Supermarket - Bobby Hall Page 0,21
Bianca, Russian Villain and Sucker of Happiness.
“Who are you talking to?” Mia said in a why aren’t you paying attention to what I’m saying tone.
“What? Oh, I’m sorry! My buddy was just trying to get my attention.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
Just as I was searching for a further excuse, we were interrupted by a voice.
“Hey there, Muldoon’s employees!” said Ted Daniels, giving us an overzealous wave. He was headed toward the coffee shop with Cara, the full-lipped blonde who worked there.
“Oh, poor girl,” Mia said. “Ted is kinda creepy. I’d hate to have to go anywhere with him! And she’s so sweet.”
“And freaky,” I added.
“What?”
“Oh, I just heard she gets a little . . . freaky, haha.”
“Who told you that, Flynn?”
“Frank had sex with her.”
“Well, Frank is a liar,” Mia said. “Because Cara is, like, super Mormon. I’ve witnessed it firsthand. If she had sex with him, well, then . . . I have a penis.”
My eyes glanced down toward the zipper in her pants.
“Flynn!” She giggled, then smacked my arm.
The giggle slap. She was definitely into me. I mean, that’s like ninth-grade shit right there . . . I was so in!
By lunch I was pretty tired—not from speaking to Mia, obviously, but from working hard under Soul Sucker Bianca. As I was about to take my break, green-haired Kurtis came over, awkwardly trying to talk to Mia while I restocked the bagels. Fuck this guy, I thought. As he left, he gave me a menacing look—like he wanted me dead. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Bianca would tell us not to speak to each other while we worked. Like, I could understand if we weren’t being productive, or being loud and unprofessional, but our work areas were feet from each other and this bitch had the balls to tell us no talking?
During my break I snagged a few slices of “dead” bread from the bakery, and then went to the deli and swiped some honey ham and Swiss cheese when Kurtis wasn’t looking. An impromptu sandwich. After that, I went to the break room, where Frank was filling a paper cup with water from the blue plastic jug.
“Dude, where you been?” he said.
“I could ask you the same thing, man. I haven’t seen you in days.”
“Bro, didn’t you see me today trying to get your attention?” he asked with attitude. “I’ve been doing that the last few days when that mean bitch who works there wasn’t looking.”
“Yeah, but I—”
“You were talking to that Mia chick, huh?! She’s fuckin’ hot, right?” he interrupted.
“Dude, she doesn’t even know who you are,” I snapped back a bit defensively.
“Man, all these hos know who I am,” Frank said, opening a locker and taking out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “You know, in my locker there’s a little cubby under the metal at the base. If you push down on the right side it pops open. It’s where I keep the shit I steal . . . and my gun.”
Frank shut the locker.
“You don’t have a gun in there!” I spewed. “Whaatt?!”
“It’s for when the time comes.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m foreshadowing, man,” he said with a smirk.
“Foreshadowing what?”
“The day some disgruntled schizophrenic nutjob employee shows up and stalks the aisles with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Pumping rounds into customers and employees. Or even himself.” Frank put a cigarette in his mouth. “I’m gonna be prepared for that fucker. He’s never gonna know what hit him. I’m gonna be a thousand moves ahead of him. Like a game of chess.”
“You don’t really have a gun in there, do you?” I asked, though, deep down, this was the shit I loved about Frank. You kinda didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
“Ever seen the roof?” he said, ignoring me as he walked past.
“No, I haven—”
“Cool, let’s go.”
As we walked through the store, he continued talking. “You didn’t see me because you didn’t want to. Just admit it to yourself, man. This really isn’t healthy by now, you must realize that.”
“Wait, what? What are you talking about?” I replied.
“Mia, man. We were talking about your obsession with her, and how it essentially makes me invisible, dude.”
“What do you mean?” I stared at Frank, puzzled.
“Bros before hos, man. But if you wanna get technical—the brain is a very complicated organ, man. If you don’t control it, it will control you. You see what you wanna see. And as the saying goes . . . you only had eyes