My Korean Deli_ Risking It All for a Convenience Store - Ben Ryder Howe [23]
“She did,” I admit. “I just haven’t had a chance to memorize the candy bars yet.”
“Sixty-five cents,” Kay says, trying not to sound impatient. Then she shows me which buttons to press, a sequence scarcely less complicated than the one presidents use to unlock the nation’s nuclear arsenal, and at the end of it all the cash drawer pops open.
“Well, there, we did it,” I say, trying to summon a jocular air. “I guess we can go home now.”
Kay frowns. If this was an audition, I just failed.
SHORTLY AFTERWARD, MY first customer arrives, a man with a sour expression and a wispy comb-over. I can’t help thinking how tired he looks, how sad and beaten down, the way his gray suit bunches at the elbows and magnifies the smallness of his shoulders. His tie is twisted. I wonder if he has a family to go home to. God—to be drab and middle-aged and not have a family? Is this all he’s having for dinner—corned beef hash and a loaf of Wonder bread? I can’t bear it, just the thought of him in some dismal little studio smelling of grease, sitting on the edge of a cot and eating of fa Styrofoam plate.
“You new or something?” the man asks.
“Huh?” I’ve been turning the loaf of Wonder bread over and over in my hands, absently looking for a price tag. Now I discover, with some help from Kay, that it’s printed right on the plastic wrapper.
“Sorry,” I say.
The man smiles benevolently. “Don’t worry about it. Everybody here is new at some point. That’s what makes New York so great. What country are you from?”
If only, I think. Then I’d have a decent excuse. I glance at Kay, who is appraising me skeptically over folded arms. I’ve never been a great worker, but not because I don’t work hard. I just tend to focus on the wrong things, like how people look, what they’re wearing and whether they use words like “fortuitous” properly. Gab once called me a “big-picture person,” which can be read two ways: either as a straightforward compliment or as a euphemism for having one’s head up one’s ass. I think she might have meant both.
The thing of it is, I’d like to be a good cashier. To be inept with cash, such an elemental part of everyday life, would seem to bespeak a shameful and fundamental deficiency, like not being able to drive because you’ve always had a chauffeur, or not being able to cook because you’ve always had your meals prepared. Kay says there are workers who “you teach right hand what to do, but left hand not learn,” and I don’t want to be one of them.
There’s even something sort of appealing about cashier work—the enviable hand-eye coordination, the mental stamina, the unflappable cool during a rush. So for the next half hour I attempt to prove to Kay that I can work the register as fast as anyone, resulting in a succession of over-rings, nineteen dollars in extra change for a grateful customer buying cigarettes, a decaf coffee served light and sweet instead of regular and black, as requested, and a turkey sandwich that never even gets made (the customer eventually walks out, cursing).
Finally, Kay nudges me aside.
“You go stock,” she says.
“Again?”
She nods.
Disappointed, I trudge to the back of the store. I can’t blame her for banishing me. If you can’t be useful behind the register, it’s best to stay clear of those who can. In a space this small, you’re either a help or a hindrance, and besides, the way my mother-in-law works, you’re in danger of losing an eyebrow in the slicer or getting accidentally doused in fresh coffee.
Sometimes I wonder what Kay thinks of me. I think she respects what I do as an editor, though when she worked at a 7-Eleven she always used to ask why the Paris Review wasn’t on the magazine rack next to Pro Wrestling Illustrated and People. I think she thinks that like a lot of men, I’m sort of hopeless when it comes to such chores as taking out the garbage or keeping the car filled with gas. Her biggest concern, though, I think, is that like many