After Hours

The time clock said midnight as I punched out.

It has been such a long day. I arrived to work at my first job

before eight a.m. It’s the local K-mart. It's close to Christmas, and

since I’m a supervisor, I’ve been putting in long hours. I worked eight

a.m. ‘til six p.m., then I got an hour break to eat something and change

my clothes before I had to be at my second job, a grocery store, here in

the same shopping mall, where I work as a cashier. I worked from

seven ‘til midnight. It was non-stop all night. I only got a fifteen-

minute break. My body is dead tired and my feet are killing me, but I

think I’ll drive by and see if Brad made it home yet.

I hear footsteps on the cement floor and look up to see Donny;

he’s one of the stock boys. He reaches past me for his time card and

punches it in the clock.

“Hey, Jodi,” he smiles, “you're outta here too huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear about Sara?” he asked.

“No, what about her?”

“Some guy was in the back seat of her car last night when she

got out of work.”

“Oh my God!” I exclaim feeling a chill race through me. “That is

so scary! “What happened? Did they catch the guy?”

“No. She went to put some groceries in the back seat and she saw

him before she got in. She ran back into the store. Angie hit the panic

button while Tom and I went out to her car. Her groceries were all over

the ground, and the guy was nowhere to be found.”

“Can you imagine what could have happened if she had just got in

and started driving?” I shudder thinking about it.

“I know.”

“I can’t believe that something like that happened here, in

Geneva.” I feel shaken by the thought; Geneva is such a small and quiet

town.  

“If you want, I’ll walk ya out to your car.”

“Thanks, that would be nice. Just let me get my purse out of my

locker and grab my jacket.”

“I’ll get your jacket for ya.” Donny says, going into the coat

room to retrieve his own jacket.

“Thanks,” I reply as he hands it to me.

I take off my red smock and wad it into a ball, that I hold

between my knees, while I sit my oversize bag on the floor and slip my

jacket on. It is below freezing outside. I pull my gloves out of my

jacket pockets and put them on, pick up my purse, and sling my smock

over one arm, while I dig in my jacket pocket for my car keys with the

opposite hand. I hear their change like jingle and pull them

out, “Okay,” I smile, “I’m ready.”

“Let’s go.”

The two of us walk through the double doors that lead from the

stock area out on to the sales floor. I can hear the hum from the milk

coolers as we start down the dairy aisle toward the front of the store.

Tom, the store’s night manager, is down on one knee pricing a

skid of milk and putting it onto the bottom shelf of the cooler. He

looks up at us, “You gonna walk her out, Donny?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell Angie when she punches out to find me. I don’t want any of

the girls leaving alone at night.”

“I’ll tell her,” Donny replies.

I study Donny for a moment. I do feel a sense of safety walking

beside him. He's tall and kinda gangly, but strong. I've seen him toss

fifty pound bags of dog food like they were... cotton balls.

Angie is standing behind her register reading a magazine. She is

spinning her long brown hair between fingers with perfectly manicured

fingernails. Her lips are full and pouty as she blows a bubble with her

gum.

“Sure, Angie,” I tease her, “there was hardly a minute to breath

all night long, and then after I punch out, the store is empty. What did

you do to scare ‘em all away?”

“It‘s kinda spooky when you’re up here all alone,” she says as

she turns a page in the magazine. Her Long Island accent is

unmistakable.

“Tom’s right around the corner,” Donny tells her. “He wants you

to find him when you punch out, so he can walk you out to your car.”

“Good.” Angie says. “After Sean gets here, I will.”

“I can’t believe what happened to Sara,” I say to Angie.

“I know! Her husband made her quit today,” Angie replies.

“No way?”

“Oh, you shoulda seen her,” Angie says. “She was terrified.”

“I guess I would be too,” I say after a moment's thought. “Well,

I’m off tomorrow. I’ll see ya on Monday?”

“I’ll be here,” Angie says.

Donny and I walked out the front doors of the store. The frosty

air hits us as soon as the electronic doors slide open. My nostrils

freeze as I inhale, and when I exhale, I watch my breath turn to a

visible vapor, slowly, swirling upward. I see Donny put his bare hands

into his coat pockets to guard against the bitter chill.

“Wow,” I say, still thinking about Sara, “what kind of person

would sit and wait in someone’s car like that?”

“I don’t know,” Donny replies, shaking his head as we approach

my car. He bends down and peers into the windows of my

Buick. “Everything looks clear,” he smiles.

“Thanks, Donny.”

“Do you ah... wanna go grab somethin’ to drink over at Denny’s?”

he asks.

“Oh, Donny, maybe some other night, but I’ve gotta be at K-mart

at eight in the morning, and I live half an hour away.”

“Oh, okay then,” he says, sounding a bit disappointed, “some

other night.”

I unlock my car, “I’ll see you on Monday.”

“I’m off Monday.”

“Well... I’ll see you next week,” I smile as I slide behind the

steering wheel      “Thanks again, Donny.”

“Bye,” he smiles back.

I just wave at him as I start my car. I let it warm up a bit.

Donny is sitting in his car doing the same thing.

I turn on the windshield wipers to sweep off the dusting of snow

that fell while I was working. I think about Sara, and I lock my door.

The inside of the car starts to fog up, so I turn on the defrost. As

soon as there is an opening large enough to see through I put the car in

gear. I should probably let it warm up some more, but impatience always

gets the better of me. I hear the slushy sound as my wheels rolling

through the salted lot.

I pull out the east driveway over by K-mart and turn left on

Preemption, south to Highland Drive, and then right on Willow Lane.

Brad isn’t home yet. The driveway of the house, where he still

lives with his mother, is empty.

He is out with Missy at Cooley’s or the Yankee Clipper. You have

to be twenty-one to get into both places. I won‘t be twenty-one for

another six months.

Brad has to be to work at eight a.m., and he never stays out too

late when he open the store the next morning. I turn my head lights off

as I drive past his house, and I pull into the driveway of the house

next door. The hedge between the houses is thick enough so that Brad

won’t see me sitting in my car, and sparse enough so that I can tell

when he pulls in.

I leave the motor running while I wait so that the heater will

keep me warm, and I hope Brad will get home soon because I am tired, and

tomorrow is going to be another long day. I am supervising open to

close.

I see head lights come around the corner. Maybe I won’t have to

wait at all... but the vehicle just pulls up along the curb near the

corner.

While I wait I think about this morning. It is Brad’s weekend to

open the store, and I am always opening supervisor on Brad’s weekend. As

territorial as she is about Brad, I can’t understand why Missy always

schedules it like that, but I am grateful to her for it. I love working

with Brad.

I got to work a few minutes before Brad. The mall doors were

still locked, so I sat in my car waiting for him to Brad arrive. When he

pulled in I got out of my car and walked over to him.

“Hey, Jodi,” he called.

“Hi, Brad,” I smiled at him, and we walked together.

He unlocked the door of the mall, and held it open for me. “Your

wearing that red dress that I love,” he said as I walked past him, “but

you’re not wearing the heels.” He sounded disappointed.

“Do you really think I would walk in those shoes through this

slush?” I asked to him. “I have them here in my bag.” I patted my purse.

“I think you could fit Texas in that bag,” he said as he turned

the key to raise the metal gate that covered the K-mart entrance into

the mall. The gate moved slowly upward.

Sharon walked in. She is the manager of the women’s department.

She came over and stood by us.

“Mornin', Sharon,” Brad said to her.

“Morning, Brad,” Sharon replied, and then she looked at

me, “Jodi,” was all she said.

I nodded my head in acknowledgement.

“Cold enough for you?” Brad asked her as he unlocked the sliding

plexi-glass doors behind the metal gate.

“Too cold. I hate the cold,” Sharon said on her way through the

door.

Brad looked at me with mischief in his eyes, “I thought ice

princesses loved the cold,” he whispered.

I had to laugh. Nobody likes Sharon. 

Sharon looked back. The look she shot us was colder than the

frosty wind blowing outside, but Brad and I didn’t care.

I went to the coat room to hang my jacket up. I took off my warm

boots and shoved them into my locker. Then I pulled my red stilettos out

of my bag/purse. Brad always makes a fuss when I wear high heels. I put

my bag in my locker and went to the office where Brad was waiting for

me.

“There they are!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “Mmmm, Girl,

those heels make that outfit!”

He took me into the office where he opened the safe and

transferred the bags of money into the locked cart for me to transport

them in.

I brought the money for the checkouts up front, and locked it in

the supervisor’s drawer. People from the various departments started

rolling in, and I dispensed the money for their registers to them while

trying to pull the merchandise that had been left up there from the

night before. I was separating it, by department, into different

shopping carts when the phone rang. It was an in-store line, “Service

desk,” I said.

“That’s what happens!” Brad said on the other end of the line,

then he hung up.

I sat the phone down, bewildered, but smiling. I went back to

sorting out the merchandise. A few moments later, the phone rang again.

“Service desk.”

“That’s what happens!” he said and hung up again.

I put the receiver down and went back to work... again.

When the phone rang a third time, I knew it was Brad, “I’m never

gonna finish pulling the service desk if you keep on calling me,” I

said, being a bit flirtatious.

“This is the first time I’ve called you,” a woman’s voice said.

It was the Ice Princess herself.

“Sorry, Sharon,” I said, “I thought you were someone else.”

“Have I got any merchandise up there?” she frigidly asked.

“Yes, but I’m not done pulling it all yet,” I replied.

“Well you better quit playing around up there and get to work,”

she said and hung up on me.

My veins turned to ice for a moment. She may be the head of

women’s wear, but I wasn’t under her command. Then the phone rang

again, “Service desk,” I hissed into it.

“That’s what happens when bodies start slappin’” Brad said

before he hung up.

It was too funny. I laughed so hard that Brian over in

electronics turned around and shot me a curious look. I picked up the

phone and hit the page button, “K-6 to the service desk,” I said,

continuing to separate the merchandise. There was always a bigger volume

in returns before Christmas. Of course, it was nothing compared to what

it would be after Christmas.

Brad strolled around the corner from the stationary

department. “Did the Lady in Red page me?” he laughed.

I walked over to him, because I didn’t want to say it too

loud, “What is That’s what happens when bodies start slapping supposed

to mean?”

“It’s a line, from that song,” he said, “you know, Wild Thing.”

I looked at him blankly.

“You don’t know that song? It’s by Ton Loc?”

“Doesn’t ring any bells.”

“When you turn twenty-one, your gonna come out to the Clipper

with Missy, and Chris, and Dixie, and me, and you and me are gonna dance

to that song.”

“I’m gonna hold you to your word,” I told him, trying not to

sound overly anxious.

“You wait and see. You gotta wear that dress though.”

Once the doors opened for business, it was crazy. Two of my

cashiers called in sick, which made scheduling breaks and lunches

harder. There were several ad items that weren’t on file, so I had to

keep calling Janet and have her put them in the computer. I didn’t see

Brad again until he came up to relieve me for my lunch break.

“Hey, Jodi,” he said as he walked over from electronics.

“Hi.”

“It’s really busy today,” he said. “I need ya to take just a

half an hour for your lunch, okay?”

“Sure," I smiled, "half an hour.”

He leaned over a little and whispered, “Your hair smells great,

you use White Rain shampoo, don’t you?”

“You recognize the scent of my shampoo?”

“It’s my favorite.”

“Mine too,” I told him, tried to look coy, but I probably only

managed to look confounded.

As I walked over to order a salad from Little Caesar’s, I

thought about how perplexing Brad was. I worked at the store for ten

months before I became a supervisor, and he never gave me a second look,

but as soon as I was promoted, he started fussing over me. It made me

feel good, but after work, he was always out with Missy, the Personnel

Manager. She is ten years older than him. He's only two tears older than

me.

I know Missy is threatened by the attention he pays me, because

she started calling me into her office to yell at me over the most

minuscule things, cashiers who didn’t have their name tags or were

taking more than fifteen minutes on their breaks, things that I was

already aware of that needed to be dealt with. I didn’t need her to tell

me to make up new name tags if someone arrives without one, or to page

an employee if they take too long on their break, but that wasn’t really

why she called me in to her office in the first place; one time she

didn’t even use the pretense of yelling at me about something wrong in

the store. She told me, “I know where I stand with Brad.” Well, that is

more than I can say. I wish I could figure him out, although, from what

Chris and Dixie tell me, Missy stands at buying all his drinks when they

are out.

More headlights start down the lane. Before they even pull into

the driveway, I recognize the car; it's Brad. I look at the clock on my

dashboard. It is 1:00 a.m. I shut my car off so he can’t hear it running

when he gets out to go in the house.

Once he's was inside, I start my car again, pull out of the

driveway and head south to the end of the block, then and turn toward

home, content in knowing that he didn't spend the night with Missy... so

maybe I still have a chance...