Disarming A Bomb

“Jenn, I figured out what I am going to use my commission check for,” Lucy tells me as she folds a men’s polo- carefully, smoothing the edges, following the creases until it is perfect, it looks like a perfectly frosted cake to me.

I am distracted. Standing off center at the front of the store and observing a man and a woman praying in the middle of the terminal. They are both wearing kaftans and the woman is wearing a hijab. They have laid a mat down next to one of the couches and are kneeling in prayer. Earlier that day there had been a shooting in a mosque in San Diego. It was two teenagers that opened fire and killed three people before taking their own lives. To attack people in a place of worship- it left me in a dire hopeless fog. Houses of faith are supposed to be safe spaces. But they aren’t.

Why did those people have to die?

Watching them pray, I sent my own silent prayer into the universe. Please. It was just one word. I don’t know why it was just one word. I don’t know why that one word was “please.” Please what?

As the world moved around them, people hurrying to boarding gates, carrying children, scrolling through their phones, I watched as the man and woman knelt, still and peaceful, grounding the life in the terminal, becoming the nucleus of everyone orbiting them.

I could feel my eyes welling up, until Lucy spoke again.

“I think I’m going to buy a gun. But don’t worry, I won’t keep it in my car.”

I look at Lucy, who was stone cold serious.

“Only 500 bucks Jenn, and that’s with the license!”

“Where?” I ask.

“Wal-Mart!” she exclaims.

“Oh God Lucy, no, don’t use your money to buy a gun. Why do you need a gun anyways? A gun? A GUN Lucy?”

Lucy’s big brown eyes turn grave. “Jenn, you never know.”

The thing I love most about Lucy, is that you never know what she is going to say. You have to have a very quick, agile mind in order to keep up with her. She leaves most of our other co-workers exhausted, but her and I have bonded in a way that is both touching and baffling, like we are holding hands and can’t let go but don’t know why.

“Jenn, doesn’t she drive you insane?” my boss will ask me. “I have a long list of people who have threatened me they will quit if I schedule them to work shifts with Lucy.”

“No,” I tell her frankly, “I’ll take all those shifts.”

I don’t think Lucy has been following the news and as I open my mouth about to go off on gun laws and tragedy, she gives me no chance to get a word in.

“Jenn, did I tell you about my Aunt? She was an actual witch,” she says.

“I’m going to change the music,” she says.

“This lady at the laundromat told me about this hand scrub, have you heard of Mary-Kay? Oh my God Jenn, when I tell you it is amazing, it took years off my hands,” she says.

She switches the music and then says, “I have to use the pee pee room,” and she exits the store. I have said absolutely nothing this entire time except to inquire where she would purchase a discounted firearm and I watch as she runs across the terminal, people dodging her left and right, to the restroom by Gate 130.

Suddenly, a group of docile Chinese women enter the store.

“Ni hao,” I address them bowing and smiling.

Overhead, I realize Lucy had put on Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction.”

I look at the three elderly Chinese ladies as Snoop raps:

I’m gonna take my time
She gon’ get hers before I
I’m gonna take it slow
I’m not gonna rush the stroke

So she can get a sensual seduction
So I can get a sensual seduction
So we can get a sensual seduction
Sensual seduction

I cringe. Lucyyyyyyy.

As I follow the Chinese women around, offering them different items as they ask, “discount?” Lucy returns.

One of the ladies buys a scarf and as they leave Lucy looks at me, “Jenn, when I say she was a witch I mean it. Jenn, she FLEW.”

“What do you mean flew?” I ask.

“Jenn, I saw your cop’s partner the other day, he told me your cop is on vacation,” Lucy says mischievously.

“Lucy, he is not MY cop,” I respond, annoyed.

There was a day when a Turkish man left his suitcase in the store. When luggage is abandoned in the airport, it is the airport employee’s duty to alert the police, who have to come with a bomb dog and remove the luggage. When I discovered this, I instantly started to sweat.

The cop had arrived fifteen minutes after my call, sans dog, and let me know his partners (human and dog) were on their way, and in the meantime, he would wait with me.

“How much is a purse?” he asked me. He was young and looked like a brown eyed Jake Gyllenhaal.

“That one is 3k,” I told him pointing to a leather bag with long tassels and a gaudy gold buckle.

“Wow,” he said looking at me.

“I wouldn’t waste my money on any of this shit,” I told him. And I could tell whatever he had been assuming about me, I had just disarmed. Sometimes I feel like I am a bomb- always having to disarm everyone. I’m just regular luggage that’s been forgotten, there’s nothing treacherous about me I promise.

“If there is a bomb in the luggage, what does the dog do?” I asked him, curious.

“The dog will sit,” brown eyed Jake Gyllenhal told me.

“So there could be a bomb in there?” I asked. Looking at the luggage. Imagining this being my last moment on earth.

“Most of the time, there is never a bomb,” he said reassuringly. I realized I liked his eyes. There were things going on in them, I could tell.

“But what about that one time? The outlier” I asked.

“The outlier,” he repeats, thinking.

We both stared at the luggage.

His partner arrived with a large, well behaved German Shepard, who took one sniff of the abandoned luggage and immediately sat on his laurels.

“Oh my God,” I looked at Jake Gyllenhal, panicked, ducking behind the male mannequin wearing a plaid bucket hat.

“No, ok, this sometimes happens,” Jake was smiling at me.

“Of course, of course. Bomb dogs are allowed to make mistakes,” I said, looking at the German Shepard suspiciously.

As they leave, Jake introduced himself. “I’m Jonathan,” he said, reaching out his hand.

“Jennifer,” I said, accepting it.

“Always call if you need anything, I’m sure I will see you again,” he said and then followed his partner out with the dog and luggage.

It was then that Lucy returned from lunch. Bursting into the store yelling about some look a girl from the beauty department gave her and she doesn’t know what she did to the bitch to deserve such a withering stare.

“Lucy,” I start and recap the story for her.

“Oh shit, the cop was cute?” Lucy said excitedly.

“Lucy no, focus on the bomb, there could have been a bomb! The dog SAT!”

“You thought the cop was cute,” Lucy said, raising her eyebrows.

Later, Jonathan returned to check on the store. There was no reason to, because the bomb threat had been removed. But this time Lucy was present.

“Thanks again,” I said as he left for a second time. Then I noticed Lucy on the other side of the room, giving me a penetrating stare.

“Lucy, no.” I said in a low tone, like I am a man.

“OOOOOoooOOOooooooo,” she said, batting her eyes. “I feel like I cock blocked you though, just by being here.”

“What?!”

“Jenn, he was too short for you, but I think he liked you,” she told me and I sighed as all the scarves fluttered in the current of air caused by my exhale.

Since then, Lucy has been on a mission to “set me up” with the cop. To my objections, by the way.

“Jenn, if I see him I’m going to give him your number.”

“No, Lucy, NO. Do NOT do that.”

“I’m going to.”

“Please, please don’t do that.”

“I’m going to do it.”

I look at her and then proceed to move behind the counter and walk, crouching down until I disappear from view, like I am going down a flight of stairs and Lucy gets distracted and just belly laughs. It was what I did when I disarmed Lucy my first day I worked with her. “You goofy ass,” she said smiling and the air around us relaxed into ease. I am ridiculous, I was showing her, telling her you can be yourself.

I do this when Lucy starts to go off on an anxiety spiral or she is having a bad day or I know she just needs to laugh. I’ll do something like dance or put on a bucket hat and pretend to fish, or imitate Jung, our elderly, semi hostile, co-worker doing leg exercises.

Lucy doesn’t know, but she does this for me constantly. When my mind starts to drift into dark spaces, Lucy’s incessant chatter snaps me out of it. The two of us have talked about everything- serious and unserious. She and I, although being from different worlds, have a lot in common. I was only able to discover all this through disarming her the first day. I realized maybe we all have a lot in common- if only we could disarm one another, instead of viewing one another as threats.

“You have to thank God Jenn,” Lucy will tell me after a sale. “I thank him all throughout the day,” she says. And she does. Lucy’s heart is pure.

“I do,” I tell her. And then I look at her seriously. “Lucy, I do thank God, and you are one of the things I thank him for,” I tell her, my eyes kind of misting up.

She looks at me differently and I can tell she feels my sincerity. I’m not sure if anyone has ever told Lucy something like that because she comes over and she hugs me. And she is not a hugger. She is a chick from South Central. Tough as nails.

I always think about the man and woman praying, and the bomb dog, and what if any given moment was my last on earth. The victims in the mosque did not know that that was it for them. That they would never see anyone else ever again. Never embrace anyone they loved ever again, never meet anyone new, their futures suddenly blank. The book closed on their story. Abruptly. Senselessly.

When I watched the man and the woman pray, I knew that to honor those who have left I couldn’t let one day pass like it was ordinary. That I couldn’t let anyone hide themselves from me due to preconceived judgements or misconceptions. That I couldn’t not tell people who matter to me that they matter- that they changed my life. Life is far too fragile for any of that.

I asked God please and he told me what to do.

Lucy and I hug in the store, as Snoop Dogg raps:

See my game is outrageous
I got her to the crib and exchanged some love faces
But it was no need for me to rush to bust one
‘Cause I wanted her to have an eruption

“Lucy, this fucking song,” I exclaim. “It’s in the algorithm now!”

“This is such a good song!” Lucy protests. She narrows her eyes. “This is a baby making song,” she says laughing.

“Lucy!!!!”