Wordcount: 642
written today
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She pays you in crumpled one dollar bills so often you wonder if she is some kind of stripper or whore, though you’d never be so bold as to ask, of course. She doesn’t really dress or act like it though: when she comes into your store, her ash blond hair is almost always tied back in a ponytail or a loose bun with a few strands floating freely here and there, and she wears loose jeans and long cardigans that almost reach down to her knees and always cover her arms. She doesn’t wear make-up or high-heeled shoes or anything of the like, so you have no evidence for your theory, such that it is, except for those dollar bills, and the fact that she always comes in during the day, mid-morning often as not, so who knows what she is doing or dressed like at night.
She always smiles at you, in a vague, distracted way, but rarely speaks more than a word or two as you go through the motions of your transaction. Sometimes the smile reaches her eyes, but usually not. Usually, you think she looks rather sad. You tried to tell her a joke once or twice, to see if you could make her smile, but she didn’t seem to find it funny or really even understand it was a joke you’d just told – most people are like that though, don’t get your jokes, never have. Sometimes you think back on her visit hours after she’s left, trying to imagine what you could have said or done differently, something that would have gotten her to talk or laugh. It’s been months since you’ve first seen her and you still don’t know her name.
You could try talking to her straightforwardly of course, but that never seems to work out very well for you, with anyone. You never know what to say, can’t be bothered with the little things that mean nothing that people are always saying to each other; the things that really interest you, the things you really know, are things that no one wants to hear about. You used to talk about them anyway as a kid, talk and talk to anyone who’d stay still long enough to listen because they were just so exciting and you wanted to share. You lost quite a few friends that way, annoyed quite a few rather larger kids who hadn’t been friends in the first place… These days you know better, stay quiet mostly, and that works out well enough with most people.
With her though, you wish you could speak. You wish you could ask about semi-circular the bruises you saw on her neck once, about why she comes in so often when almost everyone else only comes in once a week or maybe twice at most (you count their visits, keep track compulsively the way you keep track of the number of steps between your counter and the break room, the way you sort your food on your plate or tray by color before you eat, the way you check three times that everything is off before you leave your house in the morning), about the money and the far off look in her eyes and about how pretty she is and whether she would like to…
You ask her in dreams, in lazy flights of fancy born of mid-day ennui, in the little blue ink doodles you scribble on the edges of the paper notebook you keep on the counter at all times. You ask in words that float away, that dissipate before they are ever formed, in jumbled thoughts, in the little cracks and sarcastic remarks that you recite for yourself every day. You ask when you stare so intensly at her back as she walks in and out, at her eyes, her hair.
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