Candy Man

by Amy Lane

  “He still has paperwork to sign,” Darrin intervened smoothly. “But you’re welcome to stay and give him a ride if he needs one.”

  They both looked at Adam expectantly, and Adam tried to think. “Uhm, I took the bus here, but it wasn’t that far. I can probably walk—” It was four miles, but seriously, four miles to a guy from the military? Nothing.

  “I can take you,” Finn said confidently. He hopped up on the wooden stool behind the register, tucked his hands into his purple hooded sweatshirt, and swung his feet. The whimsical smile on his face had more than a hint of steel, and Adam looked at Darrin a little desperately.

  “Okay, uhm, paperwork?”

  “C’mon,” Darrin said kindly, giving him a little shove. “It won’t take long.”

  Darrin took him behind the stairwell to the left, where a tiny office attached. In the back of the office was a little restroom, and to the left of that stood a door to what was probably an alleyway or a courtyard. Two office chairs sat in there side by side, and Darrin pointed to the one with the little pile of papers on it.

  “My office manager, Carolyn, set these out before she left today,” he said. Adam had a vague memory of a motherly woman with short red hair and eyes that twinkled behind her jeweled glasses. She’d been in and out all day, getting Darrin’s signature on something and then disappearing.

  “Okay.” Adam swallowed and sat down, filling in the forms by rote. When he got to “address,” he wrote in Rico’s address and wondered if he’d still have this job when he had to move in six months. “It was really great of you to give me a job. All I did was walk in the store.”

  Darrin laughed softly and shook out his hair. He was wearing a bright red turtleneck sweater—something classic and soft and not quite feminine but not butch either. It went well with the flared jeans and eelskin cowboy boots. “All you did was walk into a madhouse and start weighing candy,” Darrin said. “You were great, sweetie. Now here—make sure you sign the whole packet, even that last one there, you got that?”

  Adam did as told and then risked a glance out into the front of the store, where Finn still waited. “He’s really going to just give me a ride home?”

  Darrin nodded. “This surprises you?”

  “He barely knows me.”

  “True, but he knows me. I haven’t hired a serial killer yet.”

  “But… but why me?”

  Darrin smirked. “Oh baby—they do have mirrors where you come from, don’t they?”

  Adam rolled his eyes. “It’s muscles, not sex appeal.” He yawned. “But I’ll explain the difference when he drops me off.”

  Darrin laughed throatily, a sweet velvet kind of sound, and Adam found himself smiling in response. “Yes, Adam, I’m sure that conversation will go over well.”

  Adam squinted at him, tired, a little confused, and worried about the animals. Rico said the cat needed medication twice a day, and she hadn’t gotten it yet, and the dumb dog had been taken on his walk to crap once already, but Clopper was pretty big. He’d probably left a giant steaming helping of trouble just waiting for Adam when he opened the door. (Rico had left specific instructions and a buttload of cleaning products should that happen. What frightened Adam was that the cleaning products were all half-empty, and the scrub brush well used.)

  “Why did you give me a job?” he asked, because the thought of caring for Rico’s animals still terrified him. “I mean, I just walked in the door and—”

  “Didn’t you need a job?” Darrin asked, blue eyes regarding him kindly.

  Adam tried to guess how old his new employer was, and failed. Anywhere from twenty-five to fifty? Probably closer to fifty, Adam would hazard—not because he looked middle-aged but because his voice was kind and patient, and those were things Adam had always hoped for in his elders but seldom found.

  “Yes,” he said hoarsely, suddenly wanting to open his heart to this kind man and spill everything. “Thank you. Uhm, when do you need me next?”

  “Well, we’re going to be pretty busy until Thanksgiving, and then Friday morning is like D-Day around here. How about ten ’til six for the next week and a half. I’ll have a schedule for you tomorrow. And get here at six in the morning on D-Day and expect to work a twelve-hour shift, paid overtime, then? Carolyn will get you a regular schedule after that. I’m afraid it’s not much more than minimum wage—”

  “It’s awesome,” Adam said firmly, his voice growing a little more solid at the thought of a job that paid regularly and had decent hours.

  “Of course once you start school, you’ll have to let us know what your hours will be—we can work around them.” Darrin stood up then and grabbed a leather trench coat off the post in the corner. In a move of sheer elegance, he swirled the coat around his shoulders and started locking the back door and turning off the lights.

  “I don’t… I’m not a student anymore,” Adam said, feeling foolish.

  Darrin arched expressive eyebrows at him. “Then I suggest you start making inquiries, young man. I hired you because you had a future.”

  “Yeah, sure, boss,” Adam mumbled, because explaining was just too hard. “Anything you say.”

  He turned and followed Darrin out of the darkened room, and then remembered why he couldn’t accept Finn’s ride home. “I appreciate you waiting,” he said to Finn, who was resting his chin on his two fists and peering moodily over the counter. “But really, I can walk from here. I’ve got to stop and get food and—”

  “No worries. I know where the nearest market is.” Finn straightened in his seat and smiled, looking about as tired as Adam felt.

  Adam looked around and realized that everybody else had cleaned and finished stocking while he’d been in the office with Darrin.

  Suddenly Darrin, the boss himself, straightened up. “Oh hell, I forgot to do the counts—what was I thinking? Damn. Ravi? Are you still here?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Ravi popped up from behind the stairs, where he’d been stocking little bags. “You need me to help with the counts?”

  “Yes, you know math isn’t my thing.”

  Ravi shuddered. “We all know math isn’t your thing. Come on, Anish—I’ll do the counts, you do the paperwork. Boss’ll lock it in the safe.”

  Anish was standing behind the chocolate counter, straightening the money drawer there. “Yeah, in a minute.”

  Adam looked around and saw the stout girl with the spiked black hair and the pretty thirtyish girl with the long ponytail and the skunk stripe finishing up in the back of the store.

  “Does anybody need to be walked out?” he asked, figuring he was the most like hired muscle.

  But Ravi looked over his shoulder on the way to the office and shook his head. “We’ll take care of them. You go home. Tomorrow we might even get to train you!”

  And with that, Finn grabbed Adam’s hand and dragged him semireluctantly from the store.

  “What?” Finn asked when they had finally started a normal gait down the raised boardwalk of Old Sacramento, heading toward the south entrance. “You act like I’m going to ravish you or something!”

  Adam shook his head. “No. Not ravish. Just… you know. Just got here. Don’t know you—”

  “So I’m a stranger? Hey, we ate in a romantic little hideaway, I can’t possibly be a stranger!”

  Adam let out a partial laugh. “If that was romantic, no wonder you’re building your own grain silos.”

  “Hmm,” Finn said suspiciously. “I have several responses to that, but first things first. Don’t forget to take your apron off when you get out to go shopping—that’s first.”

  Adam looked down at himself and felt his face heat. Sure enough, the brown apron with the little logo road to Candy Heaven was still gracing his front. He groaned and pulled the damn thing off, folding it neatly as they walked. “And second?” he asked, thinking that if this kid could keep him from looking like an idiot, it might be worth living with the nonstop verbiage.

  “Second? Oh yeah, the second thin
g. Wear a coat!”

  “You first!” Adam retorted, surprised. They were both, in fact, wearing hooded sweatshirts, except Adam’s was a basic blue zipper hoodie, and Finn’s was the rather enchanting purple one that said CSUS in rainbow letters across the front.

  “Yeah, but we’re heading for my car!” Finn blew on his hands, his breath smoking around his face in the damp cold rising from the nearby river. “I mean, if you were going to walk home like this, you’d need a hat, a scarf, some gloves. Didn’t your mother ever nag you about that stuff?”

  When you gonna pay your part of the rent, kid! You’re not a baby anymore, and you’re eating like a fucking horse!

  Make yourself scarce! I got a date tonight and it’s no kids allowed, okay? Don’t give me no crap about where you gonna go. Call your cousin, he’ll sneak you inside.

  Yeah, you go ahead and leave. I ain’t gonna take care of your fuckin’ dog when you go, and my boyfriend thinks it’s a pit bull. He’ll put it to sleep, you little fucker, so don’t be shitty to me.

  “No,” Adam said shortly. “Nobody nagged me. Sweet of you to do so now, though. It’s a real welcome to the neighborhood.”

  “Right?” Finn asked rhetorically. “You came to the right place!”

  “Sacramento?” Adam asked dubiously. “Kid, this place is pretty much the end of the road for me. It’s like my version of Last Chance Motel.”

  Finn shrugged and then crossed the nearly empty street as it dead-ended to the off-ramp. “Well, yeah, but here’s your chance, right? If this is Last Chance Hotel, you still have one!”

  Couldn’t argue with that, and Adam was actually too tired to argue at all.

  He followed Finn through the quiet of Old Town, past the statue of the Wells Fargo pony, and into the pricey parking garage.

  The kid pulled a monthly pass out of his wallet as they neared a battered green minivan with peeling paint and side panels that looked like somebody took a rake to them after a day on the golf course.

  “Wow,” Adam said, glancing from bright and shining Finn to the suburban mom-mobile.

  Finn smirked and pulled out the key remote to unlock the door. “Don’t laugh. This here is the best thing to happen to an American boy since the condom.”

  Adam couldn’t resist. “Do tell,” he asked as they both swung in.

  “Well, when my friends and I want to go to lunch, it seats six. If somebody needs to move, I take the seats out and it’s almost a truck. Took it camping once without the seats, and it rained, and we slept on the floor just fine. It doesn’t go beyond ninety, so I’m not tempted to street race, and most importantly….”

  Finn grinned, anything but coy, and Adam was forced to smile back. “I’m dying here. More importantly….”

  Finn stuck the keys in the ignition and swiveled, smiling brightly when the engine turned over, purring like a kitten. “When I turn the car on, it runs.”

  Adam remembered his last car dying on the side of Highway 5 at eleven o’clock at night. “You got me there. The apartment is on Eighth and F—any store you can stop at between here and there is good.”

  They ended up at a tiny Safeway off J Street, and Finn followed Adam inside while he ran around the store and bought bread, peanut butter and jelly, a gallon of milk, and two packages of noodles.

  “That’s it?” Finn asked, appalled. “No veggies? No fruit juice? Jesus, buy some cereal!”

  “That right there is going to have to last me until I get paid,” Adam said shortly. “It’ll do.”

  “Fine,” Finn muttered. “Stay there in line. I have to get something.”

  He was back in a moment with a paper bag full of apples, and Adam refrained from questioning until they’d both been rung up.

  “They’re for you,” Finn said as they gathered their groceries and walked toward the car.

  Adam swallowed. “I knew that. You shouldn’t have.”

  “Consider it a welcome to Sacramento gift.”

  “Apples are nice.”

  “I couldn’t get you a family or a car.”

  “You brought me a hamburger. Apples are real good. Thank you.”

  “You’re not used to asking for help, are you?” Finn asked as they got back in the car.

  “Nobody’s ever given it to me,” Adam said, feeling stupid and pitiable and like he shouldn’t be having this conversation.

  “Well, ask us. Darrin’s a good guy. He likes it when his people are happy.”

  Yeah, Adam had gotten that impression. “That’s nice and all, but I’ve sorta got to get my shit together. Happy isn’t part of the equation.”

  Finn grunted like Adam had hit him. “You can’t mean that!” he said after a few blocks of darkened streets.

  “Right there,” Adam said, not wanting to answer the disappointment in his voice.

  “Adam?”

  “You’re a sweet kid,” Adam said as Finn pulled to a stop in front of his apartment building. “But not everybody gets Mom’s minivan and a happy life. Thanks for the ride. Appreciate it.”

  And with that he opened the door and gathered his stuff and went inside, to where the gods had been extra merciful, because the dog hadn’t crapped and the cat was still alive.

  The Lay of Alien Territory

  GONZO THE cat did not like Adam. He hid in corners, under the bed, in the back of the closet, behind the toilet. The morning after Finn dropped Adam off—the morning he woke up to an alarm, thinking, “I need to walk the dog before I go to my holy-God-I-have-a-job!”—Gonzo displayed the depths of his enmity. That was the morning the cat distinguished himself from all the other creatures in the world who hated Adam’s guts, by leaping on Adam’s head from the top of the refrigerator when Adam ventured into the kitchen for a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich.

  It took a minute for Adam to fight him off—he was trying not to hurt the damned animal—and by the time Gonzo was thrown gently across the room, Adam was bleeding from several scratches along his jaw, his neck, and his shoulders.

  “Goddammit!”

  And that was when the dog ran in, jumping and barking, and tripping Adam on the way to the bathroom, where he hit his head on the corner of the counter and slid to the floor, seeing stars.

  He made it out to walk the dog, which helped him get hold of his temper so he could pin the damned cat to the couch and shove medicine down its maw, but by the time he got a good look at himself in the mirror, the scratches and bruises were in their full glory.

  Way to make a second impression.

  Darrin’s eyes widened as Adam trotted into the store, a small backpack with an extra sandwich and a refillable bottle of water on his back, so he could eat lunch and not embarrass himself more this time around. He’d also thrown his sketchbook in, because through eight years in the military, he’d never gone without one. He wasn’t going to start now.

  Unfortunately, his face drew more than enough attention.

  “Is there an abusive spouse we should know about?” Darrin asked in all sincerity.

  Adam shook his head. “My cousin’s cat… fuckin’ dog….”

  Darrin nodded. “Carry on, then. We didn’t finish the stock last night, and as soon as we’re open, I need you to go walking with the free-taste coupons, okay?”

  Adam stared. “This!” He flailed his hands around his mauled face. “This is what you want to be the face of the company?”

  Darrin shrugged. “Everybody can have a bad morning,” he said philosophically. “Let’s see if we can have a sweeter day.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Don’t be so pessimistic, Adam. I mean, yesterday you walked into a store and found a job. Maybe you’ll walk the streets and find some optimism, what do you think?”

  “I think I’m more of a grunt than a front man,” Adam replied honestly. “But as a grunt, I’m really frickin’ good at taking orders.”

  Darrin grimaced and shook his head. “By Christmas you will be a compliant house elf. Of this I swear.”

  “Yeah,
you do that. I’ll work Christmas Day if you want, just let me keep the damned job.”

  “Go,” Darrin ordered, glaring. “You’re funking up my nice little store. But don’t go too far, and be sure to smile at people so they don’t call an ambulance.”

  “Will do, boss. I’m outta here.”

  The thin sunshine barely penetrated the riverfront cold, and Adam was grateful for the cheap pair of thin knit gloves he’d gotten from the dollar store and the peacoat he’d had sent to Rico his first Christmas overseas. God, he missed his cousin. They’d both been inmates of Grandma Macias, but Rico used to show up with Legos and board games in his backpack. The two of them would disappear for hours, the better to stay out of Grandma’s line of fire when her soap operas didn’t go her way. Rico was the idea guy—which was what he was doing now, working for an ad firm, pitching ideas—and Adam had been the person who’d drawn his ideas out. And the more they’d worked like that, Rico giving ideas, Adam drawing like he saw on the TV, the more he’d wanted to do that.

  When he’d gotten out of the military, the idea of sitting behind a draft table, creating something bright and happy and beautiful, had been the only thing on his mind.

  Keeping his car running so he made it to his classes and didn’t lose his VA loan didn’t seem to have any bearing on his direct future, but he’d been wrong about that, hadn’t he?

  So he wasn’t planning to blow this chance, even if it meant smiling at people when he knew he looked like a disaster victim while passing out tickets for a free taste of candy over at Candy Heaven. Most people took the coupon from his fingers and didn’t look at his beat-up face at all, and for a little while, he forgot about his appearance and concentrated on giving people a little bit of sweetness for their day.

  Until a now familiar burst of enthusiasm practically knocked him on his ass.

  “Adam? Holy cow, Adam, what happened to you? Did you get beat up? Pushed out of a car? Held hostage by the mo—?”

  “Jumped on by a psychotic cat and tripped by the dog?” Adam supplied before Finn could get to “abducted by aliens.” His newfound friend still had the fleece Adventure Time hat on, but in deference to the chilly morning, he was also wearing a bright blue wool coat, a thick handmade wool scarf wrapped several times around his neck, and fleece gloves. His apple cheeks were red with the cold, and his breath came out in steamy puffs, which made Adam think he was probably pretty warm in all that gear.