Allegory: (n) a short moral story

         It was 12:32 p.m. and at any moment, Gene, the owner of G.L. Corp, would stop by the break area to prod the women back to work. “Girls,” he would call. “Break’s up!” But the women had decided to sit.  

         A decision made spontaneously, that’s how it felt. Because it wasn’t right, the four of them agreed, the way Gene had fired Ruth that morning without considering her story, or even the marks written across her face. He must have seen her eye, must have guessed how it happened. Unless he believed in husbands, that they somehow had the right.

         “What if we just sat here,” Charlene had suggested, “until he gave her another shot?” Charlene was a small woman with big curly hair and the ability to wear corduroy knickerbockers with a don’t-fuck-with-me flair.

         A delicious silence sent shivers to the back of Marie’s neck, bare since she’d shaved her head two months earlier. Twenty years old, she could easily pass for her younger brother. “Let’s do it,” she said. She glanced from Charlene, across the table, to Deb, slowly nodding at the grey laminate top. 

         “Worth a try,” said Deb, her voice low. She pulled a Swiss army knife from the front pocket of her brown and grey flannel before settling, more solidly, into her chair. The knife was shiny and new.

         They paused again, waiting, Marie later realized, for Jackie, who sat by Charlene. Jackie: sporty mother of three nearly grown sons, dyed blonde hair, tightly permed and bobbed. Jackie: the only one with a college degree, though Marie was working on hers and Jackie had married right after graduation. 

         Jackie, who finally sighed. “Alright,” she said. She was the manager; they needed her agreement. Otherwise, they probably would have returned to the packaging floor, thinking about Ruth until something else came up – what to make for dinner and did they need anything from the grocery store and what shows were on TV that night. 

         But with Jackie on board, Gene probably wouldn’t fire them on the spot. Especially this late in the season. So, they sat. Listening for his office door. Waiting for him to notice.

Symbol: (n) something visible that represents something invisible

         They sat in the break area – a balcony platform adjacent to Gene’s office on the second floor of a large, sheet metal warehouse in the middle of nowhere Michigan, surrounded, that late in the year, by already harvested cornfields. Jackie, Charlene, Marie, Deb, and Ruth, when she was there, packaged fundraising orders, the kind that came from themed brochures of specialty items purchased to support a child’s school club or youth group. The items were not inexpensive, especially in 1993, before NAFTA and other economic agreements began globalizing ‘cheap’ labor. But G.L. Corp, and the brochure campaigns they offered, emphasized the good feeling of knowing that your apple-scented candle or box of milk chocolate covered turtles would help purchase new uniforms for a niece’s cheerleading squad or send the high school marching band to Pasadena, California to play in the Rose Bowl. 

Setting: (n) the context and environment in which something is situated

         G.L. Corp shared this building with another business, a garment factory, so the breakroom balcony sat above rows of clicking sewing machines and the shadowed figures of women who were always there, hunched over, making shirts or skirts or something similar. Charlene guessed they earned by the piece. Jackie thought they worked twelve-hour shifts. Charlene wondered if they were legal. Jackie shrugged and said, “Not my business.” Marie and Deb watched Jackie and Charlene have some version of this conversation at least once a week. “It’s fucked up,” Marie sometimes added while Deb nodded. It was hard to not notice the ‘all-white’ upstairs, the mostly ‘not-white’ below, especially during lunch breaks. But asking too many questions felt nosy or not nice, like meddling in something you didn’t understand, including the lives of women who may or may not be migrants, who may or may not lose more than a job if too much came into view.

         The white women did not want to ‘make assumptions.’ That was something else they sometimes said. Though they never spoke about how they could afford to take this seasonal job earning $4.25 an hour, minimum wage at the time, because they had someone else to support them. Or, as in Deb’s case, another gig doing something she loved: making and selling pottery. When the women felt bad about themselves or their situations, they sometimes looked over the balcony and pitied the women earning by the piece. “At least I’m not working a sewing machine,” Charlene sometimes said. Pity ribboned with gratefulness, then, about their ‘better’ situation, for which they sometimes felt shame. No, Marie later realized, we did not create this inequity or know how to change it, but we weren’t innocent either. Our privilege fed us. Our whiteness made us gloat.

Culture: (n) all the knowledge and values shared by a society

         Their workday day ran from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., four days a week, with one 30-minute lunch break as mandated by law and two 10-minute smoke breaks because all the women smoked. It was November-cold outside, wind and snow, so they smoked indoors, as many people did then, around the grey laminate-top table with its assortment of unmatching chairs. Only Gene, the owner, did not smoke, though he didn’t complain when the women did, so long as Rose, his wife, wasn’t working that day. She used to fill in, Jackie had explained, when they were short-staffed. But now that Rose homeschooled all five children – Jackie wasn’t sure Rose liked it, but Gene thought it best – Rose and the kids only stopped by when Gene forgot something at home. “They’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Charlene sometimes added, with a meaningful look. “But we’re considerate,” Jackie often reminded. She’d brought in one of her own box fans to prop in the corner, keep the air moving, and they always remembered to close the balcony door, so the smoke stayed out of the packaging area. They couldn’t say as much for the floor below, but the ceilings were so tall, could the sewing women really smell their smoke? Gene made them wash their hands before touching the mostly cellophane-wrapped products, organized on rows of utility shelves in boxes numbered to match their corresponding brochure order form. Rows of the ever-popular “Winter Wonderland” and “Snackin’ in the USA” stayed up all season. Other, rarely used brochures, like “Popcornopolis” and “Spring Flowers,” were a welcome break to the monotony of Christmas gift wrap and seasoned Chex mix.

Character: (n) a property that defines the individual nature of something. 

         Staying at her parents’ house while on leave from UC Santa Cruz, Marie was home that fall to face recent insights into her own life. This meant retrieving a notebook from her high school boyfriend, the one who broke her heart though some part of her had known, even then, he wasn’t worth it – insecure fuck that he was. Yes, she was still angry. Willing and prepared to see the worst in him. But more than that, she wanted the facts. 

         For this, she needed the notebook. It held letters she had written to him during a time she could not remember. She had wanted to save her virginity for marriage, but something happened with him one January night when they were both sixteen years old, and everything in her memory went blank until Easter, when their sex had become normal, sometimes nice. 

         But worth the risk of eternal damnation? 

         Marie remembered the notebook during a feminist self-defense class she’d taken two years after moving to the West Coast. For six weeks, she learned how to project assertiveness, especially when walking alone at night, and what parts of the body were easy to wound, no matter the assailant’s size. One evening, while kicking in the corners of boxes and shouting “no,” Marie began seeing the high school boyfriend’s face concealed within the corrugated cardboard. She pressed through a rising feeling of nausea and kicked more precisely, but his ghoulish face reappeared with every corner, refusing to boot. Back at the rental she shared with three other students, she began searching her teen journal for clues. But those months were missing. Written, she remembered, in a different notebook: a red spiral one she had given to him.

Irony: (n) incongruity between what is expected and what occurs

         “How often does Gene leave his office?” Marie glanced at the clock. 12:36p.m. 

         Jackie shrugged, leaned back to cross her legs. She wore blue jeans with a pressed crease down their front and brown hiking boots that looked polished, certainly clean. “He usually keeps his office door open,” she said. She brushed something from the inside of her thigh. “That way he can hear how fast we’re calling numbers. You know how I sometimes say we need to finish an order by noon, no excuses …”  

         Charlene caught Marie’s eye and Marie glanced at Deb, who was using the knife to scrape dirt, or more likely clay, from beneath her short, unpainted nails. 

         “I like your knife,” said Marie.

         “Cat gave it to me,” said Deb. Cat was Deb’s roommate, who sometimes made too much banana bread and sent in a loaf for the gals. 

         “Oh c’mon, girls,” Jackie said. “He’s not a bad boss.” 

         “Then Ruth shouldn’t be an issue,” said Deb. She wiped the tip of the knife on her flannel sleeve before slipping the folded piece into her front pocket. “What, does Gene think we don’t work hard enough?” She pulled a cigarette from the pack she’d left on the table. 

         “No, no, that’s not Gene.” Jackie shrugged again. “But Ruth isn’t the most reliable …” 

         The other women gave her a sharp look.

         “I mean, really … she calls in at least once a week.” 

         “Well,” said Charlene, “she’s tight lipped, I’ll give her that. Yesterday I was asking after her boys – didn’t she tell you?” She glanced at Marie. “They had to take one to emergency, twisted ankle or something. But Ruth said they’re fine, all good. Boys being boys.”

         “Oh, I used to swear my boys were trying to kill each other with their rough housing,” said Jackie. “But the youngest finally made it to varsity, just this year.” 

         “Football?” asked Marie.

         Jackie nodded.

         “Funny word,” said Deb. “Rough housing.”

         “Oh, my sister and I would pound each other,” said Charlene. 

         “I’m glad I didn’t have girls,” said Jackie. “I used to scream like a banshee, even when my brother hadn’t touched me. Just to get him in trouble.” Jackie laughed. “I was such a brat.”

Flashback: (n) a transition in a story to an earlier event or scene

         But they had all seen Ruth that morning, arriving over an hour late. The women were pulling orders for a big “Tis the Season” campaign, permanently set up on the shelves closest to the heavy beige door leading to the building’s main staircase. They paused as Ruth pushed through, her long brown hair parted so far to the right that a big section of bangs swept across her face. Their being right there startled her to look up, like a nervous dog at a night sound, and they all saw it: red, purple, and blue circling her left eye. A bright gash above her brow. 

         Ruth recovered herself, turned toward the wall, unzipped her ski jacket even as Jackie was already beside her, speaking something the other women could not hear. Evidently, Gene had told Jackie to send Ruth in, when and if she showed up. Marie, Charlene, and Deb learned these details later, during the lunch time talk that led to their staying put. Because who cared if Ruth hadn’t called. She couldn’t! Her phone didn’t work! 

         The women didn’t know this, though, when Ruth, still in her jacket, left Gene’s office less than five minutes later, chin tucked, head down as she rushed through the putty-colored door. “Wait,” called Charlene, who tossed aside a Merry Mail Christmas Card holder and followed her out. Gene watched from his office doorway, breathing heavily, thumbs tucked in his front pockets.

         “Jackie,” he said. For a moment, his eyes rested on Marie.  

Foil: (v) hinder or prevent, as an effort, plan, or desire

         Was sex worth the risk of eternal damnation? 

         Not with boys, Marie would later realize. 

         Yet at this point in her life – twenty years old and working at the fundraising company – Marie was honestly too scared to have sex, even if that was exactly what the Christian pastors droning from her mother’s kitchen radio wanted her to fear. Marie told her friends she did not think sex was bad; she just wanted more of a say. That’s why she had reclaimed her virginity, bought herself a ‘purity ring,’ and refused to sleep with her current boyfriend, even after he became born again. And when she couldn’t stop random catcalls on the street, and when someone said trauma got stuck in the hair, and when she saw other young women with beautiful, Sinead O’Connor, bald heads, she decided to shave hers and change her script. For she had also discovered feminism and marijuana and the Grateful Dead and Ani DiFranco and radical education, like Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and while she was thinking about proposing to her boyfriend when she returned to the West Coast, wasn’t that the next step? It also felt weird, wrong, to marry so young.

Narrator (n) someone who tells a story

         Now the reader must be noticing that these elements of fiction are hardly the most ‘essential,’ and several carry awkward definitions, sometimes of another meaning held within that same word. Marie, of course, is narrating this story. Not the Marie who was twenty years old, closeted, and worried about sex, but Marie as her future self, a writer queer and fluid, still prone to worry even as she knows sex to be a site for risking wonder and vulnerability. Which is how future Marie thinks about writing. Future Marie will sometimes write woman to mean a marginalized body, regardless of identity, and story for the variant ways a textual body in prose can take a shape, pattern, or form. ‘Woman,’ the future Marie will realize, is a word claimed and constructed, like a story, and what are the elements of fiction except tools to make a story go-go. So, future Marie consolidated several ‘Elements of Fiction’ vocabulary lists, compiled by teachers across the United States and catalogued on vocabulary.com, before using the website’s quiz randomizer to select elements to create this story, and because the teachers were probably tired, and likely most of them underpaid, the list included words with definitions copied and pasted from another contextual meaning, which made some of these ‘Elements of Fiction’ quite strange. Marie liked this.

Atmosphere: (n) distinctive but intangible quality around a person or thing

         The women hated Gene’s smirk. That’s how the lunchtime conversation had started. His half smile and unmoving eyes. Jackie described how, walking into Gene’s office after Ruth left, he gave step-by-step instructions for terminating her employment. As if Jackie hadn’t been doing her job for the past five years. Gene’s look: full of smugness. As if Ruth deserved it. As if the husband was always right. Gene probably thought he was, the way Rose, his wife, clammed up when he was in the room. Marie had never worked with Rose, but Charlene swore that woman could talk your ear off, going on about how her eldest girl could sew and can, while the younger one was stubbornly disinterested in homemaking skills. No wonder Gene wanted her to homeschool their children, turn those girls into little housewives. And she was probably good at it, too, so long as Gene wasn’t around. 

         “Men disgust me,” said Charlene. She tapped the list they’d been making with her pen. That morning, Charlene managed to reach Ruth’s car window just in time. When Ruth said her phone was disconnected, Charlene jotted down her home address instead. The initial plan was to bring groceries that evening, but the more the women talked, the more they realized Ruth needed. “Potatoes, chicken, milk, butter, eggs, carrots, and pudding. Anything else?” When the other women shook their heads, Charlene folded the list, along with the five- and twenty-dollar bills they’d pooled for Ruth and the boys.

         “What do you think those boys are learning,” said Deb, “living in that home?”

Motif: (n) a recurrent element in a literary or artistic work

         Usually, the lunch time conversation was about Charlene. “I can’t afford the bullshit,” Charlene often said, before recounting some bullshit she’d already endured. When Charlene was three, her mother disappeared into the who-knows-where, so Charlene and her younger sister grew up between creepy relatives and foster care. “It was what it was,” Charlene said, and no, she had never known her father. Until later, married with children of her own, Charlene tracked him down. There were a few good years of getting to know him. He hadn’t known about her mother, he said, or he would’ve done something. Charlene didn’t believe him, but for the sake of her own children’s relationship with ‘grandpa,’ she let it go. Until the day she found Daddy doing she-won’t-say-what to her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah. This time, it was Charlene who called the State. But Charlene’s sister didn’t want to lose Daddy, not again, so posted bail. “That was the final straw,” said Charlene. She hadn’t spoken to her sister since. 

Quote: (v) repeat a passage from 

         “Women must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies – for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal.” - Hélène Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa”

Rhythm: (n) an interval during which a recurring sequence occurs

         12:40 p.m. and still no sign of Gene.

         “Anyway,” said Deb, tapping the table with her index finger, “Ruth doesn’t have to tell us her business. Do we want to help or not?”

         “We’re still sitting here, aren’t we?” said Jackie. 

         Marie nodded. They could, she realized, change their minds. She pulled a hoodie from the backpack she’d shoved beneath her chair. The movement released a small stream of wetness between her legs. “Oh, shit,” she said. No wonder she felt bloated. “I think I just started bleeding. Does anyone have a pad?” 

         Deb began rummaging through her purse. 

         Like you could decide one thing, then reverse your decision. Even if it disappointed others.

         “I know I don’t,” said Charlene. “Almost forgot my lunch this morning.” They’d gotten the first snow of the season the night before and Charlene, who gave Marie rides to and from work, had been running late. “Had to scrape the ice off,” she explained when Marie got in the car. “It’s nice to smash something you’re supposed to break.”

         “Marie laughed and hoped to be like Charlene one day: to speak as she felt. 

         In the break area, Deb handed the light-yellow pouch to Marie. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s extra-long.” 

         Jackie watched with an unfocused expression. “You know,” she said to Deb, “Bill’s never done anything like this.” 

         “Like what?” said Marie. Jackie rarely spoke about her husband.

         “Oh, you don’t know,” said Jackie., shifting in her chair. “Bill’s a supervisor at Steelcase,” she explained. “He always teases that my job is a play version of his.” She wiped the edge of her mouth. “But I’m pretty sure he’s never done anything like this.”

         “A sit-in?” said Deb. “Is that what this is called?”

         Marie smiled as the three other women laughed. 

         “I’m glad we’re sitting,” said Marie. Deciding again. 

Tone: (n) a quality that reveals the attitude of the author

         Marie was glad for Charlene’s generosity, too, and how Charlene used a cushion to see over the steering wheel of her 1984 Dodge Raider. Marie began riding with Charlene that first week, after Charlene stayed one day to chat with Jackie, and coming out of the building twenty minutes later, found Marie sitting on a parking curb near the main door. Marie had bicycled her first two days – a flat, easy four miles – but it had been raining that morning, so Marie’s mom dropped her off. Maybe her mom would remember to pick her up, or maybe Marie should begin walking. When Charlene learned that Marie lived just off her usual route, she offered daily rides. Honestly, Marie loved them.

         Charlene was older than Marie’s elder sister, but fifteen years younger than Marie’s parents, who did not understand why Marie was back in Michigan but still paying rent for a room in Santa Cruz. They wanted her to give up this ‘California thing,’ move back and, if she insisted on becoming ‘educated,’ go to a Christian college at least. If Marie wanted California, she would have to pay for it; if she was living in their house, she would have to get a job. If she got a job, she would have to figure out transportation. They never asked Marie about what ‘stuff’ she was home to deal with. If they had asked, Marie wouldn’t have told them. When Marie arrived at the airport in early September, a black hoodie covering her shaved head, her mother said she only recognized Marie by her green Doc Martens. 

         Marie shared these details with Charlene over their fifteen-minute drives every morning and afternoon. “You’ve heard all about my screwed-up life,” said Charlene, after Marie told her about the high school boyfriend. And later, about calling him and arranging a time to meet. Like old times, he did not have a car, so Marie borrowed her mother’s and picked him up, and they went to the same Denny’s everyone used to go to. He said Marie’s shaved head scared him and Charlene said, “Ha!” He accused Marie of “talking smart” to make him feel bad, and Marie said, “I am smart,” and Charlene said, “Good girl!” Yes, he had the notebook and would return it. But when Marie pulled into his driveway and told him to get it, he called it a gift he wanted to keep. “Mine,” he said. But Marie would sit there all night if she had to, she would make a madfuss like nothing he’d ever seen, she wasn’t leaving without it. Maybe it was filled with letters to him, but it was her writing. Hers.

         Reading the notebook was unbearable. For what happened but also for who she had been: a teenage girl so hopelessly lonely and trained to blame herself for being “irrational and too emotional,” for being “annoying” and “acting like a bitch.” Week and after week, she apologized and pled for her boyfriend to please not be angry. He would withdraw, disappear, he would accidently “forget about her.” He made plans with other girls who were “just friends.” 

         She became increasingly desperate.

         She did not tell Charlene any of this. Nor the details she had not remembered. Like how it had been March, not January. How she had panicked. How just that day filled the whole second half of the notebook, though she did not have language for what had happened. She was afraid to name it. How her parents’ telephone was not working that evening, so she had bicycled to a friend’s house, then to another’s, then two more miles to a gas station pay phone. Every time she called, the boyfriend was out. “I feel dead,” she wrote. “That wasn’t sex,” the boyfriend later argued. He wanted the “real” experience. “You are,” she wrote, “the most special thing that ever happened to me.” 

         “Yes,” she told Charlene. “The notebook confirmed it.” 

         “I had a dream about you,” said Charlene one morning. “You wrote a fiction book.” 

         “Oh!” said Marie. 

Plot: (n) a small area of ground covered by specific vegetation

         The restroom was on the other side of Gene’s office, near the bin where they tossed empty boxes to be broken down at the of each day. As she passed, Marie glanced at Gene’s shadowed figure behind the thin white blinds – strange for him to stay so long with the door shut. He was on the telephone; Marie heard him laugh.

         The restroom was stained-beige tiles, an overflowing trash can, and, shoved behind the manufactured-wood door, a dirty mop with a bucket holding worn rubber gloves and half-used bottles of cleaning supplies. Marie arranged paper towels over the toilet seat. She had made a bright-red blot in the lining of her cotton panties. She wiped her blood’s surface and sniffed the toilet paper. She loved that penny metallic scent and held this close, it pushed away the old urine and chemical smell of the restroom. This blood, this vagina – that’s why her dad wouldn’t teach her about cars and why her mom worried she was selfish. Sure, there were hormones, chemicals, other physical differences, but these were elements up for revision. For reinterpretation. Because the cultural meaning attached to bodies – who gets perceived as meaningful, reliable, significant, worthy of being a one and only main character in a story hailed as masterful, perfect, genius, true art – were all fictions. Written on our bodies, and the ones selected for commercial publication, Marie would learn, often maintained the status quo.

Conflict: (n) a state of opposition between persons or ideas or interests

         Back in the break area, Marie found the others standing at the platform railing and watching the women below. There were thirty-five or forty stations, each with a small machine.

         “It’s worth asking,” said Jackie with a sniff. She tapped her watch, then glanced at the clock on the breakroom wall. 12:46 p.m. “Weird,” she said. 

         Marie slid into the space by Deb. “What’s going on?” she asked.

         Charlene leaned back to peer around Deb. “Jackie had the idea of asking their manager to hire Ruth,” she said. “In case Gene says no.” 

         “Do you think he will?” said Marie.

         “I don’t know what’s taking him so long,” said Jackie. 

         “If it is piece work,” joked Charlene, “they might be open to Ruth missing a day or two …” The other women shook their heads at Charlene’s bad humor. “Look,” continued Charlene, “Everyone says to ‘see the positive.’ I know for certain she needs the work.” 

         “Depending on how this goes down,” shrugged Deb, “I might need a new job, too. Cat can’t cover the mortgage alone.”

         “Doesn’t Cat pay you rent?” asked Charlene. 

         “If he fires you all,” said Jackie, “I’m going with you.” Again, she glanced at her watch. “I can make shirts or whatever.” 

         “It doesn’t look like shirts to me,” said Marie. “Do you really think he’s going to fire us?”

         “Nah,” said Jackie.

         “Is Cat on the title?” asked Charlene. 

         “Skirts, maybe?” Deb leaned forward while tugging at the eyeglasses in her front pocket. Something fell. “Shit,” said Deb. 

         Her pocketknife lay like a silver comma on the floor below, five feet or so from a woman in a white t-shirt with short dark hair. The woman noticed the knife before looking at the women upstairs. On her shirt, Mickey Mouse ran in yellow shoes beneath three red and blue letters: USA. 

         “Sorry about that,” shouted Charlene. Marie waved. Deb had already left the break area to retrieve it. 

         “She’s coming to get it,” called Charlene. 

         Marie and Charlene followed the downstairs woman’s glance toward the other side of the room. An office, not unlike Gene’s, with glass windows and a glass paned door, closed, like Gene’s door, though the blinds were up. A figure lurked there. 

         Downstairs, the dark-haired woman moved in a quick, fluid motion, ducking and snatching the pocketknife, which she tucked into the waistband of her jeans before slipping into her seat, same spot, same direction. She said something into the machine – after, laughter, later – hard to hear given the clicking and whirring all around her. Palms down, she made two quick x’s and pointed toward the office. 

         The figure behind the window moved.

         “Fuck,” said Charlene who took off after Deb. Marie ducked. Jackie turned around.

         “I’m going to talk to him,” Jackie said. 

Tension: (n) a balance between opposing elements or tendencies

         When Deb and Charlene returned, Jackie was still in Gene’s office and Marie had lined up four boxes, empty side down, in front of the recycle bin. 

         “Handkerchiefs?” laughed Deb. 

         “I had to come up with something,” said Charlene. 

         Marie gestured quiet and nodded toward Gene’s door. “C’mon,” she said, coaxing the other women toward the recycle bin and outside of Gene’s immediate view. “What happened?” she asked.

         “I have never smelt a man so covered in liver and onions,” whispered Deb. She shook her head. “The door was locked and by the time that smelly little man showed up – I did not like that man – Charlene was there exclaiming about my handkerchief … my snot rag … saying she found it under the chair.”

         “I couldn’t think beyond a lost object,” interrupted Charlene, “but when Deb didn’t get it, I just switched stories and started telling him that Deb makes her own handkerchiefs, they’re real pretty, pink and green, but his face was blank, even those beady blue eyes, I said, ‘Do you have any applications, sir?’ Well, that woke him up. He wanted to know how I knew about the factory, and I said we worked upstairs, but the season would be ending.” 

         “Handkerchiefs?” whispered Marie.

         “Exactly,” said Deb. She rolled her eyes in pleasure. 

         “Look,” said Charlene, “sometimes you got to make shit up.” She elbowed Marie. “That’s fiction,” she said.

         “Oh, he didn’t believe us,” laughed Deb. “But he couldn’t figure out what we wanted either.”

         “He said come back when we’re done for the season, he’ll see what he has.” Charlene shook her head.

         “But that irritated me,” said Deb. “Why doesn’t he have applications? So, I said ‘Surely you have them. Please, sir,’ I said. And boy did that aggravate him. ‘I don’t have time for this,’ he said, and he pulled the door shut, right in our faces.”

         “Smelly little, small-handed man,” said Charlene. “Did you see his hands?”

         Deb nodded. 

         “But we didn’t get her in trouble,” said Charlene. 

         “Yeah,” said Deb. She paused. “So … I guess I’ll wait for the end of her shift.” 

         The silence that followed gave space for absorption. There was so much Marie did not understand. 

         Charlene looked at the boxes. “What is this?” 

         “Did I ever tell you about my self-defense class?” asked Marie. “Imagine this corner as a knee cap.” She turned her side toward the corner, lifted her leg to aim.

         Gene’s door opened. The look on Jackie’s face told them everything.

         “No,” kicked Marie.