CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Abigail looks at me as if she knows exactly what I’ve been thinking.
Not just here and now, in the Pavilion Market with spaghetti sauce painting my ankles, but for the past few days. For the past few nights. When I turned away from the last girl who was eager to go home with me. When I dreamed. When I stood across the street from the Nosh Pit like a psycho, and when I was noodling my song, wondering where it was coming from, unable to urge it faster than it naturally wanted to come. The first song I’ve taken seriously, as a new creation, since Grace died.
She has soft hazel eyes. She doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, but she’s darkened her eyes with liner or mascara or whatever it is that’s making them pop. Her skin is pale, so those otherwise subtle eyes — not blue like mine, not blue like so many of the girls who come to me after my shows, but this more honest, more understated hue — are somehow magnified, and it’s like she can see through me. I notice the overhead market lights shining down on her hair — straight, plainly, and beautifully cut, just the right amount of sun-kissed red. I notice the way her freckles, which I’d plainly seen late on other nights, appear to be gone, as if she’s hidden or somehow erased them.
The moment we lock gazes must last less than two seconds, but it’s obvious and long enough. I feel somehow accused. Or, worse: not accused when I clearly should be. Like an unfaithful man facing his wife, knowing what he’s done and enduring the unknown eyes of innocence as she continues to trust him.
But then it’s over, and she’s looking down, and it’s like I’ve been shot at the ankles, or stepped into a Cuisinart.
I’m sure she’ll react with concern — maybe for my shoes, maybe for my jeans, or maybe in general, for the market and its cleaning staff. But she doesn’t express concern any more than she expresses the accusations I deserve.
I don’t get anger at treating her badly or ignoring her.
I don’t get rejection, which would be more than fair play.
Instead, Abigail laughs.
It’s a delightful sound, and I’m reminded of an addict with his drug. The first time I heard and saw that laugh (it’s as visual as it is auditory, the way her hand goes to her mouth and her eyes narrow, her midsection twitching), it was like my first high. Now I’ll chase it forever, always looking to make Abigail laugh again and again, so I can be here to feel it.
She looks me over, and again I’m shocked that I’m not being yelled at. I deserve it. I deserved it Friday night, when she was mad at me for a reason I didn’t, at the time, understand. I deserved it Saturday, when I walked away when things got too real. I deserved it when I left with that girl, even though nothing happened. And she doesn’t even know what’s happened since. The thousand transgressions I’ve made. Dreaming of her. Thinking of her. Almost visiting for four long days, but never finding the nerve.
But none of that happens. It’s as if I’m forgiven, or never accused.
“That’s a good look,” she says.
“Shit.” I look down and pick up one foot, then the other, as if I can get away from the spill without moving from my spot. I’m not sure what to do. Is there a mop somewhere I should grab? I’ve heard people in markets call for cleanup in various aisles. How do I get such a broadcast?
“Now it’s like you’re dancing.”
“Maybe you could help me rather than just laughing at me,” I say, mock-irritated.
“This is much more fun.” The hand is still over her mouth, as if she’s trying and failing to contain further jest. But the laugh is mostly in her eyes. Her sweet, innocent eyes, so different from the jaded, ancient ones I see in the bathroom mirror each morning. It’s as if she’s never faced sorrow. But there’s so much out there, and in an instant I find myself wanting to make sure she never finds out. I want to shield her. To protect her from what the cruel world has proved it always has in store.
Before I can say more, a kid in a market apron comes rushing around the corner. It’s like I’ve fired a gun and he’s sprinting to cover me. He looks down and says, “Oh, geez.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
“I’ll get the mop.” Then, because I can’t be trusted not to hurt myself, he adds, “Don’t move. There’s glass in there.”
He leaves the way he came, and again I’m left with Abigail. There’s nobody else in the aisle, so it’s just her as my audience.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I say.
“Why not? I need groceries, too.”
“I’ve just never seen you here before.”
“What, are you tracking all of my comings and goings?”
Hearing this shuts me up, even though it wasn’t her intention. I haven’t been following her. I don’t even know when her shifts begin and end, or where she’s working on any given day. I’ve been assuming she’d work the Overlook on Friday again, but I have no reason. I’ve merely walked by the Nosh Pit, and it was my conspiratorial feet who did that, mostly without my conscious permission. I’ve tried to summon the will to go in and see her. That’s not the same as “tracking all of her comings and goings,” but she doesn’t even know the little I’ve done. She wouldn’t know why, and I couldn’t explain. I’m drawn to her, and now, hearing those words, feel somehow guilty.
The kid returns and starts mopping around me. Finally, he decides to release his decree and instructs me to step away, warning me to watch out for shards. Of course I step on one and it crunches under my sole, and the kid gives me an exasperated look that says he can’t take me anywhere.
My step away from the bomb zone moves me closer to Abigail. She’d stayed out of the blast radius and has, as far as I can tell, avoided spatter.
“There’s glass in there,” she says after I crunch the shard and get the dirty look from the mop boy.
“I hear.”
“Are you always this clumsy?”
“Only when people surprise me, sneaking up from behind.”
“All I did was to say your name.”
“From behind.”
She smiles a halfway smile. It’s somehow mocking yet playful. It’s a beautiful expression — something unique to Abigail, as far as I’ve ever seen in my life. I want to capture it in a photo, but it’s gone as soon as it came. Every moment with her, I feel like I’m trying to hold back water leaking through my fingers. I don’t know why, but I’m struck with twin impressions: I only have precious few moments, and no matter what I do to try and hold onto them, they’ll slip away. All things are like that. I have memories in layers of Grace, but what do they matter? In the end, the best memories are but figments of the past, left as specters to haunt your future.
“I’m sorry. Next time I won’t say hello.”
“To be fair,” I tell her, “you didn’t actually say hello.”
“Hello, Gavin.”
Hearing her lips speak my name sends a shiver through me. I think it’s a good shiver, but only for a second. Within me, joy likes to mingle with pain. I flash back to Saturday night, when I was enjoying her company, being with her, soaking in all that is uniquely Abigail. But then I imagined us together, and something broke inside me. I had to go. It was too nice. Too playful and happy. Alarms brayed. In my ears, those alarms sounded like my lost love screaming.
But I force myself, to be polite if nothing else, to respond in kind.
“Hello, Abigail.”
She’s still smiling as the kid mops behind me. I don’t know why. I don’t deserve this. I want to ask her why she’s in a good mood and why she’s not, seemingly, angry at me. But I’m afraid to shatter the spell, so I say nothing.
“Making spaghetti?”
I look back. “Not anymore.”
“You could buy another jar.”
“Do I have to buy that one?” I say, glancing back.
“I doubt it.”
I watch her. All the thought I’ve spent on her over the past few days comes flooding back. Why is she always in my head lately? Why have I been pondering the freckles she seems to have covered with makeup as if they bother her? Why have I been spending my nights alone, without going to see her? Why do I seem to want her … but not in the way I usually would? And most pressing of all, why does that desire make me so uncomfortable, as it did on Saturday?
I feel split. There are two people within me, each pulling on one end of a rope, fighting for control.
I open my mouth to say goodbye, that it was nice to see her. To ask her, on parting, why she doesn’t hate me.
Instead, I find myself blurting something unexpected: “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
Her smile vanishes.
“I mean, if you don’t have to work.”
But she’s no longer having fun, suddenly all serious in the face of this asshole before her. So, after another long second, I say, “Never mind” and begin to turn, already feeling like an idiot.
Before I can so much as twist my shoulders away, Abigail says, “I’d love to.”