As the Inferno customer disappears between the aisles, Meg turns her attention to Maz and Eli.
Maz’s eyes lock onto her clipboard. Eli places the donations box on the floor nearer the shelves across Maz.
Meg drums her fingers on the hardback in her hand, three short taps of a countdown before giving the air a small nod. She rolls her shoulders, retrieves her paper coffee cup from the display table, and wanders to the counter as if this were a normal workplace and not a room that has just changed its pitch or temperature.
The floorboards creak back as loudly as her boots thump down. Her hand lays the book on the counter and stays flat on top of it as she leans towards Maz.
“Who’s the mystery gent, then?”
“Nothing better to talk about? Probably here to collect overdue souls.” Maz reaches to the other side of the till. She grabs the barcode scanner hanging on its stand beside it while she turns over a book from the stack in front of her.
She points the red light of the scanner in Meg’s direction.
“Or needs a thesaurus heavy enough to impress someone.”
“Seriously, though,” Meg says to Maz, but her gaze slides to Eli first before she corrects herself.
“What did he want from you?”
“It’s a dusty bookshop, Meg. What do you think he wanted?” Maz scans the book as the reader beeps with a pleased green light. The pen in her other hand logs it onto her clipboard.
You could just let the second-hand titles and ISBNs try to save you.
Meg clears her throat with two crisp rasps.
“Apart from the book.”
“Just Dante.”
“Fair enough.” Meg takes a sip of her coffee as her brow crinkles into fine crooked lines before she flicks her ponytail over her shoulder.
“He’s fit, though. Dibs if he asks for staff recommendations.”
Eli picks up on the shape of Meg’s grin and props his elbows on the counter.
Ah. Alright. So, that’s how we’re playing it.
Maz rolls her eyes as she scans another book before returning to keep her pen busy.
“He can recommend himself right back out if he’s here to flirt.”
“Yeah?” Eli leans in.
“You were smiling.”
Maz corrals her laugh and moves on to the next book. The reader beeps its approval, and she logs it without writing the title.
He can’t punch a stranger for being too smooth. You can’t punch Eli for wanting everything to be square. You can’t punch Meg for being Meg. You can. However. Punch numbers.
“So what?” She locks her gaze on the scanner’s tiny red light.
“So…” He trails off. A stack of books on the counter’s edge draws his attention.
His eyes snap to their haphazard order, hand slicing sideways to grasp the spines. He arranges them one by one by height into a blunt line and presses the pad of his thumb hard into each crown as if to seal in the disorder.
The moment he turns back to Maz, a cold itch crawls up his neck. The books seem misaligned at the very edge of his periphery. He glances back. They look fine, in an alignment as perfect as he left them.
Right. Yes. Fine. That’s what I thought.
He pitches his weight towards her with the effort of pretending that the conversation never got interrupted.
“So don’t play innocent.”
Maz’s attempt to look up aborts itself when the spine labels on the stacks by her elbow blur in the corner of her eye. For an instant, the letters appear as if they detach from being a part of words and writhe. They queue towards some bizarre order to rearrange themselves into words at the tip of her tongue.
The lights flicker. Each letter settles back into its initial place on the titles before she can read any of them.
You’re fine. It’s just the lighting mocking you for fun.
Her fingers tap an arbitrary code on the barcode scanner.
“Oh, that’s rich. You’re the one who–” She cuts herself off, shaking her head.
He’s the one who ‘what’, exactly? He was… Was he home last night? No, you left, or did you? Someone left. For sure. Nope. Oh, forget it.
The words tremble out through her tightly bared grin.
“I smile at one customer, and you act like I climbed him like a library ladder.”
Meg snorts into her cup. The coffee sloshes from back to front, almost spilling.
“You…” Eli gives Maz a stare through narrowed eyes.
A joke, right? If that’s funny, clearly she’s not the one who didn’t come home. So, does that mean…?
“You don’t get to–”
“Why not?” Maz reverts to her brightest customer service smile, where anger pinches at the corners in small dimples.
“Because you can’t stand the idea that someone might look at me and not see–”
She clamps her mouth shut. The air conditioner tries to fill in the rest without success.
Too far. Get it together.
Eli shoots a glance at Meg and returns to Maz, tapping his fingers on the counter.
Obviously, one of us should call this off. I could stop, but would she do it for this?
“Say it.”
Maz’s matches his, only a beat off, a syncopated hazard that keeps running between the two of them.
Just say it. Call ‘truth’ and he stops.
“Make me.”
His grin curves as he tilts closer to Maz, lips close to her ear. He drops his voice to the register that only carries in one direction.
“When?”
Maz squeezes the barcode scanner until its plastic handle gives a slight cracking sound.
Now you can hit him. Or laugh. Or grab him by the collar and skip ahead.
She does none of those things. Instead, she turns the red-eyed reader over, pointing it at the floor.
Eli’s smile holds its shape.
I guess winging it only gets me this far. So far.
Maz aims her forced focus at the counter.
It won’t crack, or turn into a flying carpet, or fling you out of the shop, however hard you stare at it.
The air conditioner fills the gap with its new low rumble. The cold, which has made itself at home since the Inferno customer’s arrival, makes the wood in the shelves tighten with a tick. A book slides off and hits the floor. Neither of them turns to it.
Meg lowers her cup to the counter and puts it down so slowly that the coffee in it doesn’t even ripple.
“Don’t mind him, Maz.” Meg picks up a set of bookmarks from their spinner rack at the front of the till. After fanning them once, she throws them across the surface between Maz and Eli as if scattering breadcrumbs to feuding birds.
“He’s always worn jealousy better than you.”
Maz watches Meg’s cup.
She sounds like a test full of trick questions. She won’t give you a straight answer if you ask either. She’s already circled back to her jealousy fit again. Just keep your head down. Keep working.
Eli raises an eyebrow as his face slightly angles at Meg.
So, what, Meg’s been waiting for this moment? ‘Always’… I won’t start. I’ve now got more questions than I walked in with. Jealousy, though? I thought she was the director of this joke. Why’s she being weird on purpose today? Because it’s a perfect day that obviously has nothing to do with anything weird.
Ron returns from the staff room, and the creaks of the floorboards match the neatness of his footsteps. He looks at the trio one by one before stepping back behind the till. His finger jabs a button. A loud ping rings out when the tray shoots open. He takes a stack of receipts out and shuffles them with an urgency that could pass for building a paper shield.
The man walks back out from the maze of aisles, Inferno under his arm. Each of his silent steps towards the counter draws the cold deeper into the shop.
Ron notices the man’s shoes approaching and rushes to adjust his glasses, straightening them on the bridge of his nose.
He reaches behind his back to pull his apron strings tighter and to the front to flatten the linen. With careful hands, he gathers the receipts, treating the slips as if they were made of ash, and places them on the counter.
His brows draw into a frown, but his lifting gaze sculpts them as stripped of emotion before his eyes meet the customer’s.
“Mr. H.”
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