At Night I Dream of Shelves

You’re sixteen and you’ve never seen drawn-on eyebrows before. They curve over her eyes like commas turned sideways on their bellies.

Her long black nails type staccato on the keyboard. She’s supposed to be teaching you how to use the register, but she’s giving you a crash-course on employee drama.

“The day the guy from corporate was in, he caught them, in the office, by the desk with the security cameras. They were, you know.” She waggles where her eyebrows should be, and the commas undulate soft undersides.

You spend the rest of your shift wondering what “you know” might mean.

You were excited to work as soon as you were old enough, to have your own money and maybe even get a debit card, and to punch a timecard when you clock in. The time clock reminds you of The Flintstones.

You’re told to buy a see-through bag to carry to work instead of a purse, a corporate policy put in place to prevent theft. You fork over the money in the makeup aisle for a clear plastic makeup bag with a handle. Inside go your keys, and your wallet, and a Chapstick, and your phone. The bag cost $16 and you imagine the money you might have saved if you were allowed to use your employee discount. But it’s your first day, so you don't ask.

⌂⌂⌂

A few days in, one of the employees, perpetually stoned and swathed in a sweatshirt bigger than his body, leads you up and down each aisle. He’s teaching you how to run the vacuum cleaner, the best place to plug it in to reach each aisle. But there’s another education happening, too.

“That one’s fake,” he nods, to the circular camera hanging above your heads. You commit the aisle to memory: shaving products, aisle 3.

“That one’s real,” he says, leading you past the shampoos and body lotions, the aisle that becomes your favorite.

“That one’s fake,” he says, when you get to the last aisle: cosmetics. You pause the vacuum, and you both stare up at the black camera above your heads, like you’re waiting for the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

⌂⌂⌂

You date an employee who has cart duty with you. You swerve through the shopping center parking lot to gather errant carts. You make out behind the Taco Bell on your lunch break, and for years afterwards the smell of nacho cheese will make you blush. Your manager wants you to think he’s cool, so he lets you get away with it.

You touch your swollen mouth and watch the employee pocket a pack of razor heads in aisle 3. The only thought in your head is: Why wouldn’t they put a real camera in this aisle?

⌂⌂⌂

You singlehandedly supply the store with a bevy of new employees, kids who are looking for summer jobs. But never your best friends. You’re protective of your two worlds: the world you inhabit before you put on the apron, and the world you inhabit wearing it.

Your cousin’s cousin works a summer there, golden-haired and loud, chummy with the customers. A quiet junior from your high school, who never gets the hang of asking “Debit or Credit?” takes the morning shifts with you sometimes.

And that boy from your grade gets a job there, too. The boy you talk to late in the night over AOL Instant Messenger, the messages deeply personal and sweet, and always the promise of conversations carrying through to the next day. They never do.

You duck around each other in the aisles and eventually sign up for separate shifts. When you go home at night and log on to AIM and that first message comes in it’s like a deep breath. Like your manager taking the first drag on his cigarette after dealing with the woman who brings in bags of expired coupons and demands to use them all.

⌂⌂⌂

All these years later, and you can’t go into a drugstore without straightening the shelves.

“Facing,” they call it, in corporate land. The front product in a row of products pulled flush to the lip of the shelf. The label sticking out for the customer to see. A fresh face, ready to greet the world.

Sometimes you rush through an aisle so quickly—the fluorescent bulbs above your head humming—that the motion continues long after you stop. When you shut your eyes at night, you still see it.