* * *
• • •
Digby opens the door with a huge flourish that flings off the cluster of bells attached to the frame. Everyone in the store turns to look and watch the two of us struggle to reattach the fallen bells to the door.
We finally get the damn bells back on their little mount and Digby and I take a look around.
Digby says, “It’s very charming . . .”
The food is stored in wood-and-glass display counters that are obviously original to the store. There’s a huge ball of twine hanging from the ceiling that the busy counter girl pulls from to tie up boxes of pastry. No wonder the hipsters love it.
The line is long, and to a person, the customers look irritated but are generally well behaved. I watch the counter girl. It’s clear that her surly demeanor is the key to controlling this crowd. The fear of what might come out of her frowning mouth is the only thing keeping this powdered sugar keg from blowing up.
A heavenly buttery smell has saturated the place. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had anything this anti-vegan. And I haven’t eaten since the bags of nuts on the plane.
I am walking to join the end of the line when I hear Digby say, “Excuse me, miss?”
And then I hear the entire room explode in various angry versions of “Get back in line.”
Digby is about to justify himself, saying, “I just have a ques—” but the crowd starts to really roil.
The lone counter girl says, “Hey. Get back in line. People have been waiting.”
I can’t tell if the girl at the counter is as pretty as her heavy makeup insists she is. She’s obviously a citizen of the post-YouTube world of painting the face you want on top of the face you have and I can’t see her bone structure clearly enough to determine whether she looks like Digby. Figuring out whether she’s in the right age range is even more complicated. With her mink eyelashes, tight top bun, and bleached platinum hair, she could be anyone, of any age within a twenty-year range, from anywhere that has a Sephora and Internet access.
“Really, I just want to ask a question,” Digby says.
“They all have questions,” Counter Girl says, and points to the crowded room.
“Digby,” I say. “Psst. Get over here.”
But he ignores me and says, “I don’t even want to buy anything—”
“Then what the hell are you doing in my store?” Counter Girl says.
I hurry over and hustle him away. As I walk him to the back of the line, Counter Girl holds up two fingers and says, “That’s strike two.”
“What?” Digby says. “What was strike one?”
I physically turn his head away and shush him. “Are you crazy? You don’t cut in line in places like this,” I say. “This is New Jersey. Do you want to die?”
“She said ‘my store,’ so that’s her, maybe,” Digby says. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I stare at Counter Girl but every time I think I see a similarity, she steps into different lighting and my confidence vanishes. “She’s kind of in disguise a little.”
“The blond hair is throwing me off,” Digby says. He holds up his finger and squints, trying to edit the living image as he stares at her.
“The hair? It’s the eyes for me, I think. I can’t tell what their real shape is under that cat-eye,” I say. “And her cheekbones and jawline are shaded in. I once saw an Asian woman use makeup to turn herself into Drake. This is what we could be dealing with here.”
Digby raises his phone and takes a picture of Counter Girl right as she turns in our direction and catches him doing it. Her frown deepens and she stares at him for a pointedly long beat before continuing to ring up the customer she’d been helping.
Digby zooms in on different parts of the picture and compares it with an old snapshot of Sally that he’s brought along. We do this for the entire fifteen minutes we are in the line but we never get to a decision.
Finally, it is our turn. Counter Girl looks ready for a fight when she says, “Can I help you?”
“Um. Maybe?” Digby says. “Can we get a rhubarb pie and a Fresca?”
“Rhubarb pie? What is that even?” Counter Girl says.
“So . . . you don’t know what rhubarb is?” Digby says.
“Next customer!” Counter Girl says.
“Wait, wait.” Digby shows her Sally’s snapshot. “Have you ever seen this kid?”
Without looking at the picture, Counter Girl rears up and crosses her arms. “Are you going to buy anything? Because there’s a whole line of people behind you I need to help if you aren’t.”
I push Digby aside and say, “Actually, may I have a half dozen cream cheese kugels and two deluxe salmon schmears on everything bagels, please? Extra onions.” Digby looks at me like, How can you eat at a time like this? and I say, “And you’re paying. You never take me anywhere.” I look at Counter Girl to see she’s nodding.
“Yeah,” Counter Girl says. “He looks like a cheap date.”
I force a laugh and say, “Oh, sweetie. You don’t even know. He made me drive two hours today so he could track down some girl he went to kindergarten with who he’s gotten obsessed with lately . . .” I pause so Counter Girl’s disgust can develop more fully. “Watch him find her and get engaged right in front of me or something trashy like that.”
“What a winner,” Counter Girl says. “You’re better off with someone else, honey. Get your hair did, get a spray tan, get your revenge body on, and upgrade your man. You deserve better.”
I am just thinking to myself that I have to somehow get Sloane in the same room as Counter Girl when Digby says, “Oh . . . the bells were strike one. But that was an accident.” Counter Girl ignores that and tells him how much we owe for the food.
Digby hands over his mother’s credit card and tries to give her Sally’s picture again.
“Please,” Digby says. “Can you just take a look?”
Counter Girl runs the credit card and leaves Digby hanging with the photo in his outstretched hand until I take the bags of food from her. She takes the picture and the moment she sees the image, her face drops. With her muscles slackened this way, I can finally see that under her makeup, she is in fact very young.
A twenty-something guy in an apron comes out from the back, sees Counter Girl seemingly standing around doing nothing while the shop is full of customers starting to rebel, and yells, “Hey. What are you doing? There’s people here.”
Counter Girl tries to show Apron Guy the picture and says, “He asked if I—”
Digby, emboldened by Counter Girl’s dramatic reaction, says, “Wait. Please. Tell me. Is that your real hair color? Are you a natural blond?”
Apron Guy hasn’t yet seen the photo and in the absence of any kind of context, he is immediately enraged by Digby’s question and says, “What did you say? Did you just ask my sister if the carpet matches the drapes?”
A collective gasp echoes in the bakery.
“Hey, Tasha, has this guy been mackin’ on you? I told you to stop making up your face like that.” Apron Guy points at Counter Girl and says, “She’s only thirteen years old, buddy.”
Without thinking, Digby says, “Thirteen?” He smacks his hand on the counter. “That’s perfect.”
And then Apron Guy runs out from behind the counter, grabs Digby by the collar, and wrestles him out of the store. I take the snapshot and the credit card from Counter Girl, say something dumb like, “Have a nice day,” and follow Digby outside.
TWENTY-SIX
“Princeton. Was that her?” Digby is wild-eyed. “It must be her. The way she reacted to the picture . . .”
“Well, that’s not really definitive proof of anything,” I say.
“No, but she’s thirteen and she obviously knew that picture was of her . . . it fits,” Digby says. After a long stunned pause, he says,
“In all the ways I imagined this moment would play out, I never imagined it like this.”
“Like what? A bakery in Cherry Hill? I mean—”
“No, I never imagined that I wouldn’t like her,” Digby says. “I prepared myself for finding out she’s dead, mostly . . .”
“That would’ve been the most likely thing,” I say.
“A tiny, tiny part of me fantasized that I’d find her and we’d see each other and immediately just know . . .” Digby says.
“Right. Happily ever after,” I say.
“But I spent exactly zero minutes preparing myself for that . . .” Digby says, “. . . mean little turd.”
He stares at me, stunned. And then, one of us emits some gut gurgles. Both of us put our hands on our stomachs, not sure whose it was. I hand him one of the bagels and we go around to the shady side of the building to sit on a low wall near the bakery’s back door. We eat. We look around. It all seems so surreal.
“Good schmear,” Digby says. “So this is New Jersey. My first time.”
“Well, this is a parking lot, to be fair,” I say.
“No, no, I like it here. The food is good . . .” He points at his sandwich and then points at the bakery. “And the people are absolutely delightful.”
A delivery van drives past us and backs into a spot right by the back door. The driver toots the horn. The bakery’s back door opens a minute later and a girl runs out to meet the driver slowly climbing out of the van. She’s dressed in black jeans, big black boots, and a rumpled blazer two sizes too big for her slight frame.
“Hey, jag-off, you’re late,” the girl says. “We don’t have any blintzes today because of you. I should take our loss from that off this payment—”
The delivery guy hears this and immediately gets in her face, screaming back at her. It’s a heavily uneven match, though, because he has at least a foot and a half on her.
“Whoa,” Digby says. “That’s . . .”
I think so too, and I walk over to the fight with Digby.
“Excuse me,” Digby says. “Is everything okay here?”
“Yeah, thanks pal, it’s under control,” the girl in black says.
Digby says, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. What’s your problem?” the girl in black says. “We’re talking here.”
“Yeah, back off, moron. Mind your own business,” the delivery guy says.
“And your business is what? Beating on little girls?” Digby says.
Simultaneously, Delivery Guy says “beating?” and Girl in Black says “little girl?”
And then both of them turn on Digby and berate him as I drag him away, saying, “Sorry. Our mistake. Excuse us . . .”
We retreat to our spots on the wall and resume eating our sandwiches.
“New Jersey, man,” Digby says.
“Digby,” I say. “You know . . . she . . .” I nod to the girl in black.
It takes him a shockingly long time to catch on but when he does, he looks relieved.
“Oh . . . that would make more sense,” he says.
We watch the girl in black wrap up her argument with the delivery guy. It’s hard to say who is the winner but the delivery guy slams every door and every box he comes in contact with as he transfers the van’s contents into the bakery in that sore loser kind of way. The girl in black stands beside the van while it’s being unloaded. I catch her looking our way periodically.
“She looks like my father,” Digby says.
“But she reminds me of you,” I say. “Even though her face doesn’t exactly look like yours.”
“She might just be an employee with a bad attitude, though,” he says.
The delivery is done and the van squeals away.
“Well, I guess now we can ask her because here she comes,” I say.
The girl in black walks toward us and stops a few feet away as though she hasn’t decided to commit to actually having the conversation.
“Sitting around waiting for more people to rescue?” she says. “What’s your deal?”
Digby is staring at her, not saying anything.
It gets awkward, so I say, “It looked like he was going to attack you. Sorry.”
The girl in black says, “He’s our flour supplier. He pushes my aunt around, so she let me take over dealing with him. Today was my first day. That’s why I was pissed when you stole my thunder.”
“We were just worried,” I say.
The girl in black pulls out some brass knuckles and says, “I would’ve been fine.”
I whisper to Digby, “There’s two of you now.” It really is uncanny how much she reminds me of Digby. Beyond the weird jerky way their arms move and their similar taste in business-casual Johnny Cash clothing is the look of impending anarchy in her eyes that I’ve seen in Digby’s so many times. I like her already.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m Zoe, by the way.”
“I’m Shelley,” the girl in black says.
“Shelley,” Digby says. “They kept your name close. Smart.”
“What?” Shelley says. “Kept my name close? Close to what?”
“Shelley, could you look at a photo for me?” Digby says.
“Oh . . . you’re that guy. Showing photos in the bakery. Anthony’s inside saying you’re a pervert but you’ve got my cousin Tasha all upset and she deals with perverts all day long, so I know that’s not it . . .” Shelley says. “Let’s see this photo, then.”
Digby hands it to her.
Shelley sees the picture, takes a deep breath, and says, “Is this me?” Shelley holds up the picture next to her face to give us the side by side. “I think this is me.”
I cannot help myself. “Ho . . . ly . . . crap. It’s happening.”
“Am I adopted, dude?” Shelley says. When Digby doesn’t answer, she says, “I knew it.”
And then I realize Digby is no longer standing next to me and that Shelley is yelling at his back as he walks to the bus stop.
“Hey, dude. Am I?” Shelley looks at me and says, “Am I?”
It isn’t for me to say, so I just shrug like a dumbass and walk away too. “I’m sorry.”
I reach for the photo but Shelley snatches it away and says, “Are you kidding me? Get back here.”
A bus rolls up and Digby gets on.
“I’m sorry, but I have to go,” I say, and run.
The bus driver closes the door behind me and as we pull away, I watch Shelley standing at the bus stop staring at the picture. I sit next to Digby and watch him tap away at his phone for a minute until I can’t take it anymore and say, “That was weird.” He doesn’t answer me. “I mean, you literally ran away.”
“I didn’t run away,” Digby says. “I stepped away to figure out the situation.” He continues typing.
“Ummm. You can rephrase all you like but you still left your sister standing on the side of the road, not knowing what the hell is going on except that the people she thought were her parents have probably been lying to her,” I say. “You need to explain yourself. Also, you need to tell your parents.” But he doesn’t answer and just goes on typing into his phone. “And what are you typing?”
“I’m telling my parents I found Sally,” he says.
“You’re texting them? You can’t text this kind of thing,” I say.
“Which is why I wrote an email,” he says. “I mean, I’m not an animal.”
“I guess I know what to expect when we break up,” I say.
“Break up?” he says. “Princeton . . .” Finally, he puts away his phone. “Are we . . . together?”
“Aren’t we?” I say.
“I don’t know,” Digby says. “I was going to bring it up, but . . .”
“Okay, you know what? This isn’t really the time to talk about it,” I say.
“You bro
ught it up,” he says.
“Well, now I’m dropping it,” I say. “Can we talk about it later?”
“What’s the matter with right now?” Digby says.
“While we’re on a New Jersey Transit bus headed to Camden?” I say.
“Which part bothers you?” he says. “That it’s a bus or that we’re going to Camden?”
“Digby.” I know what he’s doing. He’d rather talk about anything besides the fact that he’s found Sally.
After a while, he says, “Yeah. I know.” The jokey smile drops from his face and he stares out the window in silence. I let him be and he is sad and quiet until a fight between the bus driver and a fare dodger cheers him up again.
The next time we talk, we are both careful not to bring up anything really meaningful. We stay like that all the way back to River Heights, gliding on the surface, pretending that if neither of us looks down, Digby won’t fall into the new bottomless pit that’s opened up beneath his feet.
TWENTY-SEVEN
We’d taken Art’s crummy sedan to the airport and are driving it back to Digby’s place when he says, “I hope you don’t mind, but I feel like taking a walk. Is that okay?”
I’d been so good up to this point. I hadn’t complained when we’d missed the flight out of Trenton we’d been booked on because Digby just had to stop for a real Philly cheesesteak. Comfort eating, I’d thought, and if anyone needs comfort, it’s Digby right here, right now. And then I didn’t complain when the next flight we’d gotten on was delayed and then had non-functional toilets. But now a walk? On top of the ten hours of travel hell since leaving Cherry Hill? Nope.
“I’m exhausted, dude,” I say.
“It’ll be a short walk, don’t worry,” he says.
When we are a few blocks away from his house, Digby pulls over onto the side of the road that’s right above a slope leading to the river and gets out.
I climb out after him and say, “Here?”
Digby looks around. “Looks good to me.”
“Are we just going to leave the car here?” I say.
“Nope.” And then he leans into the car, puts it in neutral, and starts pushing it toward the slope.
Trouble Never Sleeps Page 20