“I came to you because I remembered you. If I went through my agent, he’d make a stink. I don’t want to make a big deal about it. But I need it back.”
His body held so much power, so much forward motion. His stare was a swing in my direction, and instinctively I curved. I held my hands folded in front of me, and all my tension flowed down from my shoulders. I squeezed my hands together as if I was cracking a walnut between them.
“I’ll ask the kids. If it doesn’t turn up, we’ll find a way to pay for it.” I wished I could swallow that last sentence back. There was no way I could cough up enough for whatever that thing cost, and the LAUSD would laugh me out of a job if I asked them for it.
“I don’t want money.” Ever so lightly, he tapped my desk with the tip of his middle finger. It was the only movement of his body, as if he was conserving his energy to spring. “I have the money. It’s the glove. That glove.”
“It’s the glove you love.” I smiled at my joke and felt like a dumbass at the same time.
“You’re a poet.”
“I know it.”
He laughed, really laughed at my silly rhyming game. Oldest joke in the book, and he laughed.
The bell rang.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” I finally said. “I’ll make it my business to get it back.”
He regarded me, my face, my eyes, my posture. The look was so deep I felt not physically naked but morally, as if he were stripping me bare to see if I was not only capable of finding his glove but if my desire to do it was real.
I scribbled my number on a scrap of paper. “Here. I’m personally responsible for this. You can call me and harass me any time.”
I slid the paper across the desk. He’d probably throw it in the trash and call the school’s superintendent, who would fire me outright for not watching the kids.
He took the paper and folded it in half against his thumb. “You buy the apples with your own money?”
“Yeah. Oranges sometimes, but the peels get messy.”
“You seem like a good person.” He slid the paper into his breast pocket.
My response burst out of the base of my throat without taking the usual route through my brain. “And you’re very handsome.”
I turned red—I knew from the hot tingle in my neck and shoulders—but oddly, his cheeks went a little red as well. He always seemed so cocky, in part because I only saw him on the field, but maybe he wasn’t.
You’re a school librarian. Did you even brush your hair this morning?
That little voice brought me back to reality. Dash may have turned a little red, and he may have been a little awkward, but that made him charming and sweet to more accomplished, more beautiful women. It did not put him in my league. I was triple A, and he was the majors.
The bell rang. He stood.
“Thank you.” He buttoned his jacket.
I didn’t look at him as I walked to the door and opened it. “I’ll ask around. Do you have a deadline? It could take time.”
“Opening day’s my deadline.” He handed me a card. “Call me if you find it. Or just have it sent to the address on the back.”
“I will.”
A line of second graders made their way down the hall, and they parted for him as if he was an unseen wall with a space all his own. He turned back as he walked, giving me a wave. I wished I hadn’t told him he was handsome, and I wished I didn’t have to interrogate the entire third grade on his behalf.
five
Vivian
I hated going into Mom’s closet, because she wasn’t around anymore. It still smelled like her. As soon as I slid the door open, I was assaulted by rosewater and memories. I sighed and stepped inside.
She hadn’t been born to money, but my bio dad had gotten the house cheap when his four-minute-long career had turned a corner. My stepdad was a hard-working divorce attorney in a city that didn’t take marriage seriously, and he was generous and kind, but his career had skidded when his arthritis took over his life.
In the years he’d been married to my mother, he treated her like a queen. She never wanted for a dress, and what became apparent as the years went on and I plumbed the depths of her closet, she often didn’t want for a choice of dresses for any occasion. Some still had tags. Some were too expensive for price tags but had obviously never been worn.
I was an inch shorter than she’d been but the same shoe and dress size. As the years wore on, the contents of the closet had gone from dated to cutting edge, and in the hours before the Petersen event, I ran my hands along the sleeve of a matte gold gown that looked as if it had been smelted by a goldsmith.
“She never wore that one,” Dad said from behind me. He was having a good day, and the walker was in its little hallway, waiting for the rain.
I pulled the hanger off the rod and draped the fabric over myself. “It’s too much.”
He waved. “Please wear it. It’s a waste not to.”
Dad hated waste. I didn’t know if that was a new thing or if the excess he’d poured on my mother was the result of a surplus of love.