THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WHEN I WALKED UP WAS THAT Harris seemed to be losing ground. Instead of being stuck astraddle of the threshold he was standing on the sidewalk near a parking meter, wearing a black raincoat and holding a rolled-up black umbrella. He was looking up at the sky, which was drizzling slightly into his face.
He wasn’t really leaning on the parking meter, but he seemed to draw a certain comfort from the fact that one was near. He had a look of anguish on his face, only instead of directing it at the doorway he was directing it at the drizzling sky.
I felt I knew him, even though we hadn’t been introduced.
“Hello, Harris,” I said.
Being spoken to startled him a good deal. He gripped his umbrella a little tighter. His fingers were long enough to curl around it several times, like the toes of a sloth. He didn’t answer me.
Meanwhile, Cindy’s window had been transformed into a display case for my cowboyana. A bull’s skull I had bought in Fort Stockton was the centerpiece, around which were piled horsehide lariats, Mexican spurs, a couple of Army Colts, and some horseshoeing tools. It was a nice display and almost everyone who walked in front of the shop stopped and looked at it. There were even two or three marshal’s badges that may or may not have been worn by the Earp boys when they were working the Arizona territory.
Cindy was in her dress shop, opening packages of dresses. I felt like I had lived a life and a half in the hours since I had seen her last, but Cindy looked like she had only lived about five minutes. She was fresh, vigorous, and annoyed.
“Don’t you ever listen?” she asked.
“I listen constantly,” I replied, truthfully. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“I thought you kept your appointments,” she said.
“I’m keeping my appointment,” I said. “I’m not in Ohio or Mexico. I’m just a little late.”
“When I say five thirty I mean five thirty,” she said. “If you’d been on time we could be at a cocktail party at Oblivia’s right now.”
“I’m less than an hour late,” I pointed out.
Cindy stopped talking. She turned her attention to a beautiful sleeveless black dress she had just taken out of a box. She opened two more boxes without looking at me or saying a word to me at all.
I began to wonder why I was still there. I think it may have been because I liked the alert way she read the Sunday papers, sitting naked and cross-legged on her bed. I also liked the way she smelled, night or morning, and I particularly liked the way she said words like “yeah” and “naw.” She spoke in the tones of a real girl, however much she may have enjoyed social climbing.
“I bought a quadripartite icon today,” I said, in an effort to change the subject.
“Big deal,” Cindy said. Her irritation had not exactly subsided.
“It is a big deal,” I said. “How many have you ever bought?”
Testy women seldom mind a little backtalk. In fact, they usually require it. Cindy looked at me as if I were a rock that had suddenly grown vocal cords and made a sassy remark. She apparently saw no point in answering a rock.
“How come you own an antique store if you’re so fuckin’ uninterested in antiques?” I asked, warming to my point.
“Listen, watch your language,” she said hotly. A talking rock was one thing, a profane rock something she evidently didn’t intend to tolerate.
“I have employees,” she added, though none were in sight. I had noticed several thin-faced girls with fashionably frizzled hair in the various shops, but so far Cindy had not bothered to introduce me to any of them. They seemed to be silent minions. They all wore black sweaters and looked intelligent.
“It’s a valid question,” I insisted. “You own an antique store but you don’t know a thing about antiques and what’s more you don’t really want to. How come?”
“Because I’m normal, that’s why,” Cindy said, in a voice full of very normal-sounding irritation.
“I’m normal, too,” I said. “I just also know a lot about antiques.”
Even as I was saying it I wished I wasn’t saying it. Cindy put me away with a sharp volley, as if I were a tennis ball that had floated weakly up to the net where she was waiting.
“You were never normal a day in your life,” she said, with such cool conviction that anyone listening would have been compelled to agree, though she had only known me for two days of my life.
“All you antiques people are kooks,” she added. “I just bought this store in order to get the dress shop.”
I began to feel depressed. Some hopeful part of me still wanted her to be an antiques person. In fact her attitude toward antiques was not much different from Coffee’s.
“If I’m such a kook, what about us?” I asked.
Cindy walked past me to hang up some dresses. In passing she gave me a good swift jab with her elbow, as final punishment.
“I’ve fooled around with a lot of kooks,” she said. “The good thing about you is that you’re tall.”
It didn’t surprise me. I knew my height was an advantage—one of the most basic advantages, probably.
A second later, Cindy echoed my thought.
“It’s basic,” she said. “This town is full of shrimps.”