The People We Keep(22)

“You too,” I say, taking the cup back from her carefully. I throw some more change in her tip cup. Now I’m down to a hundred and fifty-five dollars, but even when you don’t have much, you always have to tip. Margo says there’s no excuse.

I walk down one side of The Commons and up the other, looking in windows. There’s a storefront full of shirts and bumper stickers that say things like ITHACA IS GORGES, MY KID BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT, and I NEED A MAN LIKE A NEEDS A . Another shop seems to sell nothing but silver rings and weird pipes made out of glass. There’s a used bookstore and a place that sells old clothes—like Mrs. Ivory would wear—for a dollar a pound. There are bead curtains and cracked CDs hanging all over the place and one of the stores has the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland painted on the glass. I wonder if this is what it feels like to go to Europe. It’s a far cry from Little River.

I walk past a coffee shop that’s dark inside even though it’s open. Lit candles in glass cups line shelves on the walls. It looks like a cave. There’s a HELP WANTED sign in the window.





— Chapter 8 —


“Um, a girl here wants to help us,” this blond guy yells toward the back room.

Everyone in Cafe Decadence looks at me. I stare at my boots, let my hair fall in my face. Long hair is like carrying a hiding place with you everywhere you go.

“Carly will be out in a sec,” the guy tells me. His voice is low and dopey like a cartoon character. His hair has streaks that are almost white. No one is that sun-kissed in upstate New York in November. He looks like he should be someplace warm. California, Florida, Barbados. He should be surfing. He hasn’t been in winter long enough to fade.

“Thanks,” I say, but he’s already taking an order. A woman in a lime green dress coat asks for something called a “half-caff soy mocha,” and the blond guy knows what she’s talking about.

I move to the side and try my best to look like I belong. There’s a bulletin board on the wall covered with neon flyers. Voice lessons, dog walkers, tutors, auditions, roommate, new play, babysitter, anarchist book club—fringes of phone numbers cut at the bottom. There’s even a personal ad, handwritten and photocopied. It says: You want me. Your body knows. Heart will follow. NSWM. Agnostic. Bi. Let’s explore your wildest fantasies and silliest whims. Must be open to anything; like Depeche Mode. The picture is a naked man sitting the wrong way on a chair so the chair back covers his privates. He has chicken legs. He’s wearing a black bowler hat; his eyes are rimmed with liner and there’s a fat black tear drawn on his cheek. He’s sticking out his tongue. It’s long and pointy. One of the phone numbers is torn off. I don’t know what agnostic means, but it sounds like some kind of weird sex thing. I can’t imagine the person who not only looked at that picture and wanted to do agnostic things to this guy, but also had the courage to pull off the phone number in the middle of the coffee shop with everyone watching.

“Here about the job?”

I jump back, hoping what I was looking at isn’t obvious. A short, skinny girl with spiky black and purple hair smiles at me. She has a ring in her nose, right in the middle like a bull, and holes in her earlobes filled with what look like tiny black tire rims.

“Yeah,” I say, straightening up. “April.”

I offer her my hand, and she shakes it. Her grip is weak, palm icy and damp.

“Carly. You done this before?” Her voice sounds scratchy, like she has a bad cold.

“Um, I waited tables for like five years.” I try to look in her eyes, but it’s impossible. There’s too much else to look at. Tattooed blue wisps, like the tips of tentacles, creep from her shirt collar, reaching up the left side of her neck. “After school and stuff.”

“Any experience as a barista?”

I shake my head. I don’t even know what a barista is. “I’m quick to the uptake,” I tell her. It’s what Margo always said when she bragged about me to other people.

Carly sighs. “I was hoping for someone with experience.” Her eye shadow matches the streaks in her hair. She looks back at the line of people. She’s already done with me.

I will myself not to cry. Not to think about icy pin needle showers forever and ever.

“Thanks anyway,” I say, head down, hair falling. Hoping to get to the door before I lose it.

“Hey, wait,” Carly says. “Going home for Thanksgiving?”

“No.”

“Well, there you go. You’re hired.” She laughs and it’s this weird little cackle that reminds me of stepping on dry leaves. “Everyone and their roommate will be out of town that whole fucking week. If you can work through break, I’ll train you myself.”

“Thank you,” I say, trying not to smile too wide.

“Can you start tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“Come in after the morning rush. Ten thirty. Half pay for training. Once I don’t have to hold your hand, it’s five fifty an hour, shift meals, and your cut of the tip jar at the end of the week. Okay?”

I nod.

Carly hands me a piece of paper. “Fill this out and give it to Bodie when you’re done,” she says, pointing to the blond guy.

“Thank you.”

“Ten thirty,” she says, and walks into the back room without saying goodbye.