The Sharp Time

by Mary O'Connell

  At Bradley’s insistence I go into one of the two dressing rooms at the back of the store to try on the dress. I take off my sweater and stand in my skirt and black bra, staring at the bruise on my rib cage: plum-colored, sepia at the edges and shaped like Italy. I press my finger to the tender city, Assisi, where St. Francis communed with the birds, and then I touch the radiant center of the bruise: Milan, where clothes are spun from gold, from the expansive minds of geniuses. I remember my mother tracing her finger over a magenta Italy on the globe and saying: “Assisi … Milan”: the two Italian cities she most wanted to visit when we went on our European odyssey.

  My mind stretches, litigious: Should I take a photograph of my Italian bruise? I should. But then I hear Bradley sing out my name—“Sandinista”—so I quickly pull on the dress, and bossa nova—ironic yet not, for I am pleased with the print, the waistline—out of the dressing room.

  “It’s perfect on you, as I knew it would be,” Bradley says. He crosses his arms over his chest and smiles like a TV dad on prom night. Bradley! He’ll work here for only three more weeks; he’s on his winter break from college, home with his family, home to the Pale Circus. As soon as he told me, it occurred to me that I had not seen him in the shop since summer, since all was right with the world.…

  I’m admiring myself in the three-way mirror, absently raising my hand as if I’m hailing a taxi, when the string of silver bells shivers against the glass door and a homeless man enters. He’s every inch the stereotype, with Grizzly Adams wild hair, multiple stained Windbreakers, aggressive BO and windburned face, and of course he wants to know if he can use the bathroom.

  “Please?”

  Bradley points to the words No Bathroom that are spelled out in shellacked mini-marshmallows on a small oak plaque hanging on the wall, Henry Charbonneau taking the candied Circus dream a bit too far. I never noticed this sign before; maybe my eyes were blind to this, wanting so much to see only the pastel magic.

  When the man leaves, Bradley asks me, “Do you think people really believe that we hold it all day? That we take in no solids, no liquids, I mean, surely this whole ‘no bathroom’ thing is the antithesis of entertaining the angels unawares—”

  And here I go on space patrol for a moment and consider antithesis of entertaining the angels unawares—and loving my new friend—whee! But even though I am not paying attention not paying attention not paying attention and my mind falls into Catherine Bennett country, I don’t miss much because Bradley is still ruminating on the bathroom/homelessness dilemma when I resurface.

  “Surely this turning people away from the bathroom business will come back to fuck me at the gates of heaven.” He brushes his hair out of his eyes with his hand, the crucifix tattoo on his thumb flashing. “But when you have to scrub projectile diarrhea off the walls, it turns you into a real Judas.”

  I change back into my skirt and sweater, and when I come out of the dressing room I look at all the pretty clothes, a variance of color and style and era. I talk about many random things with my new friend and I feel what must be the alleged peace of Christ, a deeply groovy respite spent with a disciple who seems better than the real deal—kinder, less prissy, without the creepy beard and über-goth crown of thorns, and who, in his millennial human form, has a serious marijuana habit: Bradley takes a break every few hours and comes back haloed with that unmistakable smell, the briefest rock show. Oh, but the hours take flight and soon it’s six o’clock and it’s all See you tomorrow and I loved working with you and Good night, good night, sweet prince as he walks me to my car, then takes off down the cold sidewalk, a boy alone, digging in his coat pocket for his bag of weed.

  * * *

  What’s there at home for me?

  I sit in my car until Bradley is safely off in the distance, and then I stroll down Thirty-Eighth Street. I look up at the monastery, at the liquor store, the erotic bakery, the pawnshop. I think of the world never stopping, just rolling, rolling, rolling, and I have that bad sensation of my hands starting to feel strange, detached from my body, that all my moronic thoughts and blood and bones are about to ooze out of the loose shells of my wrists.

  But I am paying attention to this sensation, yes, I am paying attention. I am a person and I am paying attention as I walk through the sidewalk slush. I look in the window of Second Chance? The store is illuminated by a single bare bulb in the front window. There’s a jaunty YES, WE’RE OPEN! sign hung on the door. Because I have nothing better to do, because I have nothing at all to do, I open the door and go inside. The back of the store seems to float in semidarkness, and there is a heavy smell of standing water and bacon grease, as if the pawnshop is in the midst of a breakfast buffet/flood sale.

  There is a smeared glass case of wedding rings to my left, mostly cornucopias of yellowish diamonds on thin gold bands. The price tags are strung on the rings by black thread, like tagged toes at a morgue. I think of my mother’s tan, veiny feet—she favored vamp polish and sterling toe rings—and my chest tightens. And when the Are you paying attention song starts up in my brain, I have to admit to myself that I am not. I am lost as I gaze into the next case. Handguns. I think: Now, there’s something that has never been on my shopping list.

  I look around the shop and see that people pawn some fairly useless items: a five-foot ceramic camel, startled, caught in mid-bray, his jeweled halter studded with dusty amethyst and rhinestones, his teeth glazed a bright corn yellow. There is a child-sized motorized Jeep—Easter egg purple and covered in Barbie stickers—a snowmobile, a mink coat chain-linked to the ceiling, a scramble of power tools trailing frayed cords, an oversized painting of The Last Supper with jolly disciples pigging out and a foxy brunette Jesus looking up from a platter of purple grapes, his smile tight, his forehead laced with anxiety. Mostly, though, people give up their rings and their guns.

  The handguns in the glass case are displayed on grease-stained tea towels. And there is another glass-fronted cabinet, this one stately and cherrywood, tall as a grandfather clock and filled with shotguns and hunting rifles that look clanking and cumbersome.

  But I’m no Davy Crockett, no Daniel Boone, I would not want a big gun, I would not want to kill an animal, I definitely prefer handguns. And in the next second my brain does a mocking double take: You prefer what?

  I see what must be a girl’s gun next to the black revolvers and pistols. It has a shiny, snub-nosed barrel and a sweet pink handle with ivory mosaic inlay every bit as luscious as peppermint marzipan swirled with cream. There is a closed-circuit black-and-white TV over my head and I look up at myself: a grainy, blurred girl coveting a gun. When I press my palms flat to the cool glass of the gun case, a disembodied voice asks, “Need any help, young lady?”

  Which of course is an exercise in understatement, and then he appears from the darkness, a man in his sixties with a full sleeve of tattoos and a faded red T-shirt that says CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.

  “I’m just looking,” I say.

  He holds a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand. A book is tucked under his arm.

  “At the firearms?” He smiles, skeptical and amused and grandfatherly there amid all the junk.

  And my mind floods with the image of Catherine Bennett standing at the blackboard with her chalk and her perpetual smirk; Catherine Bennett, the flashing red exclamation point to my nothingness. I travel back to algebra class like Huck Finn without the funeral, and I imagine that nothing has changed, that the school has decided not to fire her, that the class sits, placid and resigned, in their straight rows of desks. Catherine Bennett wears a teal blue Hillary pantsuit and the humble expression of one making amends until she looks at Alecia. In my mind’s eye, Alecia Hardaway sits alone.

  Mrs. Bennett’s wolverine smile fixes on the dreamy face of Alecia Hardaway, and I know that no counselor or principal or teacher or paraprofessional is on their way to help. I have studied the ways of Woodrow Wilson High School and know that I am the chosen one; I must keep Alecia Hardaway safe.

>   Still, when the words come out of my mouth, calm and sane, I am surprised. I am in no way prepared and there it is anyway. I feel my victim’s mind-set fading away, replaced by a new idea, the attendant breathlessness of a new idea.

  The guns glimmer in the dim light; CHARLTON HESTON IS MY PRESIDENT.

  “I’m in the market for a handgun. I live alone and I need some protection.”

  The word protection is suddenly so reminiscent of condoms or birth control pills that I feel myself blush, a hotness in my neck that rises to my hairline and fries my scalp.

  He looks at me. “What are you, sixteen, seventeen? Why do you live alone?”

  “I’m eighteen, actually.” And then I whore out my grief; I sing it out, slicing up the syllables: “Well, my mother died.”

  He chews tobacco. He says, “No dad around?”

  “I don’t have a dad,” I say.

  He gives a sidelong glance as if I am a child of a random hooker in a latex miniskirt, a glance that makes me want to smash the glass and grab a gun.

  “You’ll need to go to school,” he says, looking troubled. He must be some kind of mystic, someone who, in this dank shop with its smell of basement water, can divine the lives of his customers.

  I look down at the case of handguns. A wandering crack in the glass is sealed off with a strip of yellow wax.

  “I’m not going back to school.” I shrug. “School is not my thing. I had a big, big problem with algebra.” I let loose with a psychotic little chuckle.

  He looks at me for a long moment, an O.K. Corral moment, and then he spits tobacco into the Styrofoam cup.

  “Gun school, dolly.”

  Dolly, I think. Well, hello.

  “Gun school,” he repeats. “You need to learn to fire a gun, or in an emergency you’ll end up shooting your fool foot off.” He gives a masterful suck to his front teeth: tsk, tsk. “Very common occurrence among rookies.”

  “Gun school? You mean, like, a shooting range?”

  “Something like that, dolly.” He gazes out the front window and then gives a little forward jab with his shoulder. “You like working yonder at the used-clothes store?”

  The used-clothes store. Henry Charbonneau would fall down dead at the sweatpanted sound of it. He prefers the term spun-sugar vintage couture.

  “Oh, I like it a lot,” I say. “I love it so far.”

  “Today was your first day, right? Thought I saw you pop in first thing Monday morning. I knew you were looking for a job. You didn’t have the lollygagging shopping look. Dolly, you looked all business.”

  Perhaps he registers some alarm on my face because he says, “Now, don’t worry, dolly. I’m no stalker. We keep pretty good tabs on each other on Thirty-Eighth Street, that’s all.”

  Through the grimy windows I see a monk strolling past. Not the sleek handsome one. This monk is doughy and bearded and troubled-looking, a frown pinched between his eyebrows. The monk squints into the store. I know it looks dark from the outside; I know that he probably can’t make out our forms, but he waves anyway. This hopeful waving seems to be the social contract of the Trappist monks of Thirty-Eighth Street.

  “I’m Arne, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Sandinista.”

  He squints his eyes, as if thinking, Well, goddamn if that ain’t a doozy of name, right before he surprises me again.

  “Listen to this, Sandinista. I think you’ll like this quite a lot. It’s from this poem called ‘The Monk’s Insomnia.’ ” He takes the book from under his arm and half-glasses from the pocket of his T-shirt, and reads:

  “The monastery is quiet. Seconal

  drifts down upon it from the moon.

  I can see the lights

  of the city I came from,

  can remember how a boy sets out

  like something thrown from the furnace

  of a star.”

  He whistles under his breath; he takes off his glasses and puts them back in his shirt pocket. “Goddamn. Excuse my French. But, ‘the furnace of a star’? I can’t get over it.” And now a pair of monks walk by with their heads down. Just when it seems they might be oblivious save for their God-thoughts, they look up and wave into the store.

  Arne waves back, then shakes his head. “They were like you once, young, trying to find their place in this wild old world … now they’ve found their place, I suppose, but they still have the memory of being thrown from the furnace of the star. I’m not a Catholic myself, so I can’t say for sure, but I’ll tell you what, dolly, those boys up on the hill making the jelly appear to have some goddamn hidden depths.”

  It doesn’t seem polite to point out that the monks didn’t write that poem themselves, that the pretty and pointless phrases are a poet’s trick. But then I realize he’s fallen into the magic of words as I am apt to do, which makes me like him but also makes me wonder why my Honors English teacher, Lisa Kaplansky, hasn’t called to check in on me. She called me over winter break to tell me how much she liked my paper on The Awakening. She took time away from her family, from wrapping presents and eating iced cookies, to read my essay and pick up the phone. Well, where are you now, Lisa Kaplansky? Why doesn’t the poet call? And then of course I’m not paying attention I’m not paying attention. Catherine Bennett looms in my peripheral vision, standing in the half-light of the ceramic candle, her words hitting the Replay button in my brain: Do you not even know how to pay attention, Sandinista? Have I identified the problem?

  Arne lays the book on the gun case. It is a library book, encased in dirty vinyl, a bar code on the spine. “I’m going to make you a deal.” As if in some ominous after-school special: a “deal.” He scratches the stubbly gray hair on his chin, a professorial gesture, and says, “I don’t want you to be scared at night. That’s not right. You should be out with your friends, chasing the boys.” He raises his hand, a magnanimous gesture. “Or … whatever.”

  Well. Arne cares. It’s weird, to be sure, but he just met me and he cares. I see this; I see he is not from the school of smiling bleached-teeth bullshit.

  “I’m not too big on the gun laws. All right? Look here”—he takes a ring of keys from his belt loop and unlocks the glass case of handguns—“if you were a drug dealer you could get one just as easy, and so …” He takes the handgun with the pink and ivory on the handle out of the case and gives it to me. “I know I can trust you.”

  I hold the gun tentatively with both hands, as if it is a hamster about to ribbon my fingers with sharp little teeth. It’s heavier than it looks. “It’s pretty.”

  “So it is.” Arne smiles, pleased. He relocks the glass case. “It’s yours.”

  This is a confusing transaction for so many reasons. I stare down at the gun for a moment while I try to process this last moment: Who hands out guns to teenagers? Am I part of some sting operation of underage criminals trying to procure firearms? Will Geraldo Rivera burst through the door with his microphone and handlebar mustache? It seems best to keep my eyes down and my big mouth shut and study the handle of the gun, the sweet swirled cream and pink.

  When I look up, Arne has crossed his arms over his chest. He gives me the quickest glare. “Here’s the thing: A person should feel safe. Okay? Sometimes your safety is here,” He strikes his hand to his chest. “Sometimes you need a little something external to get you over the hump.”

  Inadvertently, I look over at the ceramic camel.

  “Or the plural form, the humps, as the case may be,” he says sternly, before breaking into a gray-toothed grin.

  Arne digs around under the counter for a minute before he reappears holding a square box of bullets and a wrinkled plastic grocery bag.

  “I can tell you’re full of sorrows,” he says as mere statement, not overstuffed with empathy or sympathy, no maudlin Moonlight Sonata for Charlton Heston’s disciple. “But the sharp time passes.”

  He holds out his hand; I give him the gun. And then he puts it in a plastic bag, along with the box of bullets. He takes his
wallet from his back pocket and flips through a half-inch stack of business cards. “Here we go,” he says. “The pistol range. Out past Harper Boulevard. You’ll need some practice before you become one of Charlie’s Angels.”

  “Thanks,” I say. The card has the words Protect Yourself in shadow letters beneath the address and phone number.

  “This is a gift. No payment necessary, dolly. Can you assure me you’re not a felon?”

  “Not that I know of.” I give him a sort of bizarre, flirty smile before I realize that this is someone I don’t have to attempt to charm. He appears to be giving me a gift, no strings attached, as he says, “Hold the bag from the bottom so it doesn’t bust out all over the street. And don’t do anything crazy with this. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “For you, I’m taking a chance. For you I’m bypassing the ninety-day waiting period. Because I like you. Because I want you to feel safe.” He comes around the counter and hands me the bag. He puts his arm around me. Usually the old “arm out from an old guy” means he is interested in brushing your breast, oh so casually: Pay dirt! It’s a tit! But this feels different, this feels … creepy, sure, but also, this feels like friendship. Normally I do not kick it with older gents who smell of hard liquor and peppermint and BO—Arne is a bit of a big, stinky mint julep—but I see that he is trying to improve the quality of my day, with his kind words, with his dreamy cream and pink pistol.

  “Well, thanks,” I say. I feel like I might cry, so I affect some kind of cowgirl–spaghetti Western accent and say, “Mighty kind of you, sir.”

  “No problemo,” he says.

  When I turn to leave he says, “Remember, I don’t want any problems. If there is a problem I’ll say you stole the gun while my back was turned. I’ll say girls are crafty like that. I’ll say, ‘Why, I know exactly where to find that little lady: at the Pale Circus.’ ”