Page 3 of The Paradise Problem

I turn back to look at him. From my little chair I see that he has a distinct height advantage, which I realize now is probably intentional. “Pardon?”

He flips a pencil between his fingers. His nails are all chewed up, there’s a faded blue stamp on the back of his right hand from Randy’s Arcade, and he’s wearing his high school class ring. Ricky straightens his spine and tries to look taller. He’s five seven standing on a box. It’s not my most mature coping strategy, but sometimes when Ricky is particularly condescending, I’ll draw little caricatures of him dwarfed in his dad’s broad-shouldered suit, his feet swimming in his dad’s giant shoes. “It’s ironic when you pretend to be concerned about the store being robbed.”

“Ironic?” I ask. “How so?”

“I saw footage of you taking a pack of gum yesterday. You never paid for it.”

I squint, thinking back. I did take a pack of gum. Probably thirty minutes into my eight-hour shift. “How do you know I didn’t pay for it?”

He points to the security camera in the corner of the office, reminding me, I suppose, that there are cameras everywhere. But if he knows I never paid for it, then…

“You watched eight hours of footage of me?” I ask.

Ricky shifts in his chair and the faux-leather squeaks under him like a fart. He tries to do it again and fails. With his face red, he clarifies, “On fast-forward.”

I know how old those security cameras are. Fast-forward is, at best, double speed. “So, you’re saying you only watched four hours of footage of me at work?”

Flushing, he waves this off. “The time I spent isn’t the point.”

I swallow down the response I know won’t get me anywhere: Four hours of your wasted time seems like a bigger theft of resources than a single two-dollar pack of gum in three years’ employment, as does you being here working the graveyard shift with me when we average zero-point-five customers every hour.

Instead, I say, “I just forgot. I didn’t have any cash and I didn’t want to pay a five-dollar debit fee for a transaction under ten dollars.”

“You should have put an IOU in the cash drawer yesterday.”

“An IOU? Like… on paper?”

He nods. “Feed out the receipt paper and use that.”

“How would Kelly have accounted for that when she came in at seven?”

“She could have told me you took a pack of gum and would pay for it later.”

“But you knew I took a pack of gum. You watched the entire video.”

His nostrils flare. “The point is we can’t trust you.”

“Ricky, I’ll pay for the gum now. God, I’ve worked here for three years, and this is the first time you’ve ever had an issue with me.”

The face he makes tells me that I don’t have this quite right.

I sit back in my little chair. “Oh. I see. This is about the date.”

Ricky leans forward on his forearms, clasping his hands the way his dad does when he’s in Mentor Paul mode. But Paul could give me a two-hour sermon about how to be successful in business and I’d eat it all up because he’s charismatic and caring and worked his ass off to get a chain of four stores in downtown Los Angeles. Ricky got an Audi for his sixteenth birthday, a store for his eighteenth, and apparently spends his managerial time watching security footage of me on the days I wear skirts to work. So, I don’t believe a word he’s saying when he says, “It isn’t about the date.”

“Really?”

“It isn’t about that,” he insists.

“This is so dumb, Ricky!”

“It’s Derrick.”

“This is so dumb, Derrick.”

He flushes. “This is a business owner handling an employee issue. I’m sorry, Anna. We have to let you go.”

My ears ring. A panicky flush blankets my skin. “You’re firing me today over a pack of gum?”

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