Last Known Address. Elizabeth Wrenn

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       CHAPTER SEVEN Kathryn

      Kathryn grabbed the phone and angrily punched the intercom, for the second time in as many minutes. She took a deep breath, held the handset to her mouth, earpiece down, and said, ‘Can we have another checker up front, please? Now?’

      She knew she had not succeeded in keeping the irritation out of her voice. She would no doubt be ‘having a little chat’ with Mr Knelbrecht again about the importance of intercom etiquette, which he infuriatingly pronounced ‘eti-kwett’. Chat, my ass, she thought, grabbing a stack of Lean Cuisines from the carry-basket, sliding them over the scanner one at a time. As she reached for the bag of apples, she looked up to see if any of the other checkers were coming. But all she saw was her line of angry customers. Only old Mrs B. smiled at her. Kathryn glanced at lane six, the only other one open. Marianne had just three people waiting in her line, but each had large carts, all very full. As Kathryn continued to scan items, she noted that all three of Marianne’s customers were moms with toddlers and/or babies in the front, bulbous legs dangling through the leg holes of the cart, chubby hands idly playing with keys or a pack of gum, while Mom flipped through a gossip rag for a few minutes of escape. Marianne was smiling and chatting with two of the women. The stay-at-home moms were almost always nice. They were rarely in a hurry.

      She mechanically but speedily grabbed and scanned items. She knew it made sense for her to be in lane one; she was head clerk, the most experienced and fastest. But she hated the express lane. The endless queue of people with their overbooked calendars invariably blamed her for their lateness and stress, no matter how fast she was. She was beyond tired of their impatience, their lack of even minimal courtesy, and especially their creative math when it came to fifteen items or fewer. ‘Oh, sorry. I counted the apples, oranges and pears as one item because they’re all fruit.’ Or, even worse, the petulant: ‘So, I’m a couple of items over. Sue me.’

      She passed through a can of frozen orange juice, but it wouldn’t scan. She ran it again. Still no ding. She moved her thumb over the bar code, clearing the frost from it. She felt, then saw, a thin line of hardened juice on the bar code: another container had leaked in the freezer case. She used her nametag, with its decade-of-service gold star, to scrape it off. She hated the star; to her, it felt like a tick, latched on up there, sucking the life out of her. She’d been working here since high school. Living here, since high school. Dying here, since high school. She’d imagined so much more for herself.

      Her hand closed tightly around the can. She felt the blood surge up from her swollen feet, anger rising through her like a deep-sea diver coming up too fast, knowing it was certain death, but the need for air too great. A young man wearing a too-small business suit stood in the middle of her line, checking his watch, scowling.

      Where was Tom? Or Shirley? Or Ting? Or Mr Fucking Knelbrecht? Was this some kind of April Fool joke? But she knew it wasn’t. It was business as usual.

      Kathryn froze, closed her eyes, orange juice in hand. She wanted so much to hurl the can. She imagined it, spiraling upward, breaking through the narrow horizontal windows above the high shelves of charcoal briquettes, stacked above the bags of de-icer. Barbecuing season still seemed a long way off, but the de-icer hadn’t been needed for a while either. It wasn’t winter, but it sure as hell wasn’t spring yet in northern Iowa. The sun was shining only anemically today. Kathryn knew more snow would come before spring truly arrived. ‘Betwixt and between,’ her mother would say. ‘You’re just betwixt and between, honey. Wait a spell. Something’ll shove you one way or the other.’

      Kathryn tried scanning the juice again, to no avail. She began punching in the numbers from the bar code, but found that her star had scratched through two of them. She pressed the intercom code again. ‘Price check on one.’ She kept her finger on the button, toying with the idea of announcing, ‘Naked woman on one.’ That would get Matt and Mr Knelbrecht, and the guys from the back, running up for sure. Tom would emerge from his break only if she said ‘Naked guy on one,’ and then he’d try to saunter by inconspicuously. She put the juice aside and returned to the basket, picking up item after item, not looking, not counting, not caring that this woman probably had thirty items in her basket.

      Betwixt and between. Ding. Her mother. Ding. Just thinking of her made her blood boil anew. Ding. What she’d done was unforgivable. Ding. Kathryn was already pissed at her for just planning the trip, let alone actually going on it. Ding. Ding. Didn’t she realize how much Lucy would miss her? She wasn’t thinking about anyone but herself. Ding. Even when she’d shown that damn picture to those men in the restaurant, she’d been thinking about herself. Ding. Another example of C.C. Byrd dealing with that one messy corner left in her life: the embarrassing unmarried daughter situation.

      Matt arrived just as she scanned the last item. Finally. Kathryn held up the juice, he nodded, ran to get another. Good kid. She sacked the woman’s groceries, then reached under the counter and grabbed the paper towel and Windex. She angrily scrubbed the scanner while she waited for Matt.

      It didn’t seem right, her almost-fifty-year-old mom taking off on a road trip, like a college kid. And here she was, working overtime at the SavR King. Being the responsible one. One irresponsible moment with that handsome blackjack dealer in Las Vegas had determined a level of responsibility for her that would last her lifetime. She adored Lucy, and would do anything for her. But she battled the persistent feeling that doing anything for herself was at odds with doing something for her daughter. Not to mention what she made her daughter do. Lucy had tearfully begged yet again this morning not to be made to go to school. Pretty tough to take from a second grader.

      She leaned on the intercom button again, knowing it would be more productive to try to get a response from deep space. ‘Checker needed up front, please.’ Was Matt squeezing the damn oranges to get the juice?

      Standing there at register one, under the sign that, this morning, falsely advertised ‘EXPRESS’, Kathryn picked up the scratched can of juice. She closed her eyes, felt her fingers clenching around the can.

      ‘Kathy, СКАЧАТЬ