The Sharp Time (8 page)

After a few drunken mumblings about how just because I haven’t seen Duchess, it doesn’t mean she isn’t there, and to check in the garage, Mrs. Cavanaugh starts to cry.

The bad comedy of my life. I hang up, pull my mother’s blankets over my head and sleep.

WEDNESDAY
FROG AND TOAD ARE FRIENDS

The first thing I learn on my second day of work is this: Bradley steals. The Pale Circus doesn’t accept credit or debit cards—it’s cash or check with ID on the barrelhead, baby. This is both an antiquated way to do business and an excellent one if you happen to be a quick-change artist. Perhaps it’s the only way to do it if you are, like Bradley, a sort of druggie Robin Hood of the vintage clothing game. I am working at the cash register when
three blondish sorority girls enter the store
, and, yes, I fully understand that this is the beginning of a stupid sports bar joke and one hates to offer up these simpleton summations, the laziness of cliché and physical detail. Nonetheless, three blond sorority girls really do straggle in, all highlights and laughter, carrying designer purses as chunky and unwieldy as laundry baskets strung up on leather braiding.

Bradley looks up from the sweaters he’s rearranging by color, the rack a genius wheel of black to purple to garnet and cardinal reds fading to pink and then white and ivory before the blues, the greens, the grainy rainbow of cream, maple and brown. He grimaces at the girls, and then rallies with the weakest smile. “Good morning.”

A bright day, the sun from the front windows dazzles us all. I am paying attention, yes I am, and I have a slight song in my heart as Bradley and I exchange a snobby smile of derision:
Ah, yes
, those
kind of girls
. The three little pigs squeal at the dress the headless mannequin is wearing: a short, A-line shift constructed of a clear vinyl shower curtain and shellacked vintage mini-boxes of breakfast cereal (Froot Loops, Frankenberry, Count Chocula, Apple Jacks). The mannequin is also wearing Ziggy Stardust boots: cherry-red platform boots with silver lightning bolts racing up the sides.

The girls say: “We so want this! Omigod, is that not a total crack-up? Can we get this? Is it for sale? Tell me it’s not just for display.”

Bradley allows a second to pass before he dignifies their questions with a reply. “It’s for sale. Let me get it down for you.”

“No! No worries. We can get it!”

They grab the mannequin and roughly turn the headless, molded girl to her side. They yank off her special dress. Anyone can see their inherent brutality. For sure these are the girls from the shower scene in
Carrie;
these three make the mean girls from
Mean Girls
seem like martyred saints.

Bradley looks at me and shrugs. He pins a Siamese cat brooch with glittering pink eyes to the collar of a navy blue cashmere coat, transforming a Talbots dorkfest to the ironic, the Hepburnesque. The blond girls leave the mannequin crashed over on her side as they hold the dress up to each other and laugh, and laugh, and laugh, their very own Cloroxed comedy show as they go tripping up to the counter. Bradley walks over to the cash register, but I hold my hands up and smile—I
got this
one!—because I am now the master of the register.

Bradley smiles and whispers, “Hey, let me ring this up, Sandinista,” and there is the inessential mystery of his aggressively Altoided breath, and then it happens.

He smiles at the girls. “All set?”

There is a gaggle of yep, yes and oh my Go-
od
, we found the perfect thing for our sorority’s hounds and hookers party.

Hounds and hookers? How can this be? How can they not see that this dress is fit for neither hound nor hooker, that it is a sugar-cereal Kansas City original, a throwback to the Factory days with a nuanced nod to recycling?

The least pretty of the girls holds out her American Express Gold card. (I smile at her and have a candy-colored elementary school flashback of trying to get in with the popular girls by offering them Jolly Ranchers on the school bus: “The sour apple is awesome, but the cinnamon ones are like a real fire on your tongue!”)

Bradley taps the sign on the front of the counter, the Edvard Munch postcard that announces
CASH AND PERSONAL CHECKS ONLY
.

And the girls say: “What?” And “Can you believe they don’t take credit cards?” And “Not taking credit cards blows.” and “How much do you have, how much do you have?” And they produce three twenties, which they hand to Bradley with much sorrow. The dress is exactly forty-three dollars, as per Henry Charbonneau’s inscrutable plan of never using a zero or a five in his pricing. Bradley smiles and hands the least pretty girl the change, not counting the bills or coins back, but placing the little pile of money in her cupped manicured hand. And then the girls breeze out the door, apparently unaware that three girls cannot wear one dress. Bradley makes a notation on the Big Chief Tablet where we record the day’s sales. Then he opens the cash register, takes out ten dollars and tucks it into his front jeans pocket—no furtive glances, just business as usual.

Then there is the panic and flurry of me trying to act like
I didn’t see
as Henry Charbonneau walks into the Pale Circus with a man as tall and good-looking as himself, such a foxy doppelgänger that you immediately assume that love or even fondness is an impossibility, that what you are seeing in tight focus is pure, distilled narcissism. But who am I to say? I am not ruling out the mystical. The only thing I can be sure of is what I see: Bradley slipping away from the cash register, Bradley among the sweaters, Bradley raising his face and giving Henry Charbonneau and his friend a quick nod, a “hey” of calculated casualness.

And of course I am well acquainted with that
hey;
it is the last word you say before you cast your eyes down and pretend that nothing is happening, that your brain is not a crush of
OhIamsofucked
. I watch Bradley watching Henry Charbonneau from his peripheral vision: Henry Charbonneau is all cheekbones and smiles. His arms are full of vintage dresses, a rainbow clutched to his chest. He looks surprised to see me, even though he wrote out the week’s schedule. Henry Charbonneau heaps the dresses on the counter—a good day at the estate sales—and says to me, “Mornin’, sweet lady.”

His friend smiles at me in a comradely way, as if to say,
He’s kind of an ass, but how can I help myself?
, and I try to conjure a knowing grin to convey that, yes, the handsome jackass in his native habitat, though perilous, is often irresistible.

“This is Paul.” Henry touches the crook of Paul’s arm, a tender, paternal gesture.

Paul keeps his sheepish smile going strong as Henry Charbonneau massages his arm.

I have always thought the phrase “his face clouded” a hilarious expression—
Baby, glue some cotton balls to your forehead and give me a great big cumulous smile
. But when I look over at Bradley, who is studiously buttoning up a Kermit-green cardigan, his face really does cloud, a gray shadow rising from his neck to his forehead.

Henry Charbonneau raises his hand to me, and says, “Paul, this is …” And this is not his fault, but in this pregnant pause, Catherine Bennett looms in, her coffee breath flooding my face as she asks, “Sandinista, do you even know how to pay attention?” In my mind’s bloodshot eye, I turn to her and say—politely, and with a modest smile:
Mrs. Bennett, please do not forget that I have a … what’s the name of that metal apparatus that shoots bullets? Mrs. Bennett? Yoo-hoo?

Poor Henry Charbonneau searches for my name in a brain so very filled with Henry. See also: foxiness of; see also: aesthetic genius of, etc. I feel Catherine Bennett’s voice vibrating in my chest, in the bruised spot on my ribs.

I am afraid if I speak I will start to cry.

This is only my second day at the Pale Circus, so Henry Charbonneau’s forgetting my name is totally understandable. Well, then again, he did hire me, which, according to Bradley, is pretty rare. Bradley says I was lucky in my timing because I walked into the Pale Circus just as Henry Charbonneau had enjoyed some kind of winter wonderland weekend with his new lover. I got the job because he had fallen in love, love, love, love and wanted to spend less time at the store. Although really it was Catherine Bennett’s timing—her Monday madness—that changed the course of the week. Henry Charbonneau has Catherine Bennett to thank for his sudden freedom to wander the estate sales and stop at cafés for baklava and lattes with his new love.

“This is the new girl,” Henry Charbonneau finally says. “Is she not a peach?” he asks, pointing to my melony cashmere sweater. “Is she not a little doll in the house of life?”

Already I know that Bradley and I will be mocking this last phrase, and this releases me from Catherine Bennett’s death grip. I smile and hold out my hand to Paul. “I’m Sandinista. Nice to meet you.”

“My pleasure, my pleasure,” he says. “Sandinista: Your parents must be Clash fans. I love that album! You’re lucky that they gave you such a beautiful, unusual name. It’s unforgettable, actually.”

But Henry Charbonneau misses the dig. He isn’t paying attention because a woman has entered the store wearing stiletto boots. He winces at every sharp
clackaclack
of the boots, worrying about pockmarks on the gleaming hardwood floor of the Pale Circus, while he makes a big show of looking at the Big Chief tablet, checking the sales. And in what I imagine is an effort to look whimsical and carefree to his new lover, Henry Charbonneau puts himself at extreme risk by popping a circus peanut in his mouth. All the while there is Bradley arranging the sweaters, his hands moving through the racks, fingers chapped from smoking weed in the cold, the crucified Lord on his left thumb, his face a raw radiance of pain.

I know this was my face the day that the words
mother
and
car accident
became key ones in my vocabulary, the day that I was not paying attention, paying attention, paying attention, the exact look I had on that drizzly September day when the state social worker told me that my new and motherless life would be … just like living in a dorm! Well, sort of like living in a dorm, an empty dorm. My new life with the house to myself would have to suffice, because, well, there were no guardians in place for me, and it was lucky—well, not
lucky
, but maybe fortunate—that I was eighteen and so while still eligible for some services as a juvenile I would not have to go to a foster home, the words
foster home
springing out of the social worker’s mouth with the same cadence of horror one uses when saying
rape
or
leukemia
. My mom had bought our house outright with an inheritance from my grandfather, so there was no mortgage and I would receive enough social security to pay for utility bills and car insurance and groceries, and the social worker assured me that my school would work with me, that the school would be sensitive about my situation. And Uncle Richard, my mom’s older brother, and his new wife, Pam, came up from Florida to help me with banking issues, with setting up bill payment over the Internet, the sadness of transfers—deeds, titles—accompanied by a strange smile of expectant happiness on Uncle Richard’s face, as if I were not properly expressing my elated gratitude, as if I were neglecting to pump my fist in the air and shout, “The Taurus is mine, motherfuckers!”

So I’m feeling short of breath just thinking about it all, and the bruise on my ribs hurts, a little sun radiating a burst of pain, and I’m not really
paying attention
to anything. But what I see out the window is this: a monk is staring at the Ziggy Stardust boots in the display. One of his hands is teacupped against the window glass, and he’s smiling—beatific and amazed—and indeed it would be the greatest day in the world if the monk came in the shop and bought the Ziggy Stardust boots. He could go down the street, his sandals dangling in his hand, the hem of his robe rising up and showing off the silver lightning bolts that race up the sides, the cherry-red platform soles.

Bradley is watching the monk, and I look over and see that Henry Charbonneau and Paul are looking at him too, and we all dearly want him to buy these boots, we all want something offbeat and beautiful to come crashing through the day, and I start to love everyone in the world—well, not
everyone—
and that’s when a granola woman—poncho, scuffed suede Birkenstocks—walks into the Pale Circus. She browses through the jackets before she pulls out a buckskin-fringe number and gives a happy little nod:
Oh, yeah, baby, this is it
.

Bradley saunters over to the counter with the granola woman and, with a burst of understated drama, reveals his genius. Bradley rings her up in full view of Henry Charbonneau and when he hands the woman her change, he gives her an extra ten-dollar bill. The woman takes her coat—in deference to Mother Earth, she passes on the plastic bag we offer—and counts her change. Her long, oatmeal-colored hair blankets her face until she peers up like a blond mole, and says, “Uh, I think you gave me too much change.”

Bradley winces as he appear to check his math, looking into the cash register drawer, and then rolling his eyes. He takes the ten-dollar bill the woman is holding out to him. “Math is not really my forte,” he says with a humble nod.

And I see the inherent genius in this preemptive cash game—if there is ever a question of wrongdoing, it will simply be because Bradley is not good at math. Henry Charbonneau has witnessed him actively being not good at math, and it all makes sense to me, because clearly Bradley likes the weed and I’m not sure if the vintage-clothes game would keep him high.

Henry Charbonneau sighs in faux exaggeration. “This is why I’ll never retire in Paris. This is why I’ll be slogging off to the estate sales at eighty-five in soggy Depends and dentures, Bradley.”

Granola Woman gives a twitchy, repentant smile, looking truly distressed that she may have caused someone any trouble—or perhaps it’s just the adult diaper reference—and I long to say,
You, O Lady of Natural Fibers, are but a cog in the wheel of financial deceit
.