LAYLA

I’ve landed my first job. Checkout chick at D’Angelo Brothers supermarket. It’s in the main drag. Check out my outfit. A white button-down shirt and black pants. As soon as I got the job they said I had to buy my own uniform. Went with Kmart for 15 bucks. White trash. They haven’t let me go wild with the barcoder yet. At the moment I’m on shelf-stacking duties. I go out the back and load some boxes on a trolley. Wheel them out and start to stack. My feet on a stepladder. On my first day I am asked, Excuse me do you work here in which aisle can I find: tofu, Weight Watchers cookies, coriander, gluten-free bread and textas. I have no idea but I look dutifully and then ask someone else. Or hide from the customer until I see them leaving the store. Dad says in Barcelona checkout chicks wear rollerskates and scoot around the aisles on wheels.

Everyone fights over who gets to not stack the freezers. We’re not allowed to wear cardies. So we moan and go ice stiff as we bend into snow fumes. Our raw hands fumble piles of peas and crinkle cut chips. I learn to hide products close to the use by date down below just to piss management off.

I love the fruit and veg section the best. I like the reds and yellows and greens and the smell of limes. I weigh pieces of fruit and smother them in gladwrap. Half a rockmelon in plastic. Ka chunk. A whole pineapple going slightly off. Ka chunk. More plastic. Mum would have a fit. Kiwi fruit. Who eats this stuff? Spray herbs to moisturise and leave healthy dewy glow. Stand near the scales and look busy. Avoid customers at all costs. Put hand in macadamia dispenser and sample for freshness and quality control.

Marco walks past wheeling in the milk. He’s nothing like his dad. Apart from being double my size. He always looks around as if the world is new to him. Like he might get lost just walking down the street. A toddler knocks over a tower of rice crackers. He helps me clean up without being asked.

He’s the manager’s son so I pretend to stack the apples neatly. Individual stickers lined up identically towards the customers. Tiny stickers that go into little kids’ throats. Or down the drain when you are washing up. Squished out a pipe into the ocean and plugging a dolphin’s blowhole. Or forming a community of stickers that block the shit in the sewage plant. To be prised off by some lucky guy with a scraper who can never keep up. At least I don’t have that job.

Danny D’Angelo is the big boss but he’s also the butcher. He works at the back of the store. In the freezer swinging chunky carcasses of meat. His brother Antonio works in the bottle shop next door. When checkout chicks graduate they first get to work in the deli then the bottlo. Where they handle serious cash. When his son Marco’s not there Danny wanders the aisles. He calls me bella or belladonna or bella bella. He sings to me with his thick accent. He’s round and well creased. I can’t understand him most of the time. But he helps me in my first week. Lifting the olive oil cans. Pointing me in the right direction when I look lost. He holds the stepladder and steadies me as I climb. Asks me where I go to school. I smile, am obedient, appreciative.

He invites me through the plastic doors into his slaughterhouse. Where the chill smoulders from the frozen meats. He bones them without looking. His shiny knife reflects my reluctance. To chat and dawdle in this icebox. But he is all outgoing. Says everything he feels. He smacks a wet kiss on my cheek. He talks of his son. His large frame rises like puff pastry. As he slashes through Marco’s achievements. Best and fairest at school soccer. A big boy (like his dad). I know, I’ve seen him, I say. Saxophone in the school jazz band. A good head for numbers.

I feel like I’m being sized up for marriage. Danny looks at me with dark eyes. Used to getting what he wants. The kind of guy who was hot once. Now buried under layers of fat. But he still sees the young guy in the mirror. You would like Marco. He is a very good-looking boy. He will go to Sydney University to do business.

He touches my hand briefly before beginning to fillet. With his deadly delicate knife.

Charlie, my manager, cruises past whistling. Tight jeans, slicked-down fudged hair. A big fan of old man punk like The Offspring. He thinks he’s cool because he knows all the words. Their song plays through the speakers. Pretty fly for a white guy. He sings as he peers in through the murky doors and gives me a look. I need you out here, Layla.

Vanessa is one of those girls who just never shuts up. If there’s a gap she’ll fill it. And it’s funny because she has a big space between her front teeth. And it’s like it gives her mouth more room. For the words to leak out. I always seem to make friends with people like Vanessa. It makes life easier when I don’t have to talk much. People think I’m an excellent listener. But I’m just lazy and good at nodding.

We’re outside on our coffee break. We’re not meant to have one together. But Charlie has gone out for the arvo. She leans forward to whisper.

—Take this as a warning. Once Danny called me into the coolroom and stood behind me and reached around and grabbed my tits really hard. Just stood there and squeezed them. It really hurt. I was so gobsmacked. Just waited until he let go. Then the arsehole turned back to his meat and kept on cutting.

—Did you tell Charlie?

—He knows what goes on. They all know and do nothing.

—Charlie told me not to go in the coolroom again.

—Danny’s family. He’s one of the brothers. Owns the place. Don’t worry, he tries to touch all the new girls when they start here. He usually gets over it pretty quick.

Vanessa drinks her macchiato as if her life depends on it. She was the first person to talk to me when I started. I sip a latte in the weak sunshine. We share a quick fag in the square.

I think about Marco and wonder if he knows. That his father touches girls up behind the polystyrene packaging. Uses his son as an opener. To oil the girls up. Perky and attentive to the adventures and exploits. Of Danny’s wonderful talented sporty handsome musical son Marco. To make the yeast work for him, the warm soft dough rise. I think about Charlie stalking the aisles. Watching Danny watching me. Watching others. Rescuing and resuscitating each new female body. Carried in on the waves of weekend work. Flopping in the bloodied polluted waters of the coolroom.

I think about Marco again. About how his clothes seem to fit just right. About how his hands seem to look after things. His smile that comes and goes without effort. So different from my own. I wonder how he ended up with such a dad. I wonder what his mum is like. And whether she has any idea.

In the afternoon daddyo is there again. In aisle three. And there’s no sign now of Marco. Or Charlie. Or anyone. And I can’t not smile when he calls out to me again, Bella. I can’t not thank him as he passes up the tins of tuna. In oil and brine and lemon and pepper and thai chilli and italian tomato and basil. I can’t not respond as if innocent when he tells me I have beautiful lips. I know I would have to go into the coolroom now if he asked me.

I don’t want him anywhere near.

So when I turn from him I become stiff. With the inability to express all of it. I’m being cut up by my own dull steel blades. Just put me in the mincer along with the sausage meat and garlic. Press me into a patty crammed between two hamburger buns and feed me to a dog. Or better still stuff me raw down the throat of Mister Danny. That’s what he really wants.

But what do I want? I want to make him choke on his own produce. Make his guts throb with the pain of my expulsion. As he brings me back up undigested. Vomits me on his shiny shoes. Back onto his slick super-market floor.