She hit the button for the oil release. It squirted into the bowl at about a hundred miles per hour, sizzling as it hit the heating metal. Then Maria scooped a cup full of kernels out of the bin, salted it with two scoops of bright orange popcorn salt, and dumped it in the bowl. She hit the button for the motor, which would spin the kernels in a gritty, oily mess until it was time to pop-pop-pop. But the motor jerked and made a hair-raising whine.
“No, not again,” Maria groaned. She opened the lid and peered in. Dried oil caked the spindles inside. The same thing happened last week. She couldn’t fix it herself; instead, she’d had to call Ted and have him go in and try to fix it, which was unsuccessful. The idea of calling her boss down here now brought a bad taste to her mouth.
“No, I can do it myself. I don’t need that rat bastard.”
She flicked the ‘On/Off’ button back and forth. Nothing.
“Ugh.”
She leaned the kettle forward far enough that she could see the underside, but not so far that she had to worry about spilling the kernels and oil. The motor underneath was caked with grease. She wiped some of it away with a rag, leaned the kettle back down, and hit the motor again.
Nothing.
“Damn it all to hell. You gotta be kidding me.”
Anger came over her. She felt her cheeks getting hot and her eyeballs were pulsing.
“Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me have to call that asshole down here,” she begged the kettle.
It hadn’t even started to get warm yet.
“Not the fucking heater, too!” She let the kettle drop and studied it in all its stainless steel glory. “God, could this day get any worse?”
Another weird feeling passed over her; her arms tingled, her hair stood on end. She jammed her eyes closed. The room began to spin, like the motor would not.
“Oh, I don’t feel so good. Maybe Gramps was right.” She swooned and stumbled forward, putting her hands out in front of her to steady herself.
They landed on the cold metal of the kettle, and an explosion of colors lit up the room. Deep greens and oranges. The room’s temperature dropped. Maria’s muscles quivered and tightened.
“Oh, what the fu—” she began; she never got to finish the sentence, because the kettle exploded in a rain of popcorn, knocking Maria on her ass.
The air smelled of hot butter and salt.
“Oh, crap!” she shouted, and shielded her face as popcorn came down all over the room. “Stupid kettle!”
It seemed never-ending. The popcorn should’ve fallen into the catch tray as it rolled out of the kettle like a slow moving wave of deliciousness; instead, she was hit by a blasting volcano of kernels.
Maria tried to pull herself up, but she slipped in the oil, landing on her side with an, ‘Oomph’.
“God, can this day get any worse!?”
Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down the steps, and soft cursing.
“Yeah, I guess it can,” Maria sighed. She managed to pull herself up using the sink to the right of the kettle, while her feet were sliding out from under her.
“What in the hell is going on down here?” Ted boomed.
“Kettle’s on the fritz.”
“What did you do? Damn it, Maria, you act more like a kid who needs to be babysat than a full-grown adult. I didn’t hire you because I wanted to act like your damn mother.”
That struck Maria the wrong way. Not only because she’d never known her mother, but because nobody talked to Maria like that and got away with it. Nobody.
She stood up tall, squaring her shoulders to Ted’s own slumped ones. Her fingers worked at the apron knot tied behind her back. Once it came undone, she whipped it off. “You know what? I don’t need you to belittle me, man. I’m going home.”
“What? You don’t get to go home until your shift is over.” Ted checked his wristwatch dramatically. It made Maria chuckle. “You still have another hour.”
“Well, screw your hour. You can fire me if you want to. I don’t care. I’d rather work with Satan than with someone who rips off defenseless old women.”
Ted’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t talk to—”
“To you like that? I can and I just did.” Maria stormed over the popcorn-covered floor, the kernels crunching beneath the soles of her work shoes. Once her back was to Ted, she smiled. God, it feels good to stand up to him.
Something definitely has changed, she thought as the cool, air-conditioning of the upper level hit her. A line of customers waited at the counter.
“Hey, some service would be real nice!” a guy in a tank top said. “Get your head out of your ass, and gimme some popcorn.”
Maria ignored them, feeling the tingling in her arms again. She clenched her hands into fists and walked out of the small store, to the Sephora beyond. Claire, dressed in her red and black dress—the uniform of Sephora makeup pushers—stood in the doorway, holding a tube of mascara.
“What the hell, Maria?” she said.
“I’m ready to go play putt-putt,” Maria said, walking past her into the store.
“Maria, are you feeling okay? You still have an hour left on your shift.”
“I’m fine. Let’s go pick up Tabby and get this show on the road.”
Claire’s eyes were wide open. “All right, gimme a minute to finish up with this customer.” In the seat, her face half-painted with blush and eye shadow and all types of product Maria didn’t truly understand, sat a middle-aged woman. “Sorry about that,” Claire said to her, then continued brushing her eyelashes with the black stick that Maria thought looked like a medieval torture device.
“I’ll be in the car,” Maria said, taking Claire’s keys authoritatively from the back room. A couple other Sephora employees gave her a wide berth. I could get used to this, Maria thought, and left Rolling Hill Mall on foot, heading to the parking lot beyond.
As she sat
