Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [30]
Charis peers: the shelves are upsettingly full. “You know what’s moving?” says Shanita. “This thing.”
Charis is familiar with it, because she’s sold a lot of them lately. It’s a little pamphlet-like book, a cookbook, done on grey recycled paper with black-and-white line drawings, a do-it-yourself home publishing effort: Pot Luck: Penny-Pinching Soups & Stews. It doesn’t appeal to her, personally. Penny-pinching as a concept she finds very blocking. There’s something hard and grinding about it, and pinching is a hurtful word. True, she saves candle ends and pieces of wool, but that’s because she wants to, she wants to create things with them, that’s an act of love towards the earth.
“I need more stuff like this,” says Shanita. “Fact is, I’m thinking of changing the store. Changing the name, the concept, everything.”
Charis’s heart sinks. “What would you change it to?” she asks.
“I was thinking, Scrimpers,” says Shanita.
“Scrimpers?” says Charis.
“You know. Like the old five-and-dime, all cheap stuff,” says Shanita. “Only more creative. It could work! A few years ago, you could trade on the impulse buy. Mad money, you know? Folks were flinging it around. But the only way you make it through a recession is by getting people to buy stuff about how not to buy stuff, if you know what I mean.”
“But Radiance is so lovely!” cries Charis unhappily.
“I know,” says Shanita. “It was a lot of fun while it lasted. But lovely is luxury goods. How many of these dinky toys you think people are going to buy, right now? Maybe some, but only if we keep the price down. In these times you cut your losses, you cut your overheads, you do what you have to. This is a lifeboat, you know? It’s my lifeboat, it’s my life. I have worked damn hard, I know which way the wind is blowing, and I do not intend to go down with the sinking ship.”
She’s defensive. She looks at Charis, her gaze level – her eyes are green today – and Charis realizes that she herself is an overhead. If things get much worse, Shanita will cut her, and run the store by herself, and Charis will be out of a job.
They finish taking stock and open the door for the day, and Shanita’s mood changes. She’s friendly now, almost solicitous; she makes them both some Morning Miracle, and they sit at the front counter drinking it. There is not exactly a stampede of customers, so Shanita passes the time by asking Charis all about Augusta.
To Charis’s discomfort, Shanita approves of Augusta; she thinks Augusta is smart to be taking a business course. “A woman needs to be prepared to make her own way,” she says. “Too many lazy men around.” She even approves of the furniture scrapbook, which Charis herself finds so grasping, so materialistic. “That’s a girl with a head on her shoulders,” Shanita says, pouring them out more tea. “Wish I’d had one, at her age. Would’ve saved myself a lot of trouble.” She has two daughters of her own, and two sons, grown up. She’s a grandmother, even; but she doesn’t talk much about that part of her life. By now she knows a great deal about Charis, whereas Charis knows almost nothing about her.
“My pendulum went funny this morning,” says Charis, to get off the subject of Augusta.
“Funny?” says Shanita. The pendulums are sold in the store, five different models, and Shanita is an expert at interpreting their movements.
“It just stopped,” says Charis. “Stock-still, right over my head.”
“That’s a strong message,” says Shanita. “That’s something real sudden, something you weren’t looking for. Maybe it’s some entity, trying to get a message through. Today is the cusp of Scorpio, right? It’s like, the pendulum is pointing a finger and saying, watch out!”
Charis is apprehensive: could it be Augusta, an accident? That’s the first thing she thinks of, so she asks.
“It’s not what I get,” says Shanita reassuringly, “but let’s just see.” She takes the Tarot she keeps under the counter, the Marseilles deck she favours, and Charis shuffles and cuts.
“The Tower,” says Shanita. “Sudden,