Chapter 45
I get my worst customers on my bad days.
Bored women. Sad women. Unhappy women. Women dissatisfied with their husbands and taking it out on me with their demands, barking at me to sift through racks of bras they’d be able to sift through themselves if they weren’t carrying seven bags of shit they don’t need.
Has anyone ever gone into Talbots and come out a better woman?
“Well check in the back!” she orders me, not understanding that the automatization of store inventory means there’s no margin of error.
“Our system shows we’re completely sold out of that particular demi-bra, but I’ll certainly go check in the back for you,” I say, placating her and giving myself a chance to breathe.
In the break room, a co-worker talks on the phone with her boyfriend, spewing sweet nothings under her breath, and I want to throw up.
I’ve purchased five online carts in the days since Korgy left.
So many items of clothing that will inevitably wind up in a landfill somewhere, expanding my carbon footprint and contributing to global warming when in three months I’ll decide I don’t want them anymore, which seems like a thing I should’ve known to begin with, considering they were never really the thing I wanted in the first place.
They were just smaller, more attainable things to want.
Placeholders for the bigger, insatiable, incorrigible want underneath.
And yet knowing the pattern doesn’t stop it. I’m powerless over the need to gorge myself on stupid things I put too much meaning on. Stupid things I know I’ll be disappointed by as soon as I see them in person—the colors not as bright, the fit too droopy, the construction absolute shit.
“I miss you,” the girl says into the phone.
And with that, I leave, back to Botox Face on the main floor.
“Did you find it?” the lady barks at me.
“No, we’re sold out,” I say, “but we have a lot of other demi-bras you can choose from.”
“Ulch,” the lady huffs. “No. I don’t want a different demi-bra. I want that one. That’s the one I want.”
“Right,” I say, monotone. “I know.”