Unpaid Damages
A Short Story by Rachel Brown

At the tooth-gritting sound of metal on metal, Cindy Welbourne spun around and discovered her four year old son was no longer by her side, but ramming an elderly lady's trolley into the supermarket shelf.

"Dylan!" she hissed, and dragged him away by the arm, too embarrassed to apologise. She turned back to her trolley to see Cooper, unattended in the toddler seat for half a moment, had reached down a packet of chocolate lamingtons and gnawed them open with his four teeth.

Two of the lamingtons tumbled to the floor as she snatched the packet from him. She kicked them under the shelf and made her escape from the crowded aisle.

Cindy glanced at the rest of her shopping list, then crammed it into her pocket. She needed two more items from that last aisle, but she wasn't going back for them now.

Cooper was wailing at the top of his lungs, and in desperation, she gave him one of the surviving lamingtons. The noise stopped and, her ears ringing in the sudden silence, she pressed on to the checkouts.

"Want this!" Dylan pulled a kid's magazine with a toy pistol stuck on the cover from the rack beside the checkout.

"No! Give it to me, Dylan." She lunged forward, the paper tearing as she tried to wrest it from his grip. Even if she'd wanted him to have it, she couldn't have afforded it. She wasn't even sure there'd be enough in her account to cover the groceries as it was.

Cindy managed to pull the magazine free, but Dylan flung off from her in a rage. Too late she saw him throw himself against the display of Mother's Day gift baskets, chocolates and china tea-sets.

"How's your shift going, Melinda?" Richard Dogget leaned over the Customer Service Counter, and smiled at the attractive shift supervisor.

"Don't ask!" Melinda rolled her eyes. "It's been one of those days."

She nodded her head toward the checkout bays and the sound of a child's tantrum in full flight. "I can't tell you how many times I've had to organise a mop-up today."

Richard glanced at his watch. "Aren't you due for your break?"

Melinda nodded, then looked up at him, a hopeful smile hovering on her lips. "You haven't got time to join me for a cappuccino next door, have you?"

Richard drew in a deep breath. He'd built a great rapport with the staff since moving to the area to manage the store, but still found it impossible to believe any of them could want his friendship. Suddenly nervous, he opened his mouth to make an excuse when the sound of breaking crockery was followed by sudden silence as everyone in the store turned their eyes toward the last checkout.

"Oh no! Here I go again!" Melinda came around the counter, grimacing at the sound of an incensed mother screeching at her child.

Richard stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "No - go have your break. I'll take care of this."

With Melinda's gratitude still warm in his ears, he strode along the front of the store to the far checkout. A young woman unfolded herself out of the debris of what had been the floor display, and pulled a small red-faced boy after her.

"What's happened here?" Richard asked, and the young woman's head snapped up, her expression a mixture of fear and defiance. She stared at him strangely for a moment, then as her blue eyes widened in recognition, Richard went numb all over.

Cindy stared at the man in front of her. He was tall, very good looking and, although she couldn't place him, strangely familiar. Then she noticed the name tag on his expensive looking shirt that said: "Store Manager - Richard Doggett".

Cindy nearly choked on her own spit. "Big Dog Dogget?"

The man's small nod confirmed it, but Cindy struggled to believe this solid man could be the same kid she and her friends had taunted all the way through high school.

He'd been so fat that when he'd lumbered onto the bus for a school excursion, the rest of the class had moved to the seats on the other side to "balance" him. He'd silently hung his shaggy head as they'd pulled open all the windows, complaining loudly about his body odour. Summer or winter, Richard "Big Dog" Doggett had worn the same tent-sized jumper, and you could smell him coming into the classroom before he arrived.

The night of their high school formal, when she and her friends had gone out afterwards and they'd begun reminiscing, someone had started them on "Big Dog" impersonations. Cindy had them all in stitches with her dramatisation of his participation in class.

"Sorry? What was the question?" she mimicked Big Dog's strange, deep voice and the way he looked up at the teacher with glazed eyes.

Those brown eyes were looking down at her now, piercingly clear. Cindy swallowed hard.

"I wouldn't have recognised you, Bi... Richard." Her voice sounded unsteady even to her own ears, "You've changed heaps."

Richard shrugged his broad shoulders and bent to examine the mess at their feet. "Yeah. Found out I had a thyroid problem. Once that was sorted out I went back and redid my final year at another school, got into football--" he broke off, and taking the broom a staff member had brought over, deftly moved the debris out of the walkway.

There had to be hundreds of dollars worth of damage there, Cindy thought miserably, wincing as the broken pieces crunched against each other. Damage she had no hope of paying .

Any minute now he'd take her and the boys into his office and give her the bill - and then he'd find out exactly the mess her life was in.

She'd always considered people like "Big Dog" Doggett the lowest of the low, so what did it make her, now that even he was in a position to tread her into the ground?

She felt like dirt.

The moment Richard looked into Cindy Welbourne's huge blue eyes, he was seventeen years old again, and miserable to the marrow of his bones. The five years that had passed, and his successful rise to management meant nothing. Once again he was merely "Big Dog" Doggett.

The last time he'd seen Cindy, at their final school formal, she'd been wearing a tight black mini-dress. It clung to her perfect body even closer than her gym uniform had the day he'd stood behind the P.E. building and watched her play hockey in the rain.

He'd had a painful crush on Cindy the whole six years of high school, but never dared to so much as make eye contact with her. But the night of their formal, on what might be the last time he ever saw her, he couldn't drag his eyes from her. As he watched her from his table, he could forget what he was and how everyone despised him, and simply drink in her beauty.

It didn't matter if he looked like an orca in his white shirt and straining black suit, it didn't matter that no-one asked him to sign their autograph book, so long as he could enjoy the way Cindy looked with her hair piled up in golden curls, and her face made up like a movie star

"What are you staring at, you big fat slob?"

Richard never imagined Cindy would even notice him, and he gaped at her as she paused on her way past his table

Cindy gave him a synthetic smile. "How lucky for you - you didn't even need to invite a partner - you take up two seats all on your own."

As she moved on, her elbow knocked his drink into his lap. He hung his head as the cold liquid spilled over his pants, her tittered "Ooopsie" crushing feelings he didn't know he still had left.

Nothing he'd ever achieved softened the edges of that final humiliation. Even when he faced the facts that he was not defined by what the kids at school thought him, it didn't change that it was how he perceived himself.

Richard looked up from the wreckage of his first Mother's Day display. The taste of self-loathing still filled his mouth but this time he didn't have the option of escape. He had a job to do.

"What exactly happened?" he asked Cindy, his voice carefully void of emotion.

Cindy closed her eyes, and pressed shaking hands to her temples. For a moment, Richard thought she was going to cry, but she took a deep breath and pulled herself together.

"My son bumped--" She glanced at the queues of attentive shoppers who'd seen the whole thing and shook her head. "My son knocked them down. I'm sorry - I tried to grab him."

Richard squatted to the four year old's level, noting the fair hair and hazel eyes that belonged unmistakably to Anthony Dale, one of the most popular guys in their year.

"So, you did all this, young man?".

The boy's face crumpled, and he turned to hide his face against his mother's legs, nearly pushing her off-balance.

"I heard you married Anthony. Your son's very like him."

"Yeah. And not just in looks."

Her tone was so bitter that Richard frowned

"Oh, Ant's long gone," Cindy explained with a pathetic gesture. "He didn't even stick around 'til Cooper arrived."

She turned to indicate a grubby infant in the trolley seat behind her, then swore. She wasn't quick enough to stop the child upending her handbag, and Richard winced as its contents hailed onto the floor.

Cindy scrabbled to gather the plastic cards and coins that scattered from her purse, and Richard stopped a rolling lipstick with his foot. A couple of shoppers retrieved the coins that had travelled further afield, and handed them to Cindy as she crouched on the floor, shovelling her possessions back into the bag.

For the first time Richard looked at her properly, taking in the dark circles under her eyes, and the lines around her thin lips. There were a couple of inches of dark regrowth in her blonde hair, and her nails were broken and dotted with the remnants of old polish. There were no luxuries in her trolley, just bare essentials and generic brands.

Life wasn't treating her well, realised Richard, as he picked up a hairbrush she'd missed. For all her queening it over him and the other unfortunates at high school she was just as human - and as vulnerable - as the rest of them. And had been all the time, he thought grimly, it was only the gloss of her popularity that had deceived them all.

Richard gave her time to get herself back together, and cast his eyes back over the damaged stock. He grimaced, calculating the cost of the breakages as well as the headaches of paperwork and rainchecks for disappointed customers. All over five seconds work for a frustrated four year old.

Cindy clamped her handbag under her arm, and turned back to him. It was the shame in her huge blue eyes that made Richard realise the full extent of his advantage over her. He knew exactly how she felt.

He knew it because Cindy and her friends had taught it to him.

Richard glanced at the ruined stock, then back at her. Even if she'd had a rough few years he doubted she really had any understanding of what she'd done to him.

He made his decision and smiled.

"Don't worry about the damage, Cindy. I'll handle it myself." Her mouth gaped as he pointed to an empty checkout, "There's no-one waiting at number six. Put your groceries through and forget all about it, okay?"

Richard turned his back on her stunned expression and strode toward to the storeroom to fetch a box for the cleanup. He didn't care if he had to pay for the stock out of his own pocket.

It was worth it for the gift he'd just been given.

Cindy and her children were long gone before Richard had removed all the evidence of their visit, and Melinda found him inspecting his finished handiwork when she returned from her break.

She looked at the reorganised display and gave a nod of approval. "Thanks, Richard. I owe you one for that."

"Really? I might just take you up on it." Richard straightened up and looked her in the eyes, feeling like he was newly alive. "Let me take you out to lunch today and we'll call it even."



© R. L. Brown 2007