Two and a half cynics   I tried to look busy, detangling fake black roses. I did my best to ignore all the customers, including this kid, until he started talking to himself.               He looked like a zombie. The store's strobe lights bounced off his pale, angular face and one of his legs lagged behind when he walked. From where I stood behind the counter, none of this seemed unusual. This was Monroeville Mall. Ever since George Romero filmed here, the place has attracted zombies.               It was the miniature Frogger and Space Invaders games that did it.               I thought he was talking to me at first, but he wasn’t looking in my direction as he mumbled strange phrases of pleasure.               “I haven’t seen those things since the ‘80s,” he said, as he passed the register. I still wasn’t sure if he was talking to me.               There’s a sense of safety behind the counter. By all social mores, nobody could come back here, near me. It was what separated me from them.               “I bought my buddy’s old Atari,” the kid said, itched his face, rubbed his arms. “Five bucks. Can you believe it?”               “That’s a good deal,” I said. I didn’t know. It just felt like my turn to talk. Just as my position protected me, it put certain responsibilities to me: if somebody speaks, you speak back. I was, after all, being paid.               He made a twitch of his head as acknowledgement and proceeded to tell me how he took the game consol apart -- naming the specific electronic components -- then reassembled it. The jargon he used was above me. I just shook my head and felt dumb.               Then we talked about beer.               A neon Captain Morgan’s light prompted the discussion.               “I’ve been looking for Yuengling stuff everywhere,” he said. I told him I had a similar problem with Calico Jack. He wasn’t sure what type of beer it was. I said it was rum, so we talked about liquor.               “I like Vodka,” he said, looking me in the eyes for the first time. “I mean, I’ll drink beer, but if somebody’s got some hard stuff, I’d rather drink that.”               That seemed wise. He fiddled with trademarked shot and pint glasses, repositioned his own glasses, then looked at me again.               “I’m not supposed to drink beer because I have seizures, but I don’t care. I still do.”               I may have been behind the counter -- wearing the nametag -- but I was still a stranger. I thought maybe he regretted telling me, a novelty store cashier, wearing large Aviators indoors like this.               “I drink at work,” I said, pushing my Aviators to my eyebrows. “I’m not supposed to, but I do anyway.”               He laughed at this.               “I’d probably get fired if they knew,” I said and laughed too.               He spun a rack of belly rings and walked behind the counter. I froze.               “I know,” he said, still moving at his one-legged pace. “Life sucks and then you die. My mom doesn’t like when I say that, but it’s true. Life sucks. Everybody dies.”               I didn‘t want to argue with him. Especially since he was standing beside me, behind the counter. But he was wrong.               I felt unnerved, but have handled cynics before. They picked me out. My aura or something. Sure, I was cynical, but I wasn‘t trying to meet others. I had good things to appreciate. My wife and son, publications in magazines people don’t read. He wasn’t cynical, or he wouldn’t talk so much.               One of the oldest cynics, Diogenes (fifth century B.C.E.), believed the only true freedom was with the dogs. He disclaimed all human customs and reverted to an atavistic state of behavior. No connection to anyone. If this kid was a genuine cynic, he wouldn’t be spouting phrases that you could find on the bumper stickers in the store.               The Frogger game should have signaled something unpleasant about this kid. How could he be happy with life? I had two good legs and complained most of the time. I believed people to be fully capable of good times and great intentions, but not much more. We’re all rotten in our own ways. I mean, what kind of world is it when you can’t even have your own, personal, behind-the-counter space?               Maybe we both weren’t very good cynics. I could say he’s a cynic and maybe he could call me a skeptic, but those labels didn’t do much. They only gave the bad times something to stand on.               Just two days before, I had a hefty man give me similar advice. His body language said, “Leave me alone,” but I was working with my boss. I had to go over and say hello. He didn’t say hello back. Most people don’t.               “Just killin’ time,” he said. He patted his beer-gut, which was under a deep-blue T-shirt with wolves all over it. “The wife an’ daughter are out shoppin’, so I came in here.”               Sometimes, I don’t know why, I think I’m clever and say impulsive things to customers. I’m not sure if it’s boredom, or if I’m looking for a friend, or just the pressure to make small-talk, but I blurt out random things.               “Yeah,” I said, “I’m just killin’ time too, though sometimes it feels like time’s killin’ me.” The guy in the wolf shirt laughed. I walked away. I couldn’t help him.               I crossed to the other side of the store and noticed the wolf guy tracking me from the opposite aisle. I picked up my swagger and went around the large display cubes for the T-shirts. It was there he got me.               “You think time’s killin’ you?” he said. I immediately regretted the last five minutes of my life. “Wait till you’re 40 years old and you have a teenage daughter who tells you you’re fuckin’ old everyday.” He stretched and spit the F in fuck so he sounded like a firecracker. “Wait until your wife takes your money and your daughter -- who hates you -- out to buy clothes and they dump you in some novelty store.”               I decided right there I never wanted to have a daughter.               “That’s when time’s killin’ you,” he said, laughing, but not in a funny way. “That’s when time’s holding a fuckin’ revolver to your head and just waiting for you to trip up.”               My boss had stopped stocking lava lamps and listened to the man’s rant. I laughed and looked around for help. I, for some reason, appreciated his bluntness. His impartial dissection of himself. I thought he was brave, but I wouldn’t hang out with the miserable bastard.               “I guess when I get there, I’ll have a bottle of rum with me,” I said. The man chuckled, unsmiling.               “Even that’s no good anymore,” he said. “It takes longer to get over a hangover when you get older. Now it takes days.” He walked through the parallel aisle, toward the doorway, then stopped and turned around. “Consider this your life-affirming lesson of the day.” His F’s still sizzling.               “Thanks for sugar-coating it,” I said. He offered a limp grin and turned to the doorway.               “Hey man,” I said, getting him to look back. “Have a good day.”               “Yeah,” he said, half-huffed, half-laughed and left.               I was stuck for a moment. I felt I should get a broom and spray disinfectant to clean up whatever that guy left. I wasn’t the most optimistic person, but I couldn’t just accept that sort of stoic place in the world. To dutifully stand by and allow the bad to become worse. I hadn’t found the pain I truly loved.               My boss did. He worked fifty hours a week, restacking the same lava lamps, reciting the same phone greetings to the same grumpy public. My nametag seemed heavier than normal.               “What an asshole,” my boss said, holding two lava lamps.               “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll never forget him.” My boss looked at me strangely. I shrugged and walked away.               Now, two days later, this kid was laying the same thing on me.               He just wanted to look at the silver rings. That’s why he cut behind the counter. He noticed my awkwardness.               “Sorry,” he said. “People get mad when I say things like that.” I wasn’t mad, now that he was out of my personal space. In fact, I appreciated his honesty, much more than the wolf guy’s bluntness.               He stared into the streaky glass between the silver rings and his face and began to vent. Something about not having a girlfriend, not having friends, being 28 years old and living with his mother. I wanted to offer some sense of condolence. I don’t know why, it’s some sort of personality tick: I always expect the worst from people, yet I want to make people who feel the worst at ease.               “If it makes you fell any better,” I said, dangling the keys to the jewelry case, “I’m 26 and live with my in-laws.”               “Sorry to hear that,” he said. He patted my shoulder with a tense hand. “That’s rough.”               This had somehow backfired. I just wanted to say something kind, for his sake. Hell, I was way better off than him. Every time his hand bounced on my shoulder I became, internally, more defensive. There were undeniable conveniences living with my in-laws. I wasn’t the one who seizured if I drank too much. How’s he going to feel sorry for me?               “I heard this joke,” I said, shaking off his hand and sympathy. “What do you do if you miss your mother-in-law?”               “Do you miss her?” He looked so sincere rubbing his hands and shaking his head.               “No,” I said. “It’s a joke.”               “Oh. I don’t know. What?”               “Reload and shoot again,” I said. He laughed, but I’m pretty sure it was a sympathy laugh.               “I heard Bob Dylan tell that joke on his radio show,” I said. Somehow that made the corniness okay, even a little funny.               “I don’t really listen to the radio,” he said. “Don’t watch the TV either.”               “I don’t blame you--” I started, before I was interrupted.               “All they show is the bad stuff.” Adam Matcho writes true stories for the New Yinzer. Names have not been changed and distinguishing characteristics have not been altered. They are all just as guilty as Adam.