“Of course. Anything I can do to help.”
“That’s such a relief.” Veronica gently squeezed his wrist. It had been so long since Keith had been touched in any way by an adult woman that the innocuous gesture gave him an immediate erection. “Then you can remove the staples of the ones you’ve already done and put this as page four.”
“Maybe to save time I could just put it at the bottom. A sort of postscript.”
“No, that would be too confusing. Also, you’ll have to renumber all of the pages. Actually, you should just scrap these and start over.” Veronica stood and collected the completed packets in a bundle in her arms. “I’ll take these to the recycling. It wouldn’t hurt to print off some more flyers, either. Oh, and maybe stop at the hardware store and buy some extra flashlights for tonight.”
On his way out Keith stopped at the counter to borrow some cash from the till. Today he was in no mood to be humiliated by the pizza-faced FedEx Office employee respectfully informing him that yes, all of his credit cards seemed to be declined.
Ellie looked up from her textbook. “You’re allowed to steal from the register but I’m not?”
“Legitimate business expense. I have to run some errands. Think you can steer the ship while I’m out?”
“No. You probably shouldn’t trust me. I might find an antique gun and go on a killing spree.”
“Don’t joke about that, sweetheart.”
“Fine. I’ll just use it to blow my own brains out.”
“I’ll be back before closing. Love you.”
“Who cares?”
Something changed between them after the business with the college money. It was Stacey’s actions that screwed her, but Keith was the one Ellie regarded as the betrayer. He supposed he was just easier to hate. He recalled wistfully how they had once been such good friends who could stand to be in the same room together and enjoyed family activities like watching TV and making fun of Stacey’s sibilant s when Stacey wasn’t around. Ellie was so smart and such a unique person. Keith was terrified of her. He couldn’t remember the last time the two of them really talked. Ellie invariably went straight to her room whenever she came home and only emerged for school and work.
No one had prepared him for how lonely middle age could be. It was why people had families, he supposed; they had to be your friend by default, they couldn’t just break up with you or let the relationship fade with an unreturned phone call.
Recently, while snooping through Stacey’s personal locker in the mall’s back room, Keith had found a small black ledger, the pages filled with a simple chart listing every Heart of America employee and dealer, each with a cryptic caption:
JIMMY DANIELS
ROOKWOOD SHAPE 962
RONALD MARSH
BLUE OVOID TECO
MARGARET BYRD
ROSEVILLE AZTEC SHAPE 2
ELLIE
YAGI KAZUO (?)
At first Keith thought it was a living will, though he was perplexed that she would distribute her collection among so many people who wouldn’t want it. Not till he reached his own name did Keith crack the code: it was kind of inventory associating—based on head shape or body type or personality, who could say?—the people she knew with pieces from her collection.
KEITH
BROKEN COOKIE JAR
That she conceived of human beings this way should not have surprised him. She was herself an empty vessel. And yet, almost twenty years ago, when they first opened the Heart of America, he must have been in love with Stacey, really truly in love. He had to have been. Only that all-powerful delusion could have ever led him to his present ineluctable misery. They’d courted in antique shops, inexpensive dates driving to out-of-the-way historic downtowns, strolling the aisles on Saturday afternoons. Back then Keith didn’t have to pretend to enjoy himself. Recently married, Stacey pregnant, they’d just closed on the exceedingly overvalued house in Eastborough, a modest one-story currently on its third mortgage with a finished basement, aboveground pool, and a two-car garage through whose disproportioned doors Keith’s Bonneville could never fit, the least impressive in a neighborhood full of mansions and mini-mansions. Of course Stacey had chosen the house, for its proximity to good schools, for its safeness, for any number of reasons Keith hadn’t paid attention to at the time, too in love was he to have an opinion of his own. Yes, it was true, and he was amazed to think of it now, that once he really did love Stacey. But what was love, anyway, especially at that impressionable age when Keith was just beginning to learn to be an adult, a lesson he didn’t really comprehend until the birth of his daughter, or maybe in truth he’d never comprehended it, seeing as he had failed his daughter, he’d failed as a husband (although his failure was largely Stacey’s fault, he thought), he was a loser, a crack-up, a creep. If not for Stacey’s dream to open the mall, and the attendant and unpredictably astronomical expenses operating thereof, they would have paid off the house by now and had a chance—a slight one, at least—of a retirement plan better than his current one, i.e., keeping his fingers crossed for either a windfall or an early, painless death. Keith supposed he was more fortunate than many; few could pinpoint the single moment that ruined their life, but he could: the day he and Stacey signed the paperwork on the Heart of America.
3 RONALD
Although Ronald Marsh was an optimist by nature, even he had his unhappinesses. For the good of himself, his friends, and the friends he had yet to make, he kept them inside and private. The last thing he wanted to be thought of was as a lonely old widower.
He always made sure to sign up for walking duties on the first Thursday of every month, when Dealer Association meetings were scheduled. He loved the hustle and bustle of the mall when so many dealers were present, haggling with one another, loading their booths with newly acquired merchandise, comparing sales sheets, and just plain shooting the breeze. If he was said to collect anything other than the postcards arranged by subject matter in sharp-edged rows in the cabinets that lined his booth, it would be the small social exchanges he gathered while walking: reciprocated smiles, hearty hellos, chats about the weather or current events. Each, however brief or seemingly trivial, was an opportunity to partake in human connection. Ronald regarded small talk with uncommon reverence. Even a brief conversation between strangers before going their separate ways was, for its duration, a kind of friendship.
And today of all days Ronald needed to talk. He’d always fancied himself a particularly adept small talker, but what weighed presently on his mind was quite big. Ronald was clumsy and scatterbrained by nature, had a habit of knocking over juice glasses and stumbling into closed doors, leaving his wallet at the checkout stand and driving with the trunk open. With warmth, his dear Melinda, rest her soul, had referred to such incidents as Ronald’s “oopsies.” Ronald was currently in the midst of an oopsie he had no idea how to fix. To clear his mind, to gain the perspective he needed to shimmy himself out of this pickle, he would embrace routine. He would go about his duties as if it were any ordinary day. He’d figure it all out, he was sure. If he put his faith in himself, things would work out just fine. That he believed.