Beast of Burden by Tanushree Mukherjee

It was narrow, stuffed chock-a-block with all manner of drug-related paraphernalia. It was a ‘smoke and gift shop’ in name, but sold everything from oil burners to sexual performance-enhancing pills. At some point, there had been a debate on whether the store was allowed to stock condoms. But I was only half listening by that time. My first impression, when I had walked in on seeing the ‘now hiring’ sign, was that it was too brightly lit. The illumination was plain white light of the kind that seems to render everything naked. Everything from the owner’s greed to make money off people’s weaknesses to the stark depths people sank to, to fuel their addictions.

I was prepared for the drudgery. By then, I had been hired and fired by quite a few similar establishments across the US. I knew the drill. It was a shitty job with minimum hourly wage. But you worked your sorry ass off to hold on to it. You worked your body to numbness on weekends, while the rest of the city was having fun, and returned to your accommodation, zombie-like, in the middle of the night, to pass out from exhaustion.

But I was relieved to get the job. The store was not too far from where I lived and there was no bus transfer involved. I was getting sick of taking two buses to my other job, especially after I realized that I had spent the majority of my waking hours in Los Angeles either on a bus or waiting for one.

It is not easy getting used to monotony. But I did my best, even developing an aggressive attitude toward selling drugs. Technically, you couldn’t call the products drugs. But we also displayed this huge array of elaborate equipment people used to do drugs. And it is amazing what lack of regulation combined with labeling gymnastics will allow you to sell legally.

So every time I sold three Akrux boxes – officially, cream chargers but used mostly for a nitrous oxide high – to a customer who had walked in wanting only one, I got a rush. I closed the sale in seconds before anyone could change their mind. The cash register sang, and I was high on success. Even if it was success wrested off some poor bastard who would spend the weekend getting numbed on laughing gas.

To help make my shift go faster, I also voluntarily developed a crush on a perfectly built, extensively tattooed, 40-something local who came in every evening to purchase his K-shot. I asked him once what he needed it for. After all, if I was going to spend my future with him, I needed to know exactly what kind of drugs he was on. Predictably, he said “it helped him relax”. And unpredictably, that “it helped with the pain”.

What pain? Where? And why? Unfortunately, he couldn’t read my mind and, therefore, didn’t offer an answer. I looked up ‘K-shot’ online. It had nothing to do with vitamin K as I had optimistically presumed. It was merely an under-researched plant extract, Kratom, that was supposed to help get rid of bigger, badder addictions. Such as cocaine! My heart went out to Mr K-shot! But I couldn’t help him because I was soon caught up in a swirl of workplace hostility.

At first, everyone treated me like crap. This included the young guy I shared my shift with. I was used to this treatment. It was familiar turf, and I was comfortable. I was told the pay cycle was every two weeks, on Sundays. When the others got their checks on the first pay day of my being there and the boss showed no sign of wishing to pay me, I asked for my money. Even a couple of years ago, I would have gone quietly home, hoping he would pay me the following week. But I had rent to pay, an earmarked amount I needed to send to my family back home, a cantankerous flat mate to deal with if I did not chip in for utilities, and a hardened attitude.

The boss had a huge meltdown when I asked for my pay. But I persisted and left the store with my money. Of course, they had different standards for me. I was not legally allowed to do this job. So I was working for cash. The boss hasn’t expected me to actually ask for my money. I felt like Oliver Twist but stood my ground. But I was still the newbie who wasn’t a citizen or even a permanent resident. So I was not allowed to use the register for a long time, although I made it clear I was better at it than my shift partner and could do most of the Math in my head. I was told I shouldn’t answer the phone either because the boss ‘didn’t like new hires talking to customers’. And the funniest part was that the boss was from the same part of the world that I was!

But I was not a part of their smoking ‘set’. I had to be taught about double-filter water bongs, 14” and 18” bangers, and stashes, and grinders. My first week, I couldn’t talk knowledgeably about the merits of an aloe kiwi watermelon vape from Maxx against those of a different brand. I was also a woman.

They looked upon me much like a mule, a beast of burden, that was there to do the shittiest and most labor-intensive tasks that no one else wanted. In fact, they probably expected me to clean up after them when they littered the entire store with their dinner leftovers, their used paper towels, and their plentiful personal belongings.

The morning shift guy was into self-help books on manifestation. He would take up precious shelf space, stacking his books against the flavored tobacco for the hookahs. The boss didn’t seem to mind. And once, after I almost sold a customer a used lip balm belonging to the morning shift guy (it was nestling against some of the smaller and more ingenious stashes), there was a huge row. I suppose they expected me to organize their stuff when I organized the merchandise.

But I merely cleaned the counters and display cases, studiously ignoring the Styrofoam containers reeking of stale food. I dusted the water pipes and the hookahs and the Zippo lighters. I took out the trash and replaced the trash bag. I did the heavy lifting for items to be unpacked for restocking the shelves. I did inventory for items to be ordered. And on Sundays, I mopped the floor and cleaned the restroom.

I don’t think they even thought of me as a human. My big and strong co-worker sat on the only available stool and watched TikTok on his phone, breaking off into a belly laugh from time to time, while my malnourished body wrestled with the heavy bucket and mop. A few times, the owner cut my shift and sent me home early. But he told me to make sure I mopped before I left. It didn’t matter that they probably usually mopped around closing time and he was sending me home two hours earlier than that. I was still stuck with the ugly yellow bucket and mop.

But I had arrived in Los Angeles determined to make this stubbornly alien city mine. With my income, I was going to change my family’s fortunes back home. There was no time for silliness.

And yet, I saw the beautiful people on the streets with their perfect bodies and fashionably distressed clothing. It made me start to care about how I looked. With a small part of my first salary at this job, I had bought myself a set of eye liners of different colors and I started wearing a different color to work each day. My co-worker probably noticed first. I could tell because the third evening of my wearing the eyeliners, he spent almost a full minute staring at my eyes. There was a scientific curiosity in his gaze. It was as if he had discovered a new specimen of an otherwise known species that he had already studied under a microscope and filed away.

But there was also the small matter of him being rude to me in front of customers one day, me dashing off to the restroom with my eyes threatening to start spewing purple tears, and finally rushing out the back door to cry in peace in the parking lot.

He must have left the customers waiting and followed me outside. My guard was down, the hood of my old red puffer jacket pulled up. I must have looked like little Red Riding Hood and even his indifferent millennial heart must have turned.

I was shell-shocked when I realized he had actually come looking for me. I froze, mid-cry. He took one look at my face, mumbled something about it being an exceptionally cold night, and ducked back into the store. I followed a few minutes later, after having adjusted my face.

He seemed to wake up for the first time, after we had been working next to each other for weeks, to the fact that I was not, in fact, some sort of humanoid golem with somewhat limited abilities.

Thereafter, he was always much more co-operative, trying to share some of the more physical tasks and turning on the heater in the store for me because I was always freezing my ass off. We began closing together most weekends. The kindness had begun.

He was easy on the eye and not nearly as bratty as the morning shift guy who was forever on my case and eventually got me fired. I had been steeling my mind against any kind of creeping softness, reminding myself again and again that I had to be tough, whatever that meant. But the annoying inevitable happened. His shoulder began to matter.

My last week at work, on a Friday, he was the nicest. I hate him for it. He could’ve just continued to be a heel, like at the start and like the rest of them. And I would’ve turned my back on that smoke shop forever. But I woke up Saturday morning imagining all sorts of things, chiefly involving holding hands with him while we sat at an outdoor table at the Malibu Pier Cafe, oblivious to everything and everyone else around. I could even see my half-empty glass of Sauvignon Blanc and the sun was shining bright.

But Malibu was a long way from my sunless room in Van Nuys and I wouldn’t have been able to discern a fine wine if it had punched me in the face. As for the hand-holding, my co-worker’s initial spurt of kindliness, after the parking lot episode, was rapidly dwindling and had all but disappeared. But I gamely tried not to take notice of this patent fact.

He also seemed to be joined at the hip with the morning shift guy, who was always idling in the store, way past his official shift time. The morning shift guy had been promoted to the position of designated reporter for all goings-on at the store. He was always on the phone with the boss, who was seldom in the store anymore, presenting his daily reports on the smoke shop.

That Saturday evening, I got fired. The boss had texted the week before that he would try me out one more week. I was busting my butt to save my stupid job. But it was like a snakes and ladders game. The boss, who had made an appearance, put me up two squares and then let me down five. By the end of the evening, I was beat, totally exhausted by what was to prove to be one elaborate charade.

We closed at 1am on Saturdays. Around 11.30pm, the boss summoned me to the back room and handed me a wad of bills. It was supposed to include my pay for that evening. He told me to clear out by midnight.

I returned to the register and started telling the young guy about the development. He went on scribbling illegibly on a brown paper bag, the kind we would use to wrap $6.99-oil burners. He mumbled something about business being slow and that he knew I had worked hard. That was a first. He added that I was smart and would find something else. Another first! I finally told him we would talk about it later. I told him I would call him after his shift was over.

That was when things started to crumble and shatter. He said there was nothing to talk about. I tried not to look shocked. My brain also belatedly registered that he had not looked particularly surprised by the fact of my getting fired. I also suddenly realized that everyone that worked in that store, in any shift,  just, magically, happened to be there – as if they had gathered for some ceremonial sacrifice. They all knew what had taken me so long to find out.

I woke up sometime in the afternoon on Sunday. The hardest bit to digest was that they had all been in it together, even the young guy. I almost sent them all a text, telling them exactly what I thought of unscrupulous business owners who exploited migrant laborers and co-workers who stabbed them in the back.

But I didn’t, of course. The smoke shop had taught me a lot. I had learned, for example, that you can never really kick an addiction. You merely replaced it with something less lethal. I had also learned that kindness is bad for you. Hadn’t the young guy nearly killed me with it? When he took it back? My withdrawal symptoms were strong. Now, I needed my fix. Or, at least, an antidote. Or a lesser drug.

Tanushree Mukherjee

Image: Google images – interior of smoke shop showing shelves of smoking paraphernalia, bongs etc.