“Nice, who’d you get those for?”

“I bought them for you, how do you like them?”

“They’re not as nice as the other panties customers bought for me this morning.”

“I wouldn’t expect them do be. Do you think they’ll fit?”

“You don’t want to know what I think.”

“It’s like that?”

“How do you think it should be?”

“I think you should come over to my place after work and try them on.”

“Yeah let me find the other two customers first, we can all go over to your house and watch me get naked.”

“Sounds good, what time are you coming?”

“Really? Are you out of your fucking mind? I got customers coming, sit down over there, I’m off in ten minutes.”

“I’m just supposed to wait for you?”

She didn’t reply, but she was still pointing at the little metal bench along the wall in front of the bathrooms, below the big billboard that displays how charitable Wal-Mart is to the local community. I decided to sit. Wal-Mart gave $2,000 to Blissfield Community Schools to help fund their annual Miss River Raisin pageant. According to the runner-up’s My Space webpage, the winner was a seventeen-year-old girl with dark brown hair and a flat chest. She was a two-guard on the varsity basketball team, held a 4.1 gpa, volunteered her time twice a month to the Lenawee County branch of Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, helping to trace the migration pattern of the Eastern Gray squirrel through the Great Lakes region. She took the National Virginity Pledge when she was a sophomore but still gave blow jobs to her mother’s latest boyfriend who happened to be a Wal-Mart regional director in the Midwest. They were all three standing together, smiling for the photo, one big happy family.

“I thought you said ten minutes.”

“Nobody asked you to wait.”

“So you get to leave now?”

“I gotta wait for my ride.”

“You want me to take you home?”

“You never told me who the panties were for?”

“Yes I did.”

“Look, my ride’s here, I ain’t got time for this shit.”

Some twenty-three year old dickhead pulled up in a red Dodge Dakota. There was an article written about him in last month’s Daily Telegram. He flunked out of Adrian College his freshmen year after he was cut from the baseball team for trying to score performance enhancing drugs from an undercover. The coach never bothered to petition on his behalf. Back-up left-fielders are never missed. He was wearing a Jim Thome jersey and blue Oakley sunglasses even though it was 11:00pm. I followed her over to the truck and opened the passenger side door to let her in.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Thome asked.

“He works here, I asked him to follow me out because it’s dark.”

“Well why the hell is he still standing there…Hey, why are you holding my truck door open asshole?”

I reached behind the passenger side seat and grabbed the aluminum bat.

“Put my fucking bat down.”

I started beating on the hood of the truck then smashed out both headlights. My hand got caught in the broken headlight closest to the driver’s side door and I cut a jagged gash between my thumb and fore-finger when I tried to pull it out. There was blood all over my hand, pouring down my wrist, onto my Patrick Ewing jersey, the gray throwback from Georgetown. I kept swinging then threw the bat at the back windshield, picked the diapers and panties up from the parking lot and walked over to my car. There were two men walking towards me, each with a hand out waving for me to stop. They were stock boys in blue Wal-Mart vests, coming to return the items I left on the ground in front of the store.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m alright, some asshole ran into me with his truck, you’d think people would know what a stop sign is.

“Do you want us to call the cops?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Cool man, have a good one.”

I got back to my apartment and threw the bags on the floor, walked to the kitchen, searched the cupboards for something to eat, and found a pack of Ramen noodles with mushrooms and broccoli on the front cover which meant my soup would taste oriental. I let the water boil on the stove while I washed off some of the blood. I let it run all over my dishes in the sink then pulled out a brown plastic bowl and poured my soup into it. The television turned on by itself and Comedy Central was advertising a cartoon marathon. I watched some fat black guy with a chef hat tell two fat little white kids with no necks to lick his chocolate salty balls. This somehow made my noodles more appetizing. It also made me miss Papa Smurf. Then the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Well hello, it’s nice to hear from you too?”

“You can’t keep coming up to my work, pulling this shit.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about, the glass from the back windshield cut the back of my head open.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“It’s never your intention, you just keep fucking up.”

“I said I’m sorry, what else do you want me to do?”

“I want you to leave me alone.”

“Why don’t you come over so we can talk about this? I picked up some diapers and a couple binkies for Angela.”

“You didn’t have to do that, I told you we don’t want nothing from you.”

“What about the panties, don’t you want your panties, they’re black and satin with little pink roses on each ass cheek, just like the ones you wore our first night together.”

“I know, I remember.”

“Come on, come over and get this stuff I bought you. Let’s talk about this.”

“I can’t, it’s late, Angela’s already sleeping.”

“Wake her up, I got these Spongebob movies, and I got some extra money if you need it.”

“I can’t, she hasn’t been feeling good all day.”

“She’ll be okay, come try these panties on, I know you like the satin when it rubs against you, when it gets warm and soggy between your legs.”

“Fuck you, you make me sick.”

“Whatever then bitch, have fun with your flunky college faggot.”

“At least he isn’t a –“

I hung the phone up, finished the soup and went through the closets and cupboards searching for things to shop for tomorrow and sat down and made my list.