63...

Alexis nodded her head slowly.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said. “We don’t need anyone else here.”
She glanced over at Matthew, waiting for more from him. He continued to smoke and stare out at the street. She knew he could feel her stare, but still he would not return it.
“Do you know anything about him? This new guy?”
“No,” he finally glanced back at her for a brief moment. “Jeff had just mentioned that Mr. Blume from the head office was sending this guy here. I just assumed it was someone in his family, or a friend or something.”
Matthew once again faced the shimmering cars out on the street. He took a final, enormous drag off the cigarette and put it out on the soul of his shoe. He looked at her again, lowered lids and shy.
“See ya inside Sheryl.”
He put the cigarette butt in the trashcan near the door and entered. Alexis distantly heard the chime inside as he passed the sensor in the store. She wanted to crack him so bad, find out what it was that had him in such a neurotic twist. She took a large drag of her own cigarette and threw it flaming into the street.
“Look out Matthew,” she murmured with a devious smile. “I’m onto you.”
She walked back into the store and plunged past Jeff at the register with a brief flick of her hand, heading directly back to the section of books she was shelving.
“Romance,” she whispered. “Fucking A.”
Alexis was waiting on a phone call, on contact from a superior. She needed to find out where to go. She was hiding in this strange little bookstore with a new, strange little name, and beginning to grow impatient at the wait. It had been over a week, and she assumed she would have heard something; a ‘move quickly and without notice to somewhere and wait for contact’, or a ‘stay put for the time being’. But there was nothing.
“What’s going on Sheryl?”
Alexis spun and saw Robin regarding the romance section with the same surliness she dished out for everything else in the world.
“Hey Robin, how’s it going?”
“Hear you get to train the new guy,” she said with a derisive grin. She was carrying a handful of true crime towards some other destination.
“Yeah. How come I get the pleasure and not you guys? You and Matthew have been here longer me.”
“I have, yeah, but…”
“Hello Sheryl,” an unwholesome and veneered voice called out. Alexis shivered with distaste at the picture of Jeff that her mind produced.
“Hello Jeffrey,” she said while turning. He stood before her, a short and pale companion to his right.
“This is Louis, our newbie. I know you’ve been looking forward to training him.”
Alexis’ smile was, truth be told, closer to a grimace, the sort of face one makes when you smell something rotting. She attempted to shift it into something friendlier when she faced Louis, but something about the shadow over his eyes, the reptilian features to his glance, froze her mouth moving from grimace to question.

62...

Alexis stood outside the entrance of Fountain Books, squinting against that aggravating Southern California sun and smoking a cigarette down to the filter. She was pitching the butt out into the parking lot, the asphalt soft with a full day of heat resting on it, when she heard the store's door open.
Without looking, she reached into her purse and grabbed another smoke. She didn't necessarily want another one, but it was easier to ignore a coworker you didn't want to speak with if you were lighting up. She glanced over, eyes still narrowed to slits, and saw Matthew standing on the opposite side of the door lighting a cigarette of his own. He saw her staring at him and gave a quick, furtive wave of his hand.
"Hey Sheryl," he said quietly, quickly looking away out towards the parking lot.
They stood there silent, each looking out towards the cycling traffic, each against the wall and on opposite sides of the door. The plain bookstore logo shone in reflected golden glory off of a window darkened against the damages of the caustic sun. Alexis looked back towards him, at the shoulders hunched up towards his ears.
"Hey Matthew?"
He turned his head toward her as if he were twitching, his eyes wider than they really had any business being. There was a brief flash of sadness within her for this guy, this guy who always seemed to be running from beneath a heavy weight, this guy that seemed to enjoy the sci-fi section a lot. She realized she really didn't know anything about him other than that. But that sadness was muffled and pulled aside by something a little more calculating.
"Yeah?" he asked, taking a shallow hit off his cigarette.
"What'd you do?" she asked with that crooked smile that had charmed many.
Something reminiscent of that first frost of the year blew through his eyes. Most people would have missed it, but Alexis was used to focusing pristinely on people's eyes. They hazed over quickly and narrowed.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean before you started working here, what did you do?"
"Oh." He looked back out towards the traffic, took a deep breath. "Well, I went to school for awhile, but stopped doing that. Did a couple of weird part time jobs... Started working here..."
He glanced at her, almost for confirmation, and then quickly away again towards to parking lot and street beyond. Shame was practically coming off this guy like smoke. Alexis was able to imagine a lot of bad things, but found it hard to imagine this shy young man doing something so miserable to deserve his desire to hide inside his own skin. She stared at him with that same crooked grin, watched him begin to squirm a bit.
“What?” He asked after a moment.
“Nothing,” she finally dropped her gaze, but kept the smile. “I just wonder about you Matthew.”
And before he could quite catch up she finished with, “you heard about the new guy coming in.”
“Yeah,” he said in a drawn out and ponderous tone. “Seems sort of weird. It’s not like we need someone else in a store this size.”

61...

Alexis tried, fiercely, to focus with pristine attention on the road. She tried to keep her quickly twitching eyes roving to the Honda's mirrors, to those devious small side roads that began to seem more and more like snake holes where some unseen danger sat ready to spring and consume her.
But as much as she attempted this act of supreme focus, she was unable to keep from losing herself in the painful memories of the last couple of days. The memories battered at her tired mind with a sickening clarity. She would never consciously admit to prayer, but some small voice within prayed heartily for the protection of distance. She wished so much for soft focus, for rounding of edges and distortion that time graciously brought to memories. But everything was still too fresh, and too horrific to be banished to some locked door waiting room within.
She could see clearly the hazy and brown view afforded by the bookstore's cashier counter. She could see Robin's drawn face and the anger and desperation that seemed to cling to her like a tailored suit, well kept but lifeless hair, and some black and cancerous anger in her eyes. She saw Matthew’s hunched shouldered slink through the store, his wide eyes belying some heinous thought or deed that Alexis was almost positive she would find pedestrian, but that he himself found reprehensible to the core. And there was Jeff, jolly and bordering on plain old fat, strutting over with so much empty and overdone pomposity.
“Hey Sheryl,” Jeff nodded his dimpled chin towards her.
“Hello Jeffery,” Alexis replied with a sinister and somewhat knowing sneer.
Alexis had adopted a pseudonym and certainly not for the first time. Alexis could find a false identification faster than an alcoholic could find trouble in a distillery. Alexis had never had to deal with the embarrassment of forgetting her ill gotten name.
"Oh Sheryl," Jeff leaned over onto the register counter and rested his chin on his bridged hands. His attempt at casual sexuality came off as subtle as rancid syrup. Jeff had the annoying habit of mistaking Alexis' contempt for desire. "I suppose you've heard."
He actually batted his eyelids a little bit. If it was an overblown, prancing little bit he was doing it wouldn't have been funny, it would be just a little less disturbing than it was already.
"Heard what?" She tried to keep the seething anger out of her voice.
"Corporate’s sending a newbie out here. And I want you to do your training thang."
"Okay first," Alexis began with a sigh. "The use of the word corporate? Probably unnecessary as we are a chain of three stores. And second, why should I train them? Robin and Matthew have been here longer than me. I've only been here for like a week."
Jeff leaned a little closer and dramatically looked over his shoulder. It was all an attempt to make it seem as if they were sharing a conspiracy together, something they could chuckle about later when they were alone.
"Sheryl, you're much brighter than those two. I trust you with my life."
Jeff gave a small wink and slapped his hand down on the counter as a way to indicate that he had spoken, that he was done. As he shuffled away towards the back room, Alexis fantasized about driving a spike into the back of his head.

60...

In a cracked and oil stained parking spot next to the gas station’s main building, where once sat a dirty and dented, navy blue Honda Civic, you could now find a black, late seventies model Cadillac. The car was empty. It had been quickly wiped down with windshield washing fluid, inside and out. It now sat like a dead thing, absorbing the sunlight that fell in its direction.
The mad whirring of insects in the dried and brown grass around the gas station had taken off again in earnest. The sound echoed slightly off of the odd corners of the building and the pumps; it played for nobody, it played for the tarmac that would burn bare flesh if someone were feeling inclined to put their tender skin there.
The cloudless sky around the station seemed washed out by the sun, a pale and weather-beaten imitation of the rich blues much gentler climates laid claim to. The heat bullied itself around the grasses, entered and made mad love to any exposed surfaces, danced in ephemeral shivers off of the ground.
The building of the gas station was dark in comparison to the blinding white of Central California summer sun. Within the shade, an air conditioner played its sad and monotonous music to nobody. It occasionally managed to ruffle the pages of the free newsprint publications near the register, managing to sound like ghosts quickly exiting an attic that had become too desperate, even for them.
The ancient radio behind the counter continued its soft production of misplaced music; music which seemed content in itself to be just music, audience or no. It played for the candy bars, for the chips and beef jerky, for the small but alarming blood stain on the tiled floor behind the register. Static jumped through the slow sound of the music as the fan in the cooler kicked on.
The stainless steel door to the cooler was barred closed with the roller chair that normally sat behind the register, it was wedged firmly under the door’s handle. Inside the cooler, Randy ‘E’ Lakin lay on the floor, eyes staring emptily at the metal housing in the ceiling that covered the cooler’s fan.
The cold hand that had been laid on his chest felt the effects of gravity and fell to the cooler floor. Randy let out a low, creaky grown. His eyes closed slowly, and even more slowly opened once again.
He was dizzy, he was cold. He reached slowly into the front pocket of his overalls and pulled out a slightly crushed cigarette. He slowly pulled a plastic cigarette lighter from the right, lower pocket of the overalls and lit the cigarette. He blew a contemplative cloud of smoke up towards the fan in the ceiling.
“Fuck,” was all he said.
Some miles away, heading steadily north on an interstate that cut through the fertile fields like an asphalt scar, a beautiful young woman blew smoke out the window of a navy blue Civic. She had picked up the lone cigarette from the counter of a gas station convenience store.
Alexis realized she would have to trade cars once again, more than likely long before she reached San Francisco.