Candy Man (3 page)

“Uh, Ravi? Anish? Darrin says he needs stock—can one of you tell me what to look for, and the other stand here at the bottom of the stairs and take stock?”

They both looked at him, teeth flashing whitely as they smiled. “Yeah, sure,” Ravi said with decision. “Anish, you shout the orders, I’ll take the stock.”

Oh, thank God. Help
. Adam tried not to sway as he pulled himself up the stairs into the loft.

“Lemon sours!”

Adam searched until he found the last box, and ran that down the stairs to Ravi. As he was doing that, Anish called out, “Sanded cinnamon drops and sanded cherry drops!”

And then he repeated the process.

He was into it, breaking a sweat, in that place where hunger and tiredness didn’t matter, when Anish called out for mixed sour balls. They were on the bottom shelf. He squatted down for them….

And fell on his ass.

As he was down there, wondering how he’d gone nearly a whole day without eating, he heard a perky alto calling out, “Darrin! Darrin, you said you needed food?”

“Finn! Yeah, here. Put the usual on the counter here, but do me a favor, would you? Could you run the burger with blue cheese and mushrooms up to the loft? My new employee just passed out.”

There was a chorus of “What? Who? Is he okay? Who was that guy, anyway?” And Adam felt like he should contribute his two cents.

“Didn’t pass out!” he said, but he could hear his own voice wandering. “Fell on my ass. Please tell me I’m getting paid. What time is it, anyway?”

“It’s almost eight o’clock at night,” said that perky voice. Adam looked to the top of the stairs, and there he was. The kid with the Finn hat, and he was carrying a box of takeout in a plastic bag.

“Finn,” Adam said, literally so drifty he couldn’t lock down his own brain. “Where’s your goofy little dog?”

“You watch
Adventure Time
?” Finn said, sounding delighted. “That’s awesome!”

“Someone at the base had boxed sets,” Adam said, his brain flashing to the comfortable camaraderie of H-1, outside of Baghdad. Yeah, there was war, but there was a lot of boredom, and he and the troops had passed entertainment around with an almost religious intensity. Paperbacks were golden, and Lieutenant Crandall’s boxed DVD cartoon sets from his kids had resulted in fistfights before Crandall had started showing them for an hour a day in his bunk. “
Futurama
,
Adventure Time
,
Archer
.
Adventure Time
was my favorite.”

“Finn” came closer to him, eyeballing him with a certain wariness in the dim light of the loft, like he expected Adam to start foaming at the mouth or something.

“Your sweatshirt’s wrong,” Adam said soberly. “It should be dark blue. It’s purple. That’s off. What’s your real name?”

The kid sat next to him and started pulling out the food. “Would it blow your mind if I said it was Finn?”

Adam started to laugh, suddenly in real danger of just losing it and giggling until he cried, detonating his entire emotional nut in the loft of a candy store he might or might not work at. “Would it blow your mind if I told you I was having the
weirdest
week?”

“No,” Finn said gently. “Here. My dad’s best burger. Darrin asked for it special.”

He put the box in Adam’s shaking hands, and Adam realized he needed to start eating what was in it or he really would pass out. For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of him getting a one-handed grip on the burger and cramming it into his mouth. At about halfway done, he set it down and closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath and let the food catch up to his stomach.

“Thanks, kid,” he said, trying to get a better look at him. “Nice of Darrin to feed me.”

“Well, it was nice of you to just start working on faith. I’m not a kid.”

Adam raised his eyebrows in disbelief, and Finn rolled his eyes.

“Okay, I’m twenty-four. I keep an apartment over my father’s store, so I officially live on my own, pay rent, and I’m probably about two years away from my degree. So, you know. Grown-up.”

Adam nodded, his blood sugar still too up and down for real words, and took another bite of his hamburger. He swallowed. Thought,
This kid has never had his heart broken. Never sacrificed something for someone who didn’t give a shit. Never tried his hardest and had his ass handed to him on a platter.
For a moment bitterness threatened to rear up and bite off the head of this sweet kid with the Finn hat and the goofy smile, but then Finn rooted in the plastic bag and came up with garlic fries.

“Here!” he said cheerfully. “They’re still hot. Do you want some ketchup?”

The aroma of garlic fries almost made Adam whimper.

“Yeah, sure,” he rasped, aware that he didn’t get to bite the head off of anybody when anybody was feeding him and being human. He took one of the fries and fell into the temporary vortex of carbgasm, then resurfaced and tried to resume his questioning. “So, what are you going to school for?”

“Structural engineering,” Finn said, like everybody said that every day.

Adam blinked. Figured. The kid was smarter than he was. Of
course
his life was better. “That’s a good major,” he said seriously. “Beats mine.”

“What’s yours?”

“Animation. Went to a school in San Diego, but I lost my grant.” God, he did
not
want to talk about his stupid car and the fucking death spiral his life had entered in the past month. “What do you want to build?”

“Bridges, highways, and grain silos.”

Adam laughed—he had no choice. “Grain silos?”

“Very phallic. After my last boyfriend, I needed a penis substitute.”

Adam almost inhaled a fry, he was laughing so hard. Oh God, this kid! “So I guess you’re lucky you’re not making weapons, right?”

Finn shrugged. “Yeah, well, my idea of a sword fight is very, very different, right?”

“Oh absolutely.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and Adam finished off his fries and sighed softly, leaning his head against his knees. “Well, Finn, it’s been great talking to you, but I think I have to pay you and get back to work.”

Finn shook his head. “No, no, like I said, Darrin took care of it. Don’t worry about paying me. They were going under when you walked in. I think he’s just grateful you took the job on faith.”

Adam nodded. He wanted to ask
What is it with that guy?
because he figured
no one
could be that sweet and that
trusting
in this day and age, but Finn was getting up, and it was time for Adam to as well. “Well, I’m grateful for the feeding—and it’s time I told him—”

“What’s your name, anyway? Darrin didn’t say.”

“Adam, but—”

“Why were you that hungry, Adam?” Finn asked, barging right into his privacy without so much as a by-your-leave.

Adam shook his head. “Just got into town. Nothing in my cousin’s fridge. Thought I’d get a job first.”

“Wow. That’s dedication.” Finn stood and offered his hand down, and Adam took it after only a second’s hesitation.

A little force, a little lever, and suddenly Adam was standing way too close to the cute sandwich delivery kid. What made it worse was that Finn backed up against a stack of crates and looked at him with big eyes in the suddenly intimate loft.

“Gee, mister,” Finn said, licking his lips, “you are awfully tall.”

Adam froze for a moment, thinking that Finn, for all his flirt, was probably not ready for what he and a few guys from his squad used to do in the darkened bunkers, between Humvees, or in the miniscule, sweating supply closet of his base outside of Baghdad.

“I’m, uhm, six four,” he mumbled, taking two steps back. Finn was maybe five eleven, so not really short, but Adam felt sort of outsized, freakish, and awkward. “Uhm, I’ll walk you down.”

He was feeling the day now, in the soles of his shoes and the heaviness of his limbs. Maybe he could sign some paperwork or something, sit down, stop thinking about Finn’s wide, pink mouth and the way his straight teeth glinted when he smiled.

“So, how long have you been in town?” Finn asked as they made their way down the stairs.

“Thirty-six hours,” Adam replied shortly, thinking that it was probably closer to thirty-eight.

“What are you here for?”

“To watch my cousin’s animals and get my shit together. Jesus, kid—”

“Where’d you come from? Did you leave anybody there?”

“San Diego, a school that is indifferent to me, and a grandmother that lights black candles to curse my every breath. Do you always—”

“What kind of animals do you have? I mean does your cousin have? I’m just asking, because if you’re not used to dogs or cats, I can help. I mean, I’m not an expert, but my family has had tons of the critters. I’ve grown up with them. What about you?”

“I had a boxer in high school. My mom put him in the pound the day I shipped out. Rico didn’t get there in time to save him. He was euthanized.”

Finn’s barrage of questions stopped cold. “Holy God, Adam, do you have any
happy
answers?”

Adam got to the bottom of the stairs and looked around the store, which was almost miraculously cleaning itself up with the help of the hipster elves that seemed to be working there this evening. “Yeah,” he said, bemused. “Ask me if I got a job.”

Finn’s grin lit up the entire wooden room. “You got a job?”

“I’m pretty sure I do, but let me go talk to the boss man. You got a problem with that?”

“Nope. I’ll be waiting when you come out of the office.”

“Don’t you got a job to do?” Adam asked, confounded. Jesus, who
was
this kid, and would he ever stop talking long enough for Adam to gently but firmly disengage?

“Nope. This delivery was my last task of the night. Dad’s cleaning up, I’m off the clock, and, you know, you just got done here—”

“He still has paperwork to sign,” Darrin intervened smoothly. “But you’re welcome to stay and give him a ride if he needs one.”

They both looked at Adam expectantly, and Adam tried to think. “Uhm, I took the bus here, but it wasn’t that far. I can probably walk—” It was four miles, but seriously, four miles to a guy from the military? Nothing.

“I can take you,” Finn said confidently. He hopped up on the wooden stool behind the register, tucked his hands into his purple hooded sweatshirt, and swung his feet. The whimsical smile on his face had more than a hint of steel, and Adam looked at Darrin a little desperately.

“Okay, uhm, paperwork?”

“C’mon,” Darrin said kindly, giving him a little shove. “It won’t take long.”

Darrin took him behind the stairwell to the left, where a tiny office attached. In the back of the office was a little restroom, and to the left of that stood a door to what was probably an alleyway or a courtyard. Two office chairs sat in there side by side, and Darrin pointed to the one with the little pile of papers on it.

“My office manager, Carolyn, set these out before she left today,” he said. Adam had a vague memory of a motherly woman with short red hair and eyes that twinkled behind her jeweled glasses. She’d been in and out all day, getting Darrin’s signature on something and then disappearing.

“Okay.” Adam swallowed and sat down, filling in the forms by rote. When he got to “address,” he wrote in Rico’s address and wondered if he’d still have this job when he had to move in six months. “It was really great of you to give me a job. All I did was walk in the store.”

Darrin laughed softly and shook out his hair. He was wearing a bright red turtleneck sweater—something classic and soft and not quite feminine but not butch either. It went well with the flared jeans and eelskin cowboy boots. “All you did was walk into a madhouse and start weighing candy,” Darrin said. “You were great, sweetie. Now here—make sure you sign the
whole
packet, even that last one there, you got that?”

Adam did as told and then risked a glance out into the front of the store, where Finn still waited. “He’s really going to just give me a ride home?”

Darrin nodded. “This surprises you?”

“He barely knows me.”

“True, but he knows me. I haven’t hired a serial killer yet.”

“But… but why
me
?”

Darrin smirked. “Oh baby—they do have
mirrors
where you come from, don’t they?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “It’s muscles, not sex appeal.” He yawned. “But I’ll explain the difference when he drops me off.”

Darrin laughed throatily, a sweet velvet kind of sound, and Adam found himself smiling in response. “Yes, Adam, I’m sure that conversation will go over well.”

Adam squinted at him, tired, a little confused, and worried about the animals. Rico said the cat needed medication twice a day, and she hadn’t gotten it yet, and the dumb dog had been taken on his walk to crap once already, but Clopper was pretty big. He’d probably left a giant steaming helping of trouble just waiting for Adam when he opened the door. (Rico had left specific instructions and a buttload of cleaning products should that happen. What frightened Adam was that the cleaning products were all half-empty, and the scrub brush well used.)

“Why did you give me a job?” he asked, because the thought of caring for Rico’s animals still terrified him. “I mean, I just walked in the door and—”

“Didn’t you
need
a job?” Darrin asked, blue eyes regarding him kindly.

Adam tried to guess how old his new employer was, and failed. Anywhere from twenty-five to fifty? Probably closer to fifty, Adam would hazard—not because he
looked
middle-aged but because his voice was kind and patient, and those were things Adam had always hoped for in his elders but seldom found.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, suddenly wanting to open his heart to this kind man and spill everything. “Thank you. Uhm, when do you need me next?”

“Well, we’re going to be pretty busy until Thanksgiving, and then Friday morning is like D-Day around here. How about ten ’til six for the next week and a half. I’ll have a schedule for you tomorrow. And get here at six in the morning on D-Day and expect to work a twelve-hour shift, paid overtime, then? Carolyn will get you a regular schedule after that. I’m afraid it’s not much more than minimum wage—”