16: you saw it too

I broke a rule today. Not one of the four. A rule I didn't know I had until I broke it, which is the only kind I ever seem to find.

Corridor. Four doors. Crack runs seven to one. Third day. It's not going back. I've stopped expecting it to and started photographing it like a bruise, to see if it changes color. Twenty-one photos. The first eighteen have one crack and the last three have another and I don't look at any of them.

The store's still perfect. Held up. I can feel the hands on it. Deb looks at me every morning now and doesn't say hi anymore, she just looks, and I say hi Deb, and she goes into her office.

Here's the thing.

Two o'clock, women's contemporary, the size run on fixture 19. I was walking past and my eyes did what they do, they stuck, and I stopped, because every tag on the run said M. Twenty-four garments. All medium. Not a size run, a size. And that's a thing that happens, a bad ship, somebody hangs a whole box of mediums on the wrong bar, I'd have fixed it and moved on. Except the garments weren't the same size. I could see it. The one on the end was a two and the one in the middle would've fit two of me, and every tag said M, like whoever tagged them knew clothes have a letter and didn't know what the letter's for.

I felt the look. I looked up.

Marisol. Three fixtures down, a go-back in each hand, and her eyes went to the run, and to me, and to the run, and to me.

Ping pong.

From Marisol. From the humming and the claw clip and the cheeks, the one who said it never had that, the one who said “that's nice, what is it?” Her eyes went to the rack and came back with a question on them and it was the exact question, I know it, I've been carrying it around since March, I've seen it on one stranger's face at a bus stop and now on hers and it was the same face, it's the same face on everybody, did you see that. Tell me you saw that.

And I said it. Out loud. On the floor. I said "you saw it too."

She put the go-backs down. Just set them on the nearest rounder, which you never do, and she came over, stood next to me and looked at the run and said, real quiet, "they're all medium."

I said yeah.

She said "they're not all medium."

I said no.

We just stood there. I counted, because I count now, and it took nine seconds, and then she made a sound, not a word, just a breath going out, and I looked and the run was a run. Double-zero through fourteen, in order, the way I'd have hung it. And she said "okay," but not the dream voice. The other okay. The one that means I'm going to need to sit down.

We sat down. Break room, 2:20, her break, my break I didn't have, whatever. And I want to write this part exactly because I don't think I'll ever get it again.

She said she thought she was the only one. She said it's been happening since before this job, little things, she said the first one was at the movie theater where she worked in high school, a stapler, at the box office, it didn't have the... she made a shape with her hands, the top part, the part that opens. It was just one piece. And she stapled a ticket with it, and it worked, and she looked up at the manager to say hey, and looked down, and it was a stapler. And she never told anybody. Six years. She said "who do you tell?" and I said nobody, you tell nobody, and she laughed, this big surprised laugh, and said "you tell nobody too?"

A stapler. I didn't tell her about the thread. I didn't tell her there were two staplers on it, four years apart, different states. I didn't tell her about the blog. I told her about the door and the clock and the back, she listened with her whole face, and when I got to the hall she said "how far did you go" like she'd been in one.

She has a boyfriend, Danny, at the tire place, who thinks she's got an overactive imagination, she said it fondly. She's got fourteen thousand dollars saved and a spreadsheet and a plan. She was going to be a nurse. Is going to be. She said she's off Thursday, she's got an appointment, and she said it fast, the way you say a thing you don't want questions about, and I didn't ask, because I'm not a person who asks, and because for once I didn't want to notice anything. I just wanted to sit in a break room with somebody who'd seen a stapler.

She fixed her clip. The curls were coming out of it, they always are, and she pulled it out and gathered them all up and clipped it again, and I watched her do it, I watched every bit of it because I was so happy, and I thought, that's what a person looks like. That's what fine looks like. I should write that down.

She said "don't tell anyone I said any of this," I replied with “who would I tell”, and she responded, "your roommate." I paused for a moment and I said “I don't tell my roommate anything.” She gave me a look, not any of the looks, just a look, a friend's look, and said "that's a little sad," and went back to the floor.

I got home. Kate, red hair, the plate. She said "how was work?" and I said good.

And for the first time since March I meant it. I meant somebody. There's somebody in it now.

She said "good," and did the pause. And then she said "anything happen?" which she has never once asked. Two years. How was work, good, good. She asked “anything happen” and she was looking at my hands.

I said no. Same old.

I've got a break room and a stapler and a person who laughed. That's mine. I'm not putting it in the column. I'm putting it here, where I can see it.