Free Sinners Circle by Karina Sims Page B

newspaper,
circling ads when I kick the door open and lay Lilly down on the floor. She
screams, a few customers stand up, hover over and don’t leave until I push them
out. I grab the phone, Trisha tries pulling it away from me, “What are you
doing? This is a business line.”
    “What’s going on? Holy fuck!” Alison grabs the phone from Trisha, dials nine
one one . “There’s a girl! A fucking girl looks like
she’s going to die...”
    “Amanda?” Lilly’s twisted little
arms are waving in the air above her. I grab a cup of water and wrap my arms
around her shoulders, I can feel her getting colder and in the eighteen minutes
it takes for the ambulance to arrive I never move my face from her hair.
    When the paramedics load her up
on the stretcher and all the onlookers watch the ambulance speed off, Harry is
standing there, arms crossed, staring at me. “You left the store unattended.”
    I look down at myself, the front
of my white t-shirt is all wet, scrunched up and smeared in blood.
    “... And you’ve got blood on your
shirt.”
    “She might die.”
    “You should’ve told me.”
    “You were on the phone.”
    He sighs, “Someone could have
come in and taken shit. You have to let me know if you’re...”
    “She was gonna die, asshole.”
    “Hey!”
    “Fuck off.”
    I push past him and head back to
the store.
    “You can’t talk to me like that,
I’ll...”
    “Fuck off.”
    He follows me in, points at my
shirt again. “I can’t let you work in that.”
    “ You telling me to go home?”
    “No...I just...” He unfolds his
arms, scratches the back of his neck and waves a hand towards his office. “I
got a bunch of tank tops in the back. Find one that fits and come back to the
front.”
    His little janitor closet turned
office smells like wet paper and old garlic. I’m digging through a cardboard
box, ‘ titty tops’ scrawled in red marker on the side
in Harry’s handwriting. The office is so damn small I
knock over a stack of magazines piled beside the desk. I quickly slip on a
black tank, ‘Hustler’ spelled out in gaudy rhinestones, and bend down to pick
up the skin rags. Half of them are water logged, pages swollen. Under the desk
it reeks like piss. I’m just grabbing the last magazine off the floor when I
notice the phone cord isn’t plugged into the jack. I look on top of the desk
and see the receiver off the hook. I plug it back in, stand up and push call
history. According to this, the last phone call
was made today at seven thirty AM. One missed incoming at nine o’clock. I look
at my watch. It’s four fifty seven PM.
    “Amanda?” Harry is shouting from
the front of the store.
    “Yeah?”
    I unplug the phone again and lay
the receiver back on its side. There’s five long black
strands of hair laid out beside the keyboard of his computer. I touch my scalp,
pluck out a hair and hold it up to the bulb on the ceiling.
    “You finding everything OK?”
    I’m squinting one eyed to make
sure I’m right, that I’m positively correct.
    “Yeah... I found everything.”
    I walk back to the till. “You OK,
Harry?”
    He shakes his head. “No.” He rubs
his belly and laughs. “I’m hungry enough to eat a whore.”
    I make sure I pace my blinking
and breathing to his. “Oh?”
    “Yep.”
    He scratches the back of his neck
again and points at my top. “Looks nice.”
    “Ok.”
    “Well, I’m gonna head off to McDonalds. You want anything?”
    “No, I’m not hungry.”
    “Come on, you look thin. I’ll
bring you back something.”
    “No, I’m not hungry.”
    He shrugs. “Fine. Go for your lunch when I get back.”
    He goes to his office, gets his
coat and leaves out the back door. The second he leaves I crack my neck, grab
the sandwich out of my lunch bag and look through the newspaper to see if the
remains of the jogger have been discovered yet. I’m sort of pissed when I see,
after two goddamn weeks, there still hasn’t been a
missing persons notice. I wipe the