“Clean aisle nine before you leave,” Michelle said.
“It is clean,” Derek said.
“Tidy up, I mean,” she said.
“I need to leave on time today,” he said.
“I bet you do,” she remarked.
“Why do you say that?” he wondered.
“Just go and tidy up,” she exclaimed.
“I have a part in a movie,” he retorted.
“Anything good?” she enquired.
“It is called A Hard Man Is Good to Find.” He was back to said.
“Flannery O’Connor porn?” “Not porn. Who is he?” “He isnt.”
“You are not making any sense.”
“Just go and tidy up aisle nine.”
“I have been on the landing dock since lunch.” He adjusted his glasses, scratched his back, ground his teeth, and adjusted his glasses twice more. And again.
“So?” She furrowed her brows and cracked her fingers and made her shoulders go up and down one single time.
“You always do that! During the shift, you place us somewhere else and then we have to clean where we havent been with no overtime.” She thought about the one time she had ridden a horse. It was on a perfect beach in a glorious sunset with an instructor and five other people she didnt know. The absence of romance made it the most romantic moment of her life.
He began to beat his fingers on an ice bucket carton box in a rhythm which made him think about the harmonica one of his forefathers brought over from the old world, because everything resembling music, except the call of the peregrine falcon, did. Her ancestors had crossed the seas on the kind of ship where luggage was not required.
“My great-something-mother lived out in the old west and held up a bank,” she said.
“Did she get away with it?”
“No. They grabbed her by the posse.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Listen,” she said. “Go and make your movie.”
“You were right. It is indeed porn. I play someone called The Bigfit.”
“I do declare!”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“Pay good?”
“Nah. I`m just an intern.”
“Well. Break a leg and so on,” she said.
“I probably will,” he said.
“See you tomorrow,” Michelle said.
“See you tomorrow,” Derek said.
Kjetil Jansen is from Norway. He has never owned an ant farm. He has never driven a Lamborghini Aventador with an ant farm on his lap. Does that mean he has never driven a Lamborghini Aventador at all? Not necessarily. He has featured in Bewildering Stories, and Bear Creek Gazette.