I watched the guy behind the counter make my sandwich. His head bobbed up and down to the rhythm of some obscure punk tune recorded fifteen years ago. It doesn’t matter the year, Thundercloud always just seems like fifteen years earlier.
He glanced up. “Mayo?”
I nodded. “A little.”
He squirted the mayo on the sandwich, wrapped it and said, “Chips and soda?”
“Yeah.”
“Seven fifty, bud.”
I handed him a credit card and watched him ring up the order. He came back holding up the receipt. “You need this?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re probably not going to have to prove you bought a sandwich,” he said, laughing at his joke as he started to drop the receipt in the trash.
I smiled too, trying to imagine the absurdity of such a situation.
“Unless,” he said, stopping his movement and looking again at the receipt, “you need an alibi.”
I looked from him to the receipt in his hand.
“You never know,” he said offering the receipt.
“Maybe I should take it.”
He nodded as he handed me my sandwich. “I’m just saying. You never know, y’know?”
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
Ha! Just this weekend I was thinking how since I parked in front of my office at the free meters instead of in the card-accessed parking garage that I wouldn’t be able to prove I was there. Weird how those odd thoughts pop up multiple times in a short timespan.
You told it well, James! Ever since the housewife needed her grocery bill as an alibi in “Compromising Positions” I’ve had a very hard time throwing out receipts…you never know.
Annie at the Transplantable Rose
I wonder if our occasionally felt need for proof and alibis is indicative of a general mistrust of authority. Or maybe guilty consciences.