Amanda

Amanda
By Dillon Mullenix
I got into a geodesic line
And at the register she smiled at me
Her brown hair falling against her cheeks
onto her shoulders
Slender body with freckles she hides
with makeup on her face
I speak to her.
She smiles.
Gives me the options.
Plastic I say.
Debit.
She bags the groceries and talks politely
with a small voice.
I say,
“I couldn’t help but overhear,
but where were you from
that you thought Southern California
didn’t get this hot?”
It was a 110 outside.
“Newport Beach,” she says.
I laugh.
I tell her where I am from,
which is close to her.
“This place is a mega-change for me,” she coos.
I agree Temecula is a ‘mega-change’
from a climate perspective,
In other ways too:
It is the only city I have ever been in where
having a beat-up car is grounds for search & seizure.
It is the only city I have ever been in where
glamour and glitz can be Martha Stuart and Bed Bath & Beyond.
It is the city of the new rich and it’s funny
to see how they spend their money,
on crystal chandeliers
– and even the poor
who live near them
imitate their dreadful taste
salvage crystal and other
‘luxurious’
opulent clutter that gets abandoned
by those who have so much
that they can toss away
Gold
like pennies.
When I’m done I pay and she gives me an eye
like a nymph
But I get outside
And think about swinger parties and
how I might convince my woman
to do something like that.
Then I think maybe I’ll have to do it alone,
without her, and in a way that scares me.
At the trunk of the car I hear a woman
calling out to me, saying,
“I never do this,”
repeatedly.
When she gets on me I look at her,
and she is almost hysterical,
and she says that the girl inside thinks that I’m cute,
and I like her, right?
I say she was pretty and very nice
in the short time I knew her.
Then she goes on and says that she is trying to play “matchmaker,”
and I say,
I would love to go inside
and ask her for her number,
but
I already have a girlfriend.
She looks crestfallen, and
I remember that she was the woman
behind me in line
with the hot daughter.
My friend in the car overhears it all and is stunned.
He hasn’t been laid in two years.
“You would have been so cute together,” she says and
goes back to the market
leaving me in the hot parking lot.
I get in the car.
The gauge in the back says
It’s 120 degrees
on the thermometer
stuck on the back window.
“What was that about,” my unlucky friend says.
“Some girl,” I said.