Free Like We Care by Tom Matthews Page B

ball. Red can be like a friend, sometimes.
    If the only reason to choose less over more is money—and there’s always more money—why would anyone buy less? Even if all you really want is twelve ounces of Coke?
    That’s what Todd thought. Empires depended on it.

    Kurt Berger farted—a dry, spiky one. Berger beamed. His friends—no one Joel recognized and thus no one worth knowing—nodded appreciatively, like an earlier generation might have for the second act curtain of a Noel Coward play.
    Joel, next in line and just wanting to get out of this goddamned store, was appalled.
    “Berger, you suck.”
    Todd smirked at Joel. “Hanging out with you is great.”
    “Shut up.”
    Berger finished his transaction and left; his gassy accomplishment did not. Daljit Singh sniffed the air and gave Joel the hairy eyeball.
    “It wasn’t me! Just. . .” He trailed off bitterly, not feeling like an Eskimo at all.
    Todd plopped his magnum of Coke on the counter. He handed the storekeeper a twenty, Daljit rang up the sale with a dead-eyed grimace, and Todd gave Joel a five from the change.
    Joel took the money without a word of thanks and stepped to the counter, his pack of Marlboros already waiting for him. The cash register pealed.
    “Four-twenty-two.” Daljit’s hand was outstretched, the exchange of cash merely a formality at this point.
    Joel fumed: What fucking nerve, this guy knowing from memory what he smoked. He looked at the pack of cigarettes, the stark but familiar label stroking a pleasure node deep inside his subconscious. At this point, the purchase, the zipping off of the cellophane, the tightly-packed set of twenty, straight and white and ready—it all came automatically.
    Joel’s throat was still raw from the drag he took in the parking lot. There was nothing wrong with that cigarette. He had just forgotten what it felt like.
    Students were growing restless behind him. Daljit Singh repeated what was due him.
    “Four-twenty-two.”
    Joel set his spine.
    “No. You know what? Forget it.”
    Todd, still there, sensed something brewing. Joel stuffed the five back into Todd’s hand.
    Daljit noted the merchandise on the counter, its conversion into currency forestalled.
    “You buy something.” It wasn’t an order. It was a statement of fact, along the lines of “You. Bird. Fly.”
    “No. I not buy something,” He turned to Todd. “Let’s go.”
    Daljit looked to the line of cash-bearing customers who had gone unplucked while Joel wasted these precious moments. He hadn’t slept in 37 hours.
    “You buy something!”
    “Get bent.”
    “You look!” Daljit barked, pointing to the sign near the front door. “‘No loitering’!!”
    Joel bore down. “ You look!” He pointed to a small placard next to the register, a laughable remnant of some long-forgotten legal settlement against the tobacco companies. The one in which they agreed to stop selling cigarettes to kids.
    “I’m seventeen years old! You’re not supposed to be selling me this shit!” He jabbed at the pack of Marlboros, inadvertently causing it to slide across the counter and onto the floor.
    Daljit’s eyes went wide with outrage. Stealing the inventory— this he had been trained to allow. But do it no harm.
    “You go!” Daljit cried, causing the customers in line to squirm warily. “You get out of my store. You do not come back until you be buying something!!”
    “Fine, you dick!” Joel sneered, running on adrenaline now. He took a swipe at the beef jerky carousel, causing it to spin merrily. The tangy delightfulness of spiced, dried meat wafted into the air.
    Reflexively, through his rage, an order was issued from some intricate part of Joel’s machinery long beyond his control:
    “Buy beef jerky.”
    He’d be butt-fucked before he’d spend a nickel in this guy’s store right now. And yet, even at the height of his defiance, as he sought to deprive this greedy bastard of his coin, his brain was instinctively going for his