Breaking Protocol

    I work on the edges of corporate environments where people too-often worry about covering their asses rather than getting things done. A while back someone stopped a conversation and said, "let's worry about solving this rather than finding out who's at fault." She was a secretary, but I hope someday she becomes a CEO. I interpreted that experience into the below piece.

   Tracy didn’t know the man by name, but she knew him by sight. Evey other Friday  like clockwork he’d gas up, set a case of Keystone on the counter, and scan the lotto tickets. “Which one’s a winner,” he mumbled under his breath. He was always dirty, but in a good way. In a metal shavings, grease-under-the-cuticles sort of way.  
    For years Tracy rang up booze and dollar scratch tickets, until, like a dove dying in mid-flight, he had some sort of fall from grace. The man began to come in sporadically--sometimes daily, sometimes once a  month. He’d always be dirty--not in a good way. Cheap beer and a chance to get lucky turned to malt liquor and desperate hope.
     The man didn’t show tor weeks, then months. Finally,  when he make his way back to the store, Tracy noticed he’d lost two of his top teeth. Tracy noticed the grey lotto ticket dust under his fingernails had turned black and slimy. Threads of red spider-webbed across the whites of his eyes and his fetid breath teased Tracy’s gag reflex. She watched him and listened to the grumbling, manic whisper, “Which one is a winner?”
    Breaking protocol, Tracy reached out, laid her hand on his dusty Army-issued cameo jacket. She asked, “Hey, are you all right?”