Trust Read Free Page A

liqueurs. She had platinum hair, and she was deeply tanned. The neckline of the leotard plunged to the middle of her cleavage; she had a large costume jewelry brooch of fake diamonds pinned to it there. She had very long legs. Earl stopped and pretended to be interested in various brands of rum. She straightened up without taking anything from the basket when a blocky man in a blue windbreaker, sleeves pushed up, yellowed white polo shirt, and shorts came up behind her with two cases of Miller beer. He was running to paunch, and losing his blondish hair. “You want any, that shit for diabetics?” he said. She shook her head, and preceded him into the checkout lane. Earl followed them toward the register. When he reached the place where she had stood, he could smell a lingering aroma of perfume. It grew stronger as he came up behind the man, who was presenting a twenty-dollar bill. “Don’t worry,” the man said. “It’s not one of those.”
    The cashier was a woman just shy of forty. She wore a short black wig with ringlets that framed her face, and a pink smock with “Chuckie’s Discount” embroidered in red over her left breast. She accepted themoney and snorted, ringing up the sale. “It’s fifties now,” she said, tapping a notice taped to the glass partition on the other side of the register. “I guess they’re movin’ up inna world.” She glanced sidelong at the woman in the leotard. “Like lots of us’d like, and some already did.” The woman did not say anything. She stared into the middle distance, and licked her bottom lip once.
    The man chuckled and accepted his change. “Good thing for you, I guess,” he said, “they didn’t start two months ago.” He picked up his beer, and the woman went ahead of him toward the exit, her buttocks swaying smoothly under the denim. She used her right hand to brush the hair from her right temple, tossing her head back as she did so. She gave the blocky man half a smile, her eyelids lowered, as he followed her out through the door.
    “You, ah,” the cashier said to Earl, “you want me to ring that stuff up, sir?”
    Earl took a deep breath and put the bottle and the two six-packs on the counter. He shook his head as he pulled out his wallet. “Fine lookin’ woman,” he said.
    “Best advertisement Revlon ever had,” the cashier said, running her forefinger down a flip-card list of prices. She rang up the price of the vodka, and added $3.29 for the Coke. “Eight twenny-eight,” she said.
    “Revlon?” he said.
    She nodded. “The perfume,” she said. “She douses herself. Must pour it on over her head.”
    “I kind of liked it,” he said. “I thought it smelled nice. Sort of spicy.” He separated one bill from a respectable wad in his wallet and handed it to the cashier.
    “Hell,” she said, “I used to like it myself. Wore the stuff all of the time. But that was before she started coming in here every week, absolutely reeking of it. Now I wouldn’t wear the damned poison. I dumped all of mine down the toilet. Right after the rest of my life.” She rested the bill on edge on the buttons of the top row of the register. “Course the fact that the guy she comes
in
here with now, happens to be my ex-husband—well, that might have something to do with it.” She peered at the bill. “Hey,” she said.
    “Your ex-husband?” he said.
    “You deaf or something, mister?” she said, offering the bill back to him. “I can’t take this.”
    “You used to be married, that guy?”
    She sighed. “I swear,” she said, “you got wax in your ears. You oughta go to the doctor. Yeah, I used to be married, that guy. We got what they call ‘divorce’ in this state. ‘Providence, and these Plantations.’ You come from some other planet or something, you never heard of divorce? You should live in Italy. But what I’m talking about now, though, is this.” She waved the fifty under his nose. “This’s what I’m talking about, all right? I