“Coffee? Coffee coffee coffee!” he said.
“Oookkaaayyyyy theennn . . . ,” I said, and just kept walking until I was intercepted by Ann from the pharmacy. Like clockwork, yet again, she handed me a couple of multivitamins, which I pretended to ingest, secretly storing them in my jacket pocket.
I reached the break room and hit the keypad above the doorknob: 34652. I went to clock in. Rachel and Becca were sitting inside again, talking about last night’s episode of The Bachelor.
“Hey, Flynn,” Rachel said.
“Hey, Rachel, what’s up?” I responded as I opened my locker and put on my Muldoon’s apron and name tag.
“Nothing much, just another monotonous day in the grocery store,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. Her bright red lipstick stained the paper cup. Before I even had a chance to respond, I heard it.
“Floater to bakery, floater to bakery, please.” The voice of a woman with a Russian accent crackled through the static of the dated intercom.
On my way to the bakery the lights went out in half the store.
“What the hell?” I said, stopping in my tracks.
“Oh, that’s just the busted-ass electrical system,” a voice said from behind me. When I turned around, I was met by a black man in his late twenties.
“You Flynn, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I’m DayDay.” He extended his hand and I shook it.
“Nice to meet you, man.”
“Yeah, Ted’s cheap ass still ain’t put the money he should into the electrical system.” DayDay, I soon learned, was like the on-call super for the store, the all-around handyman.
DayDay actually seemed like a chill dude. One of the only employees I could say that about so far.
“Yeah, man,” he continued. “The lights in this place are always shady. Never really know when they gonna go on you. This white nigga so cheap.”
White nigga? I thought to myself. What the hell does that mean?
I mean, I couldn’t exactly just ask him what white nigga meant because, as a white man, I’m pretty sure he would beat the shit out of me. Rightfully so—white people have no reason to use that word. But maybe . . . white niggas do?
I guess this is something I will never understand about lingo and black culture as a white kid. Hell, I’d like to think I’m a pretty good writer, but I can’t dance for shit. And let’s be real: black people have soul! There’re just some things people won’t ever understand. As for me, the oxymoron of white nigga is one I shall never uncover.
“Okay, well, thanks, DayDay. It was nice to meet you,” I said, beginning to walk away.
“Aright, my nigga, Imma get back to fixing these lights.”
I was so puzzled. Now he called me nigga? What the hell was going on? Was that a . . . good thing? I contemplated this all the way to the bakery, which was located in the back of the store near aisle thirteen. The bakery smelled amazing; all around me were pastries, fresh loaves of bread, cookies, muffins, cakes, and bagels. I felt transported by the aroma.
“Hey, you’re Flynn, right?”
And this was how I met Mia Torres.
She was an absolute beauty! A twenty-five-year-old, Spanish-speaking, tan-skinned, 5'6" supermarket model with jet-black hair; an amazing body; a warm, welcoming energy; and a radiating smile. She was the only thing in the entire store that felt real. She was a combination of Jessica Alba and Rashida Jones. Random mixture, I know, but damn, was she gorgeous. Mia was the kinda girl who you see and feel an instant attraction to and chemistry with. I felt light on my feet. I was infatuated. Lovestruck. She was wifey material. I realized I had just been standing there silently. I fumbled.
“Yeah . . . uhmmm. I, second day,” I said, nervously reaching for my Moleskine.
“Awww, yay, you haven’t been tainted yet,” she said with a chuckle, giving me an infectious smile. “This place is kind of a killer of dreams.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked, eager to take micronotes of key points of our conversation.
“Well, for starters, the—”
She was interrupted by a tiny, pasty white woman with a face that rested in anger—she was like a 5'4" female Robert De Niro, dressed in all white, with a flour-stained apron, a rolling pin, and a disgusting hairy mole above her lip. She opened her mouth to speak, but before the first syllable slipped out, I knew the voice was going to sound like a creepy James Bond villain.
The very same Bond villain who requested my presence in the first place.
“Is this the floater?” she said, not really asking either one of us in particular.
“Yes, I’m Flynn . . . I . . .”
“You—come with me, floater,” she interrupted, grabbing my arm.
Here I was, being manhandled by a sixty-five-year-old female De Niro, forced into the baker’s den. We stood surrounded by freezers, ovens, and huge baking sheets about three feet long and two feet wide. Counters piled with dough framed the room. “In freezer we keep dough,” she said in her thick Russian accent. I looked at her name tag. It read Bianca. “Now dough is ready.” She pulled out a box and I realized exactly what she meant—none of the donuts, pretzels, or bagels were made fresh. They were outsourced by another company and kept frozen in white paper boxes. So all you needed to do was pop them in the industrial oven, let them cook, take them out, and put them in a pretty package to give them that baked-from-scratch look.
I spent the next few days in the bakery, and over that time I learned a lot. Pretty soon, my notepad was almost full. For example, did you know that when anything new is brought onto the floor, such as pies and any other baked goods, they place the freshest on the bottom so as to move the old product first? So whenever you go shopping, be sure to grab your bread from the back or bottom.
Aside from the Bond villain trying to kill any bit of happiness I might have, there was always Mia. Our stations were right next to each other. I prepared the bagels and loaves of bread on a countertop, like a buffet table with the sneeze guard, you know? I mean, well, minus the sneeze guard. To my right was a gap where we could walk out onto the floor, and on the other side of the gap was Mia’s station. Mia would man the ovens. We had enough face time that we built a nice little rapport. We would chitchat, shoot the shit, joke around. She taught me how to bake and ice a cake. This was straight out of an episode of The Bachelor. Contestants having to bake together. Flour was flirtatiously tossed. I really got the feeling she’d taken a liking to me.
Mia told me about her ambitions in life, and how she had been in college studying law. She explained how her family was extremely poor, how her dad had left her family and was a little crazy. She’d entered a contest for a full-ride scholarship to law school, had written a moving essay to a man running for governor. In the end, he decided to donate his own money to a good cause—the good cause being this brown-skinned poor girl. It was a smart move, playing to the young, lower-class female and Hispanic vote all in one shot. That’s politics.
Mia didn’t mind knowing this was a big reason she received the ride—all she cared about was the fact that she’d be in school and working toward a career she really cared about. She wanted to be an entertainment attorney. She wasn’t really musically inclined, but in the shower it was Showtime at the Apollo for her! She wanted to be behind the talent, representing their interests, making sure they weren’t being exploited, and that they were getting their money where it was due.