You Gotta Wonder

My boss at the pawnshop is out back smoking a cigarette when this brunette walks in, barefoot, wearing a bikini top and cut-off shorts. She don’t fill out neither of them, but she’s got a nice body anyways, you know, limber-like. She plays with the strings between her boobs and arches her one foot on the dusty floor like she’s gonna leap over the counter.

My friends would say, “How you doing?” And that would be that.

But I says, “Can I help you?” like I’m a damn suit working in Bloomingdales.

“I need some cash,” she says. They all need some cash.

Never pry, my boss says, you don’t wanna get emotionally invested. Every customer is just a transaction. But there’s something about this chick.

“What did you bring to pawn?” I ask her.

“Nothing.”

“We’re a pawn shop.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Well you gotta have some shit to pawn or I can’t make you a loan.”

“Who makes the rules?” she asks, leaning over the counter now, her eyes dark as mine.

“My boss,” I says. But for sure this girl ain’t Italian. She’s pale as a ghost. “Don’t you ever go to the beach?” I ask her.

“What’s it to you?” she says.

I look up and down her arms for track marks, but they’re smooth as glass.

“I got a baby,” she says. “It needs some milk.”

I don’t believe her, but I slip her a twenty-dollar bill from the register.

“Thanks,” she says, sticking the bill down her top.

“Get outta here,” I says.

She walks out, the bell on the door tinkling behind her.

The next day at work, that chick comes back. Same timing, while my boss is on break.

“You always in here?” she asks. “Ain’t you got a life?”

“Yeah, I have a life,” I lie. I’m pushing twenty and I live with my mother in the projects. I work in a fucking pawn shop. “You got a life?” I ask her back.

“I got a baby.”

“Yeah, then where’s this baby?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” I says.

My boss comes back in from his break. “What you got?” he asks the girl.

“She’s got a baby,” I says.

“We don’t take babies,” he says. Pizza grease on his fat fuck-ofa-face.

“It needs milk,” the chick says.

“It needs milk,” Sal says, mocking her. “Grow some tits.”

“Kiss my ass,” she says, walking out.

And I don’t know what gets into me, but I follow her out the door, that damn bell tinkling behind us.

“Hey,” I yell to the girl, who’s walking so fast I have to run to catch up.

She glances behind her, starts running too.

“Hey,” I says again. “Wait up.” She’s headed towards the beach, past the gutted-out, green carousel house, with its swirling sun windows. It’s the end of summer now, so most of the dumb-ass tourists are gone, convinced Asbury’s making some big comeback.

We run over broken brick, onto the newly renovated boardwalk, then out onto the beach, always a grey color, no matter how much sand they dredge up from the sea. Five years ago there was another sewage spill, shit washed up on the sand.

The waves slap against the beach, hiss back.

“Hey,” I says, finally catching up to her. “What’s your name?” “

What’s it to you?”

“I’m just asking,” I says.

“You want a hand job? That’s all you get for twenty bucks.”

“Christ,” I says. “I’m not after that.”

“She stops running, keeps walking fast.

“A blow job is forty.”

“I told you I’m not after that—any of that.”

“Then why you following me?”

“I’m not. I’m walking with you. I walked out on my job.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t like what he said.”

“Maybe you were just sick of working.”

“Maybe,” I says...