Excerpt: Ghosts, Gays, and Severely Pissed Off Musicians

For the next six days of work in Gold Music, I was the one who had to face the Garry Quartet. Or well, the Garry solo. He came in, saw me behind the counter, and went to the Rock section of the store. After exactly seventy eight seconds – he left. The second day, he saw me behind the counter, went to the Rock section again, this time only choosing to spend 62 seconds browsing before leaving. The third day, 45 seconds. On the fourth day, he was back in the Classical section. He spent five minutes browsing, looking over the ‘new’ titles, before coming to talk to me.
I nearly burst out laughing right in his face. This guy was too good to be true. He really was.
“Good Morning, Mr Westerman,” I said politely, leaning forward on the counter suggestively, a smile plastered on my face.
“Good morning, Oscar,” Oscar? Now I snorted.
“The name’s Michael,” I informed him, before pushing off of the counter, this idiot wasn’t worth my time. He knew Seth’s name, but had only heard Seth call me ‘Oz’, and had assumed my name must have been Oscar. It could have been Oswold, or Austin. But no, he was determined it was Oscar.
“Oh, well, is Seth around?”
“No, Barry,” I smiled, “Seth isn’t about today. He’s ill at home with Flu. If you’d like me to pass on a message, I’m sure I could pass it on to him when I get home and tend to him, our bed,” I heard Seth snort a giggle. Barry obviously didn’t. His mouth opened and closed, much like he was doing an impression of a goldfish. Obviously his gay-dar was off today, as it had been for the last week. At least now he knew who Seth ‘belonged’ to. If he had ever known I had used that word to describe the situation, he’d had hit me for it.
He doesn’t belong to anybody after all.
Garry quickly made his excuses to leave and was swiftly gone.
He didn’t come in the next day.
I did see him walk past though, look in, see me behind the counter, and as I gave him a sarcastic wave, he ignored me and carried on.