Conveniently With You

On the first day of his job, Avery puts on a dingy baseball cap that his dad bought during the first family trip to Disney World when he was three years old. Adorned with the indiscernible autograph of a character, the black marker used to write the signature bleeds through splitting stitches and a discolored navy blue bill. He doesn’t remember the specifics of the trip, but assumes that he had a blast if the yellowing pictures in a shoebox labeled “2003” with silver Sharpie are anything to go by. A crowd favorite during family holiday dinners pictures Pluto, who appears to be shining the bald head of Avery’s dad like a genie lamp, where he sits at the dinner table of the Cape May Cafe with his head gleaming in the flash of the camera. Avery pockets the picture in the back of faded blue jeans and hurries out the door of his apartment, using his foot as a barricade to stop his cat Vader from seeking refuge elsewhere. He scoffs at the cat as it briefly hisses at his departure. “Calm down, you gremlin”, he affectionately calls him. “Do you think that canned salmon you like so well grows on trees? I need to go.” With some maneuvering, Avery manages to get the door closed with a resounding meowww being the last thing he hears before rushing down the stairs of the fire exit, too impatient to wait for the elevator. When he slams the door, Avery faintly hears a crash, deducing the sound to being the DVDs that he’s collected from Redbox over the years most likely scratching the linoleum flooring with their plastic covers. Avery’s consistency is admirable, and one of the only things that he can always rely on every two weeks when he gets whatever dismal amount of money transferred to his bank account from work is going to one of the only remaining Redbox locations he knows to be left. It sits right outside the automatic doors of the Walmart across the street with cat bowls on either side for the strays that lay behind it, the heat radiating on matted fur. The red is so faded that they may as well rebrand themselves as just “Box” at this point and has rusted corners that make it look more like an antique than a functioning movie dispenser. One of the best parts about people not caring about Redbox anymore is that subsequently, Redbox doesn’t care about itself, letting itself rot out of existence with movies that were only popular in the early 2000s and now play exclusively on cable television or sit in pathetic looking DVD cases outside of an even more pathetic looking Walmart. Redbox especially doesn’t care about anybody honoring their return policy, which is how Avery ended up with four copies of “The Princess Bride”. An impressive amount, but serves as no rival to the seven copies of “Step Brothers” that completes his collection of Redbox contraband. Nobody really needs that many copies of the same movie (or even just one for that matter, considering Avery’s Netflix account is collecting just as much dust as the Redbox movie dispenser he raids every other week) but  Avery thinks it’s kinda funny to imagine that there’s some pitiful Redbox employee out there whose sole job is to restock the movie selections for the exact location of my Walmart, only to find that the same two movies are missing from its inventory while the rest of the relics from the past stay abandoned by the nefarious degenerate (Avery) who hoards two very specific titles. Although the running joke is strictly for his own amusement, seeing the DVDs stacked under the hutch of Avery’s living room is enough encouragement for him to continue plundering an already dying business.

If arriving in his forest green Buick Century that his grandmother gifted him for his 17th birthday after losing her license (it was never lost, his dad revoked it after she drove herself into a pole exiting the bank teller) wasn’t embarrassing enough, his struggle to manually lock the driver’s side door most certainly did it. "For Christ's sake!" he exclaims to nobody in particular, relieving himself of the stress that had been following him closer than his own shadow. After fidgeting with the key enough to hear the click of the door's lock, he makes his way to the automatic doors of the small convenience store he now calls work. Schooling his expression and taking a breath large enough to end up coughing towards the end of it, he smiles while entering with a greeting much too jovial for the store's sketchy appearance. Attached to nearly each wall by the storefront are cameras much too dusty to provide a clear image of any unwelcome or suspicious activity, one complete with a screen that mirrors the movements of employees and customers alike. Avery chances a glance into the monitor, subtly baring his teeth enough to check for any remnants of seasoning from the everything bagel he shoved into his for the car ride to work this morning. He grimaces as he plucks a poppy seed from his front teeth, and scans the store for his manager, hoping it's the same woman who interviewed him. She was an older woman who told Avery that she was only working to give herself a routine during retirement, which he found to be slightly contradictory in respect to the whole idea of retirement, and mentioned such when they first exchanged greetings. She had replied by saying that she only prescribed to the “tired” part of the word “retired” and preferred working a mindless job over waiting for her husband to return from a hard day’s work of golfing at country clubs and flirting with the much younger caddies who he generously tipped after losing count of the number of drinks he had consumed. Avery surmised that she must feel obligated to make that money back, otherwise they would end up to be just as desperate as he is.

"Do you know how to count change?" she had asked him as soon as he sat in the worn leather chair of the store's makeshift office. This “office” (if that’s what you wanted to call it) had a bulky computer monitor resting on the majority of the small desk that sat in one corner of the room, with wires haphazardly bunched in the space underneath. Avery sat across from the computer’s tangled monstrosity, eyeing it from the corner of his eye every so often, half expecting them to electrocute the toe of the New Balances he had sported that day. To distract himself from thinking about the possible devastation of an accident (which may not be so tragic after all, provided that the logistics of worker’s compensation are favorable), he absentmindedly plucked the tears in the leather seat he had plopped in, feeling the grime of cigarette smoke and dust particles layering under his fingernails.

"Yes!" he had responded a little too enthusiastically, a little too loud over the whirring of an overworked box fan, the propeller inside sounding like it was ready to take flight. Avery could feel his thighs uncomfortably stick to the leather like velcro in the shorts he had chosen exclusively for the purpose of appearing casual, easygoing, and approachable. And what’s more approachable than a man who’s confident (or at least deceives people into thinking he is) enough to be showing a little knee? He adjusted his legs, peeling the exposed skin of his thighs from the leather seat as much as possible without looking conspicuous. The air was thick like syrup, and Avery couldn’t tell if it was from the smell of mildew emanating from the singular defective vent uselessly screwed to the ceiling or if it was from the efforts of the box fan circulating hot air through its pathetic wings. More of a mixture of both, if he was being honest, the permanence of fumes infused with SPF-50 and bug spray making him slightly delirious.

"Good, you're hired" the woman said decisively, cutting him out of his mold-drunk stupor without so much as skimming his resume. In hindsight, maybe bringing a laminated resume to an interview at a convenience store was a bit overkill. It's better to be overprepared than underprepared, he had supposed. Not that he really had any big accolades highlighted in the pre-structured format that Google Docs provided anyways, just a list of responsibilities he fulfilled in the one other job he had snagged before applying to this store. Boldened in a font that he had deemed “professional” spelled generic adjectives he figured employers looked for during the hiring process. Reliable, organized, dependable, respectable… all of which upon further analysis were just slightly differing variations of one another. There’s a word for that, he thought while the woman across from him reached into her back pocket to retrieve a stick of gum, gracelessly scarfing it down as if her breath were toxic and smacking her lips in the process. Symonem, sinomem, cinnamon… no, surely not cinnamon… The smack smack smack of her lips matched the rhythm of the tick tick tick sound echoing from a clock hanging precariously by a long wood nail in the wall. "You can start next week. I'll need you for the graveyard shift." Avery fumbled out of his seat to awkwardly shake her hand before he left, nearly toppling into her and inhaling the minty sigh that escaped her lips as a reprieve for his overwhelmed senses.

Avery had walked away feeling accomplished, celebrating with a can of Diet Dr. Pepper on his way out. By the time he was halfway home, he had gulped down nearly three quarters of the beverage and had made his way through four minutes and thirty seconds of his nine minute and forty two second long playlist he had created before venturing to the interview, almost an exact match to the time it would take him to both drive to work and return home if hired. Carefully curated songs that motivated him on the way there designated to the first half of the playlist, the second half consisting of lo-fi beats that diffused the high tensions of convenience store working for the way back home. Certainly, he could have simply walked to work with the destination being only a few short miles away but there was something about the drive that was necessary, almost cathartic, before being subjected to fluorescent lights that yellowed his skin and vape smoke of varying flavors that tarnished his lungs. Secondhand smoking kills, you know, he had seen it first-hand (but also not really) advertised in Truth commercials that always came on before his late-night Adult Swim binging. That, he thought, was what true addiction looked like as he positioned himself to sprawl out on his twin sized bed with one hand shoved in a bucket of extra buttered popcorn and the other resting on his distended stomach where the kernels took residence, keeping his insides warm and content.

Avery was beginning to think that he had taken his nocturnal lifestyle of unemployment for granted as he lazily scanned inventory that consisted of chips, beef jerky, and powdered donuts. He pocketed one of the crumpled packets that lay pathetically at the bottom of the box, confectioner’s sugar dusting the pads of his fingers and thanking the donuts for their sacrifice of holding the weight of their counterparts, their unmarketable state allowing him to anticipate the feast of the century after his shift. He thought that occupying himself with small tasks before his manager came out from wherever she had been hiding was the best course of action, concluding that she didn’t really seem like the “check-in and ask for something to do” type of person. If his manager was the same person who interviewed him, that is. Yeah. He should probably figure out whether or not that was true before he went looking for an old lady with one too many wrinkles in her forehead and two too many lungs for how often she whipped a cigarette out of her pocketbook, lighting it with an engraved name that spelled “Deborah” in fancy cursive writing that looked much too expensive to be used on something as cheap and classless as a pack of Marlboros. Avery wondered where all of that expendable income for cigarettes came from if her husband was apparently spending it all on smiles from younger women and whiskey at country clubs. If Deborah’s wallet was just as fat as the pocket of her purse that those cigarettes were always stuffed in, maybe she was living a little bit more comfortably than she cares to admit. Living like you were poor was only fun when it wasn’t true, after all, and Avery takes that sentiment as gospel in light of the harsh reality that he was unmistakably slumming it at the moment. The constant rumble in his stomach is only intensified as he continues to scan the barcodes on Hershey bars and off-brand Reese’s peanut butter cups fittingly named “Peanut Butter Wells.” “Wow,” he marveled, "What company had this stroke of genius?”

“It’s better than the bag of Cinnamon Toast Crunch the mini mart down the street sells…” came a voice from behind Avery that nearly sent him into an early grave. “Cinnamon Toasties, I think they’re called?” the voice finished, undeterred by the sharp yelp he emitted.

Clutching his chest in defense and almost snapping his head with the ferocity in which he turned, his mouth allowed the stranger approximately .2 seconds of silence before gulping down the breaths that had been snatched from him moments ago and exhaling with a “What the fuck??” It was only when he trained his eyes on the individual who broke him from his Hershey-laden trance that he recognized the same blue and red vest that was currently hugging his own shoulders. That was the first thing he noticed. The second was that the face he was expecting to share the same shift with him today was free of wrinkles and frown lines, the only sign of emotion in this individual’s face being a quirked eyebrow, one bemused by the sight of his bulging eyes turned narrow and accusing. The eyes that he was met with continued to twinkle with amusement, zeroing in on his crooked nametag. Written in his own atrocious scribbling that he calls handwriting was a “AVERY” in all capital letters. 

His recently acquainted coworker (to put it nicely) smirked reading the bold letters and leaned in his space from where she perched herself on the edge of the checkout counter behind him. He could feel her breath tickling his neck, the small hairs standing at attention like a soldier saluting his chief. “Avery, huh?” she said, more as a statement and less as a question. And fuck, did he wanna hear her say it again. Don’t be a fucking freak. She addressed you based on what she was able to read from your kindergarten project for a name tag, stop acting so bitchless. He attempted to suppress the obsessive little goblin in his head that always made an appearance at the most inopportune times, gaining control of the situation before following his impulse to stare at the red highlights that ran through natural brunette hair. It reminded him of the kind of red on a Campbell’s Soup can, slightly obnoxious but purposefully so. The kind of color that demanded attention, regardless of the kind of connotation that preceded it. Every part of her demanded attention, it seemed; from the rubber wristband around her left arm that spelled a friendly “fuck off” to the chipped black nail polish that was currently being violated by a series of aggressive scratches. “Did your mom forget that she birthed a little boy or did she just wanna set you up for failure?”

Well damn. Ouch. He had always been a little self-conscious about his name, his little league baseball team telling him to change in a different locker room, shouting obscenities as his name echoed through tiled floors and shower cubicles with open curtains. And who was gonna listen to his frequent recital of the term “unisex” anyways? His voice would only serve as more background noise in the already rambunctious locker room, where his peers unabashedly measured the sizes of more than just their egos. His name had always been said like a slur, sounding poisonous in the mouths of those who attached it to someone more feminine. Hearing it from a woman who looks like sex on legs? Devastating for his nearly nonexistent confidence, basically like a boot kicking dust. Not that that’s all women are, of course, his brain belatedly added in reconciliation of the fabricated argument brewing in his neanderthal brain. If he was going to successfully get through this shift without gawking at his bitchy (and crazy fucking attractive) coworker the whole time, he needed to take drastic measures to prevent himself from exposing just how touch starved he actually is. 

“Did your mother forget to muzzle you before you left the house this morning, or did she just think it was best to let you make yourself look like a fool today in hopes that you learn some manners?” he retorted amidst the silence that had fallen between them. Un-fucking-called for, dipshit. And apparently, for the first time the both of them seemed to be on the same page as he watched the same condescending smirk disappear behind an “O” shape form on stunned lips with eyebrows shot into the hairline of her widow’s peak. If the feeling of his own face was anything to trust, he could tell that he had formed the same surprised expression in shock of his own words. Avery has never really been an advocate for friendly fire, mainly because he spends more time thinking about what to fire than performing the action of firing itself, but he supposes today is a special occasion. Judging by the menacing look forming on his coworker’s once bewildered face, he can tell that another, more devastating occasion is about to follow. He just hopes that his tombstone reads something like “Here lies Avery Queens: Stomped to death by the girl of his dreams.” Before he had the opportunity to think too much about the Converse All-Star shoe mark she would leave on his face, maybe even treat himself to the thought of what it would look like with him laying flat on the ground with her face inches away from his, he mistakes the black spots in his vision for the flicker of smudged overhead lights lining the store’s ceiling.

Tenderly cradling the side of his left jaw, Avery flinches when he sees the silhouette of his aggressor move in his peripheral vision. He distantly wonders if his face looks as swollen as it feels, wincing when he cups it with too much force. He’d only been hit like this one other time in his life, when his childhood best friend smothered him with every knuckle on his dominant hand after Avery had kicked his Lego Death Star FIFA World Cup style across his bedroom in retaliation for saying he couldn’t touch it. Needless to say, there was a disturbance in the force that evening as Avery ate his dinner, chewing his food with the front of his teeth to avoid the ache coming from the back. Avery was eight at the time, and had since forgotten how it feels to have his teeth rattle in the nothingness of his skull. When he finally is able to register noise that isn’t the steady ringing his ear drum are currently producing, reminiscent of a faint but incessant whistle with a tone pitched and offensive, he surveys the face of the same silhouette that’s been lingering in his vicinity. Her lips are pressed into a thin line, humming the tune of a song only she knows, the ticking of the obnoxious analog clock that hangs just above the wall adjacent to the cash register serving as a metronome for the unidentified hymn. Her voice is heavenly… Avery thinks, as if he didn’t just see the devil himself momentarily possess her as she swung a punch in his direction that would make Conor McGregor himself jealous. The hum subsides, and replacing it comes a “Fuck you, bastard! Go home and tell your parents they raised a fucking punching bag for a son, I’m sure they’d be proud to hear that you at least have a purpose beyond wasting everybody’s fucking space.” She stomps to the other side of the store and grabs a Red Bull can, popping the tab open with her teeth like it’s second nature. The action is most likely just some feral display of dominance, but a part of Avery also wonders if she has trouble opening the cans with her jagged fingernails, if the stubs she’s bitten them to could even open something as simple as a metal tab if she tried. He doesn’t have the argumentative stamina to tell her that using the word bastard in the same sentence as his parents who just celebrated their twenty fifth anniversary seems a little counterintuitive, so he lets her continue the explosive rambling until it becomes just as much of a part of the background as the whirring of the coolers that hold freshly stocked Red Bull cans. The cans are separated by flavor, and Avery wonders if someone familiar with the logistics of modern day science could successfully capture the flavor of his assailant’s lips in a similar carbonated beverage, just for him to savor and no one else. If someone were able to bottle the taste of her in an aluminum can, no nutrition label could deter him from chugging it like a shipwrecked survivor who's just been saved from the middle of the Pacific. Avery thinks it would quench his entire soul, maybe even be branded with some cheesy name that overuses a combination of the words “essence” and “vitality”.

Avery makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat, kicking the toe of his shoe against the ground as a distraction from looking in her direction. He scuffs the surface, but doubts that his boss will be able to tell which ones are new from the ones already left on the unpolished floors. “So… what’s your name then? I wanna make sure I have it for when I file a formal complaint against you to our boss.” That was about as clever as what Avery was going to get for asking her name, and even the little gremlin in his head approved of the approach. 

His satisfaction was short-lived (as if that was some kind of new experience) when he saw a light of enthusiasm in her eyes that was both perplexing and slightly intimidating as she spoke. “My name is Wilma Diqfit. Do you wanna know my father’s name too for the report? His name is Jack Mihoff, just in case you need it”, she said trying to contain the fit of laughter bubbling from behind her mouth. Avery should’ve known that she would be the kind of person to make herself laugh, but seeing it in real time was a level of infuriating that he didn’t know existed.