“Ha,” he said, giving the word a sarcastic bite. “Yeah. I found the one outlet in Cold World that doesn’t actually have any electricity running through it.”
“The wiring is old,” she said. “An electrician is supposed to come out in January. Dolores is worried some of it won’t pass next year’s inspection.”
“Well, the more likely explanation is that I’m just a fuckup. That’s what you think anyway, right?”
This type of reaction wasn’t like him. He tried to let things roll off his back, tried to take life as one big joke. There was no point in getting worked up about what people thought of you, or petty bullshit drama. It was what allowed him to have an easy relationship with everyone he knew—his coworkers, his housemates. Everyone but his parents, and that wasn’t something he gave much thought to. Letting those thoughts intrude was a surefire way to get him out of whatever flow state he tried to achieve with his life.
“Have you eaten?” he asked suddenly. A stupid question, probably, given that she’d been expecting to eat dinner with Daniel and Dolores and their family. But he didn’t want to give her time to respond to his last comment, didn’t want to risk getting into an actual conversation about all the ways he’d let people down.
She paused, and for a minute he didn’t think she’d let him off the hook that easily. She still seemed unsettled, small in her giant cardigan, framed by the slushy snow beneath her feet and the blue door to the Snow Globe at her back. But eventually she shrugged and said, “I was going to grab something from the vending machines.”
“Nah,” he said. “We can do better than that. Follow me.”
* * *
? ? ?
Since cold world was housed in a converted warehouse, there weren’t any windows except for the glass doors that provided the main entrance. It would’ve almost been easy to forget that they were there so late at night, except that it was eerie to walk around the dimly lit space, the only sound the hum of the air conditioning and the dull thud of their own footsteps. Asa led Lauren to the hot chocolate stand near the entrance of Wonderland Walk, ducking under the counter to see what was available in the mini refrigerators stored below.
“We can’t eat that stuff,” Lauren said. “It’s inventory.”
“I’m not completely lawless,” Asa said, rummaging through the wrapped sandwiches until he found two of the best one—a basic ham and cheese that was nonetheless way better than the caprese, which tasted like vomit even when warmed up. “I’m planning to pay for them.”
“The register’s already been cashed out.”
Asa pulled his phone out of his pocket, unlocking it before opening a new note to type in. “Two sandwiches, seven ninety-eight apiece. Do you want me to pop yours in the microwave?”
“Closer to eight fifty after sales tax,” Lauren said, eyeing the sandwich he’d placed on the counter with a dubious expression. “For ham and cheese? That’s an expensive sandwich.”
“Cold World knows if you’re desperate enough to need real food at a place like this, you’re going to pay a hefty premium.” He set two bottled waters next to the sandwiches on the counter, and made a show of typing the totals for both into his phone. “And here’s us, the most desperate of all.”
There was a small seating area just inside the entrance to Wonderland Walk, with a few white-painted wrought iron tables and chairs, barely big enough to fit two people each. On a normal, semibusy day, it was impossible to get seating there, since families would push tables together and hang out for a while. But now, with no one around, Asa pulled out a chair to one of the tables, gesturing for Lauren to take a seat.
She hesitated a minute before accepting the proffered chair. “Thank you—” she started, then did a double take when he took a seat at the next table over. “Wait, aren’t you going to—”
“You made it very clear earlier today that you wanted me to stop coming around,” he said, unwrapping his sandwich from its plastic. “Unless you’re willing to set off the alarm and summon Dolores, I can’t control our current predicament. But I figured your direction to stop did not include me sitting across a dollhouse tea table from you.”
Besides which, sitting at the same table would make this feel an awful lot like a date. He’d offered to pay for the food. She was all dressed up, a detail he was too conscious of, even as he reminded himself of the person she’d actually dressed up for in the first place. Daniel. Who might be arriving at any minute to rescue Lauren from this situation, if she had anything to do with it.
She frowned down at her own sandwich but made no move to open it yet. “These tables are ridiculously small,” she said. “Maybe Cold World needs a bigger eating area.”
Asa had his mouth full by that point but tilted his head in what he hoped was the universal expression of Yeah, probably, but where would we find the room?
They ate in silence for a few minutes, until eventually Lauren took a big gulp of her water, screwing the cap back on with such deliberate determination that Asa knew she was gearing up to say something else. He found himself tensing, waiting for whatever it might be.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, still looking at her bottled water instead of at him. “I shouldn’t have said all of that stuff about you needing to mind your own business and . . . everything else. The truth is that I was frustrated. You said you had an idea for your proposal, and Daniel had just finished telling me his idea, which was—” She shook her head, but he couldn’t tell if the gesture meant that Daniel’s idea was bad, or just that she wasn’t going to reveal it. He hoped the former.
“Honestly I have zero idea what I’m going to propose to Dolores,” Lauren said, lifting her gaze to his. “Not a clue. I thought something might occur to me while I was running the report for Daniel, but I’m still drawing a complete blank. Then I thought maybe I’d get inspiration from talking to Dolores tonight, but . . .”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence. Obviously, that ship had sailed.
“If anything, I’m more stumped than I was before,” she said. “I was looking back through past years’ financials, before I even started at Cold World, hoping I could spot some trends that would tell me the right direction to go in. But the only trend I saw was that our profits are down. Like, way down.”
This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Just from looking around, Asa could see evidence that things weren’t quite as they used to be. Minor signs of wear and tear that weren’t rushed to be fixed, understaffing during their off season, employee perks that had been gradually phased out. Nothing huge. And the business was old—Dolores had been running it a long time, and things had stagnated. It was presumably the reason she’d come up with her request for proposals to give the place a makeover.
But the way Lauren said those words—way down—made it sound more serious. He couldn’t tell if that was due to her propensity to worry, or if the situation really looked that dire.
He was working up the nerve to ask when his phone rang. “Hey, Kiki,” he said into the phone.
“Where are you? You were supposed to be home an hour ago.”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m still here. I’m actually—”
When he glanced over at Lauren, she was shaking her head emphatically, her eyes wide and stricken. It wasn’t hard to read her body language, and he pivoted quickly to avoid telling Kiki she was there. “It’s going to take longer than I thought,” he said. “Don’t bother waiting for me. And don’t tell John, but I saw a spoiler online so I already know the elimination and it’s—”
“La la la,” Kiki sang childishly into the phone. “I’m not listening.”
He grinned. “I was going to say it’s totally unexpected. You won’t see it coming.”
“Well, now I will! Because you told me not to expect it! That’s basically the same thing as a full-out spoiler.”