Glass Tidings

by Amy Jo Cousins

  Mornings were quiet. Mostly moms or some retired folks drifting through—not in a hurry and up for plenty of chatting. There was a little burst of business around lunchtime, when people who worked nearby snuck over on their breaks. Right around three o’clock there was another rush, this time of kids with backpacks the size of large dogs whose carelessness made Eddie flinch every time they swung around to shout to a friend. He totally kept a sharper eye out for shoplifters with the kids, even though they all seemed absurdly young and polite and had money like they were working part-time jobs.

  Besides, Christine the Cop seemed to drop in almost every damn day. He’d freaked out the first time or two, thinking she was checking up on him because he radiated suspicious character or something. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t made any progress on IDing the car or the driver, and he could read the frustration on her face when she told him each day that she didn’t have a lineup for him yet. Mostly she spent her visits badgering Gray into talking to her, and Eddie got the feeling he was the excuse she was using to force Mr. Hermit to reconnect with her. Apparently they’d been friends way back when.

  Kept any worries about teenager shoplifters to a minimum when the cops cruised the joint on the regular.

  Then there was the post-five-o’clock rush, when the commuter trains dumped purposeful crowds of nine-to-fivers on the cement platforms that lined the track. Springfield, the nearby state capital, wasn’t a giant draw—not like Chicago was with its suburbs—but there was a boost of business between five and six o’clock.

  Plus, pretty much every fucking thing closed down at 5 p.m. except for two restaurants, the ice cream parlor, and the movie theater.

  And the Christmas Shoppe.

  His second Friday on the job, Eddie processed a return from the sweet old lady who’d bought the dog ornaments. Apparently she hadn’t realized her daughter’s new wife was allergic to eucalyptus until the daughter-in-law had started sneezing nonstop anytime she got near the wreath her mother-in-law had hung over the fireplace in the parental casa.

  “I’m so sorry.” A soft white curl bobbed over one eye while the woman spoke, like a wilting flower on a bent stem. “Our Jane only just got over our objections to Christine, which were not because she’s a lady, mind, but simply because she’s an officer of the law, which is a very dangerous job, you know—not that I could get Jane to listen to me for months—and I simply can’t have her thinking I’m trying to smoke Christine out with the decorations. Not after I learned how to make all those vegetarian dishes.”

  Eddie, who had seen Christine the Cop plow her way through an entire plate of bacon at Gray’s house, kept a straight face through sheer determination while swiping the woman’s credit card and crediting it with the cost of the wreath, plus tax. For one blinding moment, the yearning to be on the faire circuit swamped him with nostalgia. What wouldn’t he give for a crowd around a campfire that night, an audience to share the story of the small-town lady trying to make sure her lesbian daughter’s obviously vegetarian wife was welcome for the holidays.

  “I’m sure Jane will believe you’ve been very thoughtful”—he glanced at the card—“Mrs. Wasserman.”

  Mrs. Wasserman’s heavy sigh fluttered her bangs. “When she’s mad at me, she picks up more shifts at the hospital so we hardly ever see her, so I certainly hope so. My Matthew has already had it up to here”—she drew a line across her eyes with one hand—“with the kale.”

  Eddie bit his lip. “Would you like me to help you find another wreath?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’m too tired to shop, I think.” She waved her hand to encompass the shop. “Do you have a big red bow or something that’s all plastic so the only way it can bother someone is if they eat it?”

  “Of course,” Eddie said, and helped her find a burgundy velvet garland instead of a big red plastic bow. Because he was a giver, and no one should have plastic Christmas decorations indoors.

  When he asked Gray if he should retag the wreath and put it back on display, Gray shook his head.

  “Nah, just toss it. It’s a little battered, and I’ll never sell it.”

  Eddie hugged the (admittedly rather prickly) wreath to his chest. “Throw it out? But it still smells good.”

  Gray glanced up from the computer where he was working on the layout for what looked like an ad. Eddie had noticed stacks of the town newspaper in the shop and had been surprised to see how rapidly they disappeared. The Town That Time Forgot had residents who were still into getting their news the old-fashioned way, apparently.

  “You want it, it’s yours. Have fun.”

  That’s ridiculous. Like I have anywhere to put a Christmas wreath.

  All the way back to the front of the shop, Eddie argued with himself.

  Just put it in the trash. It’s a secondhand wreath that got sneezed on by strangers. It’s trash, and you’d only want it for the next couple of weeks anyway. Just toss it.

  But at the register, he gently leaned the wreath against the shelves of tissue paper under the counter and stepped carefully around it for the rest of the afternoon. And when Gray cut him loose early because the shop was so quiet, Eddie dropped the wreath into a large plastic bag, along with some of the pine garland Gray had pulled from the outdoor rack because it was getting kind of tatty, plus some battery-powered fake candles Eddie had splurged for with his own money.

  Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, decorating Gray’s home for the holidays. The man had lived there for years and showed no sign of wanting to mix his business and personal lives. Gray’s house didn’t belong to Eddie. Wasn’t anything more than a brief landing pad in the middle of his seasonal migrations. Putting up holiday decorations was the equivalent of a kid rearranging the furniture in someone else’s dollhouse. Eddie couldn’t resist though.

  When Gray got home, Eddie wondered at first if he hadn’t noticed the wreath hanging on his front door. Eddie had come across some red ribbon in a kitchen drawer and used it to add a bow to the otherwise not terribly festive decoration. He’d found a tiny nail hole in Gray’s front door, so he hadn’t felt too bad hammering a new nail in there either. Hanging the garland in swags over and around the door and putting the candles in the front windows just made sense after that. The final effect was like something out of a frigging postcard.

  Also, impossible to miss.

  It was a good thing Eddie didn’t give a shit about what anyone else thought, or the wait through dinner, and lighting the fire in the fireplace, and the first hour of reading—all the while wondering if Gray was going to say a damn word about his newly Christmassed-up house—might have killed him.

  He was so irritated with himself, he stayed awake even later than Gray, glaring at the dancing flames and ignoring his book entirely, which was a shame, because this Delany dude had quite a way with words, even if this Stars book wasn’t at all what he’d expected. Eddie was pretty sure he only understood about half of it, although that half did include the sex scenes. The stuff about the aliens and the competing intellectual factions was breaking his brain though. And that was before his stubborn-as-hell boss-slash-host-slash-he-didn’t-know-what got all weird about ignoring at home the very stuff he sold by the case at his shop.

  When Gray patted him on the foot and said he was heading up to bed, Eddie grunted.

  “Don’t forget to turn off the lights.”

  Eddie didn’t say a word.

  Gray’s footsteps fading as he walked toward the front door and the stairs up to his bedroom were particularly irritating. The sound paused as Gray passed by the front door. Probably reorganizing his scarf rack, the uptight prick.

  When the words came, Eddie was so distracted by his own irritation he almost didn’t hear them.

  “Decorations look good.”

  Footsteps again, heading upstairs.

  Eddie flung himself across the length of the couch until his head fell over the edge, swooning melodramatically.

  “Jesus. Christ. It literally almost kill
ed him to say that, didn’t it?”

  He resolved to bring home the next returned, unsellable Christmas decorations as soon as humanly possible.

  Driving Gray to react to an excess of holiday spirit at home was his new, number-one objective.

  Squad goals, yo.

  The bell over the door jingled Saturday afternoon as someone entered, and Eddie glanced up in time to catch a slouching teenage form in a dark-blue hoodie and motorcycle jacket that radiated angst and too cool for this town.

  Total shoplifter-in-training, that one.

  He kept an eye on the boy from the front, and even got up off his stool once to make a personal approach. A sales pitch flyby, with a hint of I’ve-got-my-eye-on-you.

  Before he got within ten feet, the kid dropped the Baby Jesus ornament he’d picked up and bolted for the front door.

  At least he hadn’t had time to steal anything.

  At home that night during dinner—and wasn’t it weird that he’d started using a phrase like that in his head, at home—Eddie almost mentioned the boy from the store to Gray. Rhonda always wanted to know if he spotted anyone who looked like trouble in her shop at the faire, and it felt weird to get a sketchy feeling about that kid and not tell Gray about it.

  But the same spotlit feeling that followed him when he walked through the streets of this small town kept his mouth shut now. Eddie was the outsider here. No matter how nice and polite these people were—the cops, Gray, random drivers passing him and nodding hello—he stuck out like a blinking neon light.

  And much like that light hung over a door would signal disreputable choices made here, Eddie was pretty sure his own less-than-conventional background put everything he might say in a different kind of light.

  What if that kid was the mayor’s son? Or Gray’s neighbor’s kid who mowed the lawn every summer and watered his plants when Gray scampered off to Paris or Bali for wicked sexcapades? Eddie’s speculations as to the kid’s criminal intent could very easily be the thing that pissed Gray off at last.

  Not that Gray seemed like he took a lot of time off. Although the January to October vacation was pretty chill. Eddie still wasn’t sure how the man managed to swing that one. But from their limited conversation, it didn’t sound like Gray hit the road for adventures hither and yon during the many months his shop was closed.

  As far as Eddie could tell, Gray simply sat at home and read and . . . did loner stuff. By his lonesome. Which left Eddie with way too many blank spots in his imagination for comfort.

  He’d tried to poke at Gray, verbally. To prod him into some kind of personal revelations about his loner life, but Gray hadn’t taken the bait so far. And that kind of storytelling reluctance kept Eddie on edge. He didn’t like it when he didn’t know more about people than they knew about him. That way lay danger.

  Yeah, keep telling yourself that. It’s not because you’re burning up with pure curiosity about the man. Nope. No way.

  Eddie’s rainbow of glass rods had been waiting for him at Gray’s house when he got home from the shop that night. And thank god, because Eddie was clearly losing it, living like a civilian with a nine-to-five.

  He needed to crank up the flame, block out the world, and bend some glass. Right after he ate. And maybe took a nap, because dealing with oxygen and fire when he was this exhausted was a damn stupid idea.

  But by the time they finished eating, Eddie was yawning like he’d fall asleep standing up, and Gray pushed him upstairs to bed, promising everything would still be there in the morning.

  Eddie fell asleep feeling the glass calling to him. At least he told himself that was what was making him so restless.

  The next morning, only two weeks before Christmas somehow, Eddie got his hands on the fire and glass he’d been missing for two months now. He set up his torch and laid out the skinny rods of colored glass to his right on the counter in the garage workshop. Several of them had cracked during shipping, not that that mattered much.

  The scratch of the flint and the whomp of the gas igniting settled under his skin like coming home. He turned the flame down and slipped his safety glasses on once the yellow flame was of the proper length. The flame through the pink, treated glass was nearly invisible, which meant adjusting it needed to be done beforehand or he’d inevitably fuck it up.

  Keeps your retinas from burning out though, so quit bitching.

  The sounds of small-town silence kept him company as he chose his first rods and began heating up the glass until it was melty enough to play with, making a nice gather at the tip of the rod.

  Right. Time to knock out some salables. Butterflies and unicorns and fairies, oh my.

  He almost wished he could just mess around. See what he ended up with if he let his imagination loose on the gorgeous rattling rods of many colors waiting for him in the cardboard box. But that wasn’t how he made bank off the punters, was it? Plus, he couldn’t leave Gray in the lurch on a Sunday. He only had a couple of hours before he needed to head to the shop.

  Get to work.

  He could knock out a few dozen knickknacky figurines over the next day or so, turn ’em into ornaments, and see what Gray thought. Plus, he’d ordered a bunch of premade glass balls he could coat with melting layers of colored glass on the inside, and those would be something new.

  He’d seen a real artist work with them at a faire earlier this year and had promised himself a chance to experiment more after getting her to walk him through one, even if it meant he fucked up a bunch of expensive glass because he hadn’t had the nerve to ask the woman many questions.

  Eddie hadn’t realized how uncomfortable he’d been sharing Gray’s space until he started working in the garage. As cool as it was to play house in Gray’s many rooms, the man had too much space. And none of it belonged to Eddie.

  Not that the garage did either, but the dilapidated structure felt private. Eddie had left the garage door halfway open, making sure he had plenty of ventilation while blocking his view of the big house, adding to the comforting feeling of being alone in his work space.

  Gray came bursting through the door two hours later, making Eddie’s hands spasm as he turned in surprise, fucking up the fairy wings he’d been painting with glass like taffy.

  “Ahhh.” Gray jerked to a halt just inside the side door. “You’re here.”

  Eddie nodded, pulling the fairy safely out of the flame. “I’m gonna change in a minute so I can go in with you.”

  “No, you should stay here. I know you’ve been anxious to get to your real work.” Gray hand-waved that idea away before dropping his gaze, like he didn’t want to look at Eddie. “I was just . . . You weren’t in your room. The bed was made. And your stuff was . . .”

  Eddie had put his bag in the guest room’s closet, which Gray had apparently not thought to open. He’d done that and made the bed, because it was starting to weird him out, making a big mess in the guest room when he could tell Gray liked things nice and neat in the rest of the house.

  He wouldn’t have worried about being polite if he’d known it was going to cause a freak-out.

  Gray thrust his hands in his pockets and frowned at Eddie. “If you do decide to head out, just . . . leave me a note or something, okay? I don’t want to answer my door to the cops with nothing but my dick in my hands.”

  And wasn’t that a fucking picture.

  Eddie cleared his throat, his voice still rough with lack of use. “I wouldn’t leave without telling you.”

  Which wasn’t exactly the truth. Eddie had left plenty of places without saying anything. If things weren’t panning out, better to move on as soon as possible instead of wasting time trying to make something work that wasn’t gonna.

  But Gray was . . . decent. Eddie would say Good-bye. And Thanks.

  Gray shrugged. Whatever. Like Gray already knew better than to believe him.

  That stung a little.

  More than a little, maybe.

  Because Eddie was a bit of a shit, he couldn’t let it go.
Of course.

  When he headed out to the garage Monday morning before the sun was up, he left the rest of a pot of coffee—because tea was fine for midnight but, Jesus Christ, he needed coffee in the morning—warming on the hot plate. And taped a note to the top of the coffeemaker.

  DON’T PANIC. I’M STILL HERE. WORKING IN THE GARAGE.

  But Gray must have been a bit of a shit at some point too, because when Eddie came back in the house later that morning, driven by the gnawing hunger in his belly as much as curiosity as to whether or not Gray was going to say anything to him about his note, the man was nowhere to be found.

  Eddie told himself not to be disappointed about the lack of reaction, or that Gray had apparently left to open the shop without even poking his head in to say he was leaving. But Eddie grinned hard when he hit the kitchen for a refill and found his note on the coffeemaker had been replaced.

  DON’T BE AN ASSHOLE. LUNCH AT TWO IF YOU WANT TO PUT IN MORE HOURS AT THE SHOP. BRING THE FAIRIES.

  Bring the fairies. He hadn’t even shown Gray the work he’d done yet, but Gray must have seen it from the doorway the previous morning.

  Eddie had touched his tiniest clear glass rod to the yellow hair of the fairies, making an itty-bitty loop that could be eased over a wire hook or hold a threaded ribbon. He hadn’t been sure at first if that would be enough to transform his not-at-all-Christmassy go-to designs into ornaments, but the end result looked sweet. And like something a little kid might see and want for their very own.

  That his chest got tight at the idea was a stupid kind of side effect to having this weird-ass welcome mat laid out by Gray. And the cop, who was always going to be nothing but a cop to him, but was maybe pretty okay too. Just went to show what a sucker Eddie was.

  So what if some kid got their parents to buy one of his ornaments? And unwrapped it year after year from tissue or newspaper to hang on the tree in the perfect spot?

  Jesus. Talk about romanticizing shit.

  Make it and sell it. And get the fuck outta Dodge before your brain leaks out your ass.