Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh Read Free Book Online

overstuffed purse and dug through it.
    “Twelve seventy-six,” I said. It still felt strange to hear my voice say convenience store cashier things, to watch my hands accept payment and make change from the register. I had figured I was done with these sorts of jobs the day I graduated from Emory.
    The woman gave an exasperated sigh, pulled a couple of things out of her purse and set them on the counter: Wallet. Key ring. Heat Taser. She continued searching.
    “Wouldn’t your money be in the wallet?” I asked.
    She smiled. “You’d think so, but no.” Her bra strap was hanging out of her shirt sleeve. “Um, could you put that in a bag?” she said without looking up.
    It took me a second to get why she was asking me to do what I was obviously going to do in a moment anyway. A seven a.m. purchase of tampons at a convenience store. Emergency. She didn’t relish everyone in the store knowing about her urgent feminine needs. “Oh.” I snared a plastic bag from under the counter and stuffed the tampons into it. “Sorry.”
    “Thanks.”
    “No problem.”
    “Ah!” She handed me a twenty.
    “I guess there are certain items that need to be bagged immediately,” I said as I snared coins out of the till with two fingers.
    “Yes. Tampons, pregnancy kits…”
    “Pornography,” I offered.
    “Good one,” she said, pointing at me. She was pretty in a slightly harsh, Eastern European sort of way. Dirty-blonde hair, her front teeth crooked but white. A little older than me, thirty-three or so.
    I tried to think of something else to say, but my mind was suddenly a vast wasteland. I thought we were flirting. I was pretty clueless when it came to flirting, but I thought maybe we were, and I was dropping the ball.
    “Do you live around here?” she asked.
    “About four blocks away, on East Jones,” I said, silently counting the bills into her hand. “Where do you live?”
    “Southside.”
    “Wow, you’re far from home.” Southside was a good four miles away. Usually I was leery about long-distance relationships, but it was so easy to look into her blue eyes; it felt like I could go hours without blinking if I could just keep looking into them.
    “I was in class. SCAD.”
    The Savannah College of Art and Design. Great reputation, outrageous tuition, no scholarships. Rich girl. I was probably misinterpreting polite kindness for flirtatious interest, given my station in life. I was wearing a name tag, for god’s sake.
    “What are you studying?” I asked.
    “Graphic design. Change of career—I worked in corporate recruiting for ten years.”
    “Interesting.” There was another awkward pause. She hovered, waited for me to say something. The only other customers in the store were puttering in the back, searching for just the right flavor of Gatorade. Amos was staring into the street, watching for marauders.
    “You ever make your way down here at night, to see bands or anything?” I asked. Why not, what did I have to lose?
    “No. Too rough around here at night. I tend to hang out in Southside.”
    “Mmm,” I said. If she knew the question was meant to test the waters, she wasn’t biting.
    “You should come to Southside some time,” she said, shrugging the shoulder that had lost its bra strap.
    “Where would I go, if I came to Southside?”
    She shrugged and smiled. “Snowstorm is fun.”
    “You think you’ll be hanging out at Snowstorm Saturday night?”
    “Possibly,” she said as she slung her purse over her shoulder. She waved, winked, and headed for the door. I was impressed—almost no one can wink without it seeming hokey and contrived, but she pulled it off.
    My nineteen-year-old boss appeared on the sidewalk outside; he and the girl whose name I forgot to ask passed each other in the doorway.
    “Hello, hello,” Ruplu said, grinning as he joined me behind the counter. “All is well?”
    I nodded.
    “Good. It’s payday. How many hours did you put in this week?” He opened the register.
    I