Ewie moved his car seat back so he could see out the rear side window and around the power pole beside the car. He could see Mama Cho's peculiarly small dog running around on the grass in front of the deck. The color of old weather wood, gray, water-spotted, described the deck and the dog as well, although the dog also had an annoying whiney bark that sounded like tin being pulled through a fence.
Mama Cho noticed him and called over, "Ewie, you come over here and talk to me ok?"
He opened the door and wrenched himself out of the seat, slowly making his way through the tall switch grass and abundantly thorny weeds over to the deck.
"Hi," he said. "How's your day been?"
"Aww it's been slow today. No one wants to eat healthy food anymore so they go pack their pie-holes with greaseburgers and fat fries across at the mall," she said with a scowl that turned her pretty face into an Asian mess.
"I just don't get it. My prices are good, my food is good. So I don't have a friggin' drive-thru. Is that the problem?"
"Well maybe that's part of it. Maybe I could move my insole business in and sell from here too," Ewie said with a slight grin. "That would most definitely boost sales for me and I think for you too."
"You would have a better time selling clown paraphernalia here. Or run your contracts through my agent. Yours only wants to see how many times he can bend you over," Mama Cho shot back at him.
"Yeah I know," Ewie said. "Business just doesn't favor the part time clown in the industry of happiness, joy and balloon fish much anymore."
"Don't worry, we'll work it out. How about giving me a quick hand with these meatballs?" she said, smiliing at him.
They laughed furiously, and then carried the heavy metal pans of poor man's meatballs into the small deli freezer area behind a stack of folded boxes, and stacked them on the barren frosty shelves. The dwindling stockroom inventory showed that her supplies were low as a result of slow business, and she would either have to take out another loan, make a deal with the devil (agent), or sell the deli. It was something she didn't want to even think about. It hurt to think about it. It stung like a hive of barn wasps taped to her head.
The last few months had also been tough on her physically. Her feet and lower back were in constant pain. Gout, ganglions, bone spurs, bulging disks, you name it, she had it somewhere. And not in places that were good places, although not many places were actually better places to have those particular afflictions.
Her brain stem had swollen last year after a nasty fall from the neighbors Blue Cow onion bin, and she had to stay in the hospital for three weeks while the meningitis subsided. It had left her partially blind in one eye, and her left ear had turned a strange shade of reddish-purple. The doctors said it was a minor complication from the medication, and that she wouldn't be able to wear large earrings in that ear anymore. It would not go away. Not her ear--the swelling.
"Ding dang damn it all to heck in a bin barrel," she swore as she looked at herself in the mirror. "Today is a day I could use a good heavy pair of earrings!" That thought took her away to the good old days of careless earring-wearing and she almost broke into tears.
Ewie could sense her desparity, and he held her close to him for a long minute. He made a mental note to take back the large pair of ivory earrings he had bought at CongoMart last Thursday on the way home from work. "It wouldn't be a smart move to give them to her now," he though to himself.
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