Alone Together (Gallavich)

thirty

ian

Another week and absolutely nothing from any Milkoviches. After Mandy came over that day to watch a movie when Terry was getting out, it's like the whole family ceased to exist. No word of Terry acting up at the bar from Kev or V when they came over, no word from Lip and Mandy reaching out, and as expected, no word from Mickey to me. Either the world forgot about them or it was them who forgot about me.

What a fucking sad life I was currently living.

Still concussed, I figured if I wanted to prevent my whole being from being atrophied, I should probably go out and get that job. So I did. At the Walmart on West Cermak. Considering my only work experience was at a convenience store, this was surprisingly the best fit. Besides, after how last time went, a corporate store seemed safer and better equipped or someone as fucking traumatized by life as I was.

Like I said, a sad fucking life being lived.

It truly wasn't any less mundane than it had been before Mickey so it shouldn't have bothered me as much. But it did. Cause the in between of life before and life now was something I couldn't get out of my head. Everyday I would turn down my street to walk to work and think about just going the other way instead, knocking on Mickey's door just to see if he was still alive.

I fucking missed him. And I didn't have any way of knowing at this point if he was even coming back.

Mickey was right, I could be such a baby sometimes. It was horrifying to see how many different emotions I could feel in a day, side effect of the drugs or not.

Whatever. None of that was important right now because all that mattered was waiting. There was no way of getting back to that "in between" part of my life without the waiting. So that's what I did.

Today, I did it behind the register of the aforementioned Walmart on West Cermak Road. It was a nice job to have - the perfect balance of independent work and social interaction. Plus, it's one of those Walmart Neighborhood Markets where it's only a grocery store so the crazies that troll around Walmarts usually are rarely there. Discounts on food for the house was nice too.

Now that I thought about it, I actually really liked this job. It wasn't anything crazy that I looked forward to going to every day since I started working, but once there and clocked in, it didn't feel suffocating to be in that building. It was the most normal and calming thing I had going on in my life right now.

It was around 9pm currently, meaning I had successfully stood behind this register for 5 hours already, minus the twenty minute break at 6:30. It's something I have to remind myself of; that I'm actually doing it - working, functioning. Especially taking the closing shift, which ran from 4:00-10:00, I felt the need to silently congratulate myself for not falling asleep standing up or snapping at a customer who used one too many coupons to be sane. Then again, who the hell was I to be a judge of sanity? This Walmart was my sanity for crying out loud. Helped me stay distracted from certain things, certain people.

Well, sometimes it did. I had been working here for about 4 days now and every once in a while, someone would come to check out who looked a little too much like Mick or a little too much like Mandy for my brain to ignore. It sucked because in a place like this, once something was in your head, there wasn't much to distract you from it. Especially during the night shift when it was just one other person working the registers besides me.

Luckily, I had one hour left today and I was feeling pretty good. Only once did I have to look up an items price manually and only once did I have to explain to a customer that the restrooms were out of service. At this time of day, the store was pretty dead too so there was really no worry about anything crazy happening til at least tomorrow. Seems like a win to me.