Vintage Veronica (11 page)

One day, he asks to look at my sketchbook.

I almost say no, because it’s really just my random doodles, most of which suck. But then I hand it over. He takes his time with it, flipping through page after page of drawings—dresses, gloves, skirts—so slow it makes me want to jump out of my skin.

“I like it,” he says when he gets to the end.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks. Whatever.”

“How come you draw clothes that way?”

“What way?”

“All … empty.”

“Um, that’s how they … are up here?” I gesture at the racks, confused.

“Yeah, but how come when you draw them you don’t make up people to wear them? Or draw yourself in them?”

“I dunno,” I say, surprised by the question. “I just don’t.” I take a breath, then add, “I like the clothes. I’m not so hot on people.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I mean, not all people,” I add quickly, realizing how I probably sound. Len raises an eyebrow.

“Tell the truth,” he says. “You never liked me.”

“That’s not true.”

“Come on.”

“What’s your point?” I argue. “You probably hated me, too.”

“Nope.”

“Oh, please! I used to be a total bitch to you.”

“Yeah, I guess. But I always thought you were, I dunno. Different.”

I meet the gaze of his pale eyes. His lip twitches, and out of the blue I wonder what it would be like if he kissed me. My sarcasm steadies me.

“Yeah, I’m different, all right,” I scoff.

“You are,” he says, missing my tone as always. “Just not quite in the way I thought.”

“What way was that?”

“Relax,” he says. “I didn’t mean anything bad. I just always kind of wanted to talk to you, to maybe get to know you. But whenever I saw you it seemed like you just wanted me to leave, so I never got the chance.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I just never …”

“It’s okay,” he says in a way that lets me know it actually is. Silently, the snake glides between his intertwined fingers.

I’m relieved that he stopped me before the rest of my words slipped out:
I just never thought of you as an actual person before
.

“It’s okay,” he says again.

So I nod. I open my sketchbook and find a blank page. My pen finds the paper and my eyes find Len’s hands and the snake.

I’ve got to admit, it’s more challenging to draw something that moves. I try not to look at Len’s face, and I lean forward to keep him from looking at mine. Those clear eyes of his make me nervous, a little. Sometimes I think he can see inside me, what I’m thinking and feeling. Things I might not even know yet. Things I might not even want to know. Which kind of scares me.

On the positive side, I think I might be getting a tiny bit better at drawing hands.

The thing I like about hanging out with Len is that we talk, but we don’t have to talk. I’ve never known anyone I could just sit with, not talking, and have it be okay. Except maybe my dad, but that was so long ago I’m not sure if I actually remember or I just think I do.

When Zoe and Ginger and I hang out on the loading dock, there are definitely times when I just sit there and don’t talk. After all, Zoe takes up a lot of airspace with her rants. And Ginger grabs every spare silence she can to chime in. But it’s not really the same thing.

Occasionally I ask Len about Violet, how she’s doing. He usually says she’s the same. Sometimes “a little better.” Sometimes “not so good.”

“How can you tell?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I just can.”

Len himself doesn’t look so good sometimes, but I’m not sure if that’s because I see him more often so I’ve been noticing more. Some days, he looks extra thin, extra pale. Like a vampire or something. My mom would be thrilled if I looked like him. Once she got sick for a week and she couldn’t eat anything but saltines and ginger ale. First thing she did when she felt well enough to get out of bed? Got on the scale.

She’d love Len. Of course, I have no intention of telling her about him, much less bringing him home or anything. She’d get all overly hopeful and giddy at the thought that I have not just a Friend but a
Boy
Friend, even if it’s a boy that looks kind of sickly and dead most of the time and limps around carrying bags of crickets.

I keep meaning to ask Len if
he’s
okay, but I don’t want him to feel weird. It’s like when people try to give me a hand getting up—maybe they don’t mean anything by it, but maybe they do.

The thing about having Len visit me each day is that I am increasingly aware of the lurking threat of getting busted for
violating the Secret Spy Girl Pact. Len’s visits to Employees Only! are not so risky, because Zoe and Ginger never come upstairs. And I make sure never to leave with Len, even if I have to make excuses. Each afternoon, as I leave the store, I always fear that I’ll run into Zoe and Ginger and they’ll grill me about my after-work plans. Or, worse, rope me into an impromptu Secret Spy Girl Stakeout of Len’s place.

I keep thinking,
Maybe I should just tell them?
I mean, they’re supposed to be my friends, right? Why couldn’t I just say to Zoe and Ginger,
Hey, wanna hear something funny? It turns out there’s actually a good reason D.B.W. took those pajamas!

But then what? After they asked questions and dragged the whole story out of me, they might just laugh the whole thing off.

But then again, they might not.

It’s just better this way, I finally conclude, even if it means keeping them in the dark. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Or me, for that matter.

Then one day, the minute I get to work, the phone on my desk rings for a consignment appointment. As soon as I hang it up, it rings again—another consigner, a new one this time. And then it rings again. Finally, after about ten calls, I call downstairs to Bill.

“Y-ello?”

“Hey, was there, like, something about the store in the newspaper or something?”

“There was?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know if there was, that’s why I’m asking you. The phone up here has been ringing all morning. It’s like the whole freaking world is suddenly dying to consign.”

“Ohhhh …,” says Bill knowingly. “That’s because it’s August.”

Bill explains that every August, we get totally trounced at the store. The college kids come back and proceed to sell everything they own and buy new stuff to replace it.

“That’s why we’re on ‘extended back-to-school hours’ down here now. It’s killing me, man. Any interest in a little overtime?”

“As if. No offense.”

“Yeah, I figured. Still, if you change your mind … HEY! The Pile is NOT a dressing room … put your clothes BACK ON … Hey, Veronica, man? Sorry, I gotta go …”

Bill hangs up abruptly. Almost immediately, the phone rings again.

“Yeah, hey, is this the place where you can sell your stuff?”

A few calls later, I take the phone off the hook.

Around noon, Len stops by with a paper bag.

“Snake lunchtime?” I ask.

“Nah,” says Len. “I didn’t get a chance to pick up any. I’m going to have to get some later.”

“Sooo, what’s in the bag?”

Len shrugs and hands it to me. I open it and find an extralarge smoothie inside.

“I ran an errand for Bill and I just sort of thought you might want one. It’s really hot out.” He lifts up his T-shirt and mops his face, revealing his absurdly flat stomach and the waistband of his underwear. Low-slung pants are not a fashion statement for him. Just a fact of life for a butt-less boy. “That’s the kind you like, right?”

I take a sip. It’s coffee-flavored, not mocha.

“I usually get the mocha kind.”

Len looks crushed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I tried to call you from Bill’s phone before I went out, but your line was busy.”

“No, actually, it’s really good,” I say quickly. “I just never tried this flavor before … I mean, thanks.”

He looks pleased. “No problem.”

“You want some?”

“Uh, okay.” He takes the lid off and drains about half the cup. “Not half bad,” he says with surprise.

“Okay, explain how you’ve lived here forever and yet you are not wise to the many splendors of the Mooks?”

Len shrugs. “We didn’t have much money when I was growing up?”

“It’s hardly haute cuisine.”

“Yeah, well, I dunno. We had donuts sometimes, but we always got them at the grocery store. You know, the tiny ones with the powdered sugar?”

“Sure,” I tell him, not adding that I used to talk my dad into buying me a roll of them when he’d take me on a grocery run. I’d eat the whole roll in the cart before we’d even make it to the checkout. My mom would bust me every time because
of the telltale white smudges on the thighs of my stretch pants where I’d wiped my sticky palms.

“Your phone’s off the hook,” he says, pointing.

“Yeah, I know. It’s the consigners. I’m getting slammed up here,” I tell him.

“Oh, yeah?”

I gesture to ten or more trash bags of consignment items, piled in a semicircle wall around my chair. “Yeah,” I tell him.

“Do you want help?”

I give him a look. “Nah, that’s okay.”

“What, you don’t think I can do it?”

“Um, actually …”

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been coming here?”

“No.”

“Try ten years.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Okay, as an actual employee a lot less, but I used to come here with my grandma when I was a kid. She got practically all my clothes from Dollar-a-Pound. Sometimes she’d consign stuff and drag me along for that, too. So before you write me off …”

“Okay, okay, you’re hired.” I’m startled by Len’s outpouring of information. I’m also intrigued by his burst of enthusiasm. Plus, the truth is, I do need some help or I’m never going to dig myself out. “But look: up here, I run the show. So you’ve gotta do what I say.”

Len nods. I take a long draw from my smoothie and survey the situation.

“Okay, start with that bag over there.” I point. “Dump it out on the floor. Then pick up an item and hold it up. I’ll tell you what to do with it.”

Len hitches up his jeans, braces one foot against my desk, and hoists the first bag. His upper body is stronger than I would’ve thought, but his legs shake and look ready to buckle. I make a mental note not to assign him any more heavy lifting. He tips the bag and a cascade of fabric rolls out. A musty cloud of dust fills the air.

“P.U.! Attic,” I say, waving the mothball scent away.

Len selects a plaid pair of pants.

“Dep,” I order. Obligingly, he tosses them at the chute, missing by a mile.

“No problem, we’ll get it later. Keep going,” I say.

Next up: a stained tan polo shirt. “Dep.” A skirt with a broken zipper. “Dep.” A T-shirt with armpit rings and the words KEEP AMERICA GREEN over a big pot leaf on the front. “Bill will love that. Definitely dep.”

“Definitely dep,” agrees Len. This time, swoosh, down the chute. He grins.

“Two points,” I say.

“Huh?”

“Two points? Hello? Jesus, were you never forced to watch basketball?”

“Basketball, no. Hockey. My grandma’s a Bruins fanatic.”

“Ooh.” I cringe. “Brutal.”

“Hey,” says Len brightly. “Check this out.”

He holds up what appears to be a tuxedo jacket.

“Nice,” I say, going over to inspect it. “That’s a keeper.”

The lining is shot, but otherwise it looks fairly decent. I tell Len, “Good eye,” and wander off to drag another bag over.

“What do you think?” Len says.

I look up and see that he’s slipped the jacket on over his T-shirt and is puffing out his usually sunken chest. The effect is startling. The jacket sits squarely on his shoulders, which makes me realize that he actually has shoulders.

“What?” he says self-consciously, letting out his breath. For a second, he sounds like me.

“Nothing. I—you look good,” I say, flustered.

“Shut up,” he says. He takes the jacket off and throws it at me. But he’s smiling.

I throw it back at him.

“You should keep it,” I say. Which I mean, because it did look great on him. But as soon as it comes out, I realize that I’m also fishing for the Secret Spy Girls.

“Nah,” he says, throwing it at me again. “I’ve already got ten of them.”

My heart lurches for a second before I get that he’s kidding. “Right, and cummerbunds in every color of the rainbow,” I say, throwing the jacket back at him again.

“Cummerwhuh?”

“You know. Those fancy wide waistbands that go with tuxedos?”

“Right, right. Yup, I’ve got a million of those.”

We go on sorting for a while, falling into a comfortable rhythm of dumping bags and churning through them piece by piece. It’s hot, I’m sweaty, and I’m running on fumes, seeing as I’ve had too much caffeine and too little food.

And yet it’s like the fleas, only better. I look up at one point and realize that it is later than I thought. The fans are still cranking, but the sewing machines are not—at some point, the Lunch Ladies must have gone home.

“Okay, last bag,” I tell Len. “The rest can wait.” He nods solemnly and dumps it. The item on top of the heap is sort of fuzzy-looking, and butterscotch-colored.

Len picks it up and lets out a low whistle.

“Whoa,” I say. It’s a pair of men’s suede fringed pants.

“Dep?” asks Len hopefully.

“Nooo …,” I say, starting to feel a little light-headed. “I think you need to try those on.”

“What?!”

“Hey, didn’t you agree that whatever I say goes?”

“Yeah, but …” Len squints at the pants. “No way.”

“Look, this is my job. I need to see if they’re fit for The Real Deal,” I say, trying to sound like this is official business. I point to a pair of racks of off-season coats. “You can change back there.”

“Do you ever try stuff on?”

“Sometimes,” I say, turning my back to give him privacy and so he can’t see that I’m lying. For extra modesty, I close my eyes while I wait.

“Ahem.”

I turn around. Len is standing there wearing the pants, which, surprisingly, fit him great. I guess that’s the answer to the question of who should wear fringed suede pants: people who don’t have asses.

“Howdy,” I say.

“Okay, fine,” he says. He rotates clumsily in place for my benefit. “Laugh it up.”