What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [42]
She headed to the shoe store in a roundabout way, wondering if she was in love. She lingered by a sale display of laundry detergent, nail polish, and floor wax at the drugstore and found herself dreaming of using them in a large, beautiful home with Dan’s pickup parked in the driveway. Across the street, she was surprised to see the barber shop not only open but busy—she could see the men waiting in chairs, reading the morning paper, and could even hear the soft buzz of a radio report. Married men, all of them, she suspected, maybe even what Dan would turn into later on, and when she thought this, she spied one of the men looking up from his newspaper, his eyes lingering on her.
She walked away from his gaze and went to the record shop down the street. She studied the album covers pasted up against the windows, Elvis Presley and Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra, the black discs hanging down from the ceiling on fish-line, each of them with colorful labels that Teresa regarded as if they were jewels. The logos, the rich colors, even the company names: Chess, Atlantic, Peacock, Imperial, Sun, Decca, Mercury, Capitol, Cadence. Since no one was on the street, Teresa said the names aloud, wanting to hear how grand they sounded, each with its own singularity and suggestion, and she stood there dreaming about which life she’d rather have: one with Dan and the pickup in the driveway, the other where she could arrive at one of those studios in an elegant car, the microphone waiting.
To ask for both, she thought to herself, was greedy beyond words. She thought of Cheno, if he daydreamed while yanking nectarines from the branches, what he asked the sky for.
In the bottom of the corner display, she noticed the name Ricky on one of the album covers. She had to lean down to look at it, at him. There he was, a black-and-white picture, but she guessed that his hair was brown, rich and deep, and he looked back at her with eyes she could not guess the color of. Maybe blue. Maybe green. But the long lashes! Casting shadows almost, and she studied the rest of his face—his lean nose, the faint bit of stubble, his eyebrows leaning in to each other, the way his left eye seemed to signal a different kind of feeling: the regret she had heard in his voice last night. That was the eye she focused on, as if she could feel his longing, as if she could fall in love with it and alleviate it. Didn’t Cheno have it, too? And yet why couldn’t she fall in love with him? She put her hand on her purse, feeling the small weight of the jar of pumpkin seeds. Ricky’s bottom lip jutted out thick and full, the upper one much thinner, his mouth holding in a perfect line, capturing who he was—a singer—and how everything that mattered about him centered on the moment he opened that mouth.
For hurt to matter, she thought, you had to be beautiful. She thought of Cheno’s small frame scrambling into the bed of the pickup truck. She thought of Dan Watson, how even he lacked the long lashes and strange eyes of Ricky Nelson. She thought of her father, whom she had never met, and wondered how handsome he was to lure her mother all the way to Texas.
Cars rumbled by more frequently now, so Teresa made her way to the shoe store, waiting outside the doors. Mr. Carson had not yet arrived, nor had Candy, her co-worker. Sunlight warmed the sidewalk. She could feel the heat in her shoes. Mr. Carson was always early, so by the time his Oldsmobile approached the store, she knew it was probably eight thirty.
He parked fastidiously, poking his fat head from the car window to peer down at the painted lines on the asphalt. He locked the car with his key and approached, a paper cup of coffee in one hand, a small white bag in the other.
“You,” he said, searching for the key to the store. “What are you doing here so early?”
He was genuinely surprised, Teresa could tell—there wasn’t a hint of malice in his voice. “Just a few minutes is all,” she replied.
“Well, don’t expect to get off early,