Along for the Ride(23)

‘Wow,’ I said, unable to keep my silence.

‘I know,’ Leah agreed. ‘It’s like being in a Starburst box. So, the safe is under the desk, the checkbook lives in the second left-hand drawer, when it’s here, and all the invoices go under the bear.’

‘The bear?’

She stepped inside the room, walked to the desk, and picked up a little stuffed pink bear. Wearing an orange hat. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to the stack of paper beneath him. ‘Don’t ask me, it was like that when I got hired. Any questions?’

Of course, I had several, but none she could answer. ‘No. Thanks.’

‘Sure thing. Just holler if you need us.’ She stepped past me, back into the hallway, where I was still standing, having not yet had the strength to actually venture inside. I heard her take a few steps before she said, ‘And, Auden?’

I turned, facing her. ‘Yeah?’

She glanced over her shoulder, then took one step back toward me. ‘Don’t worry about Maggie. She’s just… emotional. She’ll get over it.’

‘Oh,’ I said, wondering how, exactly, I was supposed to respond to this. Even I knew better than to talk about one girl with another one, especially if they were friends. ‘Right.’

She nodded, then walked away, back to the register, where Esther and Maggie were now bent over a box, sticking price tags onto sunglasses. As she approached, they glanced up at her, then easily adjusted themselves, making room for her to join them.

I looked back into the pink room, and for some reason thought of my mother, if only because she was the only person I knew who would have had more trouble entering it than I did. I could just imagine her face, how her eyes would narrow in disgust, the heavy, through-the-nostril sigh that would speak louder than the words that followed it. ‘It’s like a womb in here!’ she’d groan. ‘An environment totally ruled by gender stereotypes and expectations, as pathetic as those who chose to inhabit it.’

Exactly, I thought. Then I went inside.

Heidi’s office might have been over the top, but her books were actually in pretty good shape. When I’d worked for my mom’s accountant the summer before, I’d seen some crazy bookkeeping methods. There were people who came in with registers where entire months’ worth of checks were missing, others who only seemed to keep their receipts on match-books or napkins. Heidi’s stuff was organized, her files made sense, and there were only a few discrepancies, all of which had happened in the last ten months or so. Maybe this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, considering what my dad had said about her business background. But it was.

Not shocking was the fact that at first, the office was completely distracting. I actually felt a little nauseated, sitting there, a condition exacerbated when I turned on the desk lamp, which had an orange shade and made everything seem even more radioactive. But after a few minutes with the calculator and the checkbook, it all just kind of fell away. I hadn’t realized how much I missed the simplicity of a project of numbers, how things just made sense in sums and division. No emotion, no complications. Just digits on-screen, lining up in perfect sequence.

I was so immersed, in fact, that at first I didn’t even hear the music coming from the store behind me. It was only when it suddenly got very loud, like someone had twisted the volume from the lowest to highest setting, that it broke through the tax forms I was looking at and got my attention.

I looked at the clock – it was 9:01 – then pushed my chair back and eased the door open. Out in the hallway, the music was positively deafening, some disco song with a fast beat, a girl’s voice chanting some lyrics about a summer crush over it. I was wondering if maybe they were having some issue with the stereo system when I saw Esther suddenly go shimmying past the jeans display, her arms waving over her head. She was followed, moments later, by Leah, doing a slow, hip-swiveling move, and then Maggie, bouncing on her tiptoes. It was like a conga line of three, passing quickly, then gone.

I took another step forward, leaning out a bit more into the store. I couldn’t see any customers, although the boardwalk looked crowded, lots of people passing by. I’d just decided to go back to the office and wait for the silence to return when Esther popped up from behind the bathing-suit rack, this time doing a step-slide, step-slide move, her hair swinging out to the side. She reached out a hand to Leah, pulling her into view, then spinning her out and back toward her as they both laughed. Then they split, and Maggie moved in between them, shaking her hips as they circled around her, still dancing.

I didn’t realize I was standing there just staring at them until Esther saw me. ‘Hey,’ she called out. Her cheeks were flushed. ‘It’s the nine o’clock dance. Come on.’

Instinctively, I shook my head. ‘No thanks.’

‘You can’t say no,’ Leah yelled as she grabbed Maggie’s hand, then spun her out and back again. ‘Employee participation is mandatory.’

Then I quit, I thought, but already they were moving on, back to the conga line, this time with Maggie in the lead, bouncing up and down, Esther snapping her fingers behind her. Leah, bringing up the rear, glanced back at me one last time. When I didn’t say or do anything, she just shrugged, following the others as they wound around the displays, and headed toward the door.

I went back to the office, sitting down at the desk. I was sure they thought I was a total stickin-the-mud, not that I cared. It was just like all the activities I’d walked past at my old schools during lunch – fake sumo wrestling, pie-eating contests, mass games of Twister on the quad – always wondering how, exactly, you did stuff like that. Maybe if you’d done it as a kid, it was all nostalgia, and that was the appeal. But I hadn’t. It was all new to me, and therefore more intimidating than anything else.