Aimee leaned out over the counter of the bagel shop and wondered with her chin balanced atop interlaced fingers. College had been fun but almost entirely useless; her current post running the day shift at Third Street Bagels convincingly attested to that. Making bagels used to be what she did on the side to make drinking money; then the student loans stopped paying rent and bagels became a career.
She mulled more than she worked, it seemed. Maybe living alone was the problem. Her mind shifted to her anti-roommate stance seamlessly and gave her a new set of issues to vex.
Before she wandered too far down that trail the god-awful jangly/tinny bell above the door rang to announce another nameless, same-face college girl wanting breakfast. She ordered something and Aimee went back to the kitchen. By the time she brought the wrapped meal back out to the front she realized that she had no idea what was under the paper. She rang up a random sandwich, didn’t get any response as money was exchanged, and realized that her subconscious probably knew what the order was all alone.
That’s what it was like at that point. Aimee would not have even had to show up as long as her brain got to work on time. It could be different, she knew. She could just leave she could just-
“I drink myself a million times around the world, just to get out of this place!” It was Kim, probably Aimee’s best friend from the flower shop across the street. She was reciting a Dave Matthews line that they had come to adopt as a mantra.
“No fair sleeping on the job if I can’t. Why’s it so dead in here anyways?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I also couldn’t tell you what the hell my underlings have been doing back there for the past three hours. I only hope they’ve made some bagels in the meantime.”
“Oh, you give me hope that one day I could be a manager.”
Aimee moved to pour two small cups of coffee. She plunked a pair of ice cubes in each glass so that the two of them could actually drink the caffeine in a reasonable amount of time. Kim slid around to Aimee’s side and took her cup.
“How’s flowers?” Aimee asked.
“Oh, you know the morning rush isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Just filling orders out. Haven’t had a real customer all day. It’s just as well, I stayed up way too late last night.”
Aimee knew what Kim was talking about; she had been there. Kim’s well, boyfriend, for lack of a better term Jeff played at the dive bar down the street last night and they had all been there to watch his band.
“It’s all over now, baby blue.” That one wasn’t hard to quote as Bob Dylan was singing it out over their heads at the moment.
“What does that even mean?” Aimee asked.
“It’s a rip on Donny Osmond, I heard.”
“That’s impossible. Dylan doesn’t have animosity against singular people.”
“I dunno. That’s what my dad told me last time I was back home for the holidays."
“You know way too many semi-interesting shitbits.” Shitbits was another word that the two had created while sitting around with too much time to think about, well, shit.
‘Fake Plastic Trees’ faded into the shop on the heels of Dylan.
“This seems like one of those days you have to revel in it, you know? Except it needs to be cloudy to be clichéd,” Kim muttered. She always knew the right thing to say. It was a catchy song, though, once it got going, and they were nodding their heads soon enough without realizing it.
“I still remember this video,” Aimee said. “It came out when I was in middle school, maybe. Thom Yorke was being pushed around a grocery store in a shopping cart singing to the camera. There was this purposely horrible, flickering, pale lighting that made him look even creepier.” Kim snorted at the reference to Radiohead’s ‘hit’ sing.
‘I wish I remembered that kind of stuff. I used to sit in my living room when we had days off from school to record cool videos on the VCR. I don’t think good bands even bother to make videos any more. Just those goddamn emo kids on MTV36 or whatever it’s up to by now.
“You want fucking emo, listen to Radiohead. They would put these emo kids into comas.”
Kim clacked her mug into Aimee’s too harshly, shattering the mood.
“Well, I should go back there and see if I have to fire anyone today,” Aimee sighed.
“Ok. You doing anything tonight?”
“I don’t know. Might see what David’s up too. I can only handle your boys for so long.”
“You’re lucky. I’ll call you.”
Aimee nodded and took their cups with her into the kitchen after Kim walked out the door.
Later that evening Aimee was in the same slumped position over her own smaller bar at the edge of the kitchen in her tiny but roommate-free apartment. The morning’s coffee had been traded for a largish glass of red wine but the mood was pretty much the same. She glanced over at the half-empty green bottle a few inches from her elbow as though it were a personal assistant with a calendar of events at the ready. Hearing nothing she liked, Aimee’s scoffed with a small smile. After draining the rest of her glass she picked up the phone.
As it rang she twirled with the receiver in her hand so that the ridiculously long curly cord that stretched a good ten feet between the wall and her hand wrapped around her body. It was something that at one time she had decided to try but by now was such a ritual that Aimee did not realize she had a ritual.
“Hey sweetie. What’cha up to?”
“Getting ready to go down to the hotel again. That guy takes more days off than a CEO,” David answered. “What are you doing?”
“That’s what I’. Trying to figure out.”
“You can always come down to the hotel with me. I can try to get you free drinks if that dick of a concierge isn’t hanging around.”
Aimee thought it over, or rather, pretended to give the possibility consideration.
“Oh, what the hell. I’ll see you down there.”
“Well, good. One fan clapping.”
“Is that even allowed there?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed nobody thought I was any damn good. Maybe they’re just not allowed to shower me with praises. I’ll see you down there, lover.”
“Kisses, I’m sure.”
Aimee drummed her fingers against her chin to a song she had listened to earlier in the day before caffeine had given way to barbiturates. She shrugged the woolgathering off and decided that she needed to take a shower.
The water seemed to shake off Aimee’s lethargy enough to make walking the scant but cold blocks to the downtown hotel David was playing at seem manageable so she set out on her journey.
