(Untitled) Run on Lies (standard:drama, 1087 words)
Author: Laine	Added: Feb 22 2001	Views/Reads: 4319/1	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A brief glimpse into the mind of a girl fond of run-on sentences and small town life.

I used to work at one of those cheap discount department stores, with a
manager with two first names who smoked cigars and chewed tobacco and 
had to wear a hearing aid, making it so when he spoke to you he had to 
lean in real close to hear your response and you came away feeling like 
you needed a shower and always had to check your blouse for orange spit 
marks. 

He called me at one o'clock in the morning on a weekday one time to tell
me he'd thought it over and yes, I could have the raise. I hadn't asked 
for a raise but I didn't tell him, so though I'd only been working 
there for 2 weeks I got a dollar more an hour and soon a promotion to 
next-head cashier, meaning that if the real head-cashier got sick or 
wasn't in and someone needed to take charge, it would be me. This 
promotion meant 50 cents more an hour and when by accident another 
cashier saw my paycheck she got jealous and told all the others and 
they were mad and demanded more money and when John Robert told them no 
they began to hate me and soon formed a mutiny so that no matter how 
hard I tried being next-head cashier wasn't working out. John Robert 
the two first-names manager had to find a new position for me. 

By the middle of my second month I was working in the back, the cold
cement warehouse back of the grocery store with  all the big muscled 
guys with dark tans and oily skin and grease stained hands. They saw 
something they liked in me, though, and soon I got another raise of a 
dollar and then another one of 75 cents and a promotion to Head of 
Receiving, meaning I was the boss of those guys. Expecting another 
mutiny I was careful to keep my paychecks in their sealed envelopes 
until I was far away from the store, and I never wore my new name tag 
with my new job title on it, but my old one with just my name, and when 
John Robert asked about it I said I'd lost the new one and he promised 
to get me another but I knew he never would and he didn't. 

I went seven months back there as Head of Receiving without another
promotion or raise until two guys quit to work at another grocery store 
for more money and I had to hire two more to replace them. When I found 
two new men quickly John Robert was so grateful he gave me another 
raise and a pat on the back and said I could call him by his first name 
instead of 'sir' but I didn't know if his first name was John Robert or 
just John and Robert was his last name or what so then I just cleared 
my throat until he looked at me and then I'd begin talking. 

It was 3 Mondays after my pat on the back raise when Billy, one of the
muscled greasy men from the back asked me if maybe I wanted to eat 
lunch with him that day, and I said yes, so at lunch time instead of 
sitting at the outside of the circle of warehouse workers, we went to 
sit in the back of one of the big import trucks and we ate among the 
cereal shipments and talked very little and smiled at each other until 
I realized he liked me and couldn't talk anymore. We ate in the import 
trucks for 3 more days before he asked me to see a movie on Saturday 
night and I was so nervous for a date but I said okay. 

When he picked me up 7 minutes early on Saturday I was wearing my best
dress and worried I was too dressed up, and when he saw me he said I 
looked different, but then hurried to say he only meant it in a good 
way. And he looked so different too, he wasn't oily and his hands 
weren't dark with grease and his hair wasn't damp with sweat but clean 
and dry and he smelled nice and instead of his dark green uniform he 
wore gray pants and a black sweater and he looked handsome. 

We didn't talk during the movie, but afterwards when he asked me if I
liked it when we stepped through puddles in the parking lot he grabbed 
my hand while I answered and I smiled while I was talking and he could 
hear it and smiled, too. 

I fell in love with Billy over the next 3 years and we worked together
and ate together and everything was wonderfully stable, when suddenly 
Billy said at lunch he needed to talk to me that night about something 
real serious and he didn't smile or eat the rest of his sandwich and my 
stomach was in knots for the rest of the day. 

That night he sat beside me on the couch but didn't touch me and said he
wanted to leave the warehouse and I bit my lip because he was leaving 
me, but then he put his hand on my knee and he said he wanted us to go 
away, to get away from this dreary town and life and to be happy in the 
sunshine. He promised me picket fences and little white dogs and swore 
he'd mow the lawn and we wouldn't have an apartment with brown 
furniture and yellow appliances. He gripped my knee tighter as he kept 
talking until it hurt and I covered his huge hand with my own and 
couldn't speak, tears were in my eyes and I bit my lip till there was a 
white scar and said I'd go anywhere with him. And suddenly he let out a 
huge gust of air--it was like he'd deflated-- and he pulled two plane 
tickets from inside his jacket and said he wanted to go tomorrow. I 
stared at him and he wiped the white from my lip and traced my cheek 
and my jaw and my eyes with his fingers and then his lips and when his 
hand slid under my sweater I hugged him so tight I thought he would 
really deflate but he didn't, he stroked my hair and kept his hand on 
my skin and said he'd give me everything and I said he already had and 
I felt his cheek stretch as he smiled. 


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