It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [13]
I could actually see the anger in her face rolling to a boil.
I had her. She had to sell me the stamps. We both knew she had them. She knew I had her.
Her eyes narrowed, and her brow lowered.
“One hundred,” she said in a low voice, knowing very well that I did not have her. At all. To the contrary.
Then she pointed her finger at me and said, “Don’t you come back. Never come back!”
I was shocked. I couldn’t say anything. After closing my mouth, I gathered up my paltry one hundred stamps, turned around, and walked away.
Was I just banned from the post office? I asked myself in disbelief. Did she just ban me from the post office? She just banned me from the post office!
This is ridiculous, I thought, as I stopped myself in the aisle where all the candy that has lost its soul and turned white is kept. How can you ban me from a post office? I’m a taxpayer. I’m her boss! And I was going to march right back there and tell her that, but I immediately thought better of making a taxpayer proclamation and pulling a line from the Bill of Rights and distorting it like it was from the Bible or I was Rand Paul. I remembered the numerous times I had passed by this particular drugstore and seen police cars parked outside, making it clear that no one here hesitates to pick up that receiver and call 911. In fact, I think they have someone on the payroll whose job description is solely to “alert the authorities.” The store is right next to a bottle-and-can return center, meaning it’s a hobo and tweaker destination, full of savory smells and nonsensical muttering, and there’s always someone on the pay phone shouting some sort of obscenity to a dealer or a loved one. Not only had I seen cop cars haphazardly parked there, but I’d also had the vast misfortune of being in the drugstore’s checkout line when a scuffle erupted from the lotion department. Apparently, according to the person in question, some bath salts had “tumbled into his pocket.” The policemen, however, weren’t buying it, and instead of cooperating, the accused decided to struggle like he was a wild mustang being lassoed, which is never a good idea in a spot so tiny that bath salts could actually fall into an available opening in your clothing.
As I watched the cops question him, I immediately checked my own coat and pants for tubs of errant body butters.
After the first crash, the man began to scream for help, but I’ll be honest and admit I was not about to be the one who volunteered my services. The scuffle moved and ate up more space as the bath-salts plucker thrashed about and screamed louder.
“Call the police!” he demanded. “Somebody call the police!”
“We are the police,” one of the officers informed him, to which Mr. Salty replied, “I want my own police!”
But unfortunately, he was out of luck. Eugene doesn’t have that service.
Yet.
Within moments, the altercation had moved in front of the main and only entrance, which I guess was the objective, but it didn’t solve any problems for me. It was clear that the situation had the capacity to morph easily from someone who just forgot to take their meds to the headline on the next day’s paper that touted a body count. Who knew if Mr. Salty had just come from a knife store, where switchblades may have dropped into his socks, or the bow-and-arrow store, where some may have landed behind his ears; who knew where he had been and what had dropped on him. Bullets. Chain saws. Rope and train tracks. God forbid he had been at the fireworks stand at some point, because any single measure of friction would be enough set that place aglow, and I do not doubt that between the Yankee Candle display and the body-sized sheets of gauze, bottles of gasoline and/or oxygen are fully stocked.
I quickly abandoned my position in line and scurried to the party-plates aisle, in case the thrashing began to spread even farther, because, frankly, I’d rather be crushed by a party-hat tower than gored by a curio or a Department 56 North Pole candy cane.
So, with the memory in my head that