Lock and Key(110)

“Oh, let them make a mess,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal cleaning it up.”

“Says the person who doesn’t have to do it.”

She raised her eyebrows at me, walking over to take her coffee off the register. “Okay,” she said slowly. “You’re in a bad mood. What gives?”

“I’m sorry,” I said as the girls finally moved on, leaving rings scattered across the counter behind them. I went over and began to put them away. “I think I’m just stressed or something.”

“Well, it kind of makes sense,” Harriet said, coming over to join me. She put an onyx ring back in place, a red one beside it. “You’re in your final semester, waiting to hear about college, the future is wide open. But that doesn’t necessarily have to get you all bent out of shape. You could look at it as, you know, a great opportunity to embrace stepping out of your comfort zone.”

I stopped what I was doing, narrowing my eyes at her as she filled out another row of rings, calm as you please. “Excuse me?” I said.

“What? ”

I just looked at her, waiting for her to catch the irony. She didn’t. “Harriet,” I said finally, “how long did you have that HELP WANTED sign up before you hired me?”

“Ah,” she said, pointing at me, “but I did hire you, right?”

“And how long did it take you to leave me alone here, to run the kiosk myself?”

“Okay, so I was hesitant,” she admitted. “However, I think you’ll agree that I now leave you fairly often with little trepidation.”

I considered pointing out that the fairly and little spoke volumes. Instead I said, “What about Reggie?”

She wiped her hands on her pants, then moved down to the KeyChains, adjusting the pink one on the rack. “What about him?”

“He told me what happened at Christmas,” I said. “What was it you said? That you weren’t in a ‘relationship place’? Is that anywhere near your comfort zone?”

“Reggie is my friend,” she said, straightening a clasp. “If we took things further and it didn’t work out, it would change everything.”

“But you don’t know it won’t work out.”

“I don’t know it will, either.”

“And that’s reason enough to not even try,” I said. She ignored me, moving down to the rings. “You didn’t know that hiring me would work out. But you did it anyway. And if you hadn’t—”

“—I’d be enjoying a quiet moment at my kiosk right now, without being analyzed,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be nice!”

“—you never would have made the KeyChains and seen them be so successful,” I finished. “Or been able to enjoy my company, and this conversation, right now.”

She made a face at me, then walked back over and hopped up on her stool, opening up the laptop she’d recently bought to keep up with her Web site stuff. “Look. I know in a perfect, utterly romantic world, I’d go out with Reggie and we’d live happily ever after,” she said, hitting the power button. “But sometimes you just have to follow your instincts, and mine say this would not be a good thing for me. All right?”

I nodded. Really, considering everything I’d just gone through, Harriet was someone I should be trying to emulate, not convince otherwise.

I moved back to the rings, reorganizing them the way I had originally, in order of size and color. I was just doing another quick pass with the duster when I heard Harriet say, “Huh. This is weird.”

“What is?”

“I’m just checking into my account, and my balance is kind of off,” she said. “I know I had a couple of debits out, but not for this much.”

“Maybe the site’s just delayed,” I said.

“I knew I shouldn’t have signed on for this new system with Blake. I just feel better when I sign every check myself, you know?” She sighed, then picked up her phone and dialed. After a moment, she closed it. “Voice mail. Of course. Do you know Nate’s number, offhand?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

“Well, when you see him, tell him I need to talk to him. Like, soon. Okay?”

I wanted to tell her I wouldn’t be seeing him, much less delivering messages. But she was already back on the computer, scrolling down.

Harriet wasn’t the only one not resting assured, or so I found out when I got home and found Cora in the foyer, wiping up the floor with a paper towel. Roscoe, who usually could not be prevented from greeting me with a full body attack, was conspicuously absent.

“No way,” I said, dropping my bag on the floor. “He’s mastered the dog door.”

“We lock it when we’re not here,” she told me, pushing herself to her feet. “Which is usually no problem, but someone didn’t bother to show up to walk him today.”

“Really?” I said. “Are you sure? Nate’s usually really dependable.”

“Well, not today,” she replied. “Clearly.”

It was weird. So much so that I wondered if maybe Nate had taken off or something, as that seemed to be the only explanation for him just blowing off things he usually did like clockwork. That night, though, his lights were on, just like always, as were the ones in the pool. It was only when I really looked closely, around midnight, that I saw something out of the ordinary: a figure cutting through the water. Moving back and forth, with steady strokes, dark against all that blue light. I watched him for a long time, but even when I finally turned out the light, he was still swimming.