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“Holy shit.  That’s never happened.”  And then he chuckled.  It was half sigh, words formed on accident before thought had been put into them.  His face was silver and blue in the shadow and streetlight.  It was probably his most genuine moment with her, and the one she always came back to when she needed him.

What had he told her to say?  She was a teacher.  Say she was a teacher and they were for her students.

 

The black man behind the counter was short with a nice face.  His head was shorn, just like Jon’s.  She tried to picture him with his hair grown out.  It would be like an afro, right?  Would it make him look taller?  Or is that the black guy equivalent of a comb over, but for shortness and not baldness?

He had five cell phones in five boxes next to his black keyboard on the glass counter, and he was pecking at that keyboard that was at least 10 years old while he glared intently into the boxy monitor.  She wondered if he was actually a fast typist but the computers were just very slow.  On cue, he shook his head and looked at her.

“Sorry, these things are so slow.  Especially today.  I think it’s worse when it rains.”  He shrugged and hit another key.  She relaxed.

“That’s ok.  These are for my students. They don’t all have their own phones and some of them need extra help in the evening and so I like to give them an option to get in touch with me.  I’m in no hurry.”  She gave her very best patient, sweet smile, the one with genuine eyes that showed affection and interest.

“Mhm.  Ok here we go,” he said, his face relaxing. “You can insert your card and hit the green button.”

She completed the transaction with Jon’s card and the nice man placed the boxes into a plastic bag with T-Mobile on the side and she walked out of the store with her heart in her throat.

Later, she would recall sunlight peeking through the clouds and dimpling the puddles, the smell of wet earth mingling with coffee from the shop next door, and she would wonder why she had just gone home to Jon the way he had instructed.  She could have walked in the opposite direction and saved herself so much trouble.

 

 

 

“That guy only had one arm.”  She raised her eyebrows, hoping someone else was up for this discussion.  Jon and Tony didn’t hear her over the music, but Lisa did and she nodded and laughed.

“Yes, Charlie, YES HE DID.”  She laughed so hard that she went silent.  “He could still sling some mean chili!  Oh my God Charlie you freak out over the weirdest shit.”  Charlie laughed also.

What she had meant to say, to ask, was why do you think this man only has one arm?  She wanted to talk about how he might have come to be the one-armed chili man with her friends, Jon and Tony and Lisa.  She hadn’t had time to ask the man himself, or she would have.

She never ate the chili.  The clumpy meat looked like the end of his arm.  You could see it poking out of his sleeve, the pinched, purple flesh at the end of his forearm.  He wasn’t born that way. That was a nasty car accident, or a fight with some animal, or someone ignoring OSHA in a factory.

 

 

Electric green vines grew up the brick walls of the walk to their apartment.  There were ten steps for each level.  She counted 20 steps, including the platform at the second level.  Their door was unlocked, which she found interesting, considering  how wound up Jon suddenly seemed about security.  A cursory inspection of the potted plant next to the door confirmed that the spare key was still in its hiding spot.