What You See in the Dark - Manuel Munoz [45]
Teresa went back to her inventory. I know you, she kept hearing as she counted out pairs of sandals she remembered having ordered a year ago. I know about you, she imagined Candy saying, and there it was—just the additional word, the single key and the lock turning for a door that revealed everything about Teresa in glaring light: her father gone, her mother following, money scarce, the men below her window whistling. I know all about you, she tried, this time her own voice saying it, repeating it, as she counted out white shoes favored by the nurses at the hospitals, tasseled flats in elderly beige, pink canvas sneakers, dancing shoes with glittery straps and heels as thin as expensive vases. I know, I know, I know, as she wrote her counts onto the salmon-colored index cards, the morning passing along torturously and Candy not saying another word to her.
I know. But Candy didn’t. Here was a pair of shoes like Candy’s, a modest pump, the heel barely off the ground, dark brown and plain, no intricate patterning. Teresa glanced at the price on the box and wondered how much Mr. Carson would reduce it—a single pair left, but maybe she could afford it if it went on sale. Women like Candy purchased such shoes throughout the year, the price not too high for them. Candy had a record player and could walk into that record shop and buy every Ricky Nelson song she desired, a different version of his beautiful face on the sleeve any time she wanted.
Teresa continued her inventory but noted more and more shoes she wanted to buy for herself, taking a single index card and jotting down the styles she would pay attention to later. She held them up for inspection: spectator shoes, stack heels, plain Mary Janes and ballerina flats, espadrilles and pumps. All of these for Candy, all of them purchased for her by the sweetheart boy she was seeing. The noon hour crawled closer, and the closer it came, the more she thought of Dan, the things she could have with him, and she felt an impatience that she didn’t have them already. When she came across a single pair of cowboy boots—chocolate, the left one scratched badly at both the tip and the heel, a ring of delicate brown roses etched around the mouth—she took one out of the box and held it up as if it could be broken. How unfair of Candy to want more than she already had. Teresa glanced at the shoe size and knew it would fit, then checked the other one to make sure they were a matching pair, as she was supposed to. There was only one pair of the boots left, meaning Mr. Carson had sold them well, but this box had been stuck near the top of the rack, its cover a little dusty from waiting.
Teresa held still, listening for Candy before she even knew what she was actually doing. The floor fan had not yet been turned on and she waited for some kind of signal of Candy’s presence in the silence of the storeroom—a shuffle of paper, Candy’s shoes against the cement floor, a cough against the dust in the air, but the place remained quiet. The longer the silence went on, the more Teresa hesitated, and she strained for the bells of the front door or voices or the telephone. Nothing came. The longer she waited, she knew, the greater the chance she would never have the boots.
She stepped off the ladder with the boot box in her hand and walked down the aisle, listening. Candy was not at the desk. Teresa stopped momentarily and listened once more. The clock read twenty minutes to noon; the lunch hour was finally arriving. She bent down to get one of the large paper bags with sturdy twine loops, carson’s printed on both sides. Briskly, she unfolded it, as if she were going about her business, but after one more glance at the beige curtain leading to the front of the store, Teresa slipped the boot box into the bag and walked quickly