Technicolor

A young supermarket employee contemplates his life amidst a cast of colorful characters. ((Back up and edited.))

Technicolor

Four dingy green walls, a floor half-tile and half-cement, a decrepit refrigerator, and some irritating metal chairs. It’s the break room of the 35th Street Safeway to some; for me, it’s sanctuary, and I’m hiding in it again.

“I need a price-check on Garbanzo beans, price check on Garbanzo beans �" and the register drawer is sticking again.”

Outside the intercom clicks off, and the saxophone and guitar that are rumored to ‘mellow’ the customers return to the airwaves. I don’t move, and the intercom buzzes on again.

“Price check on Garbanzo beans... Hess, the register drawer isn’t going to unstick itself.”

Her grating voice is gone, but no music replaces, and I imagine customers pausing, waiting, unaccustomed to this silence.

“Hess?”

“She’s gonna kill you, you know.”

Todd the mopper waltzes in with his rolling bucket of grimy water and leans on the protruding handle of the mop, his eyes on the ceiling. I look up, too, waiting for the voice of Carrie the Cashier God to condemn me or give up.

“Is there anyone even out there?” I whisper to Todd. He turns from his pimpled reflection in the porthole of the door and shrugs.

“Hell if I know. I just mop the floors.”

“Attention Safeway shoppers,” speaks Carrie, and my head jerks up again. “Any lawsuits concerning refusal of an employee to return the appropriate amount of change for purchases due to an uncooperative register drawer may be directed towards Hess Greenbaum, that’s Hess Greenbaum, Mister Hess W. Greenbaum of eastern Sacramento. And as always, thank you for shopping your neighborhood Safeway.”

Click, and the smooth supermarket jazz is back, soothing us all.

“You’re middle name’s W?” asks Todd, squinting from behind his Coke bottle thick glasses.

“Walter,” I answer noncommittally, turning back to the black and white TV and its old I Love Lucy reruns.

“Man, this place is a dingeplex.” Todd sighs and sits down, propping his Reebok's on the table.

“I like it,” I defend, wishing he’d leave, or if he didn't, then at least start speaking English. I don’t tell him why I like it, because he wouldn’t understand; Todd’s brain is so glazed with video-game neon's and pix-elated hues, he wouldn’t realize what a nauseatingly colorful universe the Safeway is, and how refreshingly drab and dull its ‘dingeplex’ of a break room could be.

Out there are fire engine red bottles of ketchup, dandelion yellow blocks of cheese, electric green stalks of celery. Bottles of fabric softener so pink they seem interchangeable with Pepto Bismol. Bulk-sized tubs of pistachio ice cream so green they look like they could sanitize your toilet bowls. And the fluorescent lighting on the shiny white-tiled floor �" spotless, because Todd here does nothing but mop so he can buy expansion packs and guidebooks and joysticks with every cent of his paycheck.

And in here, in the beautiful, beautiful breakroom, not even the television is in full color. I bask in its two-tone glory.

“Yeah, well, you’re a Mugwump if I ever saw one,” snorts Todd.

“What game is it this time?”

“Super X Forces of Xenon 3: the Pillage of the Mastadonians. It’s a new thing �" a role-playing game, or RPG as the zoigs call it. See, you get a group of guys together and you roll dice and depending on what you roll...”

On the screen, Lucy looks like she’s about to cry, her black lips pursed in that classy pout, the hint of tears shining in her ashy eyes. Oh, Lucy, how can you be sad in your clean gray house with your clean gray refrigerator and matching blender, with your funny gray neighbors and your sharp-dressed husband with his slick black hair?

I tuned Todd back in. “...and that’s where I picked up the lingo.”

“Lucy, I’m home!”

Lucy runs into Ricky’s arms as Todd stops talking, and for a moment everything is at peace.

“But I have this problem, Hess.”

All the saxophone in the world couldn’t save me now.

“What is it, Todd?”

“See, in Super X Forces of Xenon 3: the Pillage of the Mastadonians, if you lose a leg in battle, say, by Ninja Laser or Warlock Raybeam, you have the option of becoming a Voodoo Pirate, and that got me thinking, how come so many real-life pirates didn’t have legs? The peg leg thing, you know? Next to maybe the hook hand, a peg leg was the most popular accessory of the high seas, but how would a pirate lose a leg?”

“Sharks, hydras, mutineers... a nasty shop class incident. I don’t know, Todd. Shouldn’t you be leaving me and my bleak little refuge alone?

We sit in mutual silence, me willing myself into Lucy’s living room, Todd pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and space cadette-ing out. The intercom buzzes on.

“Hess Walter Greenbaum, you are under threat of unemployment if you do not kindly unstick the register drawer of lane 6 within the next three seconds.”

I stand, switching off the TV as I do, obliterating Lucy and Ricky and all their appliances. Through the porthole in the door I see a woman with nothing more in her cart than a few loaves of white bread and a case of beer, but even she is lurid under the lights, her hair the same shade of orange as shag rugs and her purple eyeshadow whorish.

“Carrie’s gonna kill you,” Todd repeats matter-of-factly.

Outside these doors waits the Safeway, with its red steaks and white marshmallows and bright blue detergent.

“Yeah,” I say to Todd. “I know.”

Outside, three hours later, the winos have taken up their nightly quarters against the towers of Pepsi vending machines, the shopping carts have all been pushed into their corrals, and I’m fumbling with the key to my car. Inside the Safeway it’s dark, but outside its red neon sign stays lit �" the S is burned out and the Y flickers, questioning me.

School, I answer. Lacrosse scholarships get you so far, minimum wage will have to get you the rest until you get a lucky break.

Carrie is locking up the Safeway's doors, and I wonder if she suffers the same Technicolor blindness I do when she leaves work. Probably not, considering she’s been working here since she dropped out of high school, climbing her way up the supermarket power ladder till she was 3rd shift manager, a job that garnered little more pay than Todd the mopper, but did allow access to fellow employee’s files and thusly their middle names. This was apparently useful when threatening them over the PA system.

Carrie had simply sneered at me when I banged the drawer open, and then told me to make sure all the soup can labels were facing out before closing time. I did, griping at each can of Cream of Mushroom and Chicken Noodle while making up my own bonuses.

“To Hess Greenbaum, a sixty percent pay increase, for being the only employee at the 35th street Safeway with enough know-how to unstick a register drawer. Thank you for saving the day again.”

I knew the only reason I could do it was because I was the only one of the three of us working with enough muscle to lift a jug of bleach, let alone show register drawers who was boss. Practicing lacrosse fifteen hours a week had few benefits, but it had helped in getting me my stocking job.

I found a can of Clam Chowder soup in the Beverage aisle later that night, or rather, Carrie did, and told me off for missing it when I was turning all the soda bottle labels out.

And now Carrie was fumbling with the lock, stomping her four-and-a-half inch heels and swearing. I watched her as my own key suddenly slipped into the ignition, and with a wicked grin I pushed myself back in my seat victoriously, as though I had beat her in our little key race, and drove off.

Six miles later I realized what a terrible person I was.

My lacrosse team was losing this season; yes, that was true. I had an awful job at the circus of foodstuffs, that was also true. I was up to my neck in student loans and financial aid debts, my steering wheel veered slightly to the left, and I still hadn’t met a girl worth conversing let alone sleeping with, but were those any reason to refuse assistance to my fellow slave in hell? To leave Carrie there in her short skirt and frizzy hair with nothing more than the winos and the buzzing Safeway sign for help? What if she was still there, stabbing blindly with the key, or what if she had given up and the Safeway was robbed, and all because I, Mister High and Mighty Varsity Master Rotator Hess Greenbaum had been, well, a Mugwump?

I was suddenly back in the parking lot of the 35th Street Safeway, rushing to the door and pulling it. Locked. And Carrie’s truck nowhere to be seen.

“Little fruit tart left ten minutes ago, bub,” offered one of the winos. “You just missed her.”

“Thanks,” I said, unsure of what to do with myself. Then I realized I was paranoid. But still a Mugwump. Todd was right.

I went back to the car and leaned on the hood, mulling things over. I realized I wanted to stop being a Mugwump, that I wanted some happiness in my life, not only wanted it, but needed it. I thought about what made me happy; winning lacrosse matches. Winning anything, really, and then I wondered if this was Todd’s secret �" he was so damn chipper all the time, despite his drippy hair and bad complexion, because he won. He didn't win at social situations, and certainly not at hygiene, but the simple pleasures of beating his video games gave him a purpose... a passion. And that got me thinking about pirates, and how pirates lost their legs, and suddenly I had it.

Igby Winfield. My best friend from St. Luke’s Catholic School, and possibly the only person who had made a difference in my life besides the occasional bottle of whiskey on the days I was really angry at the hand I got dealt. Somehow, I felt he could help me with his endless supply of logic and knowledge.

I was flipping through the phone book instantly, scanning the list of Californians to find his new address, if he was even in the state anymore.

“Winfield, Igby A,” I read in triumph to the phone booth. Abruptly, I became very nervous as I tore the page from the book, but I ignored the feeling and walked back to my car, clutching the tissue-thin sheet like a life preserver.

I hadn’t seen him in over a year. Different things had engendered the lengthy interim �" us being at different schools, me running eight miles three days a week and him stocking up on books and weird records and pot, as I found out later when I showed up at his old doorstep and a man older than time itself answered the door. After an hour of conversation attempts with Grandpa Prehistoric, I tried Igby’s parent’s house, but no one answered, and when I called the next week, no one picked up. It was all very mysterious, but I forgot it as the routine of run, class, match, work, run, class, match, work dulled my mind and sent me to the pinnacle of Mugwumpery.

I sat outside the Safeway later that week, gazing up at the sky while I thought of when Igby and I first met. We were both at the St. Luke's Catholic school stadium, both from different worlds.

Igby was the staple of the stadium. After school, the lacrosse team would have practice, and everyday Igby was there, reading. All the boys at St. Luke’s were issued the same bookbags, but you could tell whose was whose just by looking at them: in mine, a sweating water bottle, and lots of papers with crinkled edges from said water bottle. In Igby’s, anywhere from one to half a dozen books. Fiction, poetry, history, anthropology, at one time a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The other guys didn’t tease him, because anywhere you looked a brother was waiting with a demerit to scar your record, but it was known Igby was weird.

Across the street from St. Luke’s was the Serenity Girl’s School, and the students there would flock to the stadium after school as well, all plaid skirts and knee-high socks and cardigans. They’d take their cardigans off once they’d made it to the stadium, even on chilly days, because the wool was as itchy as it was unfashionable, and then they’d let down their hair since regulation was to keep it pinned up. Catholic girls were not known for wanting to comply with conformity.

Many a St. Luke’s scrimmage goal was lost on account of the Serenity girls.

At first, when I saw Igby report to the stadium with the same diligence as the Serenity girls, I thought it was because of them he came. But then, as the season went on, I realized he didn’t care either about the girls or about the game; he simply came to read.

Suddenly I felt a connection with our silent bench-warmer, because like him, I didn’t care about the girls. I thought they were snotty, pompous, and bratty. Beautiful, yes, but would they ever be worth more than a pretty smile and a head of long hair?

Many a goal was lost on those girls, but never was it one of mine.

It was November and drizzling the afternoon Igby and I first actually met. The Serenity girls had their school-commissioned plaid umbrellas unfurled to keep the drizzle off their deep-conditioned locks of hair. I was a sophomore and somewhat of a klutz, and I was currently receiving a due berating from Brute, the team captain (not his real name, but it'll do just fine for now). I had just played a brilliant maneuver that incorporated the forfeit of a goal, the loss of my stick, and the cruel acquaintance of my face with the soggy ground.

“I know those Serenity fillies are over their with their headlights on brights, but that’s no excuse, Greenbaum �" that was a pathetic display, and if you want to make anything of your time on this team without sacrificing the dignity of St. Luke’s �" ”

Brute paused, watching me spit out a wad of grass and dirt and saliva.

“I ought to make you swallow it,” he snarled, “but seeing as it’s your first season, go keep that one-legged creep company till huddle-up and showers. I’ve got my eye on you, Greenbaum.”

Yeah, good luck seeing me beneath that unibrow, I thought to Brute's retreating, sweat-stained back. I grimaced: my teeth felt like fossils, my cheeks like furnaces, and my skin was clammy and damp from the wussy precipitation. It didn't even have the decency to rain the team out and distract them from my embarrassment.

I squinted to see Igby, sitting across the field, his blazer pulled over his head like a tent. Scowling, I took the long way around the pitch, realizing only after I’d sat down that any sort of water I might use to scour my mouth with was on the other side where I’d just come from. Something tiny in me thought I might look tough, sitting out a whole practice with caveman teeth, but something bigger thought I’d just get laughed at, while something colossal merely wanted the taste of earthworms and fertilizer gone. So I started spitting, and while my teammates’ eyes were elsewhere, the other stadium's occupants were not, giving me a soundtrack of “Eww”s, “Ugh”s, and “Omigod, and I thought he was cute”.

My attempts seemed to increase the combination of gritty feel and filthy taste, my saliva acting as wine that enhanced the cheese of gunk in my mouth.

It was then that Igby handed me something.

“Here.”

I took it. A flask. Silver, thin, and capped. I looked at Igby, who looked back from under the canopy of his blazer, his eyes pea soup green but unreadable, his grin slightly off-kilter. Our gazes locked, both of us taking a moment to regard the other fully, until finally I unscrewed the lid and took a swig.

I spewed and gagged. Igby chuckled softly, and the girls all gave little screams of disgust.

“You coulda told me it was whiskey,” I said to him once I’d mastered my impulses and gargled the last of the loam from my throat.

“Could have,” agreed Igby, now returned to his book. “But didn’t.”

“At least it got the job done.” I shrugged, handing the flask back to Igby. He had to lean to reach it, and his pants leg lifted to reveal a stainless steel pole for an ankle. I glanced at his face as he retrieved the flask; still page-bound, unknowing that I’d seen.

“Though I think that stuff could take paint off walls,” I remarked amicably. Igby pocketed the flask.

"You’re wondering how it happened,” he said. I swallowed. He turned a page. “If you really �" ”

"No,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m wondering why you sit in the stadium reading every day.”

Igby closed his book, looked me straight in the eye, till his focus shifted to someplace over my shoulder. I turned.

“Hi, Hess.”

Veronica Shuyler was standing behind me, flawless with her orange-blond hair spilling over her shoulders, her head tilted at an attractive thirty degree angle. Her plaid skirt ruffled in the breeze and her matching umbrella framing her like a huge tartan halo.

“Hey, Veronica,” I said, standing politely. Veronica was somewhat the stuff of legends, being the only daughter of the second-richest man in town, and so I had heard of her, but never expected her to know my name. As I said, I wasn't into most of the Serenity girls, but Veronica was different. She was graceful and intelligent and seemed to walk without actually moving. She was ethereal.

“That was a nice play out there,” she said with a smirk of her full lips. She was being sarcastic, I knew, but there was a tone of friendliness to her words that told me she wasn't putting me down like Brute and the others. She delicately took a seat next to me.

I snorted. “Yeah, well, Brute didn’t think so.”

“Apparently not,” she said with a quick laugh. What seemed like epochs passed, in which the rain gradually began to fall harder. I could feel the acrid aftertaste of the whiskey staining my taste buds and I fought the urge to spit again. The rain soaked through my jersey.

“Well,” Veronica finally said. “I should get going. Take care, Hess.”

“Right,” I said. “See you.”

And she wandered back off, the umbrella so huge it hid all but the bottom inch of her plaid skirt and that strip of tan thigh before the white bobby socks covered her from the knee down. I watched her leave and sat back down by Igby, his book still closed.

“When a babe beneath a bumbershoot comes by, Hess,” he said, “you offer to hold it for her.”

“Oh?”

“And when such a pretty paragon as Veronica Shuyler is under a parasol, you speak up and don't let her go. Honestly, man, you’re a waste of perfectly good whiskey - especially when you use it for mouthwash. You didn’t even smile at her!” Igby tsked, looking in the direction of the vanished Ms. Shuyler.

He sighed, shook his head, and looked at me.

“You still want to know? Why I’m here, that is?”

I shrugged, holding out my hand palm up, watching the water pool up in the crevices.

“Because I don't get the luxury of sitting at home to read and I hate public libraries. Because I stole that flask from my pop, who’s currently ravaging my house looking for it, looking for me. Because I like lacrosse and lastly �" ” He stood, pulling his blazer off his head and onto his arms. He extracted an old golfing cap from his bag and placed it atop his wind-tossed brown hair.

“�" because I have nothing better to do.”

Brute blew the whistle and the team trooped together for the huddle-up. I vaulted over the stadium wall and jogged to join them, turning back on a whim to look for Igby but instead seeing Veronica standing where he’d been, her umbrella closed up and the rain matting her hair.

Author's Note

Story progression suggestions are welcome! :)