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Page 38.
20. Econoligne
 "I need to go in there," Hannah said, taking Rick's hand.
He looked surprised, but went along with her. What was it now? Tampons? Some female thing?
They entered a cramped little mass-produced convenience store—the type you found at gas stations around the world—and sidled down the narrow aisles. A heavyset woman with greasy looking black hair and thick glasses looked utterly bored, almost annoyed, as she rang up purchases for two black teens, an Asian girl with a pink umbrella and braces and a simpering smile, and a middle-aged, graying white businessman of military bearing and no-nonsense expression.
Rick followed her, holding a black rubbery-looking hand basket with a flip-up handle.
One by one, Hannah piled her purchases in Rick's basket: hair color, scissors, canned cola drinks, cellophane-wrapped sandwiches with sausage and pickle slices hanging out the sides, a map.
"Quarante-sept," (forty-seven) said the woman at the counter, punching her computer cash register with pudgy fingers. She took the Euros while she gave them a single raking, sidelong glance with dark, heavy-lashed eyes behind those bottle-bottom lenses.
Rick spotted a cheap burner-phone, which he added to the stack.
The woman made an exasperated gesture, signaling for Hannah to bag her own purchases from a rack of plain white plastic bags with the Econoligne store logo in black lettering, growing larger from left to right as if climbing out of a sack.
As he glanced up, Rick felt an icy shower in his guts. He saw the display screen of a small surveillance camera. In grayscale, he saw himself and he saw Hannah, two pale faces in bedraggled clothes, with soggy hair. Rick wondered if it made them look like two vagrants, and if that made the checkout clerk extra surly.
Moments later, they stepped outside of the Econoligne convenience store. They were back outside on the wet sidewalk, in the fresh air and rain, enveloped by the omnipresent, mixed aroma of green trees and oddly scented diesel fuel.
"You're going to freshen up," Rick said sarcastically. "Like we have time."
"We're going to change our hair and appearance," she said.
Oh. "I knew that."
She made a punk face. "You need me."
"I do," he agreed. He wanted to add, jokingly, "like a hole in the head," but he felt like hugging her instead. Only there wasn't time, or it wasn't the right time, or something. His feelings were all up in a blender again, but this time sort of a nice one.
She did not reply but went out of her way to bump her shoulder against his torso.
"We were being recorded on a surveillance camera," he told her.
"I noticed."
"Smart move going in there, huh?"
"Don't be so paranoid."
"We've got to get serious," he said.
"Go on," she said. "I'll follow."
"Okay. Here goes. Stick with me."
"I'm all glue, all over me."
"A sticky chick," he agreed.
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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