Chapter Text
Her world was low-ceilinged, pink and purple. It sparkled, but not in the way that new things do. The sparkle was the same every day. The same glinting rhinestones and iridescent fabrics. It was new, once, when she first came here. It wasn’t exactly that Claire’s had lost its charm, but that its charm had become mundane to her. She still enjoyed the smiling faces of the little girls, the nervous hand-holding of their mothers as they went to get their ears pierced. The shy boys who wanted pretty things, the teenage girls not quite ready to grow up. The adults, looking for something kitschy. It brought all manners of people, and it was her domain.
It had taken a few years for Kim to work her way up to the manager position, but damn if you could find a person in Nebraska better at piercing an ear or arranging a display of decorative hair clips.
She wiped a smudge from her metal name tag. Kimmy, she thought, was a more Claire’s-appropriate name. That, and it wasn’t the same derisive Kim she’d been hearing her whole life. Her mother, her classmates, her friends. Kimmy was fun. Kimmy sold plastic jewelry.
Lunch was approaching. During the lunch hours, every citizen of the mall would move in their amoebic shape away from the stores and into the food court, herself included. She looked forward to lunch, not only because she could leave the store in Heather’s capable community college freshman hands, but because today was Wednesday. On Wednesdays, as she knew she had to pick only one day of the week to indulge in this ritual lest her behavior be interpreted as obsessive, she would go to the food court and get a coffee from Cinnabon. No roll, no treats. Just a coffee. She knew that the coffee was not the central appeal of a Cinnabon, nor did people ever order just a coffee, especially since there was a Starbucks not twenty feet away.
She enjoyed the perplexed look behind his glasses when she went there. How his eyes would dart across the way to the perfectly good Starbucks where they were serving fresh coffee and had dairy substitutes. His mustache would shift, denoting the twist of his mouth, a tell. She delighted in it. But, dutifully, Gene (Manager– as his nametag read) would turn away from the register, get her a coffee, take her debit card, swipe it, hand her the receipt, and go on about his day.
She didn’t even know why she found him so charming, as he had barely spoken a word to her. But he seemed…gentle. When he did speak, it was in a sensitive rasp. He worked with pretty young women but didn’t seem weird about it. His eyes were blue behind the glasses. He was a little bit older than her. He had a sort of tender patheticness about him that Kim had become fascinated with. But, not one to show her colors, she had devised the subtle plan of getting coffee from him every Wednesday. The ritual of making sure her eyes were glistening and wide, two pools for him to look into. Her nametag positioned just-so on her chest: Kimmy. That’s the name of the pretty woman who buys coffee from you at Cinnabon when there’s a perfectly good Starbucks just over there .
She was becoming more adventurous, of late. On this particular Wednesday, she made certain their hands touched when he gave her the receipt. She looked him straight in the eyes.
“Thank you, Gene,” she said, taking a quick look at his nametag as if she had never read it.
“Uh,” he said, almost pitifully taken aback. “Any time…Kimmy…”
His eyes, magnified by his glasses, were focused on her chest. Her name tag. She was also wearing a well-fitted v-neck tucked into her denim skirt. He seemed to focus on that, too, subtly looking her up and down in a manner so coy she could almost miss it.
She took a sip of her coffee, holding the cup with both hands, never breaking eye-contact with him. There was a line forming behind her, a swath of people ravenous for sweets. Just as she was about to say something (though what , she had not prepared for), she panicked.
“Um. Yes. Thank you.”
She turned on the rubber heel of her ballet flat and headed back towards Claire’s, though her break was not even half-over.
Back at the store, Heather was reading Teen Vogue behind the counter.
“Hey, Kimmy,” she said with the pop of some bubblegum.
“Hey, Heather.” Kim rounded the counter, putting her purse beneath it. “Anything happen while I was gone?”
“Ya,” she said. She closed the magazine and leaned heavily into the counter, grinning. “You fucked up your coffee run.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Heather nodded upwards, in the general direction of the food court on the level just above them. At Cinnabon.
“You go there every Wednesday. I thought so, at least. So today I watched.”
“Heather, you can’t…” Kim ducked down, trying to see beyond the awning. “You can’t see it from here.”
“I know, I went and stood over there,” Heather said, pointing at one of the lounge areas from which one could just-so get a glance at the food court.
“You were supposed to be manning the register.”
“It was only for a second, ” Heather said. “You are down so bad. I guess I get it. He’s like…a DILF.”
“ Heather .”
“What!?”
“I…” Kim folded her arms. “Is it that obvious?”
Heather giggled.
“There’s this guy in Comp I, right?” she began. “And I use pens, like, usually blue ones. But he sits next to the pencil sharpener. So obviously I go to the bookstore and I buy like, a bunch of pencils. And I sharpen them and I don’t even use them.”
“Okay?”
“To be near the guy. Kimmy, there’s a Starbucks right there.”
“I…don’t like their coffee. It’s better at Cinnabon.”
Heather frowned dramatically and then re-opened her magazine.
“I’m just saying,” Heather went on. “Eventually my pencil-sharpening tactic isn’t gonna be enough. Guys are stupid. They don’t get the hint, no matter how many shitty Cinnabon coffees you order.” Heather shrugged, and her attention was then very quickly re-focused on Teen Vogue.
Kim tapped her fingers on the counter. She parted her lips, about to speak, but then shut herself up. She was not going to ask an eighteen-year-old for advice.
She didn’t come here to be a schoolgirl in a grown woman’s body. She came here to get away. To live in a city, any city. She had changed her hair and her life. Maybe this city wasn’t far enough away from where she’d grown up. Maybe she was searching for anything exciting that she could find. And, given the slim pickings, she had landed on–
That wasn’t fair to him, was it? For all Kim knew, Gene was complicated, intelligent. Good in bed. Maybe he was funny. Maybe she would go again tomorrow, on a Thursday, to throw him off.
Or maybe her pencil-sharpening days were over. Maybe she had to try something new.
-
“Gene? Gene.” Tiffany shyly tapped him on the arm. He turned around, so fast he almost became dizzy. He had been staring off into the distance, towards the South escalator. That was the one she always took. Kimmy, his mysterious brown-haired paramour. Imagined, so far. He was becoming wrapped up in the idea that, because there was a perfectly good Starbucks right there , she was coming to him for coffee for a specific reason. Maybe it was him. Maybe she had bad taste in beverages. But he tried not to get ahead of himself.
“Yeah, what’s up? Sorry. Tired,” he said. Tiffany smiled, youthful and awkward.
“Help me with the ice?” she asked, carrying the heavy bucket, her shoulders weighed down by its heft.
“You got it,” he said. He wrapped a fist around the handle and let her shift it into his care. The girls had been nervous around him, at first. He couldn’t blame them. He knew, vaguely, that the world was not a very nice place to be a girl, especially one stuck in a very small space with an older man, a complete stranger. But eventually their dynamic had eased, and she and Corina had even gone so far as to ask him to walk them to their cars some nights.
And he did so, because it was the nice thing to do, and because he was trying to be a good person. He’d left behind a life where he had not been nice to enough people. He had been, for lack of a better phrase on his part, a total asshole. And now here he was, living the dreary day-to-day in a space that smelled of sweetness but which no longer filled him with the warm-fuzzies he’d experienced at first.
But he had a home, and a job, and a dog. Those were the things that nice people got to have. But good people, the kind of person he was trying to be, had more. They had homes and jobs and dogs and wives and friends and families. He tried not to dwell on it, and he was mostly successful. But for some reason, when that enigma of a woman would come and order black coffee from him on Wednesdays, he felt an unfamiliar ache, something a bit like a void that needed to be filled.
After he had poured the ice into the top of the soda machine, he told Tiffany she could go on her break.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m just gonna grab something from here, I have something to do.”
“Oh yeah?”
Tiffany pulled the string of her apron and then shimmied it off, promptly hanging it on the hook.
“This is stupid, and you’re gonna laugh,” she said.
“Try me.”
“I have to go to–” she paused to laugh at herself and shake her head. “I have to go to Claire’s, down on the first level.”
“What for? They having a sale on…what’s the thing? Bratz dolls?”
“Gene!” Tiffany turned red. “No. Look.” She pinched one of her ears between her fingers. “See anything? No? Exactly. I’m finally getting them pierced.”
“Yeah? You think maybe I should get one?” he asked, tugging on his earlobe. “A diamond stud, maybe?”
“Ohmygod, no .”
“Yeah, it’s a little too mid-life-crisis, I guess.”
“Get a sports car or an inappropriately young wife or something. Do not get jewelry.”
“I’ll be getting none of those things.”
“Whatever, look. I have to go, I have an appointment with the lady.”
“The lady?”
“The piercing lady! You know, pretty, brunette? Comes here to get coffee sometimes?”
Gene blinked. His fingers twitched and he suddenly felt like he needed to do something with his hands. He shifted his posture and folded his arms.
“I, uh. Yeah. I think I know who you’re talking about.”
Tiffany grinned and rolled her eyes as she backed away, opening the countertop so that she could leave.
“I know you do. Every time she comes here you look like…I dunno. A cartoon. Hearts for eyes.”
“Well, wait–”
Tiffany kept walking away.
“You should go for it! I’ll give her your number.”
“ Tiffany .”
“Al right . Just saying. She’s so pretty.”
Yeah , Gene thought. Yeah she is .
After closing, he pulled on his jacket and headed for the exit. The secret one that only employees knew about. One of the only perks of working in the mall, if it could even be considered one. A special door leading to another smelly concrete lot.
He sighed dolefully as the door shut behind him. He looked up at the night’s sky. He thought about which direction Cicero was in, and how it wasn’t far away enough. He heard a cough, and turned his head in the direction of the sound.
There she was, standing in the slanted beam of the motion-sensing light. Leaning against the concrete wall with a cigarette in hand. He licked his lips. He could go for one of those. He had been trying to quit for– what? Call it an even thirty years. Each attempt had been unsuccessful, and now, looking at her…it had never seemed so appealing.
He patted the pocket of his jacket. No luck.
He realized too late that he was staring. She looked over at him, her face expectant as if he owed some explanation. Maybe he did. But what does one say? What does one say when they are the pitiable manager of the local Cinnabon, when faced with a schoolboy crush on a stranger?
Lucky for him, she took the initiative.
“You want one of these?” she asked, holding up the half-empty cigarette pack.
“I um…” He adjusted the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “Yeah. Sure. Thank you.”
With deft, pretty fingers, she extracted one of the cigarettes and held it out to him. He took it, his own fingers shaking though it was not cold enough to blame it on the weather.
He leaned beside her on the wall. She handed him her lighter. They smoked in the quiet for a few long moments.
She sighed. He felt brave.
“Rough day?” he asked.
“They’re all rough. It’s the mall.”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“It’s no problem.”
Her cigarette was nearly gone. She tossed the butt on the ground and stepped on it with her flat, pretty foot.
“Come down and buy some nail polish or something, some time. I’ll give you a discount.”
Gene spread out his fingers and examined his own hand.
“I’m thinking something sparkly,” he said.
“Definitely.”
They laughed together. It was sweet and new, but he felt its simplicity, as if it had happened many times before. As if this shared moment ought to be commonplace, between them.
His cigarette was finished, too. He threw it to the ground. It fizzled out on its own on the cold cement.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Gene,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “See ya tomorrow.”
He drove home with a grin on his face. He had vague dreams of her. Of the two of them, surrounded by sugary sweet things and sickening pink. She smelled like acetone. He smelled like frosting.