3. A customer came in the store and walked up and down the aisles. She watched the customer by looking at the curved mirror mounted on the wall. The customer picked up an item and put it back. She stopped watching the customer and went back to the comic book she was reading: The Adventures of the Masked Failure. The Masked Failure was attempting to prevent a cadre of criminals from robbing a bank. The Masked Failure could not get his car started and things were not looking food for him making it to the bank in time.
The customer was standing in front of the counter. She scanned the items and took the ten dollar bill the customer paid with and handed the customer the change. The purchases made her hungry and after the customer left she walked around the counter and looked at the candy bars. She picked one that had white chocolate and marshmallows and coconut flakes in it. She carried it with her behind the counter and folded the wrapper back away from the bar and took a bite. She picked up the comic book just as another customer came in the store. The customer was wearing paint-stained coveralls and walked to the back of the store where there was a unisex bathroom. She thought that perhaps she recognized the customer who wasn’t actually a customer at the moment because he wasn’t buying anything. But maybe he would buy something after he came out of the bathroom. She put her feet up on the counter. She took another bite of her candy bar. It did not taste like anything. She read some more of The Masked Failure comic book. He’d gotten his car started but was catching every red light. The criminal cadre had already robbed the bank and were making a clean getaway.
The noncustomer came out of the bathroom and didn’t even look at any of the merchandise. He just walked straight out of the store, the door closing behind him. She continued reading the comic book until the Masked Failure stood before the Board of Results and had to explain why he hadn’t caught the criminals.
She finished the comic and candy bar at the same time.
Her shift was almost over and she didn’t have another comic book to read. She thought the one she had brought would have lasted her through the work shift. Business must have been slower than usual.
There was a large clock hanging over the back coolers which she tried to avoid looking at but she couldn’t help herself. A customer came in and paid fifteen dollars for gasoline. A minute passed. A customer came in and perused the adult magazine rack. Two minutes passed. A customer came in and bought a can of macadamia nuts. Three minutes passed. The customer browsing the adult magazines left without buying anything.
It was three minutes until the next worker was scheduled to come in to relieve her. There was someone using a squeegee on the windshield of their car. She heard the sound of voices coming from the back of the store. She hadn’t seen them come in. It was a couple and they were arguing. The male was shaking his head negatively while the female was nodding her head vigorously in the affirmative. Whatever it was they were arguing about, they ended up buying a pint of vanilla ice cream.
It was five minutes past the time she was supposed to get off work. There was nothing else she had planned to do for the day but she had been there since six in the morning. For no particular reason she was having vague erotic fantasies. Maybe it had something to do with the customer browsing the adult magazines.
Finally the next worker scheduled for the afternoon and evening shift showed up smoking a cigarette. She looked at the cigarette and decided that if he wanted to blow himself up smoking in a gas station that was his prerogative. She clocked out and grabbed her leather jacket and helmet. Her moped was locked up out back behind the gas station.
The moped was small, like an oversized bicycle. And like a bicycle it had pedals. It also had frayed wires sticking out of its chassis. She bent over and touched two of the wires together and twisted them for contact before getting on the moped and pushing with her feet as the moped sputtered and coughed. She began peddling and the moped’s engine fired into life and sped her away from the gas station.
She lived on the other side of the wall which was a hassle as she had to go at least ten miles out of her way to get around it. And because the wall had risen up after the streets had been designed, there was no direct route.
Instead of going back to her side of the wall, she went over to the comic book store. She needed to buy a new comic book. She opened the door. The store was in a row of buildings just opposite the wall and it had a run-down, forgotten air to it. Like it might used to have been something but had been abandoned mostly for years. There was a boarded-up window in one of the walls and the comic book store owner used the ledge to display some figurines that went with a series of comics she didn’t read.
There were two people huddled over a comic book in the corner and the store owner was sort of standing back and watching them. She went over to The Masked Failure series and flipped through looking for the next volume. They weren’t in order so it took her a while to find that she had read all of the ones she flipped through.
She went up to the store owner and asked him if they had the volume she was looking for. He told her that he had sold the last one earlier that week and walked over to his work station which was crowded with mountains of comic books, regular books, sheets of paper, envelopes, tubes for posters and other odds and ends. He moved some of the odds and looked at his schedule.
"Oh," he said.
He told her that she was in luck as he was expecting a shipment of Masked Failure comics the next day. She asked him what time he thought they would arrive and he told her most likely by noon. She didn’t start work until two.
The store owner picked up a comic from a box behind his desk and showed it to her. He said it was new work by the same artist who did The Masked Failure.
The Masked Failure had been suppressed five years ago by local bureaucratic red tape which made getting a hold of these copies very difficult. Since then, the artist had gone into retirement. Now it seemed that the whole time he had been secretly working on a new series, one that would be more subtle and even harder to obtain. The comic book store owner told her that he only ever showed this first edition to regular customers whom he trusted.
She wanted it immediately. She asked him how much it was.
"It’s not for sale." He saw her dejected and confused look. "The artist has forbidden selling these comics. He wants them to be given away. You can have it."
The first thing she noticed about the new comic was that there was no picture on the front. There was no hero or ominous figure, no car or lightning bolt or monster or alien, none of the typical tropes of comic book covers. It was off-white with only the number 216 stamped not quite in the middle in thick, red font. She didn’t want to open the comic yet. The store owner placed it in a brown paper bag folding the top down over itself and taped it shut with a strip of adhesive.
She didn’t know if she could wait until she got home but couldn’t think of any other place that seemed appropriate for the reading for this particular comic.
She stuck it in the back of her pants, wedged in under her belt and covered by her leather jacket. She got on her moped and rode around for a while feeling a visceral excitement radiating out from the small of her back.
That night, before she returned to her side of the wall, she stopped at a bar that had been converted from an old library and sat in a corner booth were she ordered a vodka. The bartender asked if she wanted anything in it like pineapple juice but she didn’t.
"Ice?" the bartender asked.
"Neat," she said.
He went back to the bar where he poured two fingers of vodka into a shot glass and brought it over to her. She took the glass in her hand, felt its smooth surface, and tossed the liquid into her mouth in one swift motion. She asked the bartender for another and the bartender brought it. This time she let the shot sit on the table while the bartender poured drinks for other patrons. She could feel the burn of the vodka fading away inside of her. She waited until just before she could no longer feel the vodka at all before drinking the second shot. She drank the second shot slightly slower but far from savoring it. She lifted her empty glass in the direction of the bartender and he filled another glass and brought it over. He had it on a tray with other drinks. He lifted hers off the tray and placed it on the table. She was still feeling the vodka. The glass was slightly larger than a shot glass. She asked the bartender what it was. He told her it was time for a change. She looked at the glass askance.
"Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s a bad idea to give customers anything but what they ask for?"
The bartender shrugged and then she shrugged and lifted the glass to her mouth. It had a different taste from the vodka which she actually tried not to taste, preferring to let it slide past the taste buds and get straight to the blood stream. This had a taste that you could not ignore but she could not identify it. Maybe if she hadn’t already had two shots of vodka. The bartender was watching her with the tray still lifted to the level of his shoulder. She took a longer sip and decided that she liked the new drink. It had a sharpness to it like maybe of ginger.
She had gotten to the place that she was always looking for when she came here. The place where everything peels back, nothing is in the way, everything is automatic. She ordered a shot of vodka, the shot came, she drank it She no longer felt it or anything. She ordered another shot. She watched her arm moving as if it were detached from her body. Her whole head was somewhere else, somewhere that was nowhere. It floated off at the end of a string. And when she saw herself moving to the back of the bar and into the bathroom where she vomited into the sink, her head continued to watch her.
She felt great as she got on her moped and wobbled off into the street. Even though there was a little bit of puke still on her lips, even though she’d spent more of her paycheck than she had wanted, even though she didn’t know that at the time, even though she almost ran into three telephone poles, and even though she fell off her bike and scraped her leg. She felt wonderful.
She felt awful in the morning.
She had puked on her hair and was in desperate need of a shower. She poured herself a large glass of water and drank it quickly. Some of the water spilled out over her cheeks and ran down her neck.
She took off her clothes and threw the dry ones on the pile in front of her closet. The puke-stained shirt she put in the sink. She stepped into the shower and turned the hot water knob up, feeling the warmth of the water hitting her over and over. It washed away all of the filth and all of the sorrow and left her feeling rejuvenated. Of course, there was still the mess of her vomit to clean up but she felt better equipped for the task now.
She pulled out a pair of underwear and jeans and a t-shirt, smelling them to see if they would pass the day. They would have to.
The scrape on her leg burned and she looked at it. Thin layers of skin peeled back and away from an oozy, shiny sheer of blood underneath. She poured hydrogen peroxide over it and slapped on an oversized band-aid.
She left her apartment and walked down the boardwalk stairs lining the outside of the complex.
She had ridden all the way around the wall and was on her way to the comic book store when she realized that she had left the new comic at home, or at least she hoped she had. She couldn’t remember taking it out of her pants. But she was going to get the next volume of The Masked Failure anyway so it was all right. At least she’d have something to read at work.
She pulled up to the comic book store and put her kickstand down. There was a person working on the wall and she didn’t think it was the one who had come into the store the day before. He wasn’t wearing coveralls and he seemed to be doing something to the wall and taking notes in a notebook.
She went into the store and saw the owner unpacking a box. She did not want to seem overeager and so pretended to look at some of the other run-of-the-mill comics. The store owner looked up and saw her. He went over to the work station where he had set aside a copy of The Masked Failure she was looking for.
"This is actually the last one in the series," he told her. "Looks like he came out of retirement just in time."
She paid for the book and left the store. The man at the wall had changed and become the painter and he was painting a few feet away from where the first man had been and where there was a large hole in the wall. She looked at her watch and saw that she didn’t have very much time before she had to work and so she began to pedal her moped in that direction.
next
The customer was standing in front of the counter. She scanned the items and took the ten dollar bill the customer paid with and handed the customer the change. The purchases made her hungry and after the customer left she walked around the counter and looked at the candy bars. She picked one that had white chocolate and marshmallows and coconut flakes in it. She carried it with her behind the counter and folded the wrapper back away from the bar and took a bite. She picked up the comic book just as another customer came in the store. The customer was wearing paint-stained coveralls and walked to the back of the store where there was a unisex bathroom. She thought that perhaps she recognized the customer who wasn’t actually a customer at the moment because he wasn’t buying anything. But maybe he would buy something after he came out of the bathroom. She put her feet up on the counter. She took another bite of her candy bar. It did not taste like anything. She read some more of The Masked Failure comic book. He’d gotten his car started but was catching every red light. The criminal cadre had already robbed the bank and were making a clean getaway.
The noncustomer came out of the bathroom and didn’t even look at any of the merchandise. He just walked straight out of the store, the door closing behind him. She continued reading the comic book until the Masked Failure stood before the Board of Results and had to explain why he hadn’t caught the criminals.
She finished the comic and candy bar at the same time.
Her shift was almost over and she didn’t have another comic book to read. She thought the one she had brought would have lasted her through the work shift. Business must have been slower than usual.
There was a large clock hanging over the back coolers which she tried to avoid looking at but she couldn’t help herself. A customer came in and paid fifteen dollars for gasoline. A minute passed. A customer came in and perused the adult magazine rack. Two minutes passed. A customer came in and bought a can of macadamia nuts. Three minutes passed. The customer browsing the adult magazines left without buying anything.
It was three minutes until the next worker was scheduled to come in to relieve her. There was someone using a squeegee on the windshield of their car. She heard the sound of voices coming from the back of the store. She hadn’t seen them come in. It was a couple and they were arguing. The male was shaking his head negatively while the female was nodding her head vigorously in the affirmative. Whatever it was they were arguing about, they ended up buying a pint of vanilla ice cream.
It was five minutes past the time she was supposed to get off work. There was nothing else she had planned to do for the day but she had been there since six in the morning. For no particular reason she was having vague erotic fantasies. Maybe it had something to do with the customer browsing the adult magazines.
Finally the next worker scheduled for the afternoon and evening shift showed up smoking a cigarette. She looked at the cigarette and decided that if he wanted to blow himself up smoking in a gas station that was his prerogative. She clocked out and grabbed her leather jacket and helmet. Her moped was locked up out back behind the gas station.
The moped was small, like an oversized bicycle. And like a bicycle it had pedals. It also had frayed wires sticking out of its chassis. She bent over and touched two of the wires together and twisted them for contact before getting on the moped and pushing with her feet as the moped sputtered and coughed. She began peddling and the moped’s engine fired into life and sped her away from the gas station.
She lived on the other side of the wall which was a hassle as she had to go at least ten miles out of her way to get around it. And because the wall had risen up after the streets had been designed, there was no direct route.
Instead of going back to her side of the wall, she went over to the comic book store. She needed to buy a new comic book. She opened the door. The store was in a row of buildings just opposite the wall and it had a run-down, forgotten air to it. Like it might used to have been something but had been abandoned mostly for years. There was a boarded-up window in one of the walls and the comic book store owner used the ledge to display some figurines that went with a series of comics she didn’t read.
There were two people huddled over a comic book in the corner and the store owner was sort of standing back and watching them. She went over to The Masked Failure series and flipped through looking for the next volume. They weren’t in order so it took her a while to find that she had read all of the ones she flipped through.
She went up to the store owner and asked him if they had the volume she was looking for. He told her that he had sold the last one earlier that week and walked over to his work station which was crowded with mountains of comic books, regular books, sheets of paper, envelopes, tubes for posters and other odds and ends. He moved some of the odds and looked at his schedule.
"Oh," he said.
He told her that she was in luck as he was expecting a shipment of Masked Failure comics the next day. She asked him what time he thought they would arrive and he told her most likely by noon. She didn’t start work until two.
The store owner picked up a comic from a box behind his desk and showed it to her. He said it was new work by the same artist who did The Masked Failure.
The Masked Failure had been suppressed five years ago by local bureaucratic red tape which made getting a hold of these copies very difficult. Since then, the artist had gone into retirement. Now it seemed that the whole time he had been secretly working on a new series, one that would be more subtle and even harder to obtain. The comic book store owner told her that he only ever showed this first edition to regular customers whom he trusted.
She wanted it immediately. She asked him how much it was.
"It’s not for sale." He saw her dejected and confused look. "The artist has forbidden selling these comics. He wants them to be given away. You can have it."
The first thing she noticed about the new comic was that there was no picture on the front. There was no hero or ominous figure, no car or lightning bolt or monster or alien, none of the typical tropes of comic book covers. It was off-white with only the number 216 stamped not quite in the middle in thick, red font. She didn’t want to open the comic yet. The store owner placed it in a brown paper bag folding the top down over itself and taped it shut with a strip of adhesive.
She didn’t know if she could wait until she got home but couldn’t think of any other place that seemed appropriate for the reading for this particular comic.
She stuck it in the back of her pants, wedged in under her belt and covered by her leather jacket. She got on her moped and rode around for a while feeling a visceral excitement radiating out from the small of her back.
That night, before she returned to her side of the wall, she stopped at a bar that had been converted from an old library and sat in a corner booth were she ordered a vodka. The bartender asked if she wanted anything in it like pineapple juice but she didn’t.
"Ice?" the bartender asked.
"Neat," she said.
He went back to the bar where he poured two fingers of vodka into a shot glass and brought it over to her. She took the glass in her hand, felt its smooth surface, and tossed the liquid into her mouth in one swift motion. She asked the bartender for another and the bartender brought it. This time she let the shot sit on the table while the bartender poured drinks for other patrons. She could feel the burn of the vodka fading away inside of her. She waited until just before she could no longer feel the vodka at all before drinking the second shot. She drank the second shot slightly slower but far from savoring it. She lifted her empty glass in the direction of the bartender and he filled another glass and brought it over. He had it on a tray with other drinks. He lifted hers off the tray and placed it on the table. She was still feeling the vodka. The glass was slightly larger than a shot glass. She asked the bartender what it was. He told her it was time for a change. She looked at the glass askance.
"Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s a bad idea to give customers anything but what they ask for?"
The bartender shrugged and then she shrugged and lifted the glass to her mouth. It had a different taste from the vodka which she actually tried not to taste, preferring to let it slide past the taste buds and get straight to the blood stream. This had a taste that you could not ignore but she could not identify it. Maybe if she hadn’t already had two shots of vodka. The bartender was watching her with the tray still lifted to the level of his shoulder. She took a longer sip and decided that she liked the new drink. It had a sharpness to it like maybe of ginger.
She had gotten to the place that she was always looking for when she came here. The place where everything peels back, nothing is in the way, everything is automatic. She ordered a shot of vodka, the shot came, she drank it She no longer felt it or anything. She ordered another shot. She watched her arm moving as if it were detached from her body. Her whole head was somewhere else, somewhere that was nowhere. It floated off at the end of a string. And when she saw herself moving to the back of the bar and into the bathroom where she vomited into the sink, her head continued to watch her.
She felt great as she got on her moped and wobbled off into the street. Even though there was a little bit of puke still on her lips, even though she’d spent more of her paycheck than she had wanted, even though she didn’t know that at the time, even though she almost ran into three telephone poles, and even though she fell off her bike and scraped her leg. She felt wonderful.
She felt awful in the morning.
She had puked on her hair and was in desperate need of a shower. She poured herself a large glass of water and drank it quickly. Some of the water spilled out over her cheeks and ran down her neck.
She took off her clothes and threw the dry ones on the pile in front of her closet. The puke-stained shirt she put in the sink. She stepped into the shower and turned the hot water knob up, feeling the warmth of the water hitting her over and over. It washed away all of the filth and all of the sorrow and left her feeling rejuvenated. Of course, there was still the mess of her vomit to clean up but she felt better equipped for the task now.
She pulled out a pair of underwear and jeans and a t-shirt, smelling them to see if they would pass the day. They would have to.
The scrape on her leg burned and she looked at it. Thin layers of skin peeled back and away from an oozy, shiny sheer of blood underneath. She poured hydrogen peroxide over it and slapped on an oversized band-aid.
She left her apartment and walked down the boardwalk stairs lining the outside of the complex.
She had ridden all the way around the wall and was on her way to the comic book store when she realized that she had left the new comic at home, or at least she hoped she had. She couldn’t remember taking it out of her pants. But she was going to get the next volume of The Masked Failure anyway so it was all right. At least she’d have something to read at work.
She pulled up to the comic book store and put her kickstand down. There was a person working on the wall and she didn’t think it was the one who had come into the store the day before. He wasn’t wearing coveralls and he seemed to be doing something to the wall and taking notes in a notebook.
She went into the store and saw the owner unpacking a box. She did not want to seem overeager and so pretended to look at some of the other run-of-the-mill comics. The store owner looked up and saw her. He went over to the work station where he had set aside a copy of The Masked Failure she was looking for.
"This is actually the last one in the series," he told her. "Looks like he came out of retirement just in time."
She paid for the book and left the store. The man at the wall had changed and become the painter and he was painting a few feet away from where the first man had been and where there was a large hole in the wall. She looked at her watch and saw that she didn’t have very much time before she had to work and so she began to pedal her moped in that direction.
next