Big Sky Bread on a Wednesday
by Jessica Evans
We both work here, but I get paid less, so Gideon gives me the better hours sometimes as a way of saying sorry and a way of saying thank you for us letting him stay on Wheeler Street. His hair is the color of new flames, orange and yellow, textured with curls. Gid rims his eyes in thick grey eyeliner, calls it smoky a decade before palate kits are sold in shops. It's March 1999, and we have every worry in the world and none at all. Nate's somewhere traveling, and I pretend like I don't miss him. No one will give me details, which is kind and infuriating at once. I try changing myself. Ditch my stones and my spells. Forget about making glamours in the mirror, disregard my quest to change my eyes to a golden color. I let my magic slip away in degrees because there are more pressing worries to consider. I should've said it was fine for Nate to keep fucking Sara. With him gone, extra money is gone too.
I've never been anywhere in the world except Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana, so I don't know that Big Sky is a euphemism for Montana. I can't even imagine a sky so wide, a world so open. I've dreamed about the globe, imagined plotting points on the map, vast swaths of blue, strange pink and purple lands. Here, things are compact, compartmentalized, specific. It's lunch rush. Skyline Chili is around the corner, and when white academic opens the door, I can almost get a whiff of home. Cinnamon and clove, the combination of humidity for boiling spaghetti, cheese congealing. I'm piling on alfalfa sprouts onto in-house baked bread. The line moves serpentine, first from my station, then to Gid, and finally to Frank. Frank is the kind of twenty-something retail worker who's decided he's fine exactly where he is, working splits and swings, and isn't interested in reaching for me.
A decade later, I'll find Frank working at a Sears as the floor manager for the housewares section. My shift goes slow. I imagine the Latin classes, history lessons, math calculations I'm missing. The chances to flirt with other people in front of Nate. Missed opportunities to learn how to be a friend, a human, a student. In front of me, a woman with chipped teeth and rings under her eyes barks that she's allergic to onions. There are onions down there by Frank, but she doesn't seem to notice.
Jessica Evans is the author of LEARN TO FIND (2014), HIPPIE MAFIA (2016), and PHANTOM GRIEFS AND KITCHEN MAGIC (forthcoming, 2021). Evans earned her MFA from Spalding where her fiction work focused on the agency of female and female-identifying characters. Her work can be found in LEON Literary Review, The Louisville Review, Louisiana Review, Outlook Springs, and elsewhere. She is the EIC of Twin Pies Literary. Hang out with her on Twitter @jesssica__evans