The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [49]
When the exterior doors of the mall open, the senior citizens arrive and start their mall walking. Smelling of antique cologne, they hold their elbows up and appear to be quite complacent as they grind by.
Chloé comes in right about then, Chloé who works at Jitters because she says there’s a harmonic convergence right in this very spot in the mall. She says it’s a sacred place, like Sedona, Arizona. Sweet girl that she is, Chloé gives my nerves a good shaking every day. Sometimes she comes in so yeasty with sex she’s just had with her boyfriend that I feel like applauding. She gives off sexual odors like a flower out in the front yard trying to make a statement about gardens, which of course flowers don’t need to do. Her shirt says RAGING HORMONES across the front. She’s in love with Oscar now, it’s gone beyond sex, and Oscar has told her (after consulting me: should he tell her?) that he’s in love with her. They look so punk and disreputable, those two, but they’re just a couple of kids, dressed and costumed to affect a menacing appearance.
On this particular day, she comes in and says, “So how’s it going, Mr. S?”
“Oh, okay,” I tell her. “The usual. Monday, you know. I kept noticing those little crosses on the curves on the way here.”
“Monday!” she exclaims. “Right. And those crosses. Did I ever tell you I went to school with one of the guys who, uh, got one of those crosses? He was a total asshole. He wasn’t even a fun asshole, which, you know, some of them are. Even dead, he’s lucky to get a cross. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t give that guy a shave.”
“What was his name?” I ask.
“Bumford,” she says. “Bumford McGonahy. A loser. With a loser name. Those crosses. Cry my eyes out. He was a mean guy. Guess I should have more sympathy, huh?”
She puts on her apron and starts arranging the pastries, like an art project.
“How’s Oscar?” I ask. “What time’s he coming in?”
“You should know that,” she says. “I’m just labor. You’re management.” She smiles, and then she stops to think. “Around one.” She stands up straight. “No. One-thirty.”
We have overhead track lighting, five lights over the service area, and Chloé has a habit of moving back and forth behind the counter so that she appears sequentially under the lights like an actress on a stage. She’s careful not to plant herself in the small shadowy vacant gaps between the lights. She’s star-practicing. She flicks her head to highlight her hair. She’d be breaking my heart if she weren’t my employee and a kid and Oscar’s lover, besides.
“Do you think,” she asks, rubbing her cheekbone, “that it’s bad to do a bad thing if a good thing is going to come out of it eventually?”
“Beats me,” I tell her. I’m staunchly stacking franchise coffee cups near the entryway. “What sort of bad things?”
“Well, not way bad, just bad.”
Now she’s positioned herself behind the display case so that she can see her reflection on it. The glass is at an angle, but when she’s under the lights, she can see her face reflected there, although she doesn’t know that I know she can. When she stands in exactly the correct spot, she looks down at herself and kisses the air as if her reflection is kissing her, she’s that pleased with the stringy unkempt unofficial beauty of herself. No doubt each time she undresses she unwraps herself like a Christmas present. I have a feeling she blesses her body for her various wild gifts every half-hour or so, now that she knows what they are and she can use them.
“Well,” she says, “like putting yourself on display.”
“I don’t follow you,” I tell her, having lost my concentration. I’ve been setting the copies of the New