Suicide's Girlfriend by Elizabeth Evans Page B

tables. “You don’t ever want to get a job here,” she says when Crocker approaches the counter. “I thought I was hired, but now I have to take a polygraph test. They want to know if I’ve ever done drugs!” She frowns in the direction of a pair of disembodied hands busily filling the refrigerator cases from the storeroom side: sandwiches and microwave burgers and individual, huge pickles packaged in brine and plastic. “I can forget it,” she says.
    Just to be friendly, Crocker says, “Maybe you don’t have to take the test. Maybe it’s not even legal.”
    The clerk looks him in the eye. Crocker hands her the pastries. “Those are really bad for you,” the clerk says, before her particular circumstances once more shoot up before her like a torpedo from water, and she blurts, “They won’t even let me wear jeans here! All I’ve got is jeans! No way am I going to last.”
    Crocker finds the clerk pretty in her despair and baby-blue pants. In a spill of harmless attraction, he says, “I hear we’re hiring at the high school these days.”
    â€œReally?” The clerk straightens a frisky basket of matchbooks. Interestingly enough, her face becomes homely during its stab at mature consideration. “But look,” she says, sighing and resuming her cute and cranky youth, “you probably have to go to college to teach and all.”
    Both of them turn in alarm as the back room’s swinging doors pop, and out steps a young man, shrugging into an overcoat.
    â€œI wish you wouldn’t do that,” says the clerk. The young man—clearly the manager—laughs. “See you tomorrow,” he says.
    Once the young man is gone, Crocker tells the clerk, “Actually, the jobs I was talking about at school . . . I meant jobs in the cafeteria.”
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding! A food server?” The clerk snaps Crocker’s change on the counter as if she prefers not to touch his fingers.

    One hundred and fifty calories per pastry. Four grams of fat. Each gram of fat contains nine calories. The AMA and the surgeon general recommend lowering fat intake to twenty percent of daily calories. Thirty percent? Ten?
    Both Ahmad and Pop now sit in the red convertible, watching their spicy breaths spout in the cold night air above their heads. Under the stall’s fluorescent lights, their lips appear silvered, like blueberries. The silver on blueberries has its very own name. Go close enough to a subject and you will find—if its qualities receive sufficient handling—names.
    Actually, Crocker gave these shivering boys the two sweaters he had received at Christmas. If either ever wore one, Crocker missed it. In their embrace of the hard sell, the boys prefer “muscle shirts,” sleeveless, form-fitting things they wear on even the coldest days, and which leave them looking like the goosefleshed kids who hook old guys in the city.
    â€œTo imagine a language means to imagine a way of life.”—Ludwig Wittgenstein . So reads the line of type that Crocker has taped to the top of the rickety desk of his school office.
    â€œNo, thanks,” says Ahmad to Crocker’s offer of coconut pastries. His eyes appear rheumy, as if he has been smoking dope, drinking. “No eat shit,” Ahmad says.
    Crocker barely manages to rock back on his heels, laugh. “So,” he teases—playing the teacher/fool, a role he despises—“I suppose you boys finished your homework?”
    Pop hoots with laughter. His eyes are eerie—a blue that appears milky against his dark skin. While Pop laughs, Ahmad looks away. He keeps his hands tucked hard in the pockets of his snaky jacket, as if this helps him to hold down his shivers.
    â€œCome on next door,” says Crocker. “I’ll buy you coffee. You boys look chilly.”
    Pop looks to Ahmad. Who squints at a small tan car chugging out of