Gorgeous, yes. Friendly? Um . . .
“How well do you know him?” Natalie asked, color coming high in her cheeks as we moved to the front of the line. She was patting my arm in an almost nervous way, moving her weight from one foot to the other.
“Not well at all. The few times I’ve seen him, we’ve barely said— Hi, Oscar! How are you?” I chirped, putting on my game face.
He looked blandly back at me. Natalie’s skin began to burn; I could feel her heating up beside me.
“So, um, you come in each week to the city? I didn’t know the creamery had a stand here. That’s great!”
More with the bland.
“So, this is my friend Natalie—she loves your brie. Right, Nat? Hey—Natalie?”
My friend, who could talk a priest down off the pulpit with one button undone, had absolutely clammed up. Could have been a mannequin, for all the life that was in her.
Oscar turned his eyes from mine and looked at Natalie. He slowly took her in, taking his time as he scanned her from head to toe, then focused on her mouth. Which was pinched into a tight line, her lips almost white with tension. He finally looked into her eyes, and the snap crackle pop of tension between them made me feel a little dizzy.
Under her eyes, he came alive. But he still said nothing. Except . . .
“Brie?” His voice was deeper than I’d heard it before, scratchy and thick.
Natalie just nodded. He wrapped up a wedge, leaned over to set it in front of her, and moved on to the next customer.
Spell broken, Natalie flew over to the cashier, paid for her cheese, and continued her flight away from Oscar, away from the Creamery.
I caught up to her and tugged on her arm. “What the hell was that?”
“What?” she asked, all calm and cool again. She flung her hair over her shoulder and stood straight and tall, beautiful and in control once more. Clara was coming toward us with coffees, and Natalie’s eyes asked me to drop it.
“We’ll revisit this,” I said, and she nodded. The only way anyone would know she had a killer crush on Oscar the Grouch was the bloom of color still on her cheeks, and the tiny secret smile that was toying at her lips.
But I saw Oscar leaning out of his stall to take in the magnificent sight of Natalie’s backside as she strutted away.
Chapter 24
We walked home from the market, Clara taking her usual measured steps, Natalie appearing to glide on air, and me plodding. It was already eighty-five degrees well before noon, and would soar into the midnineties. Which in a city made of steel and concrete was borderline ovenlike.
In spite of the heat however, people were out in droves, walking fast and purposefully. I seemed to go left whenever they did, right when they did, and as a result was bobbing and weaving like a boxer. I caught three purses in the chest before I finally started walking behind Natalie, who at almost six feet in her heels acted as a natural crowd breaker.
The city felt like a physical being, wrapping around me warm and thick like a wool blanket. Not exactly what you want in the dog days of summer.
And the smell! It was garbage day, and thousands and thousands of plastic bags were piled onto the sidewalk’s curb, three to four feet high in some places, since the city had been constructed essentially without alleys. And in the heat of summer, the smell could be unbearable.
How much of this could be composted, I wondered as I held my breath walking by the bigger stacks. How much of this could be donated and worked into a nutrient-rich mulch that could augment summer gardens and winter fields?
Leo could figure this out, he would . . . thunk! Dodging yet another person who was intent on getting somewhere five minutes sooner than everyone else, I got shouldered into the wall of garbage, pinwheeling my arms to keep from going headfirst into a mountain of gross.
“Oh my God, Roxie! Are you okay?” Clara pulled me back just in time.