A Small Crowd of Strangers

by Joanna Rose

  Fanny was like an old black-and-white negative of a photograph, her legs darkening to her black feet, her dark face streaked silver down the center of her nose, her ears black, her wide back silvery and shiny.

  “Fantasy,” Rick said. “Because she half disappears at night. Looks like a spirit horse, they said. Spirit horse.”

  The corner of the field was full of brush and breezy rustling and other reasons for Navarre’s ears to flick back. He was close behind her, and she could smell stinky warm horse right near. He snorted and put his big wet horse lips right on her ear, and she kind of went whoop, the weirdest sound, and dropped the lunge line and jumped away sideways. Her ear was wet, and she had goose bumps all on one side, Rick saying, “That’s okay, Pattianne. That was a kiss. He’s sneaky that way. He doesn’t bite, ever.”

  She looked down at her shirt, a string of horse slobber strung on her shoulder, and one nipple pointed out hard.

  Michael handed Fanny’s line to Rick and wiped at the horse slobber.

  “Okay?” he said.

  She could feel herself smiling like an idiot.

  Michael touched her ear, pushed her hair back.

  The goose bumps kept shivering up and down one side of her body.

  She’d never been kissed like that before.

  She said, “Think you could learn that trick?”

  Rick’s face went a little straight, but Michael laughed, up at the blue sky, and Navarre just stood there and switched his tail.

  Rick picked up Navarre’s lunge line and said, “Well, let’s head back for lunch.”

  He held the line out, and she took it. But she didn’t turn her back on him again. That Navarre.

  “That Rick,” she said later, on the drive home. “He’s an awful nice guy.”

  For a minister, which is what she didn’t say.

  And Michael smiled, easy, happy, saying, “I really like those folks.”

  It was on the way home from Lamplighter Books that she saw the shop. There was no name on the door, no sign, and the door was open. There were racks of gauzy shirts and pants and dresses. Some were embroidered and dotted with tiny round mirrors, or tie-dye and batik, all bright, odd colors—mustard, rose, periwinkle, chartreuse.

  A man with a beard sat behind a counter reading a book, and he said hello and didn’t look up. He said, “Dressing room’s back there, purple curtain.”

  They weren’t the kind of clothes you had to try on, they were all loose and airy and long, lots of fringes and lots of elephant designs. Pattianne went around the shop, touching the colors. She pulled out a pair of wide black pants and held them up. A long, blue shirt, or maybe it was a short dress, dark blue that faded to purple at the edges of the loose sleeves. A small T-shirt of rosy, gauzy cotton. Everything was cotton. Everything smelled herbal. Everything was cheap.

  The man looked up when she piled the stuff on the counter. He had gray in his long hair, and he wore silver hoops in both ears.

  “Sale,” he said.

  He wrote the prices on a receipt pad and added them up, carrying his ones.

  “That look right?” he said. He showed her the receipt. “My arithmetic isn’t very good. I need one of those adding machine thingies.”

  “Twenty-two bucks?”

  Cheap.

  He took out a brown paper bag and a red ink pad and a stamp, and he stamped the bag carefully. It was a crescent moon shape lying flat like a shallow dish and, under that, the word SMOKE’S.

  “That’s an Indian moon,” he said. “India Indian. And that’s me. I’m Smoke.”

  He slid the pile of clothes into the bag.

  “It means ‘and,’” he said.

  “And?”

  He pointed at the moon. “And,” he said.

  He took her handful of bills and put them in the drawer without counting them.

  “It’s like at the beginning of a story,” he said. “They say ‘and’ like we say ‘once upon a time,’ meaning all stories are connected. Only one story. Get it?”

  “Cool,” she said. He had clear, beautiful gray eyes, and she thought maybe that was why he was called Smoke.

  The first time she wore the pink shirt and the wide black pants at home, Michael said, “Get some new pajamas?”

  One thing about Michael was how he noticed girls. His eyes went to girls who were dressed like girls, and they didn’t have to be sleek babes or curvy-gal types. He just liked girls in sexy clothes. When she wore tight jeans, he ran his hand across the back pockets without even seeming to think about it. He looked at women without even noticing it himself.

  So she said, “Sort of.”

  “Pretty color.”

  “It’s kind of a look,” she said. “Big clothes.”

  She looked around in the kitchen drawer like she was looking for something in there, and when she looked back at him, he was reading the newspaper.

  She wore the pink shirt to Lamplighter Books with her jeans and left the big black pants in the closet.

  Elizabeth said, “Somebody’s been to Smoke’s.”

  She stacked a small stack of books on her desk.

  “That color,” she said. “It’s sacred. Hindu.”

  Pattianne looked down at her shirt. “Pink?”

  Elizabeth wore peach today. “Rose,” she said.

  “The color of joy in a sorrowful season,” Pattianne said.

  “Rose?” Elizabeth put the small stack of books in her book bag. “What does that mean, sorrowful season?”

  “In the Catholic Missal,” she said. “The guide to the Mass? It explains the colors of the vestments the priest wears. That’s what it says about rose.” She didn’t really know what it meant. “Purple for Advent and Lent, and I guess once in each of those times there’s cause for joy, or maybe hope, and the priest wears rose-colored vestments instead of purple, purple being the color of sorrow.”

  Elizabeth poked around in the bottom of her book bag. “I can’t find my scarf,” she said. “Are you Catholic?”

  “No. Was.”

  “Well, that whole priest thing, that’s very weird. Total perversion of the Jesus message. He never said anything about anybody being the boss. It was just love, love, love. I like that about the colors, though. Where’s my damn scarf?”

  The bells at the door jingled, and Joseph Garrison came in. He grabbed the bells and jingled them again. Then he blew at the cranes and sent them spinning around.

  “Consider me announced,” he said.

  Elizabeth said, “I’ll be ready in a minute. I can’t find my scarf.”

  Pattianne thought about lighting all the candles on the Hindu deities table after they left. Maybe turn on the heat. She would watch every person who came in like a hawk.

  Joseph walked along the shelves, his hands still on his hips.

  “So,” he said. “Have the books introduced themselves to you? All you have to do is touch them, you know.”

  Elizabeth said, “Joseph.” She was pulling open drawers in the desk.

  “And don’t cross your Tao with your tarot,” he said. “You could end up with Darrow, and the animal spirit books are way up at that end of the wall with The Secret Life of Plants. Fairies right underneath the plants, which is where she says they like to hang out. What does she know? It is, however, her bookstore.”

  Elizabeth said, “That’s right.”

  “It’s all in its own order,” Joseph said. “Although Elizabeth, honey, I’d like to point out that by putting Rumi right there by Sufism, you’re bordering on the alphabetical.”

  She said, “That’s okay.”

  “If someone from the metaphysicians’ union came in,” he said, “there could be repercussions. Or would that be reverberations?”

  She said, “Joseph.”

  “That would be Local Number 9, I bet,” he said. “We could look it up in numerology. Maybe we should just move Rumi down here by fairies.”

  He pulled Rumi off the shelf.

  “Put Rumi back, Joseph.”
/>   He put Rumi back.

  “Now here,” he said, “we have a section in flux. Mutant Message Down Under? Fiction. Recently joined by Carlos Castaneda, who was banished from the company of Shirley MacLaine for telling fiction, the dog.”

  “Don’t be a speciest,” Elizabeth said, and she wrapped a huge orange scarf around her shoulders and head.

  “Speciest,” Joseph said. “You know, if this were the kind of bookstore with dictionaries in it, you probably wouldn’t find that word in one. Well, maybe in one.”

  “Here,” she said. “Carry my books.”

  And to Pattianne she said, “We’ll be back in about an hour.”

  Joseph picked up the book bag and said, “What about lunch? I distinctly remember lunch being part of this deal.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around, and pushed him toward the door, and said, “Maybe an hour and a half.”

  “If you need a task,” Joseph said. “Just ask the store what it wants done.”

  He jingled the bells again, and then they were gone. The cranes circled. Lamplighter Books was empty. The cranes kept moving, so slowly she couldn’t see them moving, but she looked up, and the red crane was where the white one had been. Another moment, the blue crane was there.

  Michael called it Elizabeth’s hippie bookstore. There had been kids at Cranbury High School who got into the hippie thing, and at least half the Ed School at Montclair was hippie, or a smearing of hippie and liberal, and a few people who just never wanted to leave kindergarten in the first place.

  Jen was definitely not a hippie, but she used to go out behind the garage with the purple pipe after dinner before she settled down to spread out homework on the dining room table, chattering away, happily stoned.

  “The angles of geometry are like playing pool in a mirror.”

  “Human biology is even better than wristwatches.”

  “My Lit exam on Theater of the Absurd? Aced it.”

  Michael only ever said, “It’s illegal.”

  A man-size boy with no hair at all came in, the cranes swinging in a circle around his bald head, and he didn’t even look at them, just walked in, stepping his legs out long. He had big feet in black boots, and he walked like he had just recently grown those feet, hadn’t quite figured out how they worked. He big-footed it across the blue stars.

  She said hello. Made it a singsong sound, like, Hello, I’m your friendly New Age bookseller who has seen shaved heads before.

  He stopped by the Light of the World and put his hands together as if in prayer and nodded toward her like saying, Hello. I knew you were there all along. I’ve seen these Hindu candles before, too, they’re nothing new, nothing is new. Two more steps, and he stopped at Tibetan Buddhism and turned his back to her, becoming a square of puffy blue nylon and a small shaved head, which wasn’t exactly round in the back, sort of lumpy. She touched her own head, that ridge across the back, which felt lumpy, and which meant she probably shouldn’t consider going with that particular look.

  The boy took out two big books, brought them to the desk, and set them down, like an offering. The Art of Ancient Tibet and Meditations of Color Photography. His head was covered with fine blue dots where there had once been hair. He reached into his swishy jacket and took out a glittery card that said Happy Birthday to a Dear Grandson.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, careful not to sound too perky.

  The card had money inside, Andrew Jackson showing through a hole in the card. The boy had long, dirty fingernails and, this close, he smelled like Jen’s room used to smell when she was going through her gerbil-breeding phase. Pattianne opened each book to the first white page.

  “Thirty-eight dollars,” she said. “And nineteen cents.”

  A firm no-smile, no anything there on his face, nothing except pimples around his nose, chapped lips, dark surprising eyebrows, and red-rimmed eyes. He pulled several Andrew Jacksons out of the birthday card and said, “Could you by any chance spare a roll of quarters?”

  He had a mouth full of lead-colored braces.

  She said yes, and he said, “How about two rolls?”

  He kept his face still, mostly by looking away from her, down at the blue stars, off to the side, not at the cranes or the Light of the World, just away.

  “I’d be happy to give you two rolls of quarters.”

  Then he smiled, down, off to the side, away. The touch, the briefest connection, how you can make a stranger smile sometimes.

  She liked vodka better than pot. She discovered vodka tonics in eighth grade and never looked back. No lime. Just vodka and tonic water and a couple of ice cubes. Her father drank scotch. He kept the vodka around for company. No one ever mentioned the vodka tasting watered down.

  A young woman with a baby in a backpack looked at yoga books. Then her baby threw up, a thin dribbling curd of white baby puke, right into the center of the mandala on the front of a mandala calendar. The woman picked up the calendar with both hands and held it evenly in front of her, held it out, said she would now buy the calendar.

  “That’s okay,” Pattianne said. “Accidents happen.”

  The calendar was one of the small ones, only five dollars and five cents with tax.

  “Oh,” she said. “I must.”

  She had long dark braids and long dangling earrings, a different one in each ear.

  She said, “This mandala has been chosen by my son.”

  Pattianne offered her a small box of tissues.

  “Your son,” she said. “Has also chosen your braid.”

  A smile. One tooth in the front was bigger than the other, capped, bright white.

  Vodka tonics were for drinking several of. Scotch was for sipping. When they went out to a restaurant and Pattianne ordered scotch, her father would say, “That’s my girl.”

  And Jen would blink at her, a blink so blank it was full of a secret sneer. She always ordered bourbon and Coke, unless she was stoned. Then she ordered something like a sloe gin fizz or a daiquiri. And their father looked at Pattianne, a wink maybe, shook the ice in his scotch, that beautiful small sound. Their mother was there somewhere.

  Later, that day, at home, in her house, the sun in the living room was warm and golden on the bare floor. She had a screwdriver, and there was wet lavender polish on three toes, pieces of tissue worked in between each toe, when the phone rang. She hated it when the phone rang and Michael wasn’t there to answer it. She hopped across the living room with her toes not touching the floor. It was Lily, all Hi, how are you, good, okay, back and forth like that for a while. She said it was nice having them out to the house, the way people said that, out to the house. Pattianne balanced the phone between her shoulder and her ear and polished her thumbnail lavender.

  “So,” Lily said. “What’s a good time for Sunday night?”

  “Sunday night?”

  She hated it when she got nail polish on her cuticle.

  “Our sitter’s a high-school girl, so early is better.”

  “Early is fine,” Pattianne said, playing for time.

  “Five thirty?”

  “Fine,” she said. “Let’s say five thirty.”

  The Seasons of Minnesota calendar on the refrigerator had red trees and blue sky and nothing written in for Sunday.

  “Can I bring anything?” Lily said. “How about dessert?”

  Autumn blue, a certain shade of clear, dark blue.

  “Pattianne?”

  “Yes, great,” she said. “That would be great.”

  Miss Mimi said to paint black first to get that color blue.

  “Rick is allergic to shellfish,” Lily was saying. “We went to Lander’s house for dinner once, Tom Lander? Lower math? His wife, Mary? Really great cook, she went to cooking school in St. Paul or something, I don’t know, but she fixed a spaghetti-and-scallops dish, really proud of it, and Rick couldn’t eat a bite. I was so embarrassed.”

  “No shellfish. Got it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll
fix dessert, maybe cranberry bars, fresh cranberries? Did you talk to Angela Park?”

  Wife of Max Park, civics teacher.

  “No, I haven’t talked to her,” Pattianne said. “Yet.”

  “If she offers to bring something to drink, talk her out of it.” Lily’s voice got lower. “She likes to make blender drinks. I don’t know that it’s such a good idea. Sometimes that doesn’t work out, you know?”

  “Right. I’ll tell her to just bring herself.”

  “Well, I’m really looking forward to it. I think it’s just a really exciting idea. See you then, bye.”

  By the time Michael came in the kitchen door, all ten toes were silvery lavender, two coats each. All ten toes and one thumb. She stuck both legs out straight.

  “Like my toes?”

  He dropped to his knees and grabbed her feet.

  “Like your toes?” His fingers were too cold, tickle cold, shrieking cold. He held both feet and said, “I love your toes,” and he kissed the ends of her toes on one foot and then the other foot, her trying not to kick him in the face while he was kissing her toes, but tickling her toes was a dangerous, dangerous thing. She finally got her feet back down on the floor and could breathe again, and he leaned back on his heels there at her feet and said, “So.”

  He looked at her and she looked at him, and it could still make the sidewalk fall away underneath her when Michael Bryn just looked his blue, blue eyes into hers, the sidewalk in this case being the chair she was sitting on.

  He put his hands on her knees, which were not ticklish, and he leaned up and kissed her mouth. She held him by his hair, that thick mess of curls, and wrapped her legs around him and kissed his beautiful mouth open into her mouth and wouldn’t let go of his hair or his mouth or his tongue or all of him squeezed tight in between her legs. They could fuck, right here, on their own kitchen floor, married, and alone in their own house.

  He dug his fingers into her knees and stood up, letting out his breath, stood up right in front of her, her face right at the zipper of his khaki pants, him hard there, hard against her lips, and he made a deep, soft sound, her hands on his hips, the bones there, her fingers at his zipper. She hated zippers. She hated shirttails. His fingers dragged shivers across her shoulders, up and down her neck, her face in the cotton of his underwear, the smell of laundry soap. Michael always smelled like soap.