Dweller - Jeff Strand [39]
Her long, straight black hair was unevenly cut, and she had sort of a crooked smile, but it wasn’t like she were missing a nose or anything like that. Not everyone could be on the cover of Playboy. As far as Toby was concerned, she was a goddess of beauty.
It helped that she was nice to him.
She’d never worked a cash register before, and Annette, whom she would be replacing, was immediately exasperated, even though from what Toby could tell she was picking it up quickly. People weren’t born knowing how to use a piece of man-made equipment. Toby wanted to walk over there and tell Annette this, and he almost did, but Melissa seemed to be handling everything fine, and her smile never vanished.
Then Mr. Zack asked Toby why he was loitering out here, and he sheepishly returned to the stockroom.
He spent the morning lifting boxes and working up the courage to ask her to sit next to him at lunch. Or the courage to sit next to her, wherever she decided to sit. Either one of those would be fine.
Melissa went home for lunch. Apparently she lived only two blocks from the store.
Toby spent the afternoon mopping floors and trying to decide if he would be risking severe humiliation by asking her to go to a movie with him. Robin Hood was still playing, though he didn’t know if she’d want to go see a Disney cartoon. The only other thing playing was Serpico, which might be kind of violent for her.
His hands were so sweaty that he dropped a box of Tide when he tried to put it on the shelf. Fortunately, Mr. Zack didn’t see him.
“Hi,” Toby said, walking over to her as their shifts ended. “I’m Toby. Mr. Zack introduced us this morning.”
“Yep, I remember.” Toby wasn’t sure if her smile actually got bigger, but it might have. “What’s up?”
“How was your first day?”
She shrugged. “Not too bad. Annette tries to make it a lot more difficult than it really is. I think she’s embarrassed by how easy it is. You don’t even have to add up the numbers yourself. At least your job requires strength.”
Toby grinned. “Well, not that much strength.”
“More strength than pushing buttons for eight hours.” She lifted her hand and stared at it in mock agony. “Oh, my poor, poor, delicate fingers!” She had long fingernails, painted with bright red polish.
“Do you want to go to a movie tonight?” Toby asked. He hadn’t planned to just blurt it out like that, but at least he didn’t screw up the words. He’d half expected to say something like “Tonight want go movie-thing me come too?”
“Ooooh, I can’t tonight.”
“No problem.”
“I can tomorrow, though, but we have to see Sleeper. Have you heard of that?”
“No.”
“It’s about a guy who wakes up in the future. It’s a comedy, though. It looks hilarious.”
“I didn’t know it was even playing.”
“It’s not in Orange Leaf. We’d have to drive about forty-five minutes. Is that okay?”
“Of course!”
“How about we leave right after work? I’ll drive.”
“I’ve got a car.”
“Yeah, but I’ll drive. Are we set?”
“Definitely.”
Toby went out and bought a new shirt and jeans for the date. He pretty much only wore the same five shirts, so everybody at work would know that he’d bought something special just for this occasion, but he didn’t care. He didn’t have any reason to downplay his excitement.
“Nice shirt,” said Annette. “You look good in green.”
“I should let you know that I investigated you,” said Melissa, as she pulled out of the grocery store parking lot. She was dressed simply—faded jeans and a yellow T-shirt—and Toby had never seen anything more radiant.
“You did?”
She nodded. “I just asked people around work if you were safe. Apparently you’re extremely quiet and keep to yourself most of the time.”
“That’s probably accurate.”
“Except Mr. Zack said that you can be a smart-ass.”
“That’s probably accurate, too.”
“And everybody was surprised that you asked me out.”
“I was kind of surprised,