Ask Me If I Care - Corii Liau

I had just finished stocking the back shelves with cans of tomatoes, and Link asked me to help unload the truck that had just come in with the fruits and vegetables.

Manny hopped out of the truck.

“S’up,” he said, clapping my outstretched palm in a rough handshake.

“Na much,” I said, watching him slide up the rolling door in the back of his truck. He started to yank boxes of peaches, apples, plums, and pears. He swung them over to me and I set them down on the shuttle cart by the green outdoor bins where Link kept the produce.

“Still playing out?” Manny took off his gloves, reached up and grabbed the strap to the rolling door and slammed it down shut.

I scuffed the sidewalk with my top of my sneaker. “This Saturday, at the Milky Way.”

“Right on,” Manny said. “I’ll try to swing by,” he said, even though we both knew he wouldn’t. He looked past me and smiled.

I turned to see what he was looking at. A slim girl, wearing a tube top and cutoff minis and flip flops had stopped by the green bins. She picked up one of the peaches and turned it in her thin long fingers.

“I’ve got fresh ones there that I’m going to unpack,” I said to her, nodding at the boxes that Manny and I had just unloaded.

Manny snorted, slapped my shoulder, said “Laters,” and hopped back into the cab of his truck. He drove off.

She just looked at me, looking flushed, with no make-up, and damp hair, as if she’d just come out of a shower.

I smiled at her, shrugging my shoulders. Did she want to wait while I unpacked those peaches?

She smiled, and then bit into the peach and walked off, swinging a small worn clutch from a strap around her wrist.

“Hey!” I said. She walked off more quickly, and then turned once, flipping her long wet hair away, to smile at me over her shoulder. I watched her skinny legs and her hips walk away and then disappear around a corner.

Link came outside. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking in the direction that the girl had walked off in.

“Nothing,” I said. I put on my gloves and started to rip open the boxes of fruit.