Rotimi is known for the beauty of his dark skin in the sunlight, flecks of gold in African coal. For his soft voice despite, his towering frame. For his irritability and passive aggressiveness. But he knows Malomo for her soothing energy. The lack of panic when she trips, the calm when dealing with erratic customers. He knows Valentino for the recurring flashbacks the spacey cashier has of his family. Valentino’s abuelo drinking Corona’s while his mother cooks caldo con pollo. Rotimi doesn’t speak Spanish, so he won’t understand the words. Only the love in her eyes when everyone enjoys her cooking.
“You’re going to go see End Game?” Rotimi didn’t have to read the kid’s mind as he stood there with a gold and red mask on.
“Yes!” He says out loud and screams in his head. “My favorite is Iron Man! I heard someone’s gonna die in this movie, but I know Iron Man will save them!”
Rotimi winces as he separates the ticket from the receipt. “Well, enjoy.”
As the kid dashes towards theater two and his shaky grandmother slow on his heels, Rotimi catches a glimpse of their newest employee in his peripheral vision. The trainee is all the way across the room, sweeping dirt no one can see. Rotimi doesn’t want to taste his energy yet. He’s scared he’ll hate him, that it will be too chaotic on the already busy Friday afternoon. The thing about reading minds is that it isn’t an on and off switch. It’s loud and it’s quiet. It’s screams, background noise, and it’s constant. So even though the trainee came in early, with mutters of his name, Ace or Ashley or something, Rotimi can’t start off his morning trying to get used to him. Not with the senior citizens lined up impatiently for their four-dollar tickets. So Rotimi made sure he stayed far away for as long as he could. “Stock the straws over there.” “Pick up that one receipt in the corner of the room” and finally “sweep the entryway,” to which the trainee finally retorted in a voice way too big for his small body. “I already swept the entryway.”
Rotimi was stuck. Flinched as the loud voice, and equally loud energy filled his mind. “It looks dirty again.” He stuttered as he handed an eighty-year-old woman a box of Raisinets.
This infuriated the trainee. Rotimi could feel the blazing fire from twenty feet away. And he can still feel it now, almost a whole 45 minutes later. Raisinet lady has already taken two bathroom breaks.
“At least get to know him first.” Malomo is beside him in an instant.
“For what? Dude looks like he’s fresh out of high school. This is probably just a summer job for him, and he’ll probably only last a month.”
“You read his mind?” Malomo is the only coworker Rotimi has that knows about his abilities. It slipped out of drunken lips at a work social three years ago. Except, Malomo doesn’t drink, and was all too aware of Rotimi’s confession. His account of details she had never told him, almost like he was bragging.
“No, I looked at him.” Rotimi shrugs. He’s never regretted telling Malomo. He did it on purpose. Studied her mind for two years before he decided to do so. Now he has someone who understands the overwhelming “migraines” on busy nights. The fear of touch, the thing that changes reading minds into seeing them just as vividly as their host does. The seemingly random mood swings influenced by whatever energy is populating the air. Whether it’s the excitement from an action flick, or the lust from romance. Rotimi doesn’t just read minds; he feels them.
So, when the kid stumbles out of the theater crying later, he’ll suffer that same heavy sadness. When the new employees shake his hand, he’ll be drenched in that same nervousness, viewing himself as a scary executive. He’s a sponge. Soaking up every single thing until he’s sour. He has Malomo here to vent to. To make things just that much easier.
“I’m done.” The trainee’s anger has simmered down, only the slightest bit audible in his voice. Ask me to do something else and I’ll walk out. He thinks.
Rotimi almost laughs out loud. It’s a dare. He’ll make the guy clean the women’s restrooms next.
Malomo pulls on her ear, a signal that she wants Rotimi to read her mind. Ask him to do something else and I’ll–
“Want a tour?” Rotimi asks.
The trainee’s eyes light up. Monolided galaxies smiling at the same time his lips do.
•••
“This is where all of the premiers happen, theater ten, the biggest one.” Rotimi is dragging this out a bit. He enjoys the silence of the empty hallways. The musty red carpet and dim lighting. The only other people are on movie posters, and the only other voices are trapped behind thick doors and surround sound. All of them except for one.
“How long have you been working here?” Angel asks.
Rotimi finally took the time to read his name tag.
“Five years.” He’d been alive and reading minds for twenty-three. He’d learned to ignore the small things, and could usually tune out one or two voices with his thoughts. But Angel has like, three.
Wow, what a loser. I wonder if he’s gonna spend the rest of his life here.
Imagine all of the free movies he’s seen.
The last thing he says Rotimi can’t understand. It is mumbling, murmuring, maybe even in a different language. Everything about this guy is muffled in some kind of high energy cloud. Rotimi tries his best to ignore it, to remember another time when he felt something like this— but he can’t. It wasn’t like Ms. Ruffle, the zippy kindergarten teacher he met during his senior year internship. It wasn’t like when he was six years old either, the hysteria-inducing trip to Disney World with all of the princess costumes and confectioner sugar smells.
No, as much as Rotimi hates to admit it, Angel is a special case. The entire hallway was doused in his energy as soon as they stepped foot in it.
They’re rounding a corner. Angel is filling the air with fireflies as he goes on and on about how excited he is to see a new horror movie, a new comedy, and then a new trailer that came out earlier in the week.
“Jesus, I’ve been so stressed with school these days. Once I submit my portfolio,” Angel runs his hands through fluffy blonde dyed hair. “I’ll be free.”
Rotimi ignores his smile, ignores how his energy becomes that much brighter, and chooses instead to focus on the bulky portfolio Angel stumbled in with earlier.
“What kind of art do you do?” Rotimi should have never asked.
Angel’s eyes light up, the entire hallway does. It’s sunlight on his nose bridge, his cheekbones, the magnolias in his hair. The carpet blooms into plush grass polka-dotted with pansies. Rose blushes his cheeks, and Rotimi didn’t know so many flowers could bloom so close to Fall. Angel doesn’t even say anything. He just smiles as his imagination takes Rotimi’s world away.
Malomo doesn’t even notice. Her smooth olive skin is unwavering as wind ruffles the lavender fabric of her hijab.
“We’ve got a bus,” she says calmly after joining them.
Rotimi almost wonders why she’s looking at him and not the garden around them. “A bus?” He asks as he feels himself slowly descending back towards the ground. He turns to check, and sure enough, behind the retreating vines, through streaked windows, there is a yellow school bus.
•••
“How are all of these middle schoolers taller than you?” Valentino jokes, dimpled cheeks, stubble, and pearly white teeth.
“Shut up,” Angel shoves him, spilling some of the large popcorn he made in the process.
Rotimi assumed they had known each other for a while outside of work, that maybe they went to the same school. But that wasn’t the case. They had grown close when it was only Angel’s first day, and meanwhile, Rotimi and him were barely on a first name basis.
When he first met Valentino, he hated him. He used to hate having to see all of his perverse thoughts. But it was on a day like this that everything changed.
Malomo looks in the face of one of the students and sees herself. Fifth grade. Blonde boy pulls her hijab off during recess. “Would you like anything else?” she asks the kid in front of her before continuing her memory. All of her friends huddled around her, plaid skirts and messy buns, to make sure her head was covered until she got it back on.
“That’ll be $20.72.” Valentino is remembering how his school didn’t have an ESL program. He’d try and remember everything he heard in order to learn. When he went home and researched all of the words, he realized they were all racial slurs.
Rotimi wants to know why Angel is the way he is too, without having to open his mouth and ask him, but all he’s gotten so far are daydreams of his stupid paintings. Angel isn’t like everyone else. He doesn’t see himself in others. He thinks he’s special. He is.
Rotimi watches the kid he just rang up for a soda get an ICEE. There are at least fifteen students in front of him trying to pay for their overpriced candy boxes with piggy bank change. Some of them are thinking about the movie, some are thinking about what happened earlier in the school day, his mind is a mess as he tries to count out change amongst a geek going over the exponents he’d learned in his math class.
“Can I get a small popcorn?” The next customer has both of their earphones in, and the bass shakes the room around.
In Rotimi’s head, white, pink and yellow acrylics start to wash over the room. And then I can use encaustic paint to add texture.
As Angel arises from the back, glistening resin follows him.
Rose petals will preserve better– no gladiolus!
He’s right beside Rotimi now. Rotimi who can’t figure out how to ring up the same small popcorn he already has, at least a million times this month.
“It’s right here.” Angel was reaching over him, sparkly fingertips and blue paint under his nails. “We had this same system at my old job–”
“Can you shut up?” Rotimi snaps.
“But I’ve– I’ve barely said anything.” There’s a dip in his energy. The flowers wilt and the paintings dry to blacks and greys. And it’s all Rotimi’s fault.
“I mean, I–”
“He hasn’t been feeling well today.” Go cool off in the freezer. Malomo thinks as she tugs on her earlobe. “You’ll have to excuse him.”
“Anyways,” Angel is smiling as he turns towards the annoyed student. “Sorry for the wait.” Rotimi knows he’s hurt on the inside. As he walks away, he can see the mistiness in the air. He can feel how easy it is to choke on it. He can hear Angel’s trembling voice.
Why does he hate me?
•••
By the third week, everyone else absolutely adores Angel. Malomo loves his work ethic, the customers love his charisma, and Valentino loves how he has someone new and equally as immature to joke with.
Rotimi doesn’t like how he isn’t in control of his own mind. Angel is. He feels whatever vivid feelings Angel is feeling. Whether it’s stress about his stupid portfolio, or enthusiasm about a piece he’s working on. But more often than not, it’s something else. Something everyone else seems to be feeling whenever he is nearby as well.
Rotimi has gotten used to the butterflies and bumblebees. Whenever they’d get busy, he’d put Angel on cashier while he’d make the hot foods. Angel’s thoughts always reached farther than anyone else’s could. Rotimi would be reheating cafeteria-quality nachos, and the kitchen would transform into a treehouse. He’d step on sticks on the way to hand them off.
Today, however, everything is ablaze. Rotimi is struggling to compose himself and don an acceptable facial expression. There are flames at his neck, and red at the tips of his ears. He tells himself to think of something– anything else. To give himself away to Angel’s overly active imagination, but even the artist’s thoughts aren’t as strong as those of the man standing right next to him.
Valentino is handing a drink to a customer. She’s busty, and has a centimeter of cleavage showing which is the only thing he notices. He thinks about squeezing her chest until she shrieks, splashing the soda on her so it soaks through her pale blouse, sucking it all off drip by drip–
“Why do you look so flustered?” Angel asks.
Valentino jumps.
But Angel is talking to Rotimi.
“Are you hot?” He asks without an answer to the first question. His voice making everything worse. Breath, steam pushing at the lid of a pot already threatening to boil over.
“Oh, I bet you are!” Valentino snickers, taking his eyes off of the woman’s retreating figure. “You were thinking about them too, weren’t you?”
Valentino’s energy is cocky. Angel’s is disappointed.
“How could I not?” Rotimi forces a grin on his face as he pretends not to notice how somber Angel gets.
Hydrangea blooming only in the shade of thick trees. Black and indigo absorbing all other colors. Stupid observant Angel.
Rotimi can’t help but notice him. He can’t help but notice how Angel’s energy picks back up when he locks eyes with him. It’s brief. Rotimi makes sure it is. He looks around for Valentino so that he can say something vulgar, and bring Angel’s energy back down. He looks around for Malomo, so that he can ask her to take over his register and he won’t have to be around him anymore.
I could paint him like that. Angel thinks. Roses across his nose bridge. I’d use a dark russet for his skin then layer it with gold and mahogany.
Angel doesn’t just see things differently, Rotimti realizes.
A smooth canvas. An angled brush.
He makes them that way.
I wonder if he’d let me– I wonder what would make him blush like that again.
Rotimi is stunned, pupils shaking and eyebrows skewed, as he sees himself through Angel’s eyes. He had always thought he was made up of everyone else. Their thoughts, their emotions. Not this stuff. Not sunlight through clouds, and not rosemary in his curls. He searches for a way out. A way to change Angel’s mind.
Tahira Bradley (she/her) is a senior English-Creative Writing major at Georgia State University. Her other fields of study include 2D art, Korean, and linguistics. Pulling from these different areas and her own personal experiences as a queer Black woman, she enjoys writing diverse literature that is both inclusive and explorative.
Follow Tahira on Instagram: @hoodbabyhira