The Cloak of Invisibility

Dave’s assistant manager handed me a work shirt the next day after my training, such as it was, with Abdul.

“You can put it on back there,” she said, pointing to the restroom. “The toilet’s broken, and Dave’s too cheap to get it fixed.”

The blue work shirt with orange lettering had the company logo. I went to the restroom and slipped it on. When I returned she handed me an invoice.

“The directions are on the back. They seemed retarded or something.”

“Some of my best friends have been retards,” I admitted. That was the truth too. Bootsie. Everyone in our cabin at summer camp picked on Bootsie. Except for me. I didn’t have the heart to walk away from them. I always listened to them until their eyes got gooey and watery.

“Maybe they’ll make friends with you,” she said with a laugh.

I immediately forgave Penelope Lopez for taking a shot at me. Plain and simple. She was gorgeous. Tall with an exotic face like a flamenco dancer, her countenance filtered through Gibraltar and several centuries on the Iberian Peninsula . Her long, black hair contrasted sharply with her pale, mortician-like complexion. She had almond-shaped eyes that were dark brown, and eyebrows that were coal black and razor sharp. Red lipstick outlined her sensuous, though mournful lips.

The only drawback to all that sat next to her. Barrel-chested, with large, popped out eyes, and a wide mouth, he was wearing a cream-colored guayabera, gray slacks, and shiny black shoes. She introduced her father, Vircengetorix Lopez. He rose briefly then sank down in his chair.

“You should have kept that job at the electric company. You had insurance and a future,” Mr. Lopez said. “When are you going to get a raise at this place?”

Penelope got out of Dave’s Lazyboy and walked away from him. The lines on Mr. Lopez’s forehead thickened.

“Well, if a daughter doesn’t want to listen to her father, it’s a damn shame.”

“Say something sensible or nice. Who wants to listen to that? Why don’t you get a part time job? And, and, stop acting so retarded.”

She paused. It was a Eureka moment, like when Archimedes discovered his principle of buoyancy before the Second Punic War. Dave had it on a poster in the back room. Archimedes was half asleep on a waterbed and there was a cartoon balloon above his head that restated his discovery: Your fat-ass is buoyed by a force equal to the weight of the water displaced by your keister.

Penelope appeared to have the same kind of revelation.

“Would you mind if my father rode with you on your first delivery? It will give him something to do. You two would be like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” she said.

“Us, Paul Newman and Robert Redford? They die in the end,” I reminded her.

“You haven’t been to the house in a week. Your Uncle Pericles and Aunt Clytemestra can’t believe you treat me this way. And where’s your boyfriend? And when’s he going to marry you?” Mr. Lopez harped.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?” Penelope snapped.

Mr. Lopez shrugged his shoulders. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, crimped at the neck.

“I’m a big girl now. I’m not moving back home with you. I’m not!”

She looked at me.

“I wish my mother hadn’t died,” she said solemnly.

“He should marry you. This living together stuff. It’s just not right for a nice Spanish girl.”

They kept squabbling. I loaded the van parked outside the back door.

“Are you sure my father can’t go with you?” Penelope begged.

I didn’t turn around. Seeing her face would have gotten me thinking with my tallywacker, and I would have invited him along just to please her voluptuous Iberian Peninsula . The blue work shirt was my cloak of invisibility. I vanished out the back door.