In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

frequency problems she had plenty of and needed those wires as a way
of proofing through a piece and still hear the bass. All without exposing
herself to any more damage.
"I'll take these, and a fifty stack of CDs and two five packs of
mini discs, please, thanks."
"You pay me for the duh buds, him for the disc, remembah?"
the Chinese kid grinned up at her white and clean, reaching in the case
for more buds to hang.
The boy hollered over to the back of the store in Cantonese
where an old man was bent over a bowl of noodles. The shrunken
patriarch creaked up from his plastic milk crate to a full stoop and
shuffled to the front, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his padded
jacket.
In the glass case were crammed every make of disc, from five
inch dinosaur floppies to CD's, to minidiscs. The old man reached in
and brought out two packs of minidiscs in their icy plastic cases, five to
a pack, then a tower of CD's, adding it all up longhand with his abacus.
Penny put the pile of bills and change on the glass counter in
front of the kid for the buds, grinned thanks and slid over to the old
man, who pushed the piece of paper towards her without looking up.
Another couple of green paper rectangles, no tax around here, that
helped a little.
The porno guy's polyester encased gut spread out on the
counter like raw dough as he resumed his badgering, his eyes locked on
the creamy young neck and bobbing Adam's apple. "Okay, how about
five hundred? Take five hundred?"
The kid backed into the display wall screwing up his eyes at the
liver lipped perv. Shakily, grandpa handed Penny the bag of
immaculately packed CD's and disks.
"Okay! Fi' hundred, you can have it for fi' hundred! Good
customah! Back o' store, follow him, ring you up."
Old man followed kid and "good customer" into the back
where the TV's and the porn were stashed as Penny slipped happily out
of the store with her packages.
Back out on Canal Street, fluorescent bike messengers wove in
and out between the semis that thundered between the Holland tunnel
and the Manhattan Bridge. Penny headed east towards the heart of
authentic, not tourist, Chinatown, into an alternate reality teeming with
ancient women picking through piles of roots and greens along the
sidewalks of Grand and Market streets. Most had shopping carts but
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