She pulled on the uniform again, wanted to strangle whoever thought catsuits made a great uniform again, felt the fabric grab and tug every errant body hair and inadvertently pop a back zit or two.
The nametag stayed on the uniform, though she could see where the pin was starting to make a wider hole, as she tugged on the uniform for the three hundredth time,the nametag proclaiming that she was Naturally Eager to Help.
Barf.
The guy with the harmonica was posted up by Lynch’s Grocery, small child’s toy sandbucket for tips chained to the motorized wheelchair.
He played a lot of stuff she didn’t know, probably blues classics, she didn’t care, she was almost always almost late, she threw a buck in the bucket more for good karma than anything else.
When they stayed open late for Wild Wednesdays, he’d be out there when she left, exhausted, letting a small boombox play songs, hoping for the generosity of people stumbling in and out of the sports bar next to the cosmetic hellhole she worked at.
Someone, thinking themselves clever, had named the bar the Bottomless Pitch, and truckers coming off 57 would stop thinking it really was a strip joint. Some of those truckers saw her in her catsuit and thought maybe, just maybe…
Barf.
She dropped a dollar in the bucket, gave the guy a smile, he waved with the one hand he could move slightly, holding the gleaming harp in his mouth.
His eyes held recognition.
He knew her.
She recognized in those eyes that she was a bitch for not ever asking his name, or extending him any kindness beyond the crumpled George Washington.
In fairness, she never heard him speak, but that didn’t preclude her from…
There’s a trucker lurking, dammit. Go sell organic lip gloss.
She breezed into the store, hit the toggle switch on the fake smile, heard Wendy call her the Cardiac Queen because she had made it in the door a minute before she would have been marked late.
She would prefer the blues standards to the new agey crap they piped through the store, prefer that Lewis & Prine Architects reconsider her resume…and here comes a woman with a botox skull who doesn’t want any chemicals in her foundation.
At the end of the night Wendy offered an extra hour at double time to make a clearance display, and what the hell, groceries were crazy now…
Out into the cool night she considered having one at The Pitch, but she could feel the air making her nipples hard and she was not in the mood for any of it, she might have half a bottle of wine at home, she stepped out into the lot and headlights veered toward her.
She hopped back on the sidewalk, annoyed, catsuit reminding her that she had hastily shaved her legs, feeling every centimeter of herself.
The harmonica guy was out there, switched to his boombox, Elton John playing softly from the guy’s lap.
She swore he convulsed.
She sucked in her lower lip, tasting some piney lip gloss she lied about to sell, tasting panic.
Then she saw a smile, it had to be a smile, the movement had been awkward but voluntary, then a wave, an urgent wave, so she changed direction, came closer.
Her own diaphragm shuddered a bit as she breathed in to ask his name and hope that he could somehow tell her, but he slapped off the boombox, placed the harmonica in his mouth and began to play.
It wasn’t blues, that was for sure, and she didn’t recognize it at first, only enough to know she had heard it before and that if she was on a game show the buzzer would sound before she could say the name of it,and then it was right there, pushing at the edges of her own cranium, that nearly painful moment when the knowledge is about to burst an unseen bubble, and the harmonica guy had eyes that smiled at her as he played.
It felt more organic than anything they sold at that damn store, the eyes, the song, all of it, and a part of the song was about to kick open a new door in her brain, while the cold wind was trying to push it back closed, gooseflesh and erect nipples like a Halloween costume she would never wear, and the metal object fell away from lips as a thin, wheezing, but in key voice sang the single word “Veronica.”
And if Veronica Riley could feel every inch of that stupid catsuit when she dressed for work, she might as well be naked now, as the harmonica went back in the mouth of a man who could feel nothing below his chest, a man who took the time to learn the name reluctantly pinned to hers.
***
Elvis Costello, doing Veronica:
https://youtu.be/qGv7g3xTHTc?feature=shared
Jimmy, how do you know so much about women?
Damn Jimmy! Absolutely loved it! Giving me lots of flashbacks from the hundreds of hours I spent playing outside Kroger the beauty salon. What an honor! I felt this one in my bones man! You’re the best Jimmy! thank you so much!