You Deserve Each Other(31)

“If I could afford it, I’d take the plunge now and move,” Brandy laments, toying with her choker necklace. “I wouldn’t even take anything with me. I’d just go.”

“When I win the lottery, I’ll buy you an island off the coast of Alaska,” I promise her. “With a guest suite for me to stay in when I visit.”

“Win the lottery as soon as you can, please. Half of my savings dried up this summer when my refrigerator broke and I had to loan my sister money for her school books.”

I lay my head on her shoulder. “You’ll get there. Before you know it, you’ll be shivering in negative-sixty-degree weather, wearing snowshoes and talking to me on the phone while you drive a team of sled dogs to the grocery store.”

“I heard you guys all thought you were going to die on Monday,” Leon announces, transplanting jars of pickled rattlesnake eggs and BBQ weevil larvae into boxes for Mr. Howard to pick up later. Mr. Howard’s going to ferry half the merchandise away to Tenmouth and dramatically clearance the rest. There are fluorescent blue signs stapled to every telephone pole on Langley: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE. EVERYTHING AT THE JUNK YARD MUST GO! Including the people who’ve made a life here.

“It was a close call,” I sniff.

“Death by jasmine.”

Brandy and I give him questioning looks for knowing my flowers were jasmine, but he shrugs and smiles. Goddamn it, Zach. This is just like him. I wish he were here so I could yell at him for knowing it was jasmine and letting us believe otherwise. Instead he is somewhere else, ensuring his own financial security like a total jerk.

I think about moving to Tenmouth, which would suck. I think about staying in Morris and not being able to find another job, which would suck. I gaze miserably at Leon’s grizzly-filled lifeboat, which is already pooling with water. The only thing that could make this day worse is if I spontaneously started my period, so that’s exactly what happens.

“I’m going to miss you guys so much.” Brandy trumpets into a Kleenex. “I hate this.”

“It’s the end of an era,” I say gravely. The lights have been on the fritz for two days, but we don’t bother changing the bulbs. There’s hardly anything left to sell, so lasting even another week would be a miracle. I examine my surroundings and hope I wake up from this nightmare. The blank shelves are particularly depressing.

One of my favorite parts of the job has been rearranging our displays, setting up elaborate live tableaus with marionettes playing Frisbee or re-creating iconic movie scenes with pop culture figurines. I’d dress our faithful old stuffed raccoon, Toby, in dog sweaters and berets and place him in a new position every day: by the register, reading a magazine; smoking a pipe on top of the jukebox; on the windowsill, peering outside through a pair of small binoculars. Brandy and Leon love looking for Toby when they clock in, and say my talent for devising full scenes out of the merchandise is being wasted somewhere we don’t ever get customers. That talent is useless now, since all the merchandise is gone.

“I don’t think I’m ready for the next era,” Brandy sighs.

Me neither.

“You’re going to forget all about me by January and won’t invite me to the wedding.”

“Of course you’re invited to the wedding!” There will never be a wedding.

She blows her nose again. Her hair looks fantastic and I hate myself for not asking her a week ago which salon she goes to. I could have bangs as cute as Brandy’s right now if it weren’t for my impulsiveness.

“I’ve been keeping an eye out for your invitation,” she tells me as we put our jackets on. It’s not quite six yet, but staying here any longer is useless. “Maybe it got lost in the mail?”

“Oh.” I try not to squirm. “Haven’t sent them out yet.”

“Don’t you need to do that, though? To give people time to RSVP? Your caterer will want to know how many heads to expect.”

Leon saves me from answering. “She’s still got time. Anyway, what do you think the surprise is, Naomi?”

I open my mouth and can’t think of a single nice thing this surprise could be. Whatever it is, Nicholas has the edge on me. I’m racked with nerves.

“Dinner,” I say. “He’ll serve me to a mountain lion.” In a boiling cauldron of lettuce and carrots, like a Bugs Bunny bit.

Leon laughs. “I think that’s a little dramatic.”

Maybe so, but Nicholas has a dramatic streak as well. He got it watching daytime television in grade school, pretending to be sick so he could stay home and avoid bullies who called him Four-Eyes and made fun of the ascot his mother made him wear. Nicholas knows precisely what he would say to his childhood bullies if he ever came across one of them now. He’s perfected his speech in the shower, which he must think is soundproof. Too much One Life to Live in his formative years turned him into a vindictive diva.

To be honest, I hope he gets the opportunity to deliver that speech someday. It’s incredible.

“I’m going to put off going home for as long as possible,” I tell them. Brandy nods sagely. “I might go see a movie. Then grab something to eat. Then see another movie. By the time I get home, the mountain lion will have gotten so impatient that it’ll have already eaten Nicholas. We’ll watch Netflix together on the couch. A wildlife documentary.”