The Tunnel Dream

customer comes in? I certainly didn’t. I spent most of my time wishing the shop would suddenly become invisible while I was working.

  I made my way to the backroom, trying not to look at all the shiny jewelry glittering in the cases. I had plenty of time to look at them while showing them to customers. The backroom was filled with more jewelry sitting in boxes on shelves. The shelves turned the backroom into a maze. I had to weave around them to get to the sign in sheet. I looked at my watch until the minute hand reached the twelve and then scribbled my name and time down. The boss, who everyone called Mr. Stone, was a middle aged man with short graying hair and a permanent good natured smile. He came up behind me without making a sound.

  “Right on time as always, Agate.” He said, polishing some stone I couldn’t remember the name of.

  My name was Aimory Bridgewater. Mr. Stone had a fascination with coming up with stone based nicknames. I actually preferred Agate to my actual name.

  “I try to be punctual.” I said.

  I got away before he could ask me to do anything, but I wasn’t fast enough.

  “Hey, Agate, make sure you clean all the cases before the rush comes in.” Mr. Stone called after me.

  We never got a rush but he was always hopeful. I took some paper towels and a spray bottle full of some brand name cleaner and started around the store with it. It wasn’t so bad. I liked cleaning the cases, especially if customers came in. It made it look like I was too busy to help them.

  When I was finished I stood behind the counter near the cash register and waited for someone to come in. It was always dull in the morning. Shopping for jewelry was more of a midday to evening type of excursion.

  Mr. Stone came out of the backroom after a while and saw me standing idly by. “Why don’t you clean some of the rings or something? Look busy; it attracts more people than you just staring out at them creepily.”

  I took the key from my pocket and a cleaning cloth to the ring cases to start cleaning. They all looked fine but I suppose a nice shine wouldn’t hurt. If it occupied my mind and let the minutes flow a little quicker it was alright with me.

  The first person to make the bell ring was another worker. His name was Jasper. Mr. Stone probably hired him so he wouldn’t have to think up a nickname. He was about ten years older than me, so around thirty five, and had long slicked back hair. He couldn’t go five minutes without telling a story about what he did on some weekend somewhere. He held a newspaper in his hand on this particular morning.

  “Soooo,” Jasper began, elongating his words as usual, “any customers yet?”

  “No.” I said.

  “Alright, alright, sounds good. So how about—”

  He stopped. He was staring at my shirt. “You didn’t iron that.” He said as though I might not have noticed.

  I looked down at my collared shirt and tan pants. “Oh, I think you’re right. I must have forgotten.”

  “You shouldn’t come in here like that. Who wants to be shown a five hundred dollar necklace by someone who doesn’t press his own clothes?”

  “Someone who really wants a necklace.” I said haughtily.

  “Do better next time. Anyway so how about that town that was destroyed yesterday?”

  “You mean the dead deadly one?”

  “What? I mean the one in some African country that was destroyed. Four hundred people killed. This is getting to be a real problem.”

  “You mean towns being destroyed?”

  “A few hundred people were killed in the Middle East a few days ago. Haven’t you been keeping up with the news?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have a T.V.”

  “There’s more than one way to get the news. Buy a paper sometime.”

  He thrust the newspaper in my hand and I went ahead and started reading it. The article I had seen was talking about a town in Eastern Africa that was destroyed by some terrorist group. It was a different branch of a terrorist group that had been terrorizing a Middle Eastern country for several months. When one leader got killed, six more popped up with even bigger numbers. It was really getting out of hand.

  “Huh,” I said when I finished, “I hadn’t even heard about this.”

  “Well you better start paying attention.” Jasper said, taking the paper back. “It’s big news.”

  The bell rang again and this time it was a customer. Jasper mumbled something about needing to sign in and left me alone. The woman started looking into the display cases full of money clips and mood rings. Mr. Stone wanted to try out some trendier merchandise.

  I went back to the cash register, took out a piece of paper and a pen, and pretended to look busy so it didn’t seem like I was watching her.

  “Did you greet her?” Mr. Stone had crept up behind me again.

  “Not yet. She’s just looking.”

  “It lets her know you work here.”

  “I’m standing behind the desk at the cash register; I think she can figure it out.”

  He looked at me sternly. “Go greet her, Agate.”

  I did as was told. The woman said she was just looking. I nodded and went back to where I was.

  Mr. Stone disappeared into the backroom after making sure I annoyed the customer. I took out a bracelet and started cleaning it. It didn’t need it, but I always hated it when people in stores stared at me while I was looking at something, and so refused to do it to others.

  The woman started humming to the music playing. I hadn’t even noticed the music until she did that. Mr. Stone always played those songs from the eighties that never made it on best of the eighties mixes but still refused to be forgotten. I generally blocked them out. Something about her humming made me notice it for the rest of the day. She left after a few minutes of wandering around and smudging up every case I had just cleaned.

  The moment she left Jasper appeared out of the backroom.

  “What did she want?” He asked, looking out the door after her.

  “Nothing, she was just looking.”

  “You have to try and sell things to her. Get her looking at something. Make her feel bad for coming in and wasting your time.”

  “She wasn’t wasting my time. I have to be here.”

  “Well, try harder next time.”

  I started to feel the signs of an oncoming headache. I couldn’t tell if it was Jasper or the bright lights shining down on the jewelry that caused it. Within an hour I had a full blown headache and had to reach for my headache medicine I hid in the backroom. It was a little lighter than I remembered. I think everybody was starting to take it.

  I worked from ten to four that day. As it was getting closer to four more people came in. I showed off some necklaces and some rings but nobody bought anything. Jasper took every customer he thought had money and so made several sales. When it was time to leave he came over to me the same way he did every day. Each time he found a new reason why I wasn’t getting the sales.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I sold a lot more today. Do you know why that is?” He asked calmly.

  “No clue.”

  “It’s because you didn’t iron your clothes. If I walked into a jewelry store and saw you and then saw me, who do you think I would walk up to?”

  It took a lot of self control to not make a snide remark. “Probably you.”

  “Exactly.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “So let’s try a little harder tomorrow, sound good?”

  I nodded and as soon as he took his arm away I was out the door.

  I went to the bus stop but it was twenty minutes until it was supposed to come so I walked home. It was an even better walk on the way home. I had the rest of the day to myself. I could do anything, go anywhere. Who knows, I might even meet someone.

  Instead of all that I went straight home and tried to connect my tablet to the neighbors WIFI. It didn’t work that day. I tried for almost an hour before giving up. I briefly thought about going back outside to wande
r around, but by the time I hit the futon I’m not going anywhere. I pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and put it in the microwave. It was an old microwave and sometimes I had to put the food in for an extra few minutes.

  I went to bed early. I tried the WIFI again but it wasn’t meant to be that night.

  2

  The tunnel curved down. I was sinking closer to something. There was a destination, but I didn’t know what it was. It grew closer and I began to feel nervous. I wanted to get way, to push back. I tried to reach out and grab the sides, it didn’t work. There had to be a way back up. All I could see was straight ahead. The tunnel stretched indefinitely. More and more came out of the darkness. I didn’t want to see the end, if it did end.

  I found myself staring at a peculiar stain on the ceiling when I finally woke up. It was purple. How could I get a purple stain on the ceiling? Maybe it was there when I moved in. It was probably someone else’s stain, maybe from the floor above.

  I pushed my legs off the bed and sat up. The sun was shining through the window. I should have pulled the curtains closed but I always forget at night.

  The shower was cold again. I really hoped I paid the water bill. I rarely even checked the two sinks in the apartment to see if they were cold. The bathroom sink had a hole in the pipe I hadn’t fixed yet. If I used it then all the water would go straight to the floor. The kitchen sink still had dirty plates in it from the last time I used plates I had to clean myself. I used paper after that and never felt any need to clean the other ones. I should just throw them