When the man came up to the counter, the clerk had just started smelling himself. He was wearing the chain’s vest with the red and blue patch and had left his name tag on the bed. He’d forgot to wash the vest because he started watching a comedy on Netflix, then watched a second and stayed up until midnight. The vest’s armpits got soaked in sweat the day before when he was unloading the truck. When the man walked up, he was thinking about having to wash the vest that night. The man put his things on the counter and started yacking like a hedge trimmer.
“Seen him move over onto the yellow median and I’m thinking he’s going to make a left, but he didn’t make a left. He kept inching along the median. I slowed down because I was afraid to pass him on the right. Me, afraid. I’m following him and he keeps driving along the median, and I’m thinking, son of a bitch, he’s getting me irritated. I kept watching the car and getting more irritated. Red Taurus. And he wasn’t drunk. The car wasn’t moving like a drunk was driving it. So, what I was saying—it moved like he was looking for an address, slowing down, speeding up, like a zoo animal. You seen a polar bear at the zoo, what they do? They pace. They pace and they tear fur out. You see what zoo polar bears look like? It looks like it has some kind of disease, but it doesn’t. Well, it does, I take that back. It’s a mental disease. They all look like that from tearing their fur out with their teeth.”
