“But you know what was funny? The white people were in the minority, too! Most of the kids at my school were Asian and Indian. Not like you’d be able to tell. ’Cause the students everyone worshipped? Still the white ones.”

When the female customer leaves with her groceries, all carefully placed by me in paper bags, Angie shakes her head.

“By the way, she asked for plastic,” Angie says. “I heard her.”

“It’s okay. My thoughts were elsewhere.”

I like working with Angie. I like being around someone who’s decided to take me under her wing and says aloud everything I’m thinking about the people who frequent the store. She’s always there to remind me to use sanitizer after each customer, and on my first day, she handed me a second mask and told me to double up.

“I’ll be damned if we are going to die paying our rent.”

Even though we’re still getting to know each other, I feel like Angie understands me on a level that Parisa never could. No matter how you slice it, I’m the girl who works at the grocery store and Parisa is the one who shops here. The Princess and the Essential Worker.

During our thirty-minute lunch break, Angie and I rest our legs on upside-down buckets, spaced six feet apart, behind the loading dock. We happily eat yesterday’s sushi and make fun of the uppity customers, who don’t put anything in their mouths that’s not grass fed or cage free.

“You got a boyfriend?” Angie asks.

I nod and show her a picture of Wes on my phone.

“Oh, he’s cute,” she replies. “I like them lean and lanky like that.”

“He just moved to New York.”

“Long-distance, huh? Not like it matters. Everything is long-distance these days.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Angie shakes her head. “Not anymore. The virus got him.”

I’m waiting for her to tear up or give me more details, but she does neither. She just shakes her head and sighs, as though his death is just a fact of life in a pandemic. The statistics are what they are, and we both know they don’t bode as well for people who look like me and Angie.

Gabriela

I’m really starting to feel like a stalker now. I just hope you don’t get a restraining order against me. JK. But, like, please don’t do that.

You have every right to be upset with me. It’ll be excruciating, but I’m willing to accept if you don’t want to be friends. But can we at least talk about it? I would just really like an opportunity to explain myself.

We’ve been through so much together, P. This whole pandemic has been so hard and lonely without you. But having no contact with you at all? It’s fucking unbearable.