Comfortably Numb

Inside the retail warehouse overhanging industrial lights hiss, casting shadows on workers and customers alike. DO NOT let the bosses catch you calling them that. They pay to shop here. Being an associate, I must refer to our patrons as MEMBERS, not CUSTOMERS. My head thumps dull with each step I take. The left ear piece of black framed glasses once holding my view of the world together broke off, and is now bound in electrical tape too tight around my face.

March further North past all qualities of Oklahomans but the same quality of people and you'll find the cash registers. While my feet drag me not towards a Professional destination, but a Personal agenda I scratch viciously at my ear in hopes of easing the pain. No, the plastic frame just digs deeper into flaking middle class skin.

REGISTER ONE. There she is. Russian or Polish but speaks like a dreamer from Farm Town, Oklahoma subtract the drawl. She doesn't wave to me. She gives me a funny look like she's trying to be funny. The brown tuft of hair becomes a halo around her head as nostrils flare and a thin eyebrow cocks with several white dwarfs behind suspicious outer-space eyes. I laugh, but not because it's funny.

Rinse-

Repeat this Michael Jackson moonwalk slick look every time our ocular cavities meet for the next two hours. Right up until she walks into the break room. Three of the bosses are at the table closest me eating chicken salad and watching Canadians celebrate their winter Olympic gold victory in hockey against America. All of them and everyone else scolding over lunch and carbonated high fructose corn syrup in aluminum cans. It usually brings me joy to watch citizens get bent out of shape over such petty things, but the situation doesn't get me high this time.

Friction between chair legs against the floor and friction between her blue jeans against my blacks create two polar opposite frequencies simultaneously as she sits down. One destructive. The other angelic.

One point five seconds of my life gone by.

Last hour some creep in a sweater vest gave her the look up and down in front of his second place beloved and infant child. She changed the subject to something about HOGWARTS and how much she wanted to go. The husband promised tickets if only she'd come home with them, please? The family left once the transaction was complete.

Venting let's go of a strange laugh complemented by those oxymoron unstable stars in her face. I return the gesture. I'm feeling a bit strange myself.

Voices come from all around about how America ranked higher than Canada before the game. Those Red Leaf's kicked our ass on our own turf. I finally get a head change off seeing these people ashamed in their country. And look at what it took: A HOCKEY GAME.

She asks, "Why?"

Turn on the sweat. Of all people is this the one I'm going to tell? "No," I say. "Too many people in here." Just making an excuse me.

We compromise to a far corner near the space heater. It oscillates on seventy-five back and forth and has me pouring even more. I still say, "No." Her hand dives into an unnatural sun yellow purse  and emerges gripping a cell phone. Numbers exchange. I send a message through radio waves to satellites in space back to Earth and into her phone.

One minute of human existence clocked.

Her eyes rise from the phone to mine without giving me the look. She let's me know it's not all that bad. Her cheeks bloom roses, a veil removes itself and our thoughts lose to gravity landing on common ground: Suicide. I tried pills. She wrecked her car into a highway guardrail. Her bravery and dedication to the idea is remarkable.

"It'll be alright."

The phrase that anyone can say, but only means something when certain people say it.

Our minds veg out on each other until she breaks the silence with the look. We laugh with, not at each other.

Que the end as she slips back into her work vest, leaving me with only the visions behind my eyelids. The space heater quits oscillating without reason, pointing directly at me. I do nothing. Comfortably numb.