1
Cindy
According to legend,this place used to be as hopping as a roller disco on a Saturday night. Shiny new tools and appliances lined the walls like classic cars at an expo. Everything was shiny and glossy. We were busy. Money changed hands fast and it was a time when everything was booming. There were photos on the walls picturing my mom and dad with every local celebrity who lived from here to Miami to Boca Raton. They were autographed, too. The wall behind the front desk was a floor-to-ceiling cork board with millions of holes where push-pins hung up product descriptions, pricing lists, and everything else you’d need to run the front desk at a hardware and tool rentalstore.
But times have changed. The photos are still there, but no one really notices them. The cork board is still there, but there aren’t many scraps of paper stuck to it, partly because I have everything memorized and partly because there’s not many people who need to know the price of some crummy oldhammer.
Now, I’m at the point where I’m doing inventory on individual nails and screws. Individual nails andscrews!
They’re worthpennies.
But now, every pennycounts.
“Cindy, you should clock out early. You have better things to do than shuffle dustaround.”
“I’m not shuffling dust around. I have a very specific system where I sweep everything to the middle of the floor and then sweep it to the corners and then sweep it out the door.” I pull my shoulders back. “It’srelaxing.”
“Like I said,” he chuckles. “You have better things todo.”
“Dad, no. I’m not leaving you.” I smile as I put my hand on his chest. “It’s not up fordebate.”
My eyes flash to his cane as I sweep the sawdust past his work boots. I turn to hide my face and feel a pang of guilt. I always feel bad when I have to remind him he isn’t so young anymore. I try to pretend he can still do all the things he used to, but I have to remember to keep him in check for his own good. If it were up to him he’d be running this place like nothing’schanged.
He points his cane toward the big windows and tries to coaxme.
“It’s a beautiful day.” He’s right. The door is propped open with a cinderblock to let in the salt-water ocean breeze. “You should be out there enjoyingyourself.”
This is South Florida, where everything was prosperous and hot in the go-go-nineties and two-thousands and now it’s just one depressing abandoned half-built housing development after another. Things have definitely turned around a ton since the absolute rock bottom several years ago, but things still aren’t where they need to be. They certainly aren’t where they need to be for us to keep this placegoing.
I feel like it’s karma, maybe Mother Nature’s f-you to the people who decided to cut down so many trees. I wouldn’t really call myself a conservationist — my family built our business on renting out power tools and construction equipment for wealthy developers to build a bunch of mansions — but it does feel like the scales are tipping back the otherway.
And now every day feels the same. The tides roll in, the tides go out. Some dude comes in snapping his fingers to get my attention, the same dude asks to talk to “one of the guys in the back” because he doesn’t want to talk to somegirl.
I always have to tell them there’s no other guy in the back. There’s no other guy they’re gonna talkto.
There is no guy. I am “theguy.”
Yep, it’s the same thing every day. If it’s getting to be the end of the day and we haven’t had anyone come in, I actually pray that someone’s going to come in even if I have to take some mild harassment if it means we get to make somemoney.
You know what they say — sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly go thedays.
That, and there’s nothing new under the sun. If I’ve thought it, someone else thought it first. And there is a whole lot of sun here and lots of places for new ideas to form. But I’ve looked. They just aren’t there. I’m always trying to come up with something new, something to supplement ourincome.
A new kind of fishing wire, for instance. I had an idea for a mini tool kit that has a mirror attached for the woman on the go who needs to take measurements and wants to make sure she looks put-together while she does it, but yeah — someone else got to itfirst.
“I’m enjoying myself rightnow.”
“All right. I’m going to my office,” Dad grunts as he pushes off thecounter.
I link arms with him as we side-step some industrial carpet cleaners. He lives in a crummy one-bedroom apartment over the store. The silver lining there is that he doesn’t have to travel to go to work. His commute is just a walk down some stairs. I have a scholarship at the nearest college and it covers room and board. I tried to get him to let me stay with him but he insisted that I live oncampus.
When we get to Dad’s office I wave my hand as I pull his chair out. There’s no window in here. It smells like oil and wood shavings, honestly not the worst thing I’ve ever smelled, but we could probably get an air freshener up in here. The breeze is nice in the store. In here, they should have built awindow.
“Is it possible that this place got messier since the last time I was backhere?”
I feel my lips pull into a line as I look at his desk. There’s an old PC that looks like something from an instructional video from the nineties. I’d say that’s a good thing, a piece of nostalgia to remind me of how prosperous Mom and Dad were back in the day, but man — the keyboard sticks likehell.
Ugh. I grab an ancient roll of paper towels from the shelf and try to do some quick dusting. This office has seen better days. I’ve been tidying up after Dad since before I can remember, but it seems like the paper and the bills get higher every time Ilook.