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that’s not right,” under his breath. It was at magazine sixteen that I felt the need to step in.
“You sure there isn’t anything I can help with, sir?” I prompted, walking slowly down the long aisle.
“Do you have road maps?” he finally asked, looking up at me. He pushed his thick-lensed glasses up to the ridge of his nose with a curled index finger.
“I mean, yeah, but don’t you have, like, a cell phone or something?” I asked, a little surprised. Even my abuela, who’d turned ninety-three last June, had a smartphone by now. She even Instagrammed pictures of her elderly pit bull a few times per day.
Quickly inserting the magazine back into the rack, the man swiveled and made a beeline towards me. Under his breath, he whispered "this is a matter of national security. I need a map of the local region and any news you can get me about animal attacks within a fifty-mile radius.”
“So, that’s a no on the whole having a cell phone thing, I take it,” I said, nodding along and slowly moving my hand to the big red button under the counter, in case things took a turn for the worse.
“Uhm, yeah, we have the maps up by the cash register, with the sunglasses. And, uh, I can Google it, I guess?”
"Yes, do the Google, please,” he grunted, then went to the rack to grab a map.