Linksshifter II

A Path Between The Waves - ~

Sonali turned away from the shelf of detergents she was filling in with a sigh, straightening up to her knees. "Roger, I play football. For a club, that is in a league, that is about to go professional. You couldn't stick with Peterhead, and now you play on Sunday mornings against your mates from the pub, in games that end up like 8-7 and don't have sub restrictions because everyone's like thirty year old and ends up blowing out their erchie after half an hour. Saying we both play football is like trying to hit on the district manager because hey, you both work for Tesco right? And it's not affecting you with me one way or the other, because you didn't have any kind of chance from the very start, but if you try this on someone else, suggesting that their culture's full of pedophiles is probably the worst way to get into someone's pants I can think of."

"Should I phone for an ambulance?" Gerry called back from the register. "The last guy I seen burnt that bad, they had to airlift him to Edinburgh."

Roger flushed, turning away with a scowl; behind him, Elaine was still laughing at him from the beverage case. "We'll switch: finish stocking up in here and I'll get the towels out. You can cool your heid, and put some ice on that burn." She swung the door closed and wiped her hands on her apron.

Roger sighed and threw his hands up. "No, no; it's fine, I've learnt my lesson. You ever change your mind, let me know and I'll be back in, but until then I'll no be distracting you from your work. I'll finish stocking this shelf, then run the rest of the pallet back in around the back when I'm done." He turned around, back to the tower of packaging, box cutter out to get the outer layer opened. Sonali looked at him skeptically, at Elaine rolling her eyes behind him as she opened the cooler again, and went back to her work. They were almost finished here, and once everything was squared up for tomorrow, she'd have to go off shift. And after that...

For once in forever, Roger actually did cool it for the hour or so that it took to close up the store, and instead of hanging around to harass Sonali after Elaine and Sarah finished showing her how to fix and reload the deli-counter ticket machine, he'd headed straight off down the pub. Sonali sighed slowly with relief as she saw his time card already clocked out, balancing her gym bag with her school uniform still in it carefully as she punched her own card, trying to make sure the past-day-old chicken pies she wasn't supposed to have in the bottom didn't get twisted up. Those were supposed to go in the trash, but it felt bad to waste perfectly good food, even if they couldn't really send them to the food pantry like they did with the bread. And unless she wanted another row with her parents, she certainly couldn't go back home when supper would be on.

Someone tapped Sonali on the shoulder, and she turned around; Sarah, shaking her tight black curls out of her hairnet and putting her earrings back in. "Sonali, honey, are you all right? If you're worried, do you want me to walk you down the lane? I've got to go that way for the bus anyway." Her deep brown eyes were wide and soft with concern, like she wasn't seeing Sonali right now, but herself, years ago, worried about men getting too pushy, too late, standing out dark and obvious and self-consciously alien on the narrow stone-faced streets of a little Scottish town.

Sonali shook her head. "No, it's all right – I'm not that worried about him, and I'm not going back that way now anyways. I was going to go over the library, hang about there a bit and do my homework, but if you want me to come with I can go with you as far as the bus; it's not too far to ride back from there."

Sarah looked significantly at her as she clocked out. "They call it homework because it's meant to be done at home – are you meeting your girlfriends, maybe a young man to revise with?" Speculating about Sonali's love life was one of the main topics of conversation for the older women who worked with her, especially since she didn't have a boyfriend or girlfriend or seemingly any interest in acquiring one, and when it came too much at the wrong time, it was nearly as bad a pain as Roger's horndogging or Gerry's occasionally pre-war vocabulary.