Read Coming Together: With Pride for Free Online

and move around the counter. An elderly fellow intercepts me, and I lose sight of the pretty Asian.
    This is maddening. I am listening to this little, old man bemoan the rise in the price of Manischewitz since 1942, and all I want to do is find the boy and talk to him. The old man takes his change and heads for the door, still complaining.
    When I turn back, I find myself staring into almond eyes that seem to disappear as the young man smiles. I realize he has been waiting for us to be alone. There are no other customers that I can see or hear. The store is unusually silent. I try to sound witty and comfortable, but I'm not. I feel a thin layer of sweat break free of my pores.
    "Hel-lo. Howsitgoin?" I stammer. He nods and smiles.
    "Okay, thank you," he says as he lets out a faint puff of breath that might be a laugh and smells like ginger. He places the bottle of Seduction on the counter. I reach for it and brush his skin. Instantly, I become aroused and thank fate for the counter I'm standing behind. I grip the bottle around the neck, wishing desperately that this wasn't a bottle but the beautiful young man and that we were anywhere but here. My pants feel increasingly tighter. I keep thinking of him as a boy because he's so flawless and clean-shaven, but he holds himself with maturity and confidence. I decide I had better card him, just in case.
    "Do you have ID?" I ask, trying not to sound harsh. He looks at me, nods, and smiles again.
    "Okay. Thank you," he repeats. My stomach flips and I realize he can't speak English. I try again just to make sure.
    "Can I see your identification?" This time he shakes his spiky head just a little and shrugs. "Driver's license? Passport?" I can't make him understand me. By law, I can't serve him now. If I ask for ID and the customer doesn't have it, I cannot serve that person.
    Beautiful boy or not, I am having a serious moral dilemma. I should never have asked him in the first place. I should have sold him his bottle and sent him on his way. I still can, since there's no one here. I can still salvage this. No sooner do I think that than Dan comes whistling up from the back room. His three hour cigarette break is finally over.
    "I'm sorry. If you don't have ID, I can't serve you," I tell the boy as I pull the bottle off the counter, just as we are trained to do. The look on his face is painful. It's as if I attacked him personally. His entire body seems to despair. "I'm sorry," I repeat and he turns toward the door. I watch his back the whole way out.
    "You never say yer sorry." It's Dan. "Especially to those fuckers. If they can't learn the language, they shouldn't oughta be here. Look. The freak dropped somethin'."
    Dan bends down, picks up a piece of paper and hands it to me. "Throw this out."
    I look at it first. It's a little scrap of paper with an address on it. That unbelievable creature was going to give me his address. I suddenly realize my other hand is still on the bottle caressing the length of it slowly. I pull my hand away quickly before Dan can see what I'm doing and decide what to do next.
    It's finally the end of my shift. I'm standing in line with the same bottle that I refused to sell to the pretty Asian. I can't believe I'm about to buy this wine and take it to a complete stranger's address. He doesn't even speak English. I'm not sure if I can make him understand my intentions. I'm not even sure what my intentions are.
    "Thirteen, seventy-seven," Janet tells me, having finally come out of the back room. "What lucky girl are you going to share this bottle with?" she asks, clueless as ever.
    "I'm just going to go home and relax," I lie. Maybe it's a lie. I haven't decided whether I'll go through with this or not.
    "Well, if you get lonely, you can give me a call. I don't have any plans."
    "I'll keep that in mind," I say as I take my change. Not bloody likely. I can hear her start to drone at the next customer and wince a little on the way to my car, a beat-up Volkswagen