I wanted my job, but my job didn’t want me, and after they fired me, I had to leave certain items off my grocery list.

Is this problem pressing enough to go on at length about? and to what length? and for how long?

My boyfriend tells me a girl can’t be buying value size jars of kosher dills, say, if like, every week she’s collecting a check from Sam, Sam who’s not her uncle but pays her like he is, Sam who sends questionnaires for her to fill full of names and phone numbers of all the places she’s called for notice of open positions.

For drama’s sake I’d like to say I write down fake phone numbers, fake names, but no way. I wouldn’t try to trick the government, at least, not while they were paying me to stay at home, use the phone, eat pickles—and not just any pickles, kosher dills!

My boyfriend will see a half empty jar in the fridge one day, a full jar in the fridge the next, and he’ll say those kinds of pickles are too expensive to buy like I buy them.

He thinks he knows, but really, what does he know?

He’s a government man, an employee, I mean.

He sees me in a brand new dress and says, “Is that new?”

And I say, “I don’t know. Does it look new to you?”

This man—this man is my match. He’s hard to push lies past, lies to cover up whatever it is I don’t want him looking at.

But sometimes a girl lays her own traps.

About Jason Lucarelli

Jason Lucarelli is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in Numéro Cinq, The Literarian, 3:AM Magazine, NANO Fiction, and Squawk Back. He lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

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