“Sorry I’m late,” I say, swallowing. “Lunch took a while.”
“No worries, kiddo,” she says, giving my shoulder a little squeeze. Then she leans in, sniffs. “Mm, you smell good enough to eat.” She looks at my banged-up nails. “Amuse Bouche?”
“Hearts and Tarts,” I say, curling my fingers into my palms and hiding them from her view.
She looks at me. “Sharp.”
? ? ?
With my mouth still full of Eve’s bundt, I take up her place at the cashier’s desk. Watch her pass by me as she makes her way toward the alley, clutching her lunch and a photography book of Paris to her sternum. She’ll thumb through the pictures while she eats her yogurt. Her lunch ritual.
Behind the desk, I sit staring at our sideline merchandise, which Eve has arranged in complex, precarious towers by the cash register. Whimsical things you never thought you needed until you found yourself standing in line in front of them. Women clad in gym wear they never seem to change out of come in saying, How cute! How cute! Reminding me of the birdcalls I hear whenever I pass the aviary on my twice-daily walk.
I look at Amber sitting beside me at the desk, eating a muffuletta from the deli next door, smirking at Facebook on her phone.
I inspect my nails. Apart from a little more topcoat wrinkling, they’ve held together. I look at the jar of saltwater taffy Eve always keeps by the cash register, then at my watch.
“Eve’s taking a while,” I say to Amber.
She shrugs, keeps smirking at her screen, chewing. “Not like we’re busy or anything.”
“Still.”
I get up and wander over to a picture hanging just to the left of the back door, some sort of abstract landscape that looks vaguely vaginal. Through the glass in the door, I see Eve out there in the alley, sunning herself on a cracked plastic chair, Paris in Color splayed open on her iridescent lap to the photo of the Luxembourg gardens. The peach pit and yogurt tub sit ravished at her callused heels. She’s clutching a mug of green tea I know she takes unsweetened. Staring straight ahead, past the dumpsters, into some Zen space, I imagine. Perhaps an ocean. Rolling gray waves. A stony beach. Eve’s recently divorced. Lives with her dogs in an empty house on a hill with a view of the desert. Terrible to love the water as much as I do and live in a desert, she confided to me once. There’s the lake, I told her. Lake shmake, Eve said. What my soul needs is the sea. With my eyes on her now, I adjust the picture frame, scraping the wall with my nails a little as I do. Eve starts in her chair at the noise and snaps her head to look at me through the glass door. I smile at her and turn away.
? ? ?
At home, he’s in his office with the door closed. When I open it, I expect I don’t know what. But what I find is only lines of code and him innocently clicking.
He turns to look at me. “Hey.”
“Dinner?” I ask from the doorframe.
“I got Barbacoa on the way home,” he says, holding up a large bit-into burrito. Waving it like a flag of peace. Two tiny wedges of squeezed lime sit on his desk beside a dripping Coke.
“Figured you’d want to do your own thing,” he says. “You know. For your diet.”
“Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just make myself a salad, then.”
“Okay.”
I turn to go, then stop.
“What?” he says.
“Would you like to at least eat with me?” I ask him. “When I’ve made it?”
“Well, by then this’ll be cold so, you know, I should probably eat now. But I could sit with you, if you’d like.”
I picture him sitting in front of me, hands clasped on the table. Him watching me chew, then swallow, then chew.
“No, it’s okay, you’ve got work.” I close the door.
I eat a bowl of lightly dressed spring mix while leafing through Nigella Bites, which I thought for sure would have a Better Than Sex Cake recipe. It doesn’t. So I watch the YouTube clip of her making a caramel croissant bread pudding after a late night out. A bit eccentric for supper, she confesses to the camera, stepping out of her heels, dropping her earrings onto the kitchen counter. Nonetheless, it’s what I need. Smilingly swirls sugar in the saucepan. High heat—don’t be timid. Now, you can swirl as the caramel heats up but NEVER stir. If you stir, you can make the sugar crystalize and what I want, what anyone wants, is a luscious, smooth— The door to his office opens. He comes out to throw away his Barbacoa bag, looking askance at me and Nigella.
“I sent you a link to a new Nick Cave song earlier today. Did you listen to it?”
“Not yet.”
“You should check it out,” he says. He goes back to the office, shutting the door.