Kali’s neighborhood wasn’t so far from the urban center of Memphis, but each house was on a small lot with a grassy lawn and trees, and the creek snaking through those lots added a bit of natural beauty. The downside of having enough room for grass and trees was that the houses and business were more widely spaced than they would have been in the center of a city. Faye pictured trying to live in this neighborhood without a car, then she tried to remember if there had been a car in front of Frida’s house. Faye judged that it might take an hour to get downtown on a bus and another to get back. If Frida, a single mother of a small child, had done that every day, then her life was one notch harder than Faye had been imagining.
She saw the convenience store on her left, just as she remembered, and pulled into the parking lot. No other cars were parked there, so no one would witness her suicidal food choices but the person who sold them to her. Good. Now she was inspired to make her pizza a Meat-Lover’s Special.
She put her car in park and stepped out onto broken, oil-stained pavement. The air smelled like diesel and old garbage, so she hurried to get inside.
The battered door was located between two plate glass windows covered by bars. When she opened it, a bell sounded, and the clerk magically appeared at a cash register where no one had been before. She passed a magazine rack as she made her way to the register, which made her wonder whether this was where Kali got her inappropriate reading material. She didn’t like to think of the little girl being in the same room as the silent clerk, who was completely creeping Faye out. He watched her, wordless, as she gathered the candy and soda she wanted. His nametag said that his name was Linton.
Actually, “watched” wasn’t really the word for what he did. He was eyeballing her. His eyes rolled over her face and down her body, and they took way too long to do it.
Customer service didn’t seem to be high on his priority list, so there would be no “Good morning!” or “How can I help you?” coming from this guy. Faye had never before wished for a long line at the check-out counter, but she wanted one today to ensure that she was not alone with this man. She broke the silence with a chipper “Here you go!” as she laid her purchases on a counter covered with taped-on lottery ads.
The man’s muscles bulged under his work uniform and his head was shaved slick-bald. When she ordered her Meat-Lover’s Special, he reached without looking into a display case full of pizza waiting under a heating element. Head still down but eyes on her, he dragged the soda can toward him. It left a damp trail of condensation on the countertop. He scanned the soda’s bar code, then dragged the candy bar through the can’s damp trail. During the entire transaction, he only spoke once, and that was to ask for her payment.
She handed him a credit card. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when he violated the retail worker’s cardinal boundary by touching her bare hand with his. His close-clipped fingernails tracked the length of her first two fingers as he withdrew his hand too slowly.
Faye quickly pulled her own hand back, forcing him to lay her card on the counter when he returned it. When the transaction was done, she collected her money and fled, wishing that Joe were beside her. She hated herself for that wish, not because she wasn’t missing her husband’s company, but because she had always resisted anything that impinged on her independence and she always would.
Today’s argument wasn’t the first one she’d had with Joe about this job. The contracted amount wasn’t big enough to support both their salaries, so having him join her had never been on the table. Still, she’d been unprepared for him to insist that he didn’t want her to go without him. Joe had never once wavered in treating his wife like an equal, so she hadn’t known how to respond when this demand came from out of the blue.
“You’re telling me what to do? How Victorian,” she’d said, but he hadn’t backed down.
“Memphis is one of the most dangerous cities in America. I looked it up.”
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t taught you to use the Internet.”
She had regretted that comment immediately. Faye had always been better than Joe at things like books and school, but this had never been an issue in their marriage. He had knowledge and skills that she didn’t, and she was truly happy that she’d been able to help him overcome the learning disabilities that had come between him and a formal education. She had never lorded her PhD over Joe and she didn’t intend to start now, so she had immediately blurted out, “I didn’t mean that.” Then she had pressed her lips together to squelch the other unkind comments bumping around inside her.
“Well, the cat’s out of Pandora’s box,” he’d said, mixing his metaphors but succeeding in his goal of reminding her that he did now have an education that included Greek mythology. “I’ve gotten real good at the Internet and I looked up the part of Memphis where this job is. Don’t go. We don’t need the money that bad.”
She’d said, “We need it bad enough,” which was true. She hadn’t said, “I’ve been independent too long to let you tell me what to do, so you’ve forced my hand. Now I have to go.”
But she’d thought it, and it was true. And now
