Page 28 of With Spite

I smiled. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”

She pointed at the prescriptions behind me and said, “Name’s Myrtle. Myrtle Davis. I have a prescription.”

I got the prescription for her and rang it up. “That’ll be forty-six cents.”

She started to search through her bag for some change. “Oh, well I guess I’m going to have to come back.”

I remembered the fifty cents from earlier and said, “Oh, I’ll get that. I have fifty cents right here.”

“Oh.” Myrtle smiled. “That’s very kind of you.”

I put the money in the register and moved over to the second register where I started to check out a woman with some baby formula.

When I was done, I glanced over to see Myrtle still standing there. “Uh, can I help you, ma’am?”

“I’m waiting for my change.”

I frowned. “Um, what?”

“My change. You owe me four cents.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Ma’am, that was my fifty cents. I don’t owe you anything.”

The woman blinked. “But…”

“Myrtle, get your crazy ass out of here,” Vera ordered. “You damn well know that was my fifty cents. You don’t get any change.”

Myrtle rolled her eyes and left. “I don’t know why I even come here.”

Vera waited until she was out the door to announce, “I’m headed out.”

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

I’d never worked the store before on my own. Nor had I closed.

Which I was assuming that was what she wanted me to do, seeing as she’d told me she was leaving.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s snowing more heavily. If I don’t leave now, I’ll never get home. Remember, I arranged for my Huxley to drive you home. There’s no reason you can’t stay until closing at six.”

I didn’t point out that she didn’t have the same worry about her employees.

I opened my mouth to ask if we could just close completely when she dismissed me.

She walked out of the door and never came back.

Instead of dwelling on the fact that she’d just practically left me once again in a new situation, I decided to make the best of it.

I picked up the novel that was underneath the desk for when Vera wasn’t around to reprimand me, and I sat down on the stool behind the counter and started to read.

By the time I’d finished an hour and a half later, there hadn’t been a single customer who came into the store.

“Finishing a book is wild. I mean, I’m just supposed to close it and act like nothing ever happened?” I asked no one in particular. “And carry on with my life?”

The empty store didn’t reply.

It was predicted to snow a good twelve inches by the end of the day, and I imagined crazy Mrs. Myrtle was the last customer of the day.

Finding the quiet of the store a little bit suffocating, I eventually walked over to the book section and picked up the romance novel with the silhouette of a man leaning against a shower stall. The long line of his body, from where he had his forearm planted on the tile, to the long expanse of his calf, was on full display.