Lost December (28 page)

November passed quietly into December. At Crisp’s, Suman was preparing to make his departure the week before Christmas. I was going to be sad to see him go. He was a good guy with a wry sense of humor. He ran a solid and profitable day shift but still found time to make it enjoyable, mostly by pranking Colby. I think the most ingenious prank of his was when he froze Mentos candy in ice cubes then dropped them in Colby’s Diet Coke when he wasn’t looking. It took nearly fifteen minutes before Colby’s coke exploded. Colby never figured out what happened.

Wayne spent a lot of time with me going over the shop’s clients and finances, things I sometimes had to pretend not to understand, and it became obvious to me that he was priming me to take Suman’s position. I learned from Suman that Rachael had seniority, but even though she could undoubtedly use the increased salary that came with the position, she would likely be passed over for the job. She worked hard, but she seemed to lack drive and too many of their customers had complained about her being unfriendly and aloof.

I understood the complaints. Rachael was a mystery to me.
Actually, she was a mystery to everyone at Crisp’s, customers and employees alike. She was always quiet and heavy-minded, the way one gets when dealing with heartache. She was cautious like Candace, but that’s where the similarities ended. Where Candace was brutally honest, Rachael seemed to conceal everything, cloaking her feelings beneath a thick veil of privacy. Where Candace would dress, or make herself up to accentuate her beauty, Rachael did the opposite. She was beautiful in spite of herself and acted as if she considered her attractiveness more curse than blessing, as she got hit on daily by Crisp’s customers. She usually just ignored their advances, but sometimes the veil would part and her temper would show. Suman told me that the store had lost more than one customer that way.

The longer I worked with her, the more she intrigued me. It’s been my experience that those with the toughest shells have the softest hearts—and I sensed that she was hiding a naked vulnerability under all that armor.

I honestly had no idea what she thought of me. Our working relationship was cordial, but stiff as a starched collar. One time I caught her looking at me. I knew she had been looking at me for a while, but when I turned to look at her, she quickly turned away. I just couldn’t figure her out.

One afternoon I decided to go to the In-N-Out Burger on my break to get a milkshake and passed Rachael as I was leaving. “I’m going to be gone for a few minutes,” I said. “I’m going to get a shake.”

“All right,” she said.

“Want to come? It’s slow, Colby can watch the front.”

She looked at me for a moment then said, “No thank you.”

“We’ll only be a few minutes.”

“No thank you,” she repeated.

Since this was the longest nonwork-related talk I’d had with her since I had started, I decided to venture into unknown territory. “Is it that you don’t like shakes or you don’t like me? Because if it’s the shake, you can order something else.”

“I don’t associate with coworkers,” she said shortly.

“I associate with you all day,” I said.

“You know what I mean.”

I looked at her for a moment, then said, “Just so I understand, you would get a shake with me if I quit?”

“You wouldn’t want to do that on my account,” she said. She turned and walked away.

I am lonely. I am lonely. I am lonely.
I am lonely. I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to no one
.

Luke Crisp’s Diary

Between my two jobs I developed a routine. I got up at 6
A.M
., exercised, ate a piece of toast, then showered and dressed and went into Crisp’s. Saturday mornings I slept in until nine or ten, then ran errands or read. Peculiarly, my weekends weren’t a whole lot different than when I was homeless—a lot more comfortable, but just as lonely. My father and I used to go golfing every Saturday. I wished I had him to go golfing with now.

One Saturday night I was doing my shopping at the Food King when I saw Rachael standing in the breakfast foods aisle. A boy, maybe six or seven years old, was hanging on the shopping cart next to her. He was whining. “Why can’t we have Cap’n Crunch?”

“The cereal in the bag is cheaper,” Rachael said. “It’s the same thing.”

“No it’s not. And it has a toy.”

“The toys are dumb. It will just end up in the garbage anyway.”

“No it won’t. I’ll play with it.”

“I said, no.”

I walked up the aisle. “Hi.”

I don’t know if she was more surprised or embarrassed to see me. She wore a baseball cap and was wearing sweat pants.

“Do you always shop here?” I asked.

“Mostly.”

The little boy stared at me intently.

“Who is this handsome young man?” I asked.

“My son,” she said, moving in front of the cart as if to shield him from me.

“I’m Luke,” I said, extending my hand past her to the boy. “I work with your mother.”

He reached out and shook my hand. “I’m Chris.”

“Nice to meet you, Chris.” I looked up at Rachael. “Have you had dinner yet?”

“We’re shopping for dinner right now.”

“I can save you the trouble. Why don’t we go next door to Italian Village and get some pizza. My treat.”

“Yeah!” Chris shouted. “I want pizza. Can we have pizza, Mom?”

“No,” Rachael said. “We need to go home.”

The boy’s face tightened. “Please? He invited us. He said ‘his treat.’ That means it’s free.”

“Nothing’s free,” she said. She shot me a glance of displeasure, then looked back at her son. “I said, no.”

“Please, Mom. Please. We never have it anymore.”

“Chris, you’re seven years old. You’re acting like a five-year-old.”

I felt bad for the situation I had created, but I was also a little annoyed by how she was handling it. “Come on,” I said. “What’s it going to hurt?”

“Please, Mom,” the boy continued, “please?”

She groaned in surrender. “Okay, okay, okay. We’ll get pizza. Just stop nagging.” She looked at me with thinly veiled anger. “I need to finish my shopping,” she said.

“I’ll wait for you up front,” I said.

I finished picking up my essentials, then waited at the front of the store for Rachael. She finished her shopping about ten minutes later. Her checkout was lengthy because she used coupons and questioned the prices of several of her purchases, even putting one of them back. Throughout the process her boy kept looking at me. When she was finally done, she pushed her cart over to me. From her expression I thought she’d changed her mind.

“I need to put my groceries in the car,” she said.

I followed her to her car, an older-model Jeep Wrangler with a vinyl roof, put her groceries in the back, then the three of us went to the pizzeria. Chris looked as happy as a boy walking into Disneyland.

The restaurant was crowded, and after a fifteen-minute wait the hostess sat us at a booth in the corner of the restaurant. Rachael was her usual sullen self, which was countered by her son’s excited chatter.

“What do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Pizza,” Chris said. “With pepperoni.”

I looked at Rachael. “And you?”

“I’ll just have some of what Chris has.”

“Pepperoni pizza it is.” I turned to her son. “What grade are you in, Chris?”

“Second grade. I have Covey for my teacher. She’s a tool.”

“Chris!” Rachael said. “That’s not okay.”

“She’s really mean,” he continued. “Once my friend Brian accidentally peed his pants in class, and she made him sit in it until recess.”

I looked at Rachael, who was shaking her head.

“I agree with Chris,” I said. “Covey is a tool.”

“Yeah,” Chris said, “she stinks.”

“Chris,” Rachael said. “Enough of that.”

I hid my smile. The waitress brought us a pitcher of root beer, a large pepperoni pizza and an order of cheese-garlic bread. A few minutes after we’d started eating, I asked Rachael, “Have you lived in Las Vegas your whole life?”

“We moved here about eight years ago.”

“Where did you live before that?”

“St. George, Utah.”

“What brought you to Vegas?”

“My husband,” she said. She turned to her son. “Don’t take such big bites.”

He looked at me and smiled.

Rachael said little for the rest of our dinner, and she was ready to leave before Chris or I were done eating. “We’ve got to go,” she said. “We’ve got milk in the car.”

“Let me get a box for the pizza.”

“No, we don’t need …”

“There’s no sense letting it go to waste,” I said. “Chris can have it for breakfast.”

“You eat pizza for breakfast?” Chris asked.

“Breakfast pizza is the best,” I said.

“Cool.”

I paid the bill at the counter, then brought back a carry-out box, put the leftover pizza in it and handed it to Chris. “Thanks, Mr. Luke.”

“You’re welcome, Chris,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

Rachael said to him, “Honey, wait over there by the door for a minute. I need to talk to Mr. Luke.”

“Okay, Mom.”

As soon as he was away from us Rachael spun around. Her anger had returned. “Don’t you ever do that again. Do you understand me?”

I folded my arms. “Do what?”

“Use my kid to get to me.”

“Is that what you think this was about?”

“Of course that’s what
this
is about.”

I shook my head. “Maybe I just thought it would be nice to get to know someone I have to spend my day with. Maybe I thought we could be friends. Obviously I was mistaken.” I looked into her eyes. “There are wild boars with better dispositions.”

She looked shocked. When she could speak, she said, “Just stay away from me.” She turned and walked away.

“We work together,” I said after her. “Good luck with that.”

She took the pizza from Chris and walked out to her car. She never looked back.

As if she didn’t already hate me enough,
I was just given Rachael’s promotion.
I don’t think she’ll be sending a congratulatory bouquet
.

Luke Crisp’s Diary