The parking lot was empty as I pulled into the AutoZone at dusk. Inside, the place looked deserted, which suited me fine.
I started to stroll the aisles, looking, when a voice from the back room broke the silence.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a nice, friendly way.
He startled me while I was intently scanning the aisles for a chartreuse can.
“I’m not sure,” was my reply.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?”
“Yes,” I said, still scanning the shelves and suddenly feeling like I was 18 and back at the Shop N Bag on St. Mary Street in Thibodaux whenever a new issue of Hustler magazine came out.
There was silence.
“OK,” the clerk said nonchalantly walking to the front of the store while drying his hands on a rag. “Just let me know if I can help.”
“I’m looking for hand cream,” I finally said. “You probably hear that every day.”
He laughed.
“This time of year, I actually do,” he said. “Front of the store right by the door.”
I felt stupid. I walked right by it and missed the bright green can.
O’Keeffe’s Working Hands. 
This has been a brutal winter, marked by wide swinging temperature extremes. It can be 70 one day and 17 a few days later. It’s taken a toll on my hands. They get rough and chapped. At one point, it felt like I had a dozen paper cuts on the edges of my hands. All the hand lotions I found in stores smelled a little too dainty for me, actually irritated my sinuses and left my hands feeling greasy.
A web search turned up O’Keeffe’s. It promised to fix dry and cracked hands almost overnight without leaving a perfumey odor after you’ve entered the room. I figured I’d give it a try.
The clerk rang up the sale and I paid cash out of a lingering need to feel anonymous in this transaction for whatever reason.
“Can I get you anything else?” the AutoZone clerk asked.
“Do y’all stock foot cream?” I replied.
“OK,” the clerk said. “Now you’re getting weird.”
