November 17, 1990
Betsy stood in front of the bakery case at Publix, surveying the brightly lit confections constructed from perfect, squat circles of bleached flour, spackled smooth with whipped powdered sugar and shortening, and edged in puffy, colorful trim. In five days, she would be twenty-one. That seemed like a good enough reason to buy a slice of cake, which she planned to eat in the grocery store parking lot before she returned to work as the sole employee of Timeless Treasures, a vintage store, or junk shop, depending on whom you asked, down the street from her mom’s house in Venice.
Outside of the freezing store, Betsy popped open the plastic clamshell package and scooped off a swipe of frosting with a weak plastic fork. She placed the airy sweetness—with just the right dash of salt—on her tongue, and all of the bleakness of that place disappeared. She walked slowly through the parking lot, dodging cars driven by ancient drivers barely tall enough to peer over the steering wheels of their white sedans, savoring every crumb. While she waited for the light to turn at the crosswalk, she looked around her and realized that she was the only person on the sidewalk who was actually on foot. Everyone else had wheels: rollators, walkers, electric Amigos. Betsy knew that selling the possessions of long-dead people, surrounded by the practically dying, was no way to be almost-twenty-one. For the moment, at least she had cake.
When she arrived at the door there was a woman outside waiting, impatiently, for Betsy to return from her lunch break, five minutes late. Betsy forced a smile. The woman glanced at her watch, then at the sign Betsy had taped to the window, which said Back at 1:00. Betsy opened the door and flicked on the light switch.
“It’s just me today. Sally’s picking up some new inventory from an estate in Sarasota,” said Betsy, feeling that an explanation was more necessary than an apology. She resumed her spot on a tall stool behind the giant, 1960s cash register and pulled out a spiral notebook to continue the letter to Gavin she’d started writing that morning. Her schoolwork, which she was submitting by correspondence, was almost finished for the semester. She had two more papers to write before she was a college graduate, but the long letters she wrote to Gavin, sometimes as many as three a week, were her last ties to Gainesville. She read a few lines on the page to remember where she left off.
If you thought I was already a high-achieving pen pal, just wait. I’m going to be the correspondent to shame all other correspondents. I’m going to own that mailman, or mailperson (mail supervisor?) now that Ole Sally, my boss, has declared my Walkman headphones unprofessional. She has also claimed that my reading habit is distracting me from my work, and the customers get the wrong impression about my dedication to selling a bunch of secondhand shit. Or I should say customer, singular, because exactly one person has walked through the door so far today. So One Hundred Years of Solitude will have to wait until I’m home, in solitude, which I suppose is for the best. And the good people of Venice, Florida, who want to come sort through the belongings of the recently deceased, a pastime sometimes referred to as “thrifting,” will now see me scribbling in this spiral notebook and think that I am an industrious employee making some kind of inventory list. When in reality I will be scribbling total bullshit, which I will then put in an envelope with your address on it.
Betsy searched the desk and her pockets for the black felt pen she had been using, but when she couldn’t find it, she relented and used a blue one, even though the sight of gummy, blue ballpoint ink on lined paper made her a little queasy.