounds cool,” Robbie said, stepping into the eye of the storm. She sat down within the circle of puzzles, some of the stacks towering over her. “Just tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll pass it up to you.” Frank didn’t seem to mind that she wouldn’t actually be of any help, and Robbie didn’t mind herself that she was utterly useless. She figured he needed the company as much as she did.
“What is it you do again?” Frank asked, “Paint, right?”
“Yeah,” Robbie responded, handing him a 500-count puzzle that had a bunch of puppies stuffed in a dog house on the cover.
“I’m working on blue,” he said handing it back.
“That is blue.”
“It’s periwinkle. And here I thought you were a painter.”
“Still blue,” she said, but she took it back from him and passed up a Starry Night puzzle.
“Much better,” he said, placing it on the shelf. “So, you get any painting done lately?”
Robbie shook her head in response, “Not really.”
“Well, if you’re interested, I’ve got some model planes that could really use a lady’s touch. Maybe it’ll help you get back into your groove.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Frank stuck his hand out for more puzzles. When she failed to notice, he dropped his arm and leaned against the shelf.
“I’m gone for a week and the place has already gone to shit,” he joked, looking out across the floor.
Robbie didn’t respond. She stretched out her legs and accidentally sent some boxes toppling. “I think I’m going to quit.”
Frank didn’t even bother looking at her. “You say that all the time.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You say that all the time too.”
“Yeah, well I mean it mean it.” Her body jerked like it was trying to apply conviction behind her words, but it only resulted in sending more puzzle boxes to the ground.
“Well, if you continue trying to destroy the merch, maybe they’ll fire you.”
“I would quit before they did.”
“Then do it.” She didn’t respond but began lazily straightening up her surroundings.
“I hate it here,” she added weakly.
Frank stared out across the store some more. He reminded her of a captain peering beyond the ship’s mast in a children’s book. His face took on a peculiar look and he glanced down at Robbie who straightened up to receive the wisdom stirring on his tongue.
“I’d get up if I were you, Kathy is making her way over here right now,” he said. Then he turned away from her and made himself seem busy.
“What is going on back here?” Kathy’s ponytail looked like it moved higher on her head.
“Organizing,” Frank tossed over his shoulder.
“I didn’t think it required more than one person to make a mess.” She turned to Robbie, hands on her hip. “Uh, hello Robbie, thought you had to run to the bathroom. Last time I checked, that was across the store. I need you at the registers.”
“I’m coming,” Robbie responded. Kathy swiveled on her heel and stormed off.
“You’re going?” Frank asked. “Yeah,” she said. She didn’t move.
Spring Issue 2019, Fiction
