At noon an armada of rabid Spawnheads roll in, swamp the bag check, then mob Wade before he even gets the new issue on the shelf. If Wade weren't such a jackass, he'd see the ocean of cash that comes through the door with them. But he is a jackass, so he simply holds forth to his fellow travelers the assured outcomes of a Spawn versus Punisher fantasy match. He has absolutely no idea that salesmanship, like whoring, only becomes art once you go beyond supply and demand and show the client their unrealized needs.
Seeing Wade duly occupied by the frat boys of comic fandom, the cashier girl who goes by Talon, reaches her ferret-scratched hand into a display case and palms a Superman lighter. Slipping it into a pocket of her plaid Dickies, she looks around, gnawing a black fingernail, and catches me staring.
"What?"
"Didn't peg you for hero worship."
"Why are you such a dick?"
She glares at me through thick eyeliner, waiting for me to answer. Or at least justify my existence. I'm used to it really. When you're an albino, it's often the look you get whilst just walking down the street. When I come up empty, she gives me the finger, bloody cuticle and all. I go back to tidying up bag check. Soon enough the Spawnheads will descend upon her register, Wade along with them, mouth-breathing and sweating big, wet rings into the armpits of his 2007 Comicon T-shirt. Punishment enough I suppose.
I facilitate the ebb tide, returning backpacks to the Spawnheads, depressed at the sight of all those unharpooned whales. Talon whines to Wade that she missed her bathroom break. She should be grateful. Being disallowed from using the facilities in the fire hazard Wade refers to as the "storage room" is one less chance for a towering stack of unsold graphic novels by Mark Hamill or a bulk of Bart Simpson t-shirts to topple onto her head of dyed green hair.
"What am I supposed to do? Put Frank back there?" Wade jerks a fat thumb at the register.
They both look at me behind bag check, drinking in with renewed appall my yellow, button-down oxford. I really needed a job after what happened at Dick's Den of Rare Books and I found out through the grapevine that Wade only hires people with a "look." So I misrepresented myself in an old Smith's T-Shirt and a criminal amount of hair gel during my interview. Some days, though, I forget exactly where it is I work and I revert to my old uniform.
"I wouldn't buy an Archie comic from him," Wade snorts. Talon lets out an ironic snicker. From behind bag check, I laugh too. They think I'm laughing with them as they laugh at me, but really I laugh because I could sell hell to the devil. I am a master of the sales pitch. Once at Dick's Den I sold a five volume set of late 19th century pornography to a Baptist grandmother. Dick tried telling me that my talent was nothing more than the customer's reaction to the fact that I'm an albino. Maybe that's true, but it's rude to say to a person's face. Especially someone with my sales rate. After three years of that attitude, it's only natural for an individual to get bit fed up. Now look at me, a salesman with no sales floor. So I laugh. I laugh remembering how good it felt to clock Dick with a six-hundred-thirty-four-page first American edition of Moby Dick worth seventeen thousand dollars. I laugh because Wade as my current employer costs himself astronomical sales by virtue of his limited imagination as to just what an asset this albino could be. I also laugh at the ridiculous manner in which Wade's squat legs ram into his weirdly feminine hips compared to Talon's walking sticks.
"Wait 'til Zed gets in," Wade says to Talon then drifts away to stalk a teenager back by the Love and Rockets section. He's convinced anyone who reads Love and Rockets is gunning to steal from him. What Wade fails to realize is that most of the theft at Alley Ink is perpetrated on Wade by his very own employees. I too indulge in this luxury, but not because I'm compulsive like Talon or interested at all in comic books. It's the only way for me to keep my skills sharp. I sell the merchandise I acquire to a select group of customers at a drastically reduced rate. Make a tidy profit too. I have lawyer fees to pay after all.
Zed, the buyer, comes in and pollutes the cramped store with his waft of clove cigarettes and stale bar.
"Hey fag."
"How'd the 'big ass' do last night?" I inquire, trying my hand at geniality.
"It's BIG ASS YARD SALE. And we played to a great crowd. At least seventeen people."
"Onto the Grammys."
Zed fake punches me and laughs when I recoil.
"You're on register while Talon takes a whiz," Wade yells from the back of the store. The few customers unmolested by Wade's stalking and/or mouth-breathing don't even look up from the comics they paw. Talon lopes off to the storage room and her potential demise. Before Zed's odors take their exit from the bag check vicinity, he leans over to me and stage whispers, "Don't let the fluorescent lights give you a sunburn, fag."
Again I laugh. Then just for reassurance I reach inside my bag and feel the leather-embossed cover of my most recent legitimate purchase from the Barnes and Noble down the street: a nice, sturdy hardcover of Moby Dick.
Cat Celebrezze lives in Brooklyn, New York and saves up all her scratch to support her Laminated Love project (www.laminatedlove.com) and You Are A Member! website (www.uramember.com). Publications include: Modern Words, Thieves Jargon.