| It’s worse because the cashier, gray-eyed and red-lipped with a tattoo of Willie Nelson on her arm, smiles. It’s worse because the man, thirty-something with a rumpled business suit and tie hanging like a dog’s tongue, let me slip in front of him since I only had milk and eggs and meat, and it’s worse because I have seven dollars in my pocket and that’s not enough by eighty-nine cents. It’s worse because I checked my limit this morning, and the peddling mice that energize my computer said I had two hundred and forty-three dollars I could spend. It’s worse because I wore my good shirt, the one without the pinstripes, and was hoping to say something suave to make that gray-eyed cashier remember me. It’s worse because she will. |