This Close to Okay(17)

“I’d do that.”

“Really?”

And when he nodded she said, “All right. Come on this side with me,” and waved him over.

“What about Clark Kent and Lois Lane? Those are easy and don’t require too much,” Tallie said after they’d circled the store once with their new goal in mind. “It’s either that or Sandy and Danny from Grease. I can’t actually win the costume contest since it’s my brother’s party and it wouldn’t be fair…so be warned, we don’t have to have the best costumes, but let’s make a valiant effort we can both be proud of.”

“Right on,” he said. She had a pair of black plastic-framed glasses in her hand, shiny black leggings thrown over her arm, purse hanging off her shoulder. “I’ll wear the glasses.”

“Try them.”

Emmett took the glasses and put them on. He would’ve done anything she asked in that moment. He looked at her, his new surprise friend Tallie.

“Perfect. Okay, we need suspenders. Or maybe we don’t need the suspenders, but we do need a Superman shirt to put underneath a white dress shirt, and you can throw your tie over your shoulder. Windswept. Like Clark Kent transitioning into Superman.” He realized how seriously she was taking this. She’d walked into the store like it was casual, but now she was down to business. “I have a pencil skirt and the rest of it, but I need, like, a newspaper badge or something. Let me go ask this kid if they have those,” she said, taking the glasses off Emmett and putting the shiny leggings back where she found them. She walked to the front of the store. Emmett let pencil skirt hang out to dry in his brain momentarily, having absolutely no clue what those words meant put together like that. He was baffled and impressed by all the secret things women knew about the world.

The cashier guy followed her and pointed. “We have these badges. FBI X-Files badges.”

“Oh! Let’s be Mulder and Scully instead!” she said, grabbing two FBI badges from the rack next to them. The cashier guy straightened a shelf of ridiculous jester and skull hats on his way to the front of the store.

“We can basically wear the same things, but not the glasses or Superman shirt. Mulder wears a lot of black or gray suits, but I do have a navy suit at home that’ll fit you.”

“Joel’s?”

“He never wore it.”

“Why do you still have so many clothes he never wore?”

“Because I haven’t gotten rid of them yet and I wanted him to be something he wasn’t, and he only wears black or gray suits,” she said sharply—a needle through paper.

“I like Mulder. I’ll be Mulder.”

“You’ll be a perfect Mulder,” she said with steely confidence.

Emmett followed her to the counter.

“I have plenty of money. At your place. In my backpack. You don’t have to pay for my stuff all the time,” he said. He pictured his backpack at Tallie’s, safely snug in between her couch and the end table where he’d left it. It didn’t make him nervous leaving it at her place. She lived alone; there was no one there but the cats to nose through it.

“Nonsense. I’m making you go to a Halloween party. It’s my job to buy this.”

“You’re not making me go. I want to go,” he said, surprising himself by meaning it. He couldn’t remember the last time he wanted to do anything like go to a party.

She touched the top of his hand and took the badges to the cash register; he insisted on carrying the slick orange bag out of the store.

*



“Y’know, you can be honest with me. About anything,” Tallie said.

They’d stopped at Poodle Skirt, a ’50s-themed hamburger joint at the end of the outlet mall. It was all lit up, an oasis for the shoppers who could make it that far without killing themselves. Bravo.

“Weird. I was going to say the same thing to you,” he said, smirking.

“I’m serious, okay?” she said in a kind of whine he found endearing. She gooped her french fry with ketchup before eating it.

“I’m serious, too. You tell me something honest, and I’ll do the same. Right now,” he lied.

“You want to go first?”

“Absolutely. I’ll go first. We could’ve passed each other on the street or at the grocery store or whatever so many times…and now…here we are,” Emmett said. He looked around, noticed the family in the booth diagonally across from them.

(An older couple with their adult son, his small children. They have their food already. The older woman orders a milkshake from the waiter. Chocolate. The children drink from plastic cartoon cups with bright red lids. An Elvis clock swings its glittery hips on the wall. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock.)

“You come to Louisville a lot?” Tallie asked.

“Enough.”

“Well, I would’ve remembered you.”

“Remembered what?”

“Your face and hair and eyes. Your whole thing,” she said in between bites of food. She pointed a limp fry at him. “You’re striking.”

He loved looking at her but refrained from saying it for fear of making her uncomfortable. Her listening face was pretty and consistently reassuring, like a familiar character from a pleasant, uneventful dream.