“Dean, Jesus.”
“The colleges come to you, don’t they? Just tell me.”
“They talk to everybody,” Henry says unconvincingly.
“Shit. I knew it. I knew it. Why am I not surprised? Look, I gotta go. Congrats, Mr. Class President. Shit.”
Mike Dean walks away and back into contact lenses and Italian loafers.
Henry steps into Baxter’s, where Mr. Beardsley is looking at his watch.
“Nice of you to join us this afternoon,” he says. “Could I trouble you for a stockroom run, do you think? Would that fit into your social schedule? I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“What do you need?” Henry asks.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Powell,” Mr. Beardsley says. Henry knows his boss is disappointed in the lack of apology. Which is precisely why none is offered.
“I need you to unpack the Izods. I just got a call from Mrs. Langley. She’s looking for a canary-yellow, two-button, size large. I’ve got to call her back a-sap.” Instead of A-S-A-P, Mr. Beardsley makes a word out of it.
“Will do,” Henry says.
“Chop chop.”
Mr. Beardsley couldn’t be sure but Henry knows he notices him moving just a tad bit slower than he had been only seconds before.
The box opens easily and Henry unfolds the top panels to reveal the flat, folded technicolor shirts now all the rage after patiently waiting for a decade of grunge to run its course.
Henry reaches into the cardboard box and the shirts are now cans of nonperishable food.
“What’s your system?” Mike Dean is standing over him, arms full of Bumble Bee tuna and minestrone soup.
“My system?” Henry says. He doesn’t look up but reaches for the cans on the gymnasium floor to his right.
“Your system. Are you separating soups from condiments or what? What’s the plan?”
“No plan, just pile them over there. Or here. Just put them down here and I’ll start the next box in a sec.”
“Jesus. You need a system,” Mike says. “Move over. Move. I’ll do it. I’ll show you.”
“Dean. Get lost, I got it. Hand me that tape over there, will you?”
“If it’s all mixed up together,” Mike says, handing him the packing tape, “what happens on the other end? You gotta think of the end game. What’re they going to do when they get all this stuff? They’re going to have to sort on their end, that’s what. And that’s not community service, that’s chaos. You’ve heard of the chaos theory. Or did you have a game that day?”
“Incoming!” One of Henry’s teammates elbows Mike Dean aside as if he were invisible.
“Ow, Jesus, excuse me,” Mike says. He rubs his stringy arm and checks it for bruising.
“Step it up, Powell,” his teammate Will Sanderson says. “We got two more loads after this one and I want to get out of here sometime this century.”
“Put them over there on the table. I’ll get to it after this next box,” Henry says.
Sanderson dumps the cans, which roll indiscriminately and clang to the floor, the deviled ham making a break for freedom across the polished floor, nearly reaching the gym door.
“Your friends are geniuses,” Mike says. He fetches the deviled ham and moves closer to Henry once the coast is clear and once he has neatly restacked Sanderson’s cans.
“Dean. What do you want?” Henry says. He is stretching the tape across the bottom flaps of the next box. “I’m busy. What do you want?”
“I just don’t think it’s fair, that’s all. I’ve been in charge of the food drive since eighth grade. That’s four years of running the show. Ow! Jesus, stop,” he says.
“Then move out of the way, loser,” Sanderson says. More cans are unloaded, more cans roll, more cans clang to the floor.
“I don’t see why I can’t play a role here, is what I’m saying,” Mike says once he is sure Sanderson’s gone out for another heaping armload. “Number one it’s unfair, number two it’s idiocy since last year Mrs. Hendricks said my organizational skills were unparalleled. Unparalleled. But nooo. This year the football team is sponsoring the drive so all my expertise is ignored for pure chaos. I can’t wait to see what Mrs. Hendricks says about your system. Ow!”
“Three strikes, you’re out,” Sanderson says. After emptying his arms of cans he bends over and faces Mike. “Fourteen, twenty-seven, twenty-three, hike!”
He charges Mike Dean, hits him square in the midsection and hoists him over his right shoulder, carrying him out of the gym.
“Hey! Put me down!” Mike Dean’s voice echoes, now an octave higher than usual, throughout the gym.
Henry tapes up the box he’s just packed full and slides it to the side. He pushes himself up off his knees and stretches his back.
“Leave him alone,” Henry says to Sanderson, who is pinging Mike Dean’s head. Flicking it first on the right, then on the left.
“Ow! Cut it out. Ow. Ow.” Mike’s backing up but holding off from running away altogether because experience has taught him that running will only ignite a chase.
“Sanderson. We’ve got to carry the boxes out to the truck. You want to get out of here, don’t you?”
Will Sanderson turns from his prey and hurries back into the gym.
Mike is rubbing his head, which appears two sizes too big for his body. Henry is gone by the time he turns to thank him.
“Any day now,” Mr. Beardsley says. Henry’s hands jump into action and lift out the orange shirts. Below them are the yellow ones. Following the yellows are whites. It occurs to Henry that Mike Dean would be pleased. The packer had a system.
“Here you go,” Henry says. “Size large.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Beardsley says.
Henry straightens up and winces with the pain in his lower back. He rubs it away and reaches for the shirts he has unpacked, setting them neatly on the folding table. He takes each one out of the plastic, careful to maintain the perfect factory fold.
Out in the store the sun is streaming in dark amber through the window but is nevertheless bright enough to magnify the floating dust particles that choke the life out of fresh air.
“Henry, give me a hand here, would you?”
He crosses the store to the formal-wear display as if he is cutting his way through the jungle of airborne debris. It depresses Henry to think this is what he has been inhaling every day for twenty years. He makes a mental note to schedule a physical soon.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Mr. Beardsley says, “but this rack is off about a foot. It needs to go to southwest about a foot.”
“I forgot my compass today so which way do you mean?” Henry asks.
“Toward you. On three. One. Two. Three—stop! That’s good. Now a little north. Too much. No, north. That way,” Mr. Beardsley says, angling his head in the direction he is intending. “There you go. Perfect. Let me back up and see. Yes. It’s perfect.”
“Want me to mark the latitude and longitude in a ledger so we’ll know for next time?”
“Very funny, very funny. You know what needs doing?” Mr. Beardsley asks. “Those fisherman knits need to get moved back. Actually, most need to get packed away. Just leave a couple out.”
It has always surprised Henry that these sweaters sell at all. Baxter’s sells the authentic Pringle-made sweaters still smelling of wet Edinburgh afternoons. Itchy and ill-fitting on most everyone but the man with a walking stick and border collie in the catalog that is packed in the woolly box, the bulky sweaters are a perennial favorite. He has seen the fisherman knits he has sold dart from station wagons to supermarkets and dry cleaners.
“Here’s the sign for the shelves, once the sweaters are cleared out,” Mr. Beardsley says. The sign is handwritten, proclaiming deals for those who have the foresight to buy cold weather clothes in hot weather. Twenty percent off. As far as Henry knows no one has taken advantage of this deal, but still the laminated square gets Scotch-taped back up to the shelf year after year. Fisherman knits are
remembered only when rakes are pulled out and leaf piles are burning.
The stacking eventually gets done and winter turns to spring and summer on the right side of Baxter’s. The left side is seasonless. Suits, jackets, ties, formal wear proudly keep their places all year round.
“You okay to close tonight?” Mr. Beardsley is already putting on his trench coat. Henry Powell is always available to close the store up at precisely five o’clock.
“Yeah,” Henry says.
“Okay then. Don’t forget to put the UPS cardboard out tonight, tomorrow’s pickup day. And change out the bulb in the exit sign over the door, will you? It’ll go out any day now—I changed it out six months ago today. I don’t want a violation in case we get a pop quiz, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay.”
“Got any plans tonight?” Mr. Beardsley asks. He is tying the sash of his coat and is turning to go without waiting for an answer.
“Yeah, I do actually,” Henry says.
“Yes?” Mr. Beardsley is halfway through the door. He looks back at Henry.
“Old high school friend,” Henry says. “His dot com went bust so he’s back in town.”
“Ah! The dot com bubble,” Mr. Beardsley says. “What did I tell you? What did I say? All good things come to an end. I said it before anyone else, remember? I called it. Everyone out there on a gold rush in California and I knew the bottom would drop out. Remember that day? The day that thing—Webvan?—skyrocketed and the Dow went through the roof I told you then it would all go to hell. You can’t hold dot coms. You can’t wear dot coms. You can’t eat dot coms. Nothing good ever comes from things you can’t wear or hold or eat.”
“I thought money can’t buy happiness,” Henry says.
“Precisely,” Mr. Beardsley says, missing the point entirely. “Poor guy, your friend. I bet he had everything sunk in it. Well, I guess you’re buying tonight! Don’t forget the exit sign.”
“’Night.”
The metal brackets holding the four-letter sign in place are hot. Henry curses himself for forgetting they would be and steps back off the ladder to get a pair of golf gloves from the sportswear section. Then it’s back up the ladder, screwdriver in back pocket, calfskin protecting fingertips. The whole enterprise takes him longer than expected. Three more trips up and down the ladder are required as the bulb he originally forgot to bring up is not, as it turns out, the right wattage. He is back in the storeroom when the door chimes sound.
“Hello? Anybody in here? Hello?” reaches him in the utility closet. He accidentally kicks the broom hurrying out to the floor.
“Dammit. Hello?” he answers back.
And there she is.
“Hi,” she says. Her hair, he notes, is shorter. “You’re closing, aren’t you. I—for some reason I thought you closed later. I forgot. I swear my head’s been cut off these days, I’m just not thinking…sorry. I’ll just come back.”
“No!” Henry says. Indoor voice, he tells himself. One day everyone woke up and decided to start using this phrase all at once. As if be quiet is too harsh. Young mothers now gently suggest their kids use their indoor voices when they come to the store for school uniform fittings.
“No. It’s a good time,” Henry says. “I was just—I was—how are you? Wow. You look great.”
“Oh, thanks,” Cathy says. She looks down and runs a hand through her hair. Still self-conscious, he thinks. “Yeah, well, I came as a customer, actually. But you’re closing so I’ll just come back tomorrow.”
“It’s fine. Perfect time. Really. Wait, come sit down,” he says. He gestures for her to take the first seat on the platform in front of the three-way mirror. “How are you? God, it’s been a while. How’s it going? You look great. Really great.”
“I can’t stay long,” she says. Still standing she shifts her weight to her left side. “I just need to look at a couple of things.”
“You cut your hair,” he says. “It looks great.”
They both laugh at his repetition. Still the laugh, while relieving some of the nervous tension, is an awkward one.
“Sorry,” Henry says. “What are you looking for? You in the market for men’s clothes all of the sudden?”
“Um, it’s not for me, really,” she says, “but for the groomsmen. My fiancé’s from California and doesn’t know the area so I told him I knew just the place.”
He wonders if she, too, felt the air pressure drop. If she hears a rushing sound in her ears as he now does. He looks down and picks up a pin the vacuum cleaner must have missed.
When Henry looks up, the walls on either side of them suddenly move. Closing in on them. Like in Star Wars when they’re trapped in a giant trash compactor. Or was it Raiders of the Lost Ark? Henry can’t remember. He could swear it was Princess Leia—her white robes wet and clingy—down there with Harrison Ford, but then again maybe it was that tomboy love interest in the later film. The girl who could drink everyone under the table. Huh.
With horror he realizes his shallow breathing—mouth open like a panting dog—is audible.
“Are you okay?” Cathy asks. She puts her hand on his arm and they both look down before she hastily removes it.
“You’re getting married,” he says. He works on evening out his breath.
“I’m getting married.”
Whooooosh. A conch shell sound parents tell children is really the sound of the sea.
“Congratulations,” he hears himself say. “That’s just great.”
The next thing he knows, he is giving her a hug.
He looks away, but since they’re in front the three-way mirror he cannot escape Cathy. In triplicate. From every angle. She hasn’t properly brushed her hair in the back, he notes.
“You guys still rent tuxes, right?” she is saying. He is watching her mouth move in profile. “I mean, it’s been a long time. I remember you used to. Rent tuxes. Right?”
“Wow,” Henry says.
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s exciting. It’s just…well…”
“Awkward, yeah, I know,” Henry says. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
But just as he is saying this she is saying, “Oh, no, actually I was going to say that it’s just overwhelming, all the stuff that goes into planning a wedding.”
Henry knows he must look her in the eye. This is the moment to look her in the eye, he tells himself. But his stare is instead fixed on the pant rack.
“Wow,” he says, looking back down at the carpet, this time searching for more pins. “So, wait, what’s his name?”
“You don’t know him. His name’s Albert. Al. He’s from Pershing.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, you said that,” she says. “Anyway, I better come back tomorrow.”
She stands and pushes her purse strap up her shoulder.
“No, don’t go,” he says. He leaps up. “Stay. Just a second more. Just stay for a second more. I can help you find whatever you’re looking for.”
“I can’t, Henry,” she says. “I really have to go now. I was just going to do a quick once-over and then get going. I’ll have more time tomorrow.”
“But…”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t know,” Henry says. “It’s just…I don’t know….”
“What?”
“You never called me back,” is all he can think of to say.
“Huh?”
“You never called me back that time I called you. You said you were just going out for about an hour to run and do something and I waited and you never called me back.”
Her mouth drops open.
This is the part, he thinks to himself. Here it is. The denouement of the book. Of the screenplay. Of the film. He personally conjures up the adverbs: Frantically, fearfully, hopefully. Frantically he searches her face for a clue to what will be said. Other than the momentarily opened mouth, which shuts when she realizes he is scrutinizing her, there is nothing on her face, in her eyes, that betrays her thoughts. Fearfully he thinks she will
be scared away by his pleading tone. Hopefully he imagines this to be the part where she drops her purse and flings herself into his arms and says something along the lines of “I lost your number and then too much time passed and I figured you’d moved on so I didn’t call you back but it killed me not calling you back and as a matter of fact I’ve never gotten over you, Henry, never and I’ve been working up the courage just to come in here to see you again and I’m not getting married I just said that in case you were already married so you wouldn’t feel sorry for me, oh, Henry, I love you.”
This is what he is preparing for. He even shifts his weight so that she can throw herself into his arms.
“Oh, my God, Henry. That was almost six years ago,” she says. She pulls her purse in closer to her body. “Oh, my God.”
The chimes sound as she exits.
1986
“Why does there have to be more?” he asked her. They were lying on his couch, post-intercourse, Henry drawing circles on her bare shoulder. He was quite sure the occupants of 10D could hear their every word, every movement, because he has, in the past, heard every word of theirs.
“I just can’t stand it anymore,” she said, standing, pulling her shirt from the pile of tangled clothing on the floor by the brass-and-glass coffee table he had just polished the night before. She is hunting for her panties. Henry reaches for his boxers and steps into them, flaccid.
“I can’t,” she continues, pulling her turtleneck over her head. “We never should’ve gotten back together. Jesus, what was I thinking? Every day it’s the same thing with you, day in and day out. The same. How do you not lose your mind? I can’t even stand that we keep the same radio station on at work every day. I’ve been begging to switch it for weeks now, just a couple of days a week, switch to something else. But you, you’re like a gerbil on a wheel in a cage. Five-fifteen, God forbid anything interfere with your five-fifteen appointment. I knew this was a mistake. But you called and I thought well this time things might be different. This time he’ll have his priorities straight. This time he’ll be ready to go. What the hell was I thinking?”
She is fully dressed now.
“Marry me,” he said.