Angela stood timidly waiting as the clerk stared at her waiting for her to sympathize with him.  Angela looked at him and with a hesitant hand pushed the box of bandages further toward the clerk.  He snatched them up and looked at the digital Marlboro clock that hung over the cigarettes, the time changed to eleven fifty nine.

“Kinda late to be out all by yourself,” he said to her as he scanned the box with a beep and looked back and Angela.  Her expression was unmoving, and she slid a crumpled twenty across the counter.

Roger held the x-ray film up to the light of the neon convenience store sign.  Bright red, blues, and yellows illuminated the outline of a human chest.  In the center of the image were three fist sized lumps that blocked the rainbow colored light.  Cancer.  The doctor told him if he would have come in months ago it might have been treatable, but now it was far too advanced and spreading through his body, and that he had only weeks to live, if even that.  Roger could feel the tears welling in his eyes as he stared at his colorful demise.

“How am I going to tell Angela?” he said as he shoved the x-ray back in between the seats.  The tears stung as he fought them back and wiped away any evidence.  He took a deep breath and looked out the window into the convenience store.  Angela and the clerk stood staring at one another, unmoving.

“Shit.”

The clerk was drawn to Angela, he didn’t know what it was about her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her eyes.

“Are you…in trouble?” he asked, “do you need help?”

Angela pushed the bill further toward him across the glass countertop.  The attendant never broke eye contact with her, he was enchanted by the colors of her eyes.  One was the deepest blue he had ever seen, and the other was a glowing amber color, and as he looked at them harder it appeared almost as if her irises were fluctuating.

“If you need help, and can’t say, blink once.”

Angela stood unflinching.  The clerk moved his hand to grab the money, but never broke eye contact.  As he inhaled through his nose he picked up on an intoxicating scent.  He sniffed harder, but couldn’t seem to place it, it was an odd blend.  Almost like lilacs and something else, something musky.

“Angela,” said a voice over the violent jangle of the door’s bells.  Angela broke her gaze with the clerk and turned to see Roger standing propped in the doorway.

“Did you find the bandages?”

Angela pulled the bandages and the twenty back across the counter and walked off toward Roger leaving the clerk standing entranced.

“Thank you,” Roger said as he let the door swing shut.

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