Long, Hot Summer Ch. 03

.:.

Sally Speaker's shift began when the store opened that day. I punched in a couple hours after her, along with another of our fellow baggers, a kid named Jim something-or-other. He was a nice enough guy but a little on the vain side with his perfect teeth and blond, feathered-back hair with the center part. Half the time he quizzed me about Sally, wanting to know if she ever said anything about him, or if I thought she liked him. The other half was spent telling me that he knew she did, he could tell she dug him, and that he would ask her out if he didn't already have a super-hot girlfriend. I just pled ignorance. There was nothing to be gained by telling Jim that Sally referred to him, alternatingly, as "Blow-dry" and "The Mormon."

I still had two hours left on my shift when Sally punched out that day. I was in the parking lot herding carts and wrangling a train of them back to the storefront when she pulled up alongside me in her pumpkin-orange Chevy Vega, its rear quarter panels practically lacy from rust, the whole machine shimmering in the heat rising from the asphalt.

She leaned toward the open passenger window to say something to me. Having had no such intention until that very instant, I licked my dry lips, stuck my head in, and kissed her on the mouth. She received it so naturally, so without surprise, that I couldn't help think that she half-expected it or even intended it herself. It wasn't a peck, and it wasn't some gaping, sloppy, tongue-slithering thing: just lips, slightly parted, gently but unambiguously conjoined, and ending on the downbeat. Like the kiss of greeting or parting between a couple who had done it often.

To this day, I don't know why I did it, or even how I did it. That was a kind of spontaneous forwardness that I wasn't much good at.

"Do you need a smoke?" she said as we parted.

"Nope, I'm good."

"Okay," she smiled. "See you later."

She drove off. I turned back to my rough beast of nested carts. The wide world was a flood of heat and light.