“To what do I owe the honor?” Thomas asks, chugging his triple espresso so that he’ll be a little more clearheaded.
“I moved,” she smiles. “Luke found me a room with one of his friends. And now I really need a job.”
“What does your mom say about that?”
“What can she say? I’m eighteen. I’m an adult.”
“Are you?”
“Yes!” Alice looks directly at him. “She flipped, of course, she threw a jar of pickles at me, shouting and carrying on. But then she packed all my clothes and set them out in the stairwell. She changed the lock, too, but the next day she called and begged me to come home. Now it seems like she’s accepted it. You know her. But she won’t give me any money, and I’m seriously broke. I need to pay rent in fourteen days. They’ve let me owe them.”
The omelet arrives. Alice squirts ketchup onto her plate and dives into her food. She stuffs a chunk of sausage into the folded-up omelet that’s already in her mouth, then licks the grease from her fingers after she’s swallowed, mumbling, “Sorry, but I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.”
“Are you still seeing Ernesto?”
She nods.
“And where does he live?”
“With a friend.”
“How’s it going with his band?”
“Good. They’ve got a concert tonight. Do you want to come?”
“Maybe.”
“Can you loan me some money? I promise to pay you back when I have a job.”
“But are you even looking for a job?”
“Of course!”
Thomas promises to call her later and consider going to the concert. “Maybe Luke will come, too,” Alice says. “We’ve become really good friends. He’s super cool. Ernesto and I hang out sometimes at Café Rose and he’s teaching Ernesto how to shoot craps and win.”
“How do you teach that? The dice fall randomly. Does he have some sort of unique shaking technique, or what?”
Alice smiles. “I don’t know. But it’s kinda fun. He tells me stories about Grandpa and buys me drinks.”
It annoys Thomas that she refers to his father as “Grandpa.” He sucks air through his nose and leans back, tipping in his chair.
“What stories does he tell?”
“All sorts.”
The chair lands hard on all four legs. “Listen. Your grandpa was a criminal and not a nice person. You shouldn’t listen too much to Luc’s glorifying nonsense. Half of it is probably a lie—all that stuff about fishing I guarantee is a lie.”
Alice gives him a defiant look. “Wasn’t it, like, a hundred years since you last saw him?”
“Wasn’t he in jail because he was a fucking crook?”
“Thieves aren’t by definition bad people. Maybe he changed. Besides, can’t thieves go fishing too?”
“He was a mean bastard.”
“But he read poems.”
“What did you say?”
“He read poems. Poetry. That’s what Luke says.”
Thomas shakes his head vehemently. “Give me a break.”
Alice lifts a French fry with her index finger and thumb and dips it extraordinarily slowly into her mouth. “I think it’s a nice thing to think about. He loved Shakespeare’s sonnets. Knew many of them by heart. He read Whitman. Have you ever read Whitman?”
“Of course I’ve read Whitman! Have you?”
Alice laughs. “No.”
“He also read Borges. Mayakovsky and Celan. That’s what Luke says. I think those sound like pretty names. Celan . . .”
“Celan? He needs to cut it out. My father never read Celan.”
“Rilke, Mallarmé . . . Oh, he was supposedly obsessed with Rilke, according to Luke.”
“Alice, this is crazy. You . . .”
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know, but he hasn’t read Mallarmé either—”
“Aren’t you wearing a watch?”
Despite himself, Thomas pushes up his sleeve and glances at his watch. It’s 10:00 A.M.
“Fuck, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a job interview.”
“Where?”
She winks. “Wouldn’t you like to know!”
He stares at her face, unnerved. Lets his eyes glide down her forehead, cheeks, lips. Is she going to be a go-go dancer? A stripper? A hole to fuck? And why does he actually think that? She looks totally serene. Then her face cracks open and a childish, disarming, perfectly happy smile spreads across it. “Thanks for breakfast, Uncle Thomas.” She sets her hand on his, which is slack and cold on the table—as if it didn’t belong to his body. “You shouldn’t worry so much about me. I’ll manage. I’m feeling good now, much better than before. You know? I’m telling you, living at home was so depressing, I was fucking depressed. She drove me fucking crazy.”
“Stop saying fuck all the time, Alice.”
“Now it’s kind of a relief. Now—now I am—full of hope, actually. Yeah, full of hope, that’s how I feel.” She stands and kisses him on the cheek. “Call me later, okay? Come with us tonight, we’ll have a lot of fun.” She moves easily and effortlessly through the restaurant, and the glass door slides shut behind her with a swoop. He stares at it for a long time. Now it’s as though she’s not been here at all, as if she were a ghost. But Celan? Rilke? He leans across the table, resting his head on his forearms. Oh, lethargic body. Oh, sleep. Then someone claps a hand on his shoulder and pulls him up. “No sleeping in a public place, young man.” Maloney stands before him in all his girth, a Coke in his hand, looking at him warmly. “C’mon.” Thomas gets to his feet and chugs across the street after Maloney. “Were you watching me and Alice the whole time?”
“Christ no, I just wanted a soda.” Maloney spits out a piece of chewing gum. “I can’t deal with anymore customers, you need to take over. All they do is complain. That visual artist returned an entire box of acrylics, one of the big ones. She claims they’re ‘dry.’” Maloney spins abruptly, and Thomas bumps into his belly. “What the hell does she mean by that? Who does she think she is? That’s shit for us, they’re goddamn expensive. It’s a straight loss.” He walks on, turns his head, raises his voice: “A straight loss!”
“Did you check the expiration date?” Thomas sniffles.
“Of course I checked the expiration date! They’re good for another three years. Go see for yourself. I don’t think they’re dry at all.”
“But they’ll just need to be returned to Gross & Selvaggi, right? That can’t be our problem.”
Maloney groans. “Just have a look at them, okay? And what are we going to do about the coffee automat? It’s enough to make me sick.” He shoves the door open. Annie, who’s standing at the register, glances up from her book; he strides past her, hunched over. “Fucking bullshit. I’m going to the basement. Peter! Inventory! C’mon!” Sighing, Annie returns to her book. Down at the end of the store, two teenage boys fumble with some of the expensive ballpoint pens. They probably write poetry too, Thomas thinks, just like fucking Mallarmé. An almost welcome stab of anger throws him off balance, his body tense as a bow; he clenches his enfeebled hands into fists and kicks a cardboard box. Annie lurches once again when he shoves open the door to the street with his hip and shoulder then closes it hard with both hands, suddenly irritated by the loose springing mechanism, the soundless sliding noise, tame, toothless, in every way an expression of an anesthetized bourgeois and political correctness. A door should slam shut, goddamnit, hard and resoundingly, like when an ax strikes a rock. He smokes a cigarette, feeling his body as something toughened, agitated, as if Maloney has broken through his sleepwalking and infected him with his continually seething stew of emotions. But Thomas isn’t seething. He’s boiling. He wants to kick something over and punch someone’s face until it bleeds, gushing red. He wants to see blood. Because what the fuck’s up with poems, and Luke finding Alice a room? Angrily he checks the box of returned acrylics, comparing them with the individual tubes they sell. Sure enough, the colors in the box a
re a little dryer than the newer tubes. He calls Gross & Selvaggi, fills out the return slip for the entire shipment of “artist boxes,” and orders a new crate. After taking a deep breath he writes the visual artist, apologizes, says it’s their fault. He’ll let her know as soon as a new batch has arrived. She can kiss my ass, he mumbles to himself. But in the meantime he would like to offer her a small compensation, and he invites her to come see the pastels, charcoal, and watercolor paper. He doesn’t send her an e-mail, he sends her a watermarked card in eggshell color (Conqueror, 40lb) with Lindström & Maloney printed in blackish-purple ink in the lower right corner, and he tells Annie to take it to the visual artist right away. From the basement emerges the sound of tearing paper and cardboard being split apart and folded up. Peter and Maloney are apparently cleaning up. Thomas slams the hallway door shut, startling the two teenagers who are still trying out ballpoint pens. Thomas takes a deep breath, leaning his head against the doorframe for a moment. Then he crosses the floor to them.
“Are you looking for something in particular?”
“Oh, no. We’d like to buy a gift for our friend for his confirmation. His name is Juan.”
“Yeah, Juan Alvarez Garza.”
“Uh huh. And, um, can we get his name inscribed on one of these?” the other says as a blush expands across his pimply cheeks. Thomas’s anger is transformed at the sight of these cheeks. They move him, and now he’s moved. His anger morphs into a kind of happiness. I’m going crazy, he thinks, maybe I’m manic-depressive.
“Can we have his name inscribed?” the boy repeats.
“Of course you can. Does your friend write poems?”
“What?”
“No, oh, poems, I don’t think so . . .” says the blushing boy.
“Hmm. But maybe he’ll want to write poetry after you two give him such a nice pen,” Thomas smiles. The two boys stare uncomprehendingly at him. The blushing boy’s teeth are locked in shiny silver braces. The other boy pulls his hat down over his forehead. “Well, then I think we should buy this one here,” says the one with braces, hesitantly, pointing at a royal blue ballpoint pen behind the glass display case. “Don’t you think?” The other boy nods. “Certainly,” Thomas says. “Then we’ll just have to make sure we spell his name correctly. I’ll send the pen to the engraver. Unfortunately, we don’t do that here.” The two boys gape at him. “You can pick it up in about ten days. Does that give you enough time?” The boy with the hat nods cautiously. He fills out the slip with large clumsy letters, while the other boy pays the deposit with some crumpled bills from his pants pocket. They give a polite farewell and trip over each other’s feet, flustered, on their way out of the store. The slow-moving glass doors disgorge them onto the sidewalk like a lump of meat. They stand there a moment, then the blushing boy begins shuffling off northward; the other one follows after him, his arms dangling at his side. Thomas looks at Annie, and starts laughing.
“Did you see them?” She nods, but doesn’t understand why it’s so funny. “Did you see his braces? How the other one pulled his hat down to look more like an adult? Man, they were awkward! But sweet.” For several minutes Thomas shakes with laughter, he sweats from laughter, chuckles, coughs, spits, and gurgles. Thank God there are no customers in the store, he can’t stop laughing, the thought of their gaping faces, puberty’s bell jar, the stupidity it entails. “Did you see how thick they were?” and he continues to laugh, more and more, and now not only because of the boys, but from a deep and dark place, a hollow, dangerous place, now he can feel it, how it pulls on his body, a primordial soup, a desert, a volcanic eruption, horrifying, and Annie mumbles nervously: “What’s so funny about it?” But that only sends Thomas off on a new fit of laughter, stomach cramps, tears, the laughter cleanses him, he can’t do it anymore, and here come Maloney and Peter through the door with terror in their eyes, alerted by the sounds, the howls, and that too is funny, painfully funny, they cling to the door as if they don’t dare enter the store. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” Maloney says. “Nothing,” Thomas pants, bending forward. “It’s just those two boys, oh God, you should’ve seen them . . .” Several minutes pass, Thomas contorted by the wrenching of his body’s howling, giggling, sputtering, and gradually his laughing fit subsides to a hollow moan. Then there’s silence. Then it’s over, and it’s as though he steps outside of himself and sees a tall, sweat-soaked man in disheveled clothes, face flushed. Filled with shame. Maloney makes an effort to smile. “Good to see some life in you,” he says softly, returning to the basement with Peter. Annie sits with her head bowed, nervously picking at a fingernail. The door opens, and an older gentleman wearing a gray suit walks in. Thomas escapes to the bathroom.
As if the insanity of his laughing fit hasn’t quite released him, he chain smokes, oddly disquieted the rest of the afternoon. He calls Patricia and tells her that he’ll be home late (which surprises her, this morning he was aloof and impossible to get a word out of, and now he wants to go out?). He calls Alice and promises to loan her a small sum, gets the address of the music venue, tells Maloney that he’ll close up, and enjoys the solitude of the empty store after the others have gone home; he wanders around in the half-darkness between the shelves, running his hands over the rough watercolor paper, the smooth sketchbooks, the pencils’ perfect hexagons and their sharp lead tips, and now the contours of the deckled-edge paper, dull and yellowy, the matching envelopes. His hands find calm by touching the clean, new things. He squeezes a cylindrical eraser and sniffs it, the fresh scent of a new pencil case, and the memory the scent evokes is powerful: shredding an eraser into tiny pieces, trying to eat it because it smelled so tempting, edible, and then the dry little disappointment once it entered his mouth. He activates the alarm and locks the door, and at 7:00 P.M. he downs a greasy meal of enchiladas accompanied by a mountain of deep-fried chicken wings, all of which he washes down with beer. The restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall, but it’s filled with people eating or waiting to eat; there’s a line at the register, where customers pick up pre-ordered take-out. Salsa music is playing, and the sound from the scratchy loudspeakers mix with the diners’ loud conversations and the waiters’ shouts to the kitchen staff, who now and then can be seen through a slot in the wall. Thomas stands out among the assembled collection of not very tall people. He sits at the bar and thinks about his meeting this afternoon with the visual artist. Upon receiving the card, she’d come immediately to the store, apparently satisfied with the invitation to choose a fitting compensation for the “dried-out” colors, but then her mood shifted abruptly, and once again she complained about the watercolors, saying that “it couldn’t be right,” and that normally she was very happy with their assortment and quality, that she’d never had any problems with even a “single piece of charcoal,” but now she had to admit that she’d lost a great deal of respect for “the entire business.” Thomas, still clammy and high-strung following his laughing fit, assured her that he was terribly sorry about the whole wretched ordeal, that the colors already had been returned to the manufacturer, and that it most certainly wouldn’t happen again. “How can you guarantee that when you just told me that it’s the manufacturer’s fault and therefore the manufacturer’s responsibility?” she asked, rolling her eyes in exasperation, the whites shot through with fine red threads. “That’s simply not possible.” His anger returned. He felt like slapping her face, like slamming his fist into her jaw. Instead he clenched his fists, terrified at his impulse, and, holding his breath, asked her to choose whatever she wanted, repeating that she was one of their most cherished customers (though “cherished customers” came out as a fierce sneer) and that he would do everything in his power to ensure that she would once again be satisfied shopping at Lindström & Maloney. The visual artist gave him a distrustful sideways glance. Then he fled to Annie at the register. She stood leaning against the counter, reading. He could see now that she was absorbed in a battered paperback copy of The Idiot. She rubbed her right foot against her left shin
. They stood there for a moment, him breathing heavily, her glancing at him and returning her foot to the floor.
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