Seeing Off the Johns. Rene S Perez II
doesn’t matter how—if they die or leave you for someone else or even go gay or something like that. All that matters is if you get found by someone else. You know?”
So much of this struck Chon as wrong. But he didn’t want to argue with Ana however much he hoped it wasn’t true. He had lately realized that he could—if he chose to—change any of her beliefs or ideas by simply disagreeing with them. For that reason, he stopped disagreeing with her completely. He knew Ana was lost right now, had been for as long as he had known her. He resisted, as strongly as he could, her attempts at finding herself in him. They hadn’t had sex in weeks.
“Anyway,” Ana said in the wake of Chon’s silence. She slipped off of the ice machine onto the trashcan and stepped down onto the milk crate. “Her parents are right to get her away from this place. It’s like people around here aren’t happy enough sharing the same however many square feet of town, they have to share their sadness over two boys most of them didn’t even know.”
Chon nodded, holding the door open for Ana. He went behind the counter and opened the register.
“You left me two tens,” he looked at Ana.
“Just drop some from the safe,” she said on her way to the back.
“Ana,” Chon said when she came back with her purse on her shoulder, “they come once a week to fill the safe. We’ll run out of tens if we drop them so many times.”
It was Sunday. Rocha was off, so Ana had worked the first shift.
“Sorry, Chon-Chon, I promise I’ll be a good girl from now on and be real careful with the register,” she said, walking out.
“Ana,” he called to her, “have you even closed your till?”
She stood in the doorway and stared at him. “No. Will you count it for me?”
“You know, you’re a cashier. You have to count every now and then,” he said, opening the drawer and counting the money in it.
“Not to close my till, not when you’re here to do it for me,” she said with a smile.
He looked up at her and rolled his eyes. A girl no older than thirteen walked into the store. She wasn’t from Greenton, but Chon thought he recognized her. Ana walked to the counter, putting her purse down to wait for Chon to run her numbers in the register.
The girl interrupted Chon’s counting. “Do you guys sell the stars?” she asked. “The John stars?”
“Yeah,” Chon said, starting over on the dimes.
“How much are they?” the girl asked.
“$2.70…$2.80…$2.90…” He raised his index finger to indicate to the girl that he needed one minute. He wrote down the total.
“$5 a pop,” he told the girl.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take five.”
“Alright,” he said. “That’ll be $25. Just hang on a second. I have to open this register.”
There were only seven nickels in the register. Chon looked at Ana and at the nickel slot in the register. She shrugged.
“Isn’t it open right now?” the girl asked. “My brother drove me over from Premont because you guys are the only store selling the real stars. We’re getting one for his car, one for my parents’ and some for our neighbors.”
“Well—” Chon began. Ana turned toward the girl.
“Listen, little girl,” she said, “he has to count the money in the drawer and put the total in the machine to close the last shift’s totals. It’ll take five minutes tops. But if you keep interrupting him, he won’t be able to finish, and we won’t sell you any damn stars. Understand?” Ana took the pack of Best Values from her purse and pulled out a smoke and her lighter.
Chon counted the pennies quickly, added the drawer total, and ran the numbers. The printout he put in an envelope with her credit card receipts said Ana’s drawer was forty cents over. He input the total as his starting balance and rang up five John stars.
“Alright, sweetie,” he said to the girl, who was staring at her feet, “$25.”
The girl gave him two twenties. He gave her back three fives.
“You didn’t have to—” he began to tell Ana.
“I know,” she said.
“She was just trying to—”
“I know. It’s just I see a little girl like that, all happy and shit, and I want to shake her. I want to fucking strangle her, it just hurts so fucking much.”
Chon didn’t say anything. He walked to the back room, slid the envelope under the office door to be counted along with the rest of the week’s receipts by Sammy Alba, Art’s cousin, tomorrow, like on every Monday.
Ana was standing at the front of the store, watching the girl from Premont tell her brother what had happened in the store.
“Ha,” she said, “he flipped me off.” She stood there, looking at the dust kicked up by the brother and his sister and the car that would carry them to their loving home three towns over. “We’re out of Bud Light tall boys and Miller Lite caguamas,” she said. “And four of the microwave burritos were cut into. I think Rocha did it when he opened up the box. I bagged them, they’re in the cooler, leave a note for Sammy so he can write them off and order more beer.”
“Okay, Ana. Thanks,” Chon said.
Ana turned around and looked at him.
“Sometimes I just want to fucking scream. Hell, sometimes I do. I get home and I call detectives and call Bill and I cry. And then I get two days off, and I’m too sad to even go to Flojo’s so I sit at home and drink and cry and, sometimes, I scream.” She gave a laugh. She always laughed at awkward moments. “I’ll see you Wednesday,” she said.
“Well, I’ll be here if you want to drop in,” Chon said. A month ago, she might have taken him up on the offer—showed up on her day off with leftovers and helped him mop the store or stock the cooler.
“I’ll see you Wednesday, Chon-Chon,” she said walking out of the store.
She stood in the doorway trying to light her cigarette. When the wind wouldn’t let her, she crouched down in the corner made by the ice machine and the storefront. Small as she was, she disappeared from Chon’s sight. She could have been crying or curling up in a ball to give up on life or crawling away in the thirty seconds she was down there.
She popped up, cigarette lit, waved goodbye to Chon, and walked around the side of The Pachanga to get to her car. In the drive-thru window, Chon saw a woman tired and alone and who, in a bigger city, would fit right in pushing around a shopping cart and screaming at traffic passing by. She honked her horn when she pulled onto Main, waving at Chon with the back of her hand.
The John stars were Ms. Salinas’ idea. The Mejias were left with some debt after the funeral. Keeping up with the Robison’s arrangements was no easy task. Andres refused any of Arn’s offered money to bridge the gap. Julie had life insurance policies on herself and Andres and had even taken one out on John, but it was a minimal thing—who can ever foresee having to pay for the funeral of your youngest son? Who would want to? Everyone in town knew of the Mejia’s financial problems, so Ms. Salinas took action. What better way for the boys’ teacher to get over her own grief than by helping out?
Ms. Salinas brought up the idea of selling car magnets—stars, like the Johns were and would have been—to raise funds to erase the Mejias’ debt. They agreed—so long as the money made from such a venture would be split evenly with the Robisons. Arn had reservations about accepting any such money but didn’t object because he knew his agreement on the matter would be the only way he and Angie could help Andres and Julie.
The magnets were bought