Johnny Walker :: Johnny Walker Short Story Essays

Johnny Walker Sera walked into Circle K on fifth st. without noticing it had not been remodeled since 1986, and that someone from another, more financially kept city might actually find the convenience store to be disgusting, the dirt being so thick on the windows that you could only see blurry faces on the inside. Inside she saw five people in the store and believed that all of them were staring at her, looking through her like they knew more about herself than she did. The clerk, she thought, had even looked up from her monotonous duties at the cash register to glance her wrinkled leathery face in Sera's direction. An ugly bum in the beer section reached into the cooler with a calloused black hand as Sera walked through the candy aisle to pick up a case of Budweiser. "Ah yes, forty ounces to freedom." The black skinned bum grabbed a forty of old English malt liquor while he turned a decrepit smile toward Sera. She smiled back sheepishly without knowing why and took the Budweiser out of the fridge that Liza had sent for her to get. She thought of Liza as she stood in line behind the old bum. Her face, an illusion in her mind, made out of the back of the bums scraggily black afro. When she walked out the door the bum stood outside with his paper bagged forty in his hand. "Need any help with that tonight?" He grinned with a yellow and half tooth full mouth. "I tend to get pretty thirsty." He held up his forty as if to clarify his thought to Sera. Sera looked at the black man and saw how gross he looked, and then thought why not bring someone back to the apartment for Liza to fuck with. "Sure. I'm walking. It's just a couple of blocks down in the Kohler building." Her voice was firm but also curious. "Lets doer little woman." Sera rolled her eyes, turned around, and started walking. * * * When they passed the third floor on the way up to the Landlady's apartment Sera had glanced down the hall and seen that Luther's door lay wide open, and that some of his books had spilled out into the hallway toppled on top of each other. On the fourth floor, Liza's door lay open and Sera could hear her washing clothes while talking to Luther.