By the Light of a Shopgirl’s Star

The ting-a-ting-clank announcing a customer caught me off guard. No one came in Moore’s Gas & More in July. We didn’t have air conditioning. Even the taffy got squishy.

I popped up from the candy row and gave my jeans a yank. “Can I help you?”

I squinted at the customer standing by the corn chips, backlit by the window. I guessed woman because she was short. I figured she wanted the john.

“Back there.” I pointed past the air filters. “Only got one. Uni-sex and all.”

She stared out the window like a little kid, her fingers hooked over the magazine racks.

“I’m Cinny if you need anything,” I said.

I resumed my candy shelving, singing Gloria Estefan under my breath. I had a good set of pipes. Mama said my voice was sweet enough to soothe baby birds out of the nest, whatever that meant, only I was too awkward to sing in front of folks.

The customer scuff-scuffed into the candy row like she didn’t know to pick her feet up. I turned and I figured out she was a he, and the strangest little he I’d ever seen.

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