JANET: I don’t want to take over the store. I don’t even know how to run the store.

JANET goes back into the closet.

8. Jamaican

Bell. MIKE enters. He speaks with a thick Jamaican accent.

MIKE: Hey, man, wa gwan? D’ya have a tub o’ Vaseline fa me? A tub o’ Vaseline?

Beat.

APPA: What?

MIKE: D’ya have a tub o’ Vaseline?

APPA: Seen? Sorry, I don’t — I can’t catch fast what you talking.

Beat.

MIKE: What?

APPA: I can’t catch hearing you speak mouth too fast.

MIKE: What ya talking about?

APPA: No, uh, what you talking?

MIKE: About what?

APPA: What?

MIKE: What what?

APPA: No, you ask me —

MIKE: Y’aks me what I talking, what ya referring to?

APPA: Why you talking like you want to fight me?

MIKE: Me not speaking like me want to fight ya. Me not want to fight. Me just need a tub o’ Vaseline, see, and dis how me speak, take it or leave it.

APPA: Okay, I take.

MIKE: Ladda mercy, me look for it me damn self. Cha! (As he walks down an aisle) Chinaman wan run business in Canada and him can’t even speak da language proply.

9. Steal or no steal

JANET appears and APPA ushers her behind the counter at the window.

APPA: Janet, Janet, you see?

JANET: See what?

APPA: That guy.

JANET: Which guy?

APPA: Not front of store, back of store. See? Don’t look! See, but don’t look.

JANET: The black guy?

APPA: Janet, don’t be racist.

JANET: What?

APPA: You see?

JANET: Yeah, I saw the guy. So?

APPA: He is steal.

JANET: What?

APPA: He is steal.

JANET: You saw him take something?

APPA: No, he is going to steal.

JANET: How can you tell?

APPA: He is black guy, jean jacket. That combo is steal combo. You don’t know how to run store, I teach you. This is training day. Lesson number one, steal or no steal. Every customer, have to know. Steal or no steal. (Beat. Pointing to a girl outside.) See that girl? She is no steal. She is black girl, fat. Fat black girl is no steal. (Pointing to a guy outside.) Fat white guy, that’s steal. Fat guy is black, brown shoes, that’s no steal. That’s cancel-out combo.

JANET: That is so awkwardly racist.

APPA: Not racist . . . survival skill. Look. Secret survival skill. (Closes his eyes and looks around.) Make eyes very small. Then nobody know you even looking. (Reopens his eyes.) Okay, brown guy, that’s steal. Brown girl, that’s no steal. Asian guy, that’s no steal. Asian girl, that’s steal. If you is the gay, that’s no steal. Easy. The gay is never steal. If you is the lesbian, that is girl who is the gay, that’s steal, one hundred percent guarantee they is steal. But two lesbian, that’s no steal, cancel-out combo.

JANET: What about a black lesbian with long straight hair and a fat Asian gay man with short hair together? Steal or no steal?