“Lies!” Gloria shouts. “Who are you doing this for? I’ve seen you devour candy by the bagful, but even this would be excessive.”
She and Emma huddle closer to me like we’re gossiping at Sunday brunch and not work.
“It’s for a friend,” I say.
“Oh. I had a friend like that once,” Gloria says with a knowing smile. “We gave each other buttons. Come to think of it, where are those buttons?”
“This is the fifth bag of”—Emma analyzes the contents of the bag—“numbers since you started working here,” she says. “Does your friend eat it all, or what?”
“I don’t know what he does with it,” I say. Him eating it isn’t really the point.
“Why numbers?” Gloria asks.
Obviously, I can’t tell them about the lottery. Money changes dynamics. It changes relationships. “Why buttons?” I ask her.
Gloria’s lips curl up. “To replace the ones we lost when we were ripping each other’s clothes—”
“What’s your friend’s name?” Emma cuts in.
That’s an easier question to answer. Still, I hesitate. “Logan.”
“I met a man named Logan once in the seventies. He was quite the looker. Is your Logan a looker?”
Logan is notmyLogan. Or… maybe he is? I don’t know what he is.
“He’s a looker,” I say with finality. I don’t want to go down this path. Gloria and Emma are getting way too invested in my personal life. I move the trackpad on my laptop so that the download doesn’t get interrupted.
Emma shifts the conversation, as though she can sense my unease. “So you get Logan candy numbers. That’s fun.”
Gloria nudges me with her elbow. “And cute. Look at you two having inside jokes.”
“It’s not an inside joke if you two know about it,” I point out.
Emma holds her hand up. “Look, I get it. You don’t have to tell us about what you’re doing with Logan. New feelings can be fragile. You don’t want to jinx it.”
“What? No,” I say. “I’m not superstitious about me and Logan.”
I don’t think I’m the only one who notices that I don’t address thefeelingspart of Emma’s comment.
“Look at the three of us, talking about feelings like we’re in middle school.” Gloria sighs. “In middle school, I had a crush on Jim MacCreary. Now he was a looker.”
“You can talk about feelings as adults, Gloria,” Emma says.
Gloria flaps her hand at us. “Not in my generation, you can’t.”
“Anyway,” Emma says, turning to me, “it’s been nice having you here, Hazel. You’re job hunting, right? How’s that going?”
Good. Work is a safe topic. Work I can talk about. I update them on my upcoming round of interviews and how I’m being considered for manager. They listen eagerly. They act excited for me. They’re encouraging. They’re so friendly, and I… I just smile and nod in return. I’m not used to having people to talk to. Lately, between these two and Logan, I’ve had it in spades.
Our huddle is over when a customer comes in and asks for suggestions on what to buy for her Halloween party–slash–baby shower.
I check my phone. Two missed text messages. One’s from Logan that just saysFYI. The second is from Bank Frances.
That’s literally how I added her name to my contacts. Bank Frances works at Dad’s local bank in upstate New York. She helped us with the mortgage. She told me to reach out if I ever had questions, which was nice of her to do but also probably something she regrets. Honestly, I think Bank Frances took pity on me for being in this position in the first place.
For putting up with me—and Dad—Bank Frances gets boxes of chocolates during the holidays and cards on her birthday. Nearly a decade in, I’ve never missed one. This year, she’s getting the largest box they’ve got.
Bank Frances (4:31 PM):Hey Zull, hope the Big Apple’s still cheating you well. Listen, we’ve got a bitch of a situation here. It’s short hair on your account that there are perfumist payments. Give me a call when tucan, k?
