Читать книгу Everything Must Go - Elizabeth Flock, Elizabeth Flock - Страница 10

1985

Six fifty-nine. Every day it’s the same. The alarm is set to go off at seven but Henry’s eyes blink open at exactly 6:59. Henry Powell has never overslept in his life. Not once. Much to his disappointment. He has tried to sleep in—on weekends and holidays certainly—but attempts have ended up with frustrated flips under the covers, trying to shimmy his body into a position that will prolong sleep that never lasts beyond seven in the morning.

The room is so quiet he can hear the clock’s three metal plates fall over, turning 6-5-9 into 7-0-0. A gentle click of a sound. The radio lazily comes on (ten seconds after the changing of the numerical guard, he notes) and the room fills with shootings, traffic backups, baseball disappointments and heat indices.

“O-kay,” he exhales, and pushes himself to the edge of the mattress, legs dangling, feet brushing the dusty hardwood floor.

Soon the two-room apartment fills with the sounds of morning: shower spray hitting the tub, clock radio blaring, the blip blip blip of the coffeemaker forcing water through the tiny hole into the small glass pot beneath it. Once the shower’s been on a full three minutes Henry gets in, sure it’s hot enough. The mirror above the sink is already fogged up.

Four minutes into soaking with eyes closed, he feels along the tiled wall to the soap shelf. Lather is created. Private parts are soaped and rinsed. Two more minutes under the shower head that’s so old errant streams of water break rank and hit at odd angles. Water is turned off. Towel is found by groping hands. Body is dried and ready to step out onto the cold floor.

Like the childhood game of red light/green light, Henry freezes in exactly the position he’s in: toweling out his right ear. Was that the phone? He waits three seconds and yes, sure enough, the phone is ringing.

“Hello?” He holds his towel around his waist even though he is alone.

“Henry? Henry, it’s Mr. Beardsley.” He doesn’t wait for Henry to murmur hello, which he does, inaudibly. “You’ve got to come right in. Can you? Can you come in right now? I need you right now.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says with a glance over to the clock. It’s seven nineteen. “What’s going on?”

“Just come in as soon as you can get here.” Click. Mr. Beardsley—of all people—didn’t say goodbye. Just hung up.

He pulls a pair of briefs out of his underwear drawer. Boxers are too free form for a day that very well may require some kind of physical exertion. Better to go with briefs. Then khakis, his staple blue oxford and blue blazer. The neat sound of the tightly woven silk tie being pulled off the rack and he’s out the door. No time for his customary commuter cup of coffee, he’s pleased that at least he remembered to turn off the coffeemaker before locking up.

England Dan and John Ford Coley are singing far too loudly, the sound a shock to the morning quiet—it takes a moment for him to turn the knob down. Lite rock never is, in the morning.

His jaw is clenched in what’s become his natural expression. “You mad about something?” his friend Tom Geigan asked him not too long ago even though they were enjoying a Mets game on TV. Indeed, when he opened his mouth to answer no it was a relief to his jaw muscles. Since then he has to consciously relax his mouth throughout the day.

The hard rain that lulled him to sleep the night before has changed the landscape of his morning drive. He passes three plugged-up gutters on his way in to work, pools of stagnant water circling out into the middle of Main Street. The single traffic light that forces hesitation between his apartment complex and his job blinks red and no one else is on the road so he makes it downtown in minutes. He skims through the last pool and sails into a parking space right in front of the building.

But instead of rushing in, his hand remains on the gearshift long after he is parked. For here she is. The girl he noticed two days ago getting into her car, parked alongside his. Even though she’s got a whole street full of empty parking spaces, she is once again pulling in to the one alongside his.

“Hey,” he says, careful to appear casual with a half-head nod in her direction. He tries to look as if he, too, is juggling too much to fully concentrate on the morning greeting. But he doesn’t have a coffee cup or an armful of papers and books like she does. He is holding his tie in one hand, keys in the other.

“Hi.” She says it as more of an apology than a greeting. “Some rain, huh?” She juts out her chin and blows her bangs out of her eyes since her hands are full. Then she moves up to the curb, where he’s standing.

“Yeah,” he says. “You need some help?” he reaches out to indicate he means the books she’s loaded down with.

“Uh, no,” she says. “I’ve got it. Thanks, though.” He turns to go.

Then, providence intervenes. The sound forces her to reconsider. They both turn and face the source, knowing that it will require her to submit to his offer.

Splayed out on the wet pavement is her key chain, mocking the distance between them.

“Here, let me …” Henry doesn’t finish the sentence, aware now that she is strangely embarrassed at having to accept help. He leans down and scoops up the keys and tries to hand them back to her but quickly realizes she’s got no free hand with which to accept them.

“What d’you …”

“Could you …” They speak at the same time. Then she starts over. “Could you just … would you mind just grabbing that door—no, down there. I work at Cup-a-Joe,” she explains while walking. “You probably think I’m nutso, drinking coffee on my way to a coffee shop.”

“I didn’t even notice—”

“It’s just that it takes a while to brew. At the store. It takes a while to get everything up and running so I drink coffee on my way in. The key with that purple dot? Yeah, that one. I put permanent marker on my keys to tell them apart better. It’s the bottom lock first. No, turn it to the right. I know it’s stupid. My roommate makes fun of me. Counterclockwise. No, other way … Yeah. But this way I don’t waste time trying every single key on my key chain before hitting the right one. Okay, then the top one is the key with the black dot.…”

“Henry!” Mr. Beardsley bellows down the sidewalk. “What’re you doing?”

They turn to Henry’s boss, the dripping mop an explanation for his early-morning call.

“I’ll be right there,” Henry calls over. He knows this exchange has cost him response time.

“I can take it from here,” she’s saying, “thanks so much. I can get it. Oh, great.”

Henry’s unlocked the top lock and is pushing the glass door open for her.

“Thanks a lot.” She collapses her load of papers and books onto the bar-height counter along the front window that enables coffee drinkers to face out and watch nothing happen. “Phew.” She pushes her hair out of her face with a finality that blown air cannot achieve. “I hope I didn’t get you in trouble for being late.”

“Oh, no.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m Cathy,” she says, extending her hand for a shake. “Cathy Nicholas.”

The morning is spent pressing water out of the sopped carpet in the front of the store. The plastic sealants surrounding the double glass doors failed to keep the rain out, most likely because the wind blew it sideways throughout the night. Henry’s job is to twist the soaked mop out, which he does over and over again out at the curb. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice he marches to and from the curb and each time he glances down toward Cup-a-Joe. It takes three hours before most of the heavy damage is controlled. Mr. Beardsley has set up little yellow sandwich boards that read Caution: Wet Floor and depict stick men falling.

For the first time in Mr. Beardsley’s years at Baxter’s the store is closed during regular business hours. Customers would track this all through the store, he tells Henry, and then the whole carpet would be ruined. The smell of mildew is already threatening the inventory.

Henry and Mr. Beardsley set up two industrial-size fans on either side of the worst part of the damage and face them out to the street, opening up the double doors. The hope is that the moisture will be pulled from the ground and carried off, like a drunk is peeled off the sticky barroom floor and deposited elsewhere to sleep it off.

By midday Henry’s back aches. He stands up and stretches, tired from pressing the floor with beach towels Mr. Beardsley has run out and bought down the street at the dollar store.

“This is terrible,” Mr. Beardsley says. He is standing alongside Henry but has to yell to be heard over the fans. “Just terrible.”

“It’ll dry up,” Henry says. “It won’t be too bad.”

“No one wants to buy smelly clothes,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I’m going to go out and get some air freshener. I’ll be right back.”

Henry sits behind the counter and thinks about Cathy Nicholas.

He curses himself for not noticing her body. He’d taken in her face at the time and now, trying too hard, he cannot even conjure that up. She has brown hair. The kind of brown that he is willing to bet was, in childhood, white-blond. It’s straight, he thinks, though he’s not quite sure.

He has to get back into the dating game, he knows this much. His last date had a lazy eye. He had not known which eye to look at and frankly it felt creepy. He’d nicknamed her Cross-Eyed Mary for the Jethro Tull song of the same name and he’d joked about her with his friend Tom and felt bad about it.

Since Cross-Eyed Mary there had been no one. He worried that dating was a muscle that needed to be exercised, so one night, for practice, he pulled two plates out of the cabinet above his tiny kitchen counter—only big enough to accommodate his coffeemaker and a toaster oven on one side of the sink, a drying rack on the other. Two forks. Two knives. Even two place mats—the ones he had taken from his parents’ house when he had found this apartment. They had long since stopped using place mats at the Powell house so he figured they would not miss them. At the time he had figured it would be a good thing to have two place mats for dating purposes.

He set up the pair of places on the rickety thrift-store dinette table and stood back to admire it. Not bad, he thought. But after a few minutes he decided the place mats cheapened the look of the whole thing, being plastic foam and somewhat picked at the edges. He carefully put it all back—cabinet door opening and closing, drawers doing the same—it felt sad to him. Like the plates had gotten their hopes up. And the forks. Knives can fend for themselves.

The drying rack has the single plate he uses for dinner, the bowl he uses for cereal, a single spoon, fork and knife and at times a pot that is drying, depending on what he has cooked. Every so often he replaces each one to give them all equal rotation.

He tells himself he will ask this Cathy out for dinner. He feels certain she does not have a lazy eye.

The problem will be her falling in love with him. They all do, he shakes his head. It gets tricky extricating himself from these relationships. Cross-Eyed Mary had called and called. He didn’t know for certain it was her—she never left a message—but he could just tell. He didn’t answer—Jesus, no way, she’d hear my voice, tears would follow so better to just let the phone ring.

The ghost writer leans forward to make sure his tape recorder is getting all this and appears relieved to see he still has time on the miniscule tape cassette. All the women love Henry Powell, he scribbles in his notepad. Yes, Henry nods silently and then says, it’s always been the way. I guess it’s like fat people hearing thin ones complain about having to put on weight so I maybe shouldn’t say this out loud, Henry says, but really it is difficult to be me in these sorts of situations. Oh, yes, I’m sure, the man gives a sympathetic nod. I cannot imagine how difficult, he adds.

“Henry? I could use your help with this,” Mr. Beardsley says, pushing his way past the wind tunnel the fans have created, handing Henry one can of Lysol. He takes the other and starts spraying.

“Won’t this be worse for the clothes?” Henry calls out over the fans.

“What?”

“I said, won’t this be worse for the clothes? This spray sticking to them? This smells worse than the water did,” he shouts.

Mr. Beardsley stops spraying and sniffs the air.

“Shit, you’re right,” he says. It is the first time Henry has heard his boss swear. “Jesus, what’re we going to do?” He drops the can of Lysol to the floor and it rolls under a rack of pants.

“Let’s just let the fans go for a little while,” Henry says. “I think the fans are all we need.” He lowers to one knee to reach the Lysol.

“What?”

“Let the fans do it,” Henry shouts. “It’ll be fine.”

He rolls his sleeves back down and buttons them. Mr. Beardsley is staring at the carpet as if willing it to dry.

“How much longer do you want me to stay?” Henry asks.

Mr. Beardsley motions to the area just past the counter and points to his ear, indicating he cannot hear, though Henry is sure he has.

“What’d you say?” he asks Henry once they are farther away from the fans.

“Um, how much longer did you need me, do you think? I can come back … I’ve just … I’ve got to run a quick appointment, you know.”

Mr. Beardsley nods. “Yes, yes, five-fifteen. I know. Go ahead. You don’t need to come back.”

“If you need me I can come back. I mean, if you need me.”

There is a pause.

“It’s okay,” Mr. Beardsley finally says. He is so tentative Henry decides against offering again, as he was going to do a moment before the pause. To be polite.

“Okay, thanks,” he says. “Um, I’ll come in early tomorrow to clean up what doesn’t get done tonight. Don’t worry. I think the fans will really do it.”

Mr. Beardsley looks back out toward the doors. “You think?”

“Yeah, totally.”

“I don’t know. I hope you’re right. Okay, well, go on then. Have a good night.”

“Thanks. See you tomorrow,” Henry calls out over the sound.

Cup-a-Joe is already closed he notes, getting into his Jeep. Most of the stores along the street are closed. Henry starts up the Jeep and puts it right into Reverse instead of waiting the thirty seconds he normally does to let the engine warm up. He hurries along Main Street and soon pulls up in front of his parents’ house.

“Hel-lo? Mom?” he calls out, shutting the door behind. “Mom?”

He hears the refrigerator door closing so he goes into the kitchen.

She is mixing the orange juice into the vodka, ice cubes jingling.

“Hey, Mom,” he says.

“Hey is for horses,” she says. She is alert, her smile full of recognition, but Henry has been fooled before. He steels himself and sure enough the impulse to rush to her, hug her, bury his head in her chest, dissipates as she teeters past him to the living room. Imperious. Regal. And very, very drunk.

“You doing all right? You seem better today. Did you take your pills?”

“Did you take your pills, listen to this. My son doddering over me like I’m an old lady.”

“You okay on groceries?” Henry ignores her comment and goes back to see how they are holding up, food-wise.

“Liquid lunch,” she says, toasting the air in front of her and spilling a little in the process.

“Mom, you really shouldn’t be.”

“Don’t even finish that sentence, Henry Powell. Where’s my Brad? He came by yesterday but only stayed a few minutes.”

“That was me, Mom,” Henry says. “Brad’s in Portland, remember?”

“That was most certainly not you,” she says.

“It was me. You want to watch something? What’s on now?”

“I want to watch something with my Brad,” she says. “He was always so sweet. Did I ever tell you about the time he tiptoed into the kitchen after I’d burned a roast that tasted like an old shoe?” She leaned over conspiratorially as if this were not her own son she was speaking with. “He tiptoed in and whispered to me that he’d liked it just fine. He said it just like that, ‘It was fine, Mom. Just fine.’ So sweet, my Brad.”

A little later Henry pulls his Jeep into space number twelve in front of his apartment building. There are two visitor spots for every unit in his building but his have never been used.

He unlocks the top lock, then the bottom, lets himself in and closes the door. He throws his keys like dice to the counter and reaches for the phone book.

“L, m, n … n … ni … Nichitas … Nicholas,” Henry says. “C. Nicholas. Bingo. C. Nicholas, 452 Railroad Avenue.”

He looks up and squints while tracing the back roads of town in his head. Railroad Avenue should be familiar as he knows where the tracks are and how they cut through town, but he is quite certain the road that runs alongside it is Lockridge. The train tracks are not so obvious in their division of the town for they cut through like a knife into a sandwich, separating east from west to no effect. Rather, the real distinction lies between the town’s north and south.

After the cluster of Victorians and small Cape Cods huddling near downtown, the roads wend their way north past larger properties, set farther back from the road. In many cases, tucked nicely in the center of manicured and landscaped lawns, more likely called grounds. Homes protected by gates, some wrought iron, others fashioned to look like barn locks, crisscrossed-and-painted wood. Mallard mailboxes, stone walls, forsythia, boxwood and rhododendron, in different combinations, complete the complexion. Over there the Petersons’, where Henry drank too much beer after their senior prom and passed out in the pool house next to fat Sally Evans, who had vomited up her drinks. Over here the Childers’, where Henry walked in on Steve Wilson, a junior at the time, in the master bedroom with a classmate’s college-age sister. Just up that hill, behind the Alcatraz gates, sophomore Henry brokered a peace agreement between John von Sutter and Kitty Connors, who were on the angry side of the breakup-reconcile pendulum.

In one motion the phone book is closed and keys are grabbed. The light is fading and Henry wants to set out while he can still read street signs.

The Top 40 station is playing “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” and it crosses Henry’s mind that 1985 is not a good year for music. He hasn’t bought a record in two months. Turning from his low-rise apartment complex he drives down Elm to Lockridge and follows the tracks, slowing at each intersecting street to read the signs. Mason, Brookridge, Shore and one that has no sign at all but could not be Railroad as it dead-ends into the town dump.

Two verses into Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen” he sees it. Railroad Avenue. He takes a chance and turns right but it is wrong, as all initial directional choices turn out to be. The numbers are going lower from 132, not higher. So he pulls into a driveway in front of a decrepit boxy house and flips the Jeep into Reverse, lowering the radio before backing out.

He slows in front of number 452, a brick apartment building that yields no clues, as he had hoped it would. He parks the Jeep across the street and waits. Other than a discarded plastic bag jellyfish dancing along the sidewalk, filling up then deflating with wind, there is no movement anywhere on the block. An empty Tab can rolls under a car across from his. He turns up the radio even though it’s “Ghostbusters,” a song he hates. He rests his head back and closes his eyes, remembering her trying to blow her hair out of her face. Then shaking his hand. Then saying her name. Cathy Nicholas.

By the time he opens his eyes, “Purple Rain” is ending and it is dark. No plastic bag in sight. Several lights are on in the apartments facing the street and he regrets not getting out earlier to see which is hers. He cannot do it now, he reasons, because someone may have seen him—she may have seen him—and he feels he must go home.

In the dating world there is a finite amount of time in which date requests can be made following random meetings. To Henry’s way of thinking, this period is not greater than forty-eight hours. The sooner the better, he tells himself. And so the next day, the day after meeting her, Henry goes in to Cup-a-Joe before going in to work.

“Hey,” he says once it is his turn to place an order.

“Hi, there,” she says. “What can I get for you?”

“We met yesterday,” he says, coloring. “The flooding? You dropped your keys?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says. But she does not appear to remember. “How are you?”

“I’m Henry,” he says. “It’s Cathy, right? I helped you unlock the store in the morning.”

“Oooh, yeah,” she says, this time with genuine recognition. “Thanks again.” She glances around him to the line that has developed. “What can I get you?”

“Ah, actually I was wondering if you wanted to grab a bite later,” he says. “Lunch, maybe?”

“What? Oh, ah, I don’t know,” she says. “Um, do you mind … I’m not supposed to … um, can I just help this … ah, lemme see.” The stammers are meant to encourage Henry to move over to the side of the register so others can order.

Before he can do this the woman in back of him in line tilts Von Trapp-family-style to the side to catch Cathy’s eye and orders a decaf. Henry now sees the line and moves over.

“I’m sorry,” Cathy says, turning to fill the order, “it’s a really bad time right now.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Henry says. “Sorry. I’ll come back. I’ll try you again later.”

“Yeah, thanks. Sorry,” she says.

“No problem.”

But it does indeed present a problem to Henry, who is now unsure of when he can revisit the topic with her. Did she mean it was a bad time now as in time of day, he wonders, or as in time in her life? He decides she must have been alluding to the early-morning rush for caffeine.

Baxter’s is dark and locked, as Henry knew it would be this early. It is eight o’clock, two hours before the store is set to open. Even though he told Mr. Beardsley he would open the store, he had half expected his boss to be there himself to assess the damage.

Henry separates the store key from the others on his key ring and unlocks the door. The smell is like a punch. Mildew. Unmistakable. It reminds Henry of the boathouse at Fox Run where they jockeyed for the newer, less-smelly, life jackets before sailing class.

Henry knows Mr. Beardsley will unravel when he arrives so he hurries over to the phone.

“This better be an emergency,” Tom Geigan says in lieu of “hello.”

Geigan has worked at the local hardware store for as long as Henry could remember. His specialty is cutting keys. There is a sign reading Key Korner above his tiny nook toward the back of the store. Henry at first thought him much older but in fact only two years separate them—Geigan dropped out of high school and Henry assumed this adds to the division.

They met soon after Henry began working at Baxter’s in his senior year of high school, but both seemed to sense his impermanence so, while they were cordial to each other (no smiles, just respectful head nods and the occasional “How you doing?”), they more or less kept to themselves. It wasn’t until Henry was full-time at Baxter’s and found himself sitting on the bar stool next to Geigan that they both spoke to each other in complete sentences and the friendship took flight. Still—Henry being completely honest here—he had the itch of a thought that the friendship was temporary. The feeling that it would not be the sort of friendship to withstand a geographical move or a major life change. There was something that kept them off kilter. Fox Run? Henry was not sure.

“You don’t even know who this is,” Henry says.

“I don’t care who it is. If you’re calling at this hour, it better be an emergency,” Tom says. “There’s a construction site banging away in my head.”

“Yeah, well, get up, it’s an emergency,” Henry says. “You’ve got to come down here.”

“What is it?” Henry can tell Tom’s eyes are now open with yawning curiosity.

“How fast can you get here? Seriously.”

“Seriously, you better tell me what the fuck is so damn important and then I’ll tell you how fast I’ll be,” he says. Another yawn.

“Just get down here,” Henry says and hangs up.

The phone rings before Henry has moved away from the counter.

“I’m serious,” Henry says, sure that it is Tom calling back.

“What? Henry?” It is Mr. Beardsley.

“Oh, sorry,” Henry says. “I thought you were someone else. Actually I was just going to call you.…”

“Jesus. How bad is it? Did the smell go away? Is it dry?”

“Everything’s fine,” Henry lies. “I was just going to check in, you know, see how it went last night.”

“I was there until one in the morning,” Mr. Beardsley says. “But really, is it okay?”

“Yeah, sure, everything’s okay. Actually, why don’t you come in late. Since you were here until one and all.”

“So now you’re setting my hours? What’s going on, Henry?”

“No. I mean I’m not trying to set your hours. I’m just saying, I’ve got everything covered here and if you wanted to take your time getting in that’d be fine. Sorry.”

“I am a bit tired.”

“There. See? Just take your time. I’ve got it covered.”

There is a pause and Henry cannot be sure but he thinks he hears Mr. Beardsley stifling a yawn. That, he thinks, would be perfect: if Mr. Beardsley could go back to sleep that would be perfect.

“All right,” Mr. Beardsley says. “I’ll see you in a little while.”

“Take your time.”

Henry hangs up and goes back to the front doors, opening them one at a time so he can unfold the gateleg rubber stoppers that prevent them from closing. Fresh air wafts into the store. He imagines it a fight between superheroes: the strong, evil Mr. Mildew standing, feet apart, hands on hips defying the lightweight but equally powerful Captain Fresh Air, master of all that is good and right and decent, to try to thwart Mildew’s diabolical plan.

Because Baxter’s is a storefront in the middle of the block there are no windows to open. But it occurs to Henry that the backroom door, the emergency door, could be opened. This would create a crosswind. He looks out the front doors, up and down the sidewalk, to make sure gangs of looters aren’t lying in wait for the opportunity to make off with armloads of men’s clothing. Then he moves through the store, dodging displays as if they are players on an opposing team, Henry with the golden football under his arm.

The back door is metal and has a menacing brace across it that cautions it is not to be used or “alarms will sound.” But he happens to know the alarm will not sound because the company that installed the fire door went out of business two years ago. The door is issuing empty threats. The crossbar makes an official-sounding clang as it unlocks the door to Fresh Air’s troops, hurrying in as Henry lowers the bridge across the moat.

“Yo! Powell!” It is Tom. Henry can hear him say Jesus frigging Christ and knows the smell has hit him.

“I’m back here,” Henry yells out. “Hang on. Be right there.”

He is looking for something to prop open the door and finds a cinder block mercifully close to the door in the alley.

“Hey,” he says in greeting Tom.

“What the hell happened? It smells like shit in here,” Tom says.

“Shit.” Henry had hoped Tom would arrive wondering why he’d been called in.

“Beardsley’s gonna freak out, man,” Tom says. He is shaking his head.

“What should I do? You’ve got to help me think of something,” Henry says.

“Did you do this?”

“Did I do what?”

“I don’t know, this,” Tom gestures to the problem area, including a wave of his arms meant to include the smell.

“No! Why would I do this? The store flooded yesterday. With all the rain,” Henry says.

“Why are you so worried, then, man? You guys got insurance to cover flooding, right? Plus it’s not like it’s your store. Let Beardsley worry about it. Why’ve you got your panties in a wad?”

Henry steps out onto the sidewalk to see if it is not windy out or if there is another reason air is not moving through the store as he had hoped. No wind.

“Seriously, man.” Tom has followed him out. “I can’t believe you hauled me down here when you could be dialing frigging State Farm. You should’ve come out last night. Blackie’s was packed. I got two numbers.”

Geigan was perpetually gathering pretty girls’ phone numbers. Even not-so-pretty girls. He held on to them like lottery tickets.

Henry stalks back into the store. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, Henry thinks. How that shitty—yes, shitty, so there—mullet can get women and I can’t. Screw him. Screw State Farm.

Still, and for different reasons, a tiny part of Henry cannot believe he is so concerned with the store carpet. Not because it very well may be an insurance issue but because this is not what he had in mind. That tiny little voice in his head thinks this is not how I thought my life would go. But this only annoys him more so he shakes it out of his head, like a random piece of lint, picked off clothing, that won’t float off from a hand.

It occurs to him that the fans will create what Mother Nature cannot: a perfect crosswind. “Just give me a hand, will you?”

“Did you hear a word I’ve said?” Tom asks, following him to the backroom.

“I heard you,” Henry says, handing Tom a fan. Just drop it, he thinks. For God’s sake, drop it. “I’ve got an idea. Here. Take this one and set it up facing the street up toward the middle of the store. I’m going to plug this one in here so it can get it started from back here.” He has to yell over the whirring fan as he plugs it in.

Henry comes up to just past sportswear and pushes pants and jackets wider apart to accommodate the fan. “Here.”

“It’s not gonna reach,” Tom says. “Where’s your outlet? You got an extension cord?”

“Yeah, let me go get it.”

“This is stupid, man,” Tom calls out across the store to him. “I’m telling you.”

“Here.” Henry hands him one end and snakes the coil along the floor to the closest outlet.

The second fan starts, taking the ball passed off from a huffing Captain Fresh Air and carrying it to the gray cement end zone.

Henry checks his watch. It is eight-thirty so he has an hour and a half until he should start looking for Mr. Beardsley. He knows Mr. Beardsley will, in the end, not be late.

“I’m going on a coffee run,” he says to Tom, who is lighting a cigarette outside in front of the store. “What do you want?”

“Now you’re talking,” Tom says, inhaling. “Black. Large. Just how I like my women.” Which Henry knows is not true—he has never known Tom Geigan to date a black woman. What he does know is Tom Geigan adds this phrase—just how I like my women—to anything ending in an adjective. If a traffic jam is slow and snarling Tom would follow up with just how I like my women.

“I’ll be right back. Can you stay right in front here just in case?”

Tom nods but says, “In case of what?”

Henry walks over to Cup-a-Joe. This time it is empty. He hurries in when he sees a car pulling up out front.

“Hey,” he says to Cathy.

“Hey,” she says back. She pushes her hair behind her ears and smoothes her apron.

Is she blushing? I think she’s blushing, he thinks. She definitely smiled at me. Be cool. Be cool.

“Could I get two coffees to go?” Henry asks. “Large. Both black.”

While she is filling the first cup, pulling down the black knob on the tall round metal container behind the register, he has the opportunity to appreciate her backside, which, he realizes, is perfect in size. Her Levi’s are tight and faded. With her back to him he works up courage and is surprised at his ability to say out loud what only moments before he had wished he could say. This is an infrequent but welcome occurrence.

“So I’m wondering,” he says, “I’m wondering if you want to go out sometime? Like to lunch maybe? Or dinner.”

“Oh,” she says, setting the two cups down in front of him. “Um, well.”

“Or we could get a drink after work maybe.”

She looks up at him and pushes the keys on the register. “That’s $3.25.” This time he is certain she is blushing.

He takes his wallet out of his back pocket and hands her four dollar bills. The register rings open and she fishes out three quarters.

“I guess,” she says finally. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Great. Tonight? After work tonight?” he asks, looking over his shoulder to where her gaze is leveled. His time is up. The man behind him already has his wallet out and two dollar bills in his hand, ready to order and pay in one motion.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Great. See you then.”

“Lids are over there” is all she says.

“Can I help you?” she is asking the impatient man with the two dollars.

Henry turns and backs out the door because his hands are full and because it affords him one more look at her. She is looking at him, too, and pinpricks of energy stab his skin. When she smiles at him—however quick it may have been—he feels himself becoming aroused.

His light-headedness might be because he is hungry and the first sip of coffee on an empty stomach does from time to time make him a little nauseated. Or it might be because he has a date with Cathy Nicholas. He cannot be sure which.

“Nice face,” Tom says, reaching for his drink.

“What?”

“Nothing. You look weird is all. So what’s the game plan here?”

Henry deflates as he looks inside at what is promising to be a lost cause.

“I don’t know. There’s got to be something else we can do.”

Tom shakes his head and ventures another sip of black coffee. “Not your problem-o.”

Henry imagines Cathy watching him. Admiring him from a distance—across the street maybe? No, he thinks, she’s closer. She can hear us. And once again he says the sort of thing he usually shies away from. Which is to say he speaks his mind.

“You know what? It is my problem,” he says to Geigan. “I work here, man. This is my job.”

Funny, he thinks, funny how Geigan does not seem to notice the change. He does not seem to mind being challenged. Huh.

“Yeah, well, I got a job, too, man, but if the whole place burned down tomorrow I’d walk away, find myself another job easy.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not that easy.”

“‘Course it is. See, that’s the difference between you and me, Powell. My job’s just that … a job. Your job’s …”