We could all see a fall was coming. Randy’s mother owned the store and would come in behind those big glasses, judging everything. Who the hell put the fudge way up there? she would demand. What was that terrible smell? “I’m wearing perfume,” Gloria would say. “Well, why?” the mother would snap. “Are you going on a date?” That was the punch line: the idea of Gloria on a date with some unlucky bastard. The mother would laugh her low alcoholic growl of a laugh as if this was the most far-fetched idea ever. But she wasn’t only mean. She had an honest, caring side to her, too. “Don’t get your hopes up, sister, men-wise,” she’d tell Gloria, in the lettuce-smelling corner of the stockroom where they piled the cardboard boxes. “You’re not much to look at but . . .” And she’d think to add something like “you’ve got a good heart” or “you’re a hard worker,” but because she prided herself on being laceratingly honest, as these thoughts came up, she felt she had to not say them, because this Gloria had never shown any evidence of having an especially good heart, and as far as being a hard worker, well, no. She showed up every day, sure, but had never, in the mother’s memory, taken any special interest in the workings of the store or had a single fresh, helpful idea about anything at all. It was strange to have had someone working for you for nearly two years and not be able to recall a single occasion on which she had suggested anything to improve or liven up the store, such as, that gal they’d fired, Irene, had at least had the idea of putting a glass jar on the counter into which people could drop spare change, which would then be given to the local children’s hospital, but which, it turned out, Irene was cleverly pocketing about half of. Which was why she’d been let go. So, not that clever. Although pretty clever. Because it had taken them nearly a year to catch her. But at least that Irene had shown some gumption, some desire to, well, improve her condition, one might say. She wasn’t some inert thing letting life just happen to her.