The Sharp Time Part 6

"I do this by hand, I don't use the Mixmaster," Erika says. She looks at the frosting, frowns, and squirts in some bright green food coloring. "Because if you use too much Comet it bleaches the frosting out when you whip it. It goes from nice green to sickly pale green."

Psycho Martha Stewart sprinkles a bit more Comet into the frosting and I'm thinking, Wouldn't that make it ... kind of gritty, when she scoops shortening out of a tub and turns the hand mixer on again.

It's all very migraine-licious, so I lift my hand to wave-see ya!-but Erika switches off the mixer and gives me a conspiratorial smile.

"When the jacka.s.s guys get sick, they never ever think it's the cake. They don't consider the cake! They a.s.sume it's the booze." She affects a baritone: "Dude, I got so wasted last night. I drank seventeen Jagermeister bombs, and then-dude!-I f.u.c.ked the stripper, and then I threw up for five days. Ha!"

I chuckle along with Erika, but maybe she can tell what I'm thinking yet again because she says: "Hey, don't flush your chocolates down the john, Sandinista! I worked hard on those. They are the cleanest food you could hope to eat. I only add my secret ingredients to food that exploits women!"

I laugh barkingly hard, as if the exploitation of women is nothing short of distilled hilarity.

She raises one pierced eyebrow at me. "I'm serious, Sandinista. Cake can be a form of social justice. The brothers we share the block with?" She nods in the direction of the monastery. "They would tell me to turn the other cheek, but sometimes a lady needs to turn the tables instead."

I am too flummoxed to think of any socially relevant comment, so I thank her for the chocolates and hightail it out of the shop, taking a final look at the display of chocolate b.r.e.a.s.t.s: gentlemen, beware.

And then it's home again, home again, jiggety jog. It's me walking in the front door and seeing the ghost of my mother in my peripheral vision. She wears a sort of pith helmet and khaki pantsuit, as if she has not only risen from the dead but is now a minor character in a manly man Hemingway novel. She says: Sandinista, sweet girl, please put your keys in the dish so that you don't have to go on ye olde Great Key Hunt in the morning.

Oh, she is very pithy in her pith helmet.

But she has a point. I lose my keys on a daily basis, so I drop them into the dish on the coffee table, the crash of keys against gla.s.s a cartoon cymbal. I flop down on the couch and stare at the red living room walls, which my mother and I painted and texturized last summer. We had aimed for a field-of-poppies vibe, crisp and vibrant, fluted at the edges, but we ended up with muddy gazpacho. I think of my mom laughing at our failed efforts, of her in her rocker-chick black T-s.h.i.+rt and cutoffs, of how she told me, "This whole Home Depot culture we're living in is bulls.h.i.+t. Pottery Barn can suck it too."

I watch TV for hours, until there are only infomercials for Proactiv and the Ab Roller, until my eyes feel like dried-out moon marbles, but I do not fall asleep like a bada.s.s, splayed out on the couch with my gun clutched to my sternum. I lie down in my mother's room, in her queen-sized bed. I should not sleep in her bed; I should not clutter her smell with mine. I want the lemongra.s.s essence and Parliament cigarettes to forever linger on her crumpled sheets. I do not want to kill my mother off with my perfume and hair products and powder-scented deodorant, but we're fading into each other just the same.

But I have something. I have a strange new freedom of heart, which is the gun on my mother's rosewood nightstand. I try to fall into sleep but remain in a state of dreamy wakefulness; I float around Woodrow Wilson High School. I hover close to the water-stained ceiling of the gymnasium, where a pep rally is in full effect: the marching band plays, the glint of bra.s.s from tuba and French horn nearly blinds me; the cheerleaders cheer. English teacher Lisa Kaplansky has changed out of her hip linens and clogs into a cheerleading skirt. She has joined all the Megans and Caitlins in yelling Go, Sandinista! Take it to the hoop! The teachers and counselors sit in the bleachers with the students, shepherds to the flock. They pelt me with sugarless gum, with Gummi bears.

Catherine Bennett sits in the last row, but of course now she's not so scary; she clutches the teacher's edition of Math Without Fear! to her chest and smiles vaguely toward the heavens, toward me, her face a tableau of innocence and early Alzheimer's. She cannot place the floating girl on the ceiling. Who is that? I really should pay closer attention. Her eyebrows rise when she notices my creamy pink gun. It has caught her attention.

Alecia Hardaway appears at the doors of the gymnasium, waving one hand frantically, visoring the other over her forehead as she frowns, puzzled by my gymnasium ascension. Sandinista? Hi, Sandinista! You're a real cool person every day, Sandinista!

I hide my gun behind my back as I wave at Alecia Hardaway.

But Catherine Bennett sees my gun-oh, she knows all about my handgun. And so she merely lowers her eyes and clasps her hands, as if she were shy, or kind, or in prayer. But, Mrs. Bennett, switching to sweetheart mode will not impress me now. And it's Mrs. Bennett's getting away with it that gives me the courage to get out of bed and leave the house at four in the morning, though there's n.o.body waiting for my safe return. But I will have my gun. For now I stick it in the glove box with the box of bullets and so hi ho, hi ho, it's off to the wicked witch's house I go!

Oh, how I love the ccccahlunk sound it makes when I turn a corner sharply-the gun escaping the soft, folded maps and candy wrappers and napkins. And I drive, the music cranked, my driving on the slick streets fast enough that it feels like I might ascend and go flying over the guardrails of the interstate to live forever in the iced velvet night. I must be going forty miles over the speed limit, taunting the black ice, but there are no cops around. This is a shame since flas.h.i.+ng lights and a soft siren sign would be relief, medicine for this strung-out psycho feeling. And yet my sadness has a metallic edge. I have a gun.

I park across the street from Catherine Bennett's house; I park so I can see the window where I hurled a stone amphibian-such is my courage! Oh, a valorous girl am I! Of course I want to return to the scene of the throwaway crime, to see the thrill of silver duct tape covering up the pane, the fast footprints in the snow. But the side yard of her house is too dark, no light through yonder window breaks for Catherine Bennett, for me. Not even a porch light left on. Her house would disappear in the darkness if not for the snow frosting it like a gingerbread house, a Hansel-and-Gretel getaway for Catherine Bennett. The car is cold. I double check that the doors are locked, thinking that if I were killed outside Catherine Bennett's house when I myself am in possession of a gun, well ... that would be just my luck indeed. I take my gun out of the glove box and put it on my lap, my little heavy metal baby.

I wonder how it would feel to crunch through the snow yet again, gun in my hand, to walk up to her door and ding-dong and Nice to see you. Might I borrow a cup of sugar?

My mind floats back to the day last fall when Mrs. Bennett, open algebra book in her hands, started a vicious, free-flowing conversation with Alecia. Mrs. Bennett was plagued by a froggy throat, and so there was a lozenge clacking against her teeth when she announced, apropos of nothing, that she was really looking forward to her Thermos of homemade beef stew. She turned to Alecia and said, as if pleasantly, "By the way, Alecia, what is the meal that a person eats in the middle of the day?"

Here Alecia Hardaway paused, and you could see her processing ... Middle of the day ... middle of the day ... middle of the day ... not quite able to put it together. When she finally answered, it was without her usual Jeopardy! player exuberance. Her tentativeness was even more dreadful than the shouted exultations of a slow girl, for it showed that there was something beyond Alecia's grinning outbursts and her glittery h.e.l.lo Kitty notebooks, that maybe there had always been more to Alecia Hardaway than we had thought.

And so Alecia Hardaway, who was definitely paying attention-her face screwed up and her eyes rolled back, ticking an unknown quant.i.ty off on her fingers-hours? heartbreaks?-finally said, "Breakfast?"

And of course the cla.s.s sighed, and Mrs. Bennett's mouth formed an oval of delight as her eyebrow shot up, the incarnation of her cartoonish evil. "Breakfast, Alecia? Is it really breakfast?"

But it was a trick question; the middle of the day is a variable, depending on the day: on a school day it's high noon, but on the weekend you might sleep late, maybe till noon, which would make breakfast the middle of the day.

And, really, who's the genius now, who doesn't know that I sit outside her house waiting for her with my fake, filmy shroud of innocence? I raise my gun to the cold car window, metal to safety gla.s.s. I squeeze one eye shut and aim the barrel at Catherine Bennett's front door. A boy sets out like something thrown from the furnace of a star.

Guess what? So does a girl.

But also I know-like the sickly sweet refrain from one of my mother's old Abba alb.u.ms-I know, I know, I know, I know, with G.o.d as my witness I know-that Catherine Bennett is beyond all accountability, a true believer in the world of What? Oh, no! There must have been a misunderstanding. I was just kidding around! Just fooling around! That's my style. I see that gunning for those she perceives as weak or different is simply part of her DNA. And the school will probably do nothing; maybe they will give Catherine Bennett an expedient pep talk before they aggressively pretend that it never happened. Before they offer me a pa.s.sive-aggressive apology-I'm sorry you feel that way-before they give me a corporate smile and many suggestions. There is a virtual high school in the district; I imagine they might like for me to continue my education online.

Yet how am I any different from all the grinning jacka.s.ses of the world? How valiant was I on those days when Catherine Bennett would torment and taunt Alecia Hardaway for sport? Didn't I poison the cake with my own silence? Golly, why did my heart suddenly swell with this intense feeling for the slow girl? Do I really have to be the sort of person who only feels empathy and regret for a persecuted girl once I join her ranks? Do I really have to be so f.u.c.king typical? My poor mother, who always championed the underdog, would expect a little better from me.

I lower my gun to my lap. I review some basic facts, hoping for clarity. Right now Catherine Bennett is inside her house and I am outside her house, parked beneath the s.h.a.ggy evergreen that borders her front lawn. We are both alone in the world-her husband is dead, and ... I force myself to form the sentence in my head; I spell it out in the choppy font of cartoon ransom notes: my mother is dead. I turn my car on for the heater; I overheat and turn it off, sitting in the cold. I cross my arms over my chest. My rib still hurts, but I am paying attention.

I do not listen to the radio or to a CD. I sit in silence-trying to hear what, if anything, G.o.d tells me in the heart of this cold Midwestern night, in this reflective blackness that shades the snow in the distance with lilac and navy. I'm thinking, Out of the depths I cry unto you, O Lord, and also I could do it I could do it I could do it.

FRIDAY.

PLAYING WITH THE CHEETAHS.

I'm wearing starlet shoes and drinking coffee as I hobble from my parked car to the Pale Circus, a short icy journey that, to an indoors-loving girl like me, is as treacherous as a Himalayan trek on stilts. And so I nearly wipe out in my vintage stilettos when I hit a slick patch. I'm correcting myself, arms arched like I'm surfing, when I notice that the headless mannequin is wearing a long white parka with a full and fluffy hood. Our Lady of the Snows. When I pull open the door of the Pale Circus, I find Henry Charbonneau seated at the cash desk. Despite his general quality of bedazzlement-the sweet celery eyes, the ironic look of heartbreak on a face far, far too pretty for anyone to refuse, his startling hands, the knuckles wide as soup spoons-Henry Charbonneau certainly disappoints me. Wherefore art thou, Bradley?

"Good morning, pretty girl, good morning," Henry Charbonneau calls out, as if he were a pet-store parrot with green and blue plumage. "We've got to get you some keys. Your own set, dearie-doo."

"Okay," I say. I will certainly kick off my stilettos later, but for now I hammer across the wooden floor in my lovely and perilous beaded shoes. With each wooden whackuh whackuh Henry Charbonneau winces, his central nervous system unglued by my shoes. Oh, he does so love the varnished hardwood of the Pale Circus....

"Bradley called me this morning at home, and, apparently, he wasn't 'feeling well,' " Henry says, hooking his fingers around those two words and giving an exasperated smile, as if we were comrades in the know and Bradley existed merely as a drunken oaf we tolerated out of sheer goodwill.

But I offer up only a concerned and quizzical Florence Nightingale expression, as if Bradley has a new and surprising diagnosis and I am pondering potential sympathies: A balloon bouquet? Banana cream pie?

"I hope he feels better soon."

"Oh, I'm fairly sure it's nothing serious and that he'll be 'feeling better soon,' " Henry Charbonneau says, finger-quoting yet again. "Just as soon as he's had a few hours to sleep off his hangover."

And thinking, Wow, overkill, dude, what with all the b.i.t.c.hy finger quoting, I take off my coat and set my coffee cup on the counter.

Though it has a lid, Henry looks at my coffee cup with alarm, as if I'm about to dump it all over the party dresses slung next to the cash register, or maybe slam dance over and splash my coffee on the white fur parka in the display window, an homage to PETA, as the fur is really just acrylic fluff.

I take another sip of my coffee and he rubs his hands together, itching to give me instruction. Like all bosses, Henry Charbonneau believes the wheels of industry should be in motion at all times, that workers should be working, people, working! I realize that he's just a hipper and certainly more handsome version of bald Herb Winters, the manager at Baskin-Robbins, who gave many tutorials in the wrist-flip that provided maximum speed and efficiency when I was scooping up the Mint Chip and Pralines 'n Cream last summer.

Henry Charbonneau smiles at me, rests his palm on the party dresses before he taps them and says, "Will you iron these up, love?"

Ironing is not in my skill set. My mother was a leather-jacket-and-jeans kind of gal; in summer, a lover of Indian cotton gauze glinting with metallic thread. I take my vintage clothes to the dry cleaner's. There is no iron in my home. And when I'm at the Pale Circus I prefer to use the steam cleaner with its fat-frog mouth sagging away from the hose that connects it to the steam.

But what can I do when he's already plugging in the iron and pus.h.i.+ng the candy and cash register aside, covering the cash desk with a stained tea towel. Oh, that's what they're for. I used the towel to mop up spilled tea yesterday. Henry Charbonneau notices the sepia-colored stains. Tut-tutting a bit, he digs around under the counter, finds a clean tea towel and drapes it over the cash desk.

I take another sip of coffee, and Henry Charbonneau says, "This time, before there are many customers, is really a great time to do all the housekeeping."

"Right," I say brightly, thinking Jacka.s.s, and I take a long draw of coffee before I flip my cup into the painted lavender trash can.

I lay a magenta dress with a jewel collar on the counter and start nosing the warm iron down the pleat of the skirt. I make a smooth ca.n.a.l; I am paying attention. I follow the line of the pleats and am rewarded by a dramatic smoothness, one crisp, bright line shooting to the hem.

I am lost in the reverie of this magic when Catherine Bennett's gray face pops into my mind, entirely un-f.u.c.king-bidden: there she is, there she is, as if she doesn't know I have a pink and cream gun in my glove box. This morning I left it on the coffee table, and then reconsidered. And so I'm thinking of the gun and bullets in my glove box when the iron grazes my pinkie. I pop my finger into my mouth, and Henry Charbonneau looks over, alarmed, as if this action is totally unhygienic/p.o.r.n starish. Which, I suppose, it is.

"You okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," I say in a singsong voice.

Henry straightens a few racks, gives a brisk tsk tsk! to a cashmere cardigan with a rip at the elbow before he checks the price tag, and seems to consider it for a moment. Henry Charbonneau sighs and then brightens, perhaps a.s.signing a certain vagabond charm to the sweater, and rehangs it.

I finish ironing the first dress, hang it on a satin-covered hanger, and start on a spring-green shantung s.h.i.+ft. The fabric sizzles and I turn down the temperature wheel. I find a soothing rhythm to my ironing; I lose myself in the steam and heated fabrics, and I think of my gun in my glove box, and it does make me feel better; it seems to cancel out the power of the unringing cell phone in my pocket, the cheap little Sprint freebie that has made me hope's b.i.t.c.h. I try to discipline myself-I will check my home messages on my lunch hour and not a minute before.

The bells on the door s.h.i.+ver and then ring out and it's Erika in a scarlet-red coat, ripped fishnets and combat boots, her dark, manicured nails popping out of her fingerless gloves like chocolates. She's holding a bakery box. "Henry, you old slag. Sandinista's ironing and you're just mincing about?"

"What is it this time?" Henry asks, as if morose.

Erika opens the bakery box like a game-show hostess and caresses the air over the candy. "Today we have chocolate caramels infused with fresh pineapple juice."

Erika holds out the box, and Henry says, "Oh, that sounds like it will be good for a gentleman's waistline."

But he takes one anyway. He chews, rolling his eyes and holding up one finger, imploring us to wait, wait! And then, the verdict: "That is, in all seriousness, the best thing I've ever had in my mouth."

Erika smiles at me and stage-whispers: "We will be ladies, and let the obvious punch line to that joke just fade, fade, fade away." She twinkles her fingers back and forth, Glinda the Good Witch, bidding sweet farewell to the bawdy, the improper, and hands me the box of chocolates.

"Later, babies," she says. "I'm off to the sugar mines."

We watch Erika cross the street, the tails of her red coat whipping behind her.

"She's a genius with the chocolates, Sandinista. She used to be the pastry chef at Boulangerie Marcel."

Henry Charbonneau has the look of someone wanting very badly to tell you something that you do not particularly want to hear. I place Erika's chocolates in the mahogany display box.

"She was raped at gunpoint going into the bakery one morning before dawn. Someone knew the pastry chef went in at four-thirty. Someone was waiting for Erika."

Henry Charbonneau's gaze turns from the antic.i.p.atory to the rueful, as if saying it out loud has cost him something. He looks down at the floors of the Pale Circus for a moment. But soon he's distracted by a scuff, a nick, something. He leans down and works his fingers over the wood with a stern tsk.

"She opened her own bakery after it happened. Everyone was pretty surprised that she went the way of p.o.r.nography. But"-he waves his hand in the air, c'est la vie-"it's quite common for victims to take on the ways of their oppressors."

I think of the frosting in the bowl. This professor of gently used couture might not be quite as clever as he thinks.

"Stockholm syndrome," he muses dreamily, stretching the words into a musical affliction that sounds like it would strike down blond supermodels. "I do believe she has Stockholm syndrome."

"Oh?"

"Well, it's back to work for us!" He claps his hands, and I get the message-how could I not-and finish ironing a black polished cotton s.h.i.+rt with a severe bell shape. When I look up, I find Henry Charbonneau slacking, gazing out the window, watching the monks troop past in their brown robes-which, I guess, preclude their need for winter coats.

Henry Charbonneau turns from the window and looks at me; he's clutching a bottle of Windex to his chest like a bouquet of bluebells, like he's a tidy bridesmaid. "Do you like working here?"

"I love it," I say, truthfully.

Henry Charbonneau nods. "I knew you would," he says. When he looks down at the floor with a shy smile I see what it is about him that causes Bradley's face to be wreathed in kittenish pain-oh, the s.e.xy, intermittent kindness of Henry Charbonneau. Except soon he completely dispenses with his facade of cleaning and sits down, yoga-style, near the front window, with a book.

I am nearly undone by his feudal tendencies, as I still have a mound of satin dresses to iron. But the ironing is a small, good thing, even if my pleats totally suck. I have seen Bradley do twenty pleats in the time it takes me to iron three, and his pleats are severe and fresh.

When Henry looks at all these dresses I have ironed, he will sigh and his face will crumple. But for now I work and my mind wanders to my first short film of the day, which showcases my own Great Expectations: We first meet Lisa Kaplansky when she is in the cla.s.sroom, a hip teacher sitting cross-legged on her desk, comfy in her Dansko clogs, black yoga pants and batik tunic. Ms. Kaplansky is being apprised of the school situation by the several caring students crowded around her desk, Bethany Adams chief among them. Bethany Adams, Sandinista Jones's best friend from elementary school. In junior high Sandinista dumped Bethany for a skag named Josie Jennings, a bad call, the outlaw cadence of Josie's name a glimpse into her very soul. But Bethany Adams is as tall as a catalog model and a star volleyball player, to boot; she has fared well, even with those junior high injustices. And now Bethany Adams spills it with feeling. "And remember, Ms. Kaplansky, Sandinista's mother died in the fall." Here I rework the sentence, I slide the words back into Bethany's mouth so that it doesn't sound like my mother stepped off a skysc.r.a.per: "And remember, Ms. Kaplansky, Sandinista's mother died last autumn. She's all alone in the world this year."

Lisa Kaplansky's face falls and goes gray and red all at once, a crumbling ash rose. She says: "Cla.s.s, I'll be back." Her tunic billows out behind her as she scrambles off the desk and flies out of the room. Lisa Kaplansky charges into the princ.i.p.al's office without knocking, only to find a man who is neither prince nor pal, an antihero, perhaps the Antichrist: Princ.i.p.al Jack Johnson. He is cruising the Net for "artistic photos" and he hammers the escape b.u.t.ton with his index finger when he sees Lisa Kaplansky.

"Catherine Bennett ...," Ms. Kaplansky says, breathless.

"I know," he says. He lets loose with a desolate little sigh. "I've heard all about it by now."

Because his demeanor veers too close to the ol' "hey, babe, these things happen" nonchalance of the professional educator, Lisa Kaplansky plants a hand on Jack Johnson's desk. Because she hits the tanning beds-I fear you not, melanoma!-her hand is a plasticine shade of b.u.t.terscotch, and she wears a silver skull ring on her middle finger with ominous violet stones in the carved eye sockets, Georgia O'Keeffe for the aging hipster. Still, despite a few fas.h.i.+on missteps, Lisa Kaplansky is valiant, pure-hearted.

"Catherine Bennett?" Lisa Kaplansky rolls the words off her tongue-the last name clipped and ominous, like a dare. "She kicked Sandinista's desk!"

They lock eyes.

"I dunno," he says. "She's been here forever. It's complicated."

"You have two choices," Lisa Kaplansky says. "Fire her today or I go to the newspaper tomorrow."

Eager to get back to his photographs, Jack Johnson nods. Fantasy sequence number two: Wherein we find the cla.s.s sitting quietly after Mrs. Bennett and Sandinista exit, ye olde calm after the storm: there sits Evan Harper in his CORPORATE COFFEE SUCKS T-s.h.i.+rt, inscrutable as you please. Alecia Hardaway reads her Powerpuff Girls comic book, her face seized by some secret delight, or maybe it's merely the madcap antics of crime-fighting cupcakes. A few girls are sniffling. A few boys are thinking poetic and unsavory thoughts of Sandinsta Jones, wondering, Why are the beautiful ones always so tormented?

Mr. Hale, the gym teacher, is back from escorting Mrs. Bennett to the office. He has told everyone, "Why don't we just have some quiet time before the bell rings." And so he sits at Mrs. Bennett's desk, reading Penthouse, which he has stashed between the covers of an ancient Newsweek. And all is quiet; all is still. But, people, all is not calm, nor is it bright.

Sandinista Jones is walking back into the school. Sandinista must have done some kind of Superman outfit switcheroo in her car, because she's returning to Woodrow Wilson High School in a wrap dress with repeating black and turquoise triangles and patent-leather high heels. In her matching patent-leather handbag there is a gun. Sandinista Jones walks through the dim anteroom of the princ.i.p.al's office un.o.bserved, the secretary listening to her iPod and reading T. S. Eliot. Sandinista Jones looks through the rectangular windowpane of the princ.i.p.al's office and sees Catherine Bennett holding up a platter covered with Saran Wrap. Sandinista Jones puts her head next to the cracked door, and Sandinista Jones pays attention.

"Caramel apples?" Catherine Bennett smiles and flutters her pale lashes. She is one grotesque coquette.

"What?" asks Princ.i.p.al Jack Johnson. He looks frightened.

"You know I bring them to the Christmas party every year!"

Catherine Bennett plunks the platter down on his desk and frantically takes off the Saran Wrap. "It's kind of my signature treat! I bring them to cla.s.s sometimes and let the kids graze a bit while they do their math problems. Did you know if they get an A on their test I also give them a coupon for a free burrito?"

Through the cold patent leather of her handbag, Sandinista Jones feels the bulk of her gun.

The princ.i.p.al clears his throat. "I was wondering if we might talk a little bit about Sandinista Jones? The ... incident."