“There you go again. Friendship. Community. Pastry. All inefficient.”
He reaches for the door, then stops. “You should close before dark.”
“I close at nine.”
“You should close before dark.”
“Kauss.”
“The Memories have been moving in larger groups.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I want to snap back because fear makes me prickly, and being told what to do makes me more prickly, but then I see the tightness around his eyes. He is not trying to control me. He is trying to keep something terrible from happening by sheer force of vigilance, and that is its own kind of suffering.
“I’ll be careful,” I say.
His jaw works. “Careful is not armor.”
“No, but it’s what I’ve got.”
He looks like he hates that answer.
Then he leaves.
I lock the door behind him because I am stubborn, not stupid, and return to the front room with my chest feeling oddly hollow. Darlene watches me from the register while pretending to count change.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“You have never thought nothing in your life.”
“I’m old. Sometimes I think about naps.”
“Not with that face.”
She shuts the drawer. “That alien has got it bad.”
“He has concern. It is different.”
“Honey, I’ve seen concern. Concern brings soup when you’re sick. That man looks at you like he’s trying to calculate how many city blocks he’d have to level to keep you from stubbing your toe.”
“That is not romantic.”
“Didn’t say it was healthy. I said he’s got it bad.”
“We are not dating.”
“You keep saying that like repetition turns lies into architecture.”
I wipe the counter harder than necessary. “He is my friend.”
Darlene leans both elbows on the register counter, cigarette tucked unlit behind her ear, eyes bright with elderly cruelty. “Do you look at all your friends like you want to crawl inside their coat and live there rent-free?”
My face goes hot. “I do not look at him like that.”
