She stops in front of the bakery case, cupcakes sitting in perfect rows of color and sheet cake decorated with gritty butter-cream flowers, so close behind glass, she can just feel her finger running along the icing, digging down into the spongy center, finally burying her hand wrist-deep. The smell of the bakery aisle does something to her. The smell is right there. It resets her senses. She takes one more deep breath and joins the throngs.
In the cereal aisle, Iris picks up a box of raisin bran and places it in her basket. She idly glances off toward the produce section, wondering what else she might need, and her eyes stop at the teeming rows of melons. There, a man in a navy blue suit, a man just the right height, with just the same thinning reddish blond hair and verging on sickly-pale complexion, and just the same delicate profile as her boss is concentrating on cantaloupes, holding them up one by one and gently squeezing them, bringing them close to his face and breathing them in. He is so involved in what he is doing that Iris decides it is safe to take a closer look.
She takes a few steps forward, lining herself up with the condiment aisle, eye level with the Worcestershire sauce and spicy brown mustard. She closes her eyes for a moment and sniffs, but the smells are contained, bedlam if they were to mix. She imagines a grocery store with no packaging, with everything right there to touch and smell and hold and lick, tidal waves of spaghetti sauce and hills of crackers and chips and croutons to crunch in one’s fists and her breath slows and maybe she is just hungry…
But it couldn’t be him, could it? He’s in Milan until the end of the week. That was today that he said that, wasn’t it? She tries to put the days of the past week in order by what she was wearing, but then she can’t remember what she wore the day before yesterday, and then the man who may or may not be her boss starts to walk away— no cantaloupe selected, not even carrying a basket— and she follows him at a safe distance, ducking behind a soda display when he turns slightly, and that is when she knows it is him. It is the look in his eyes, somehow both confident and confused, as he looks back at the produce section, as though he does not know why he came into the store in the first place, and he is certainly going to have a word with someone about it.
He walks out of the store and Iris stands up from behind the display. The grocery list seems to have fallen from her hands somewhere in the store and she can’t remember everything else she needed, so she just gets milk, the raisin bran’s natural companion, and checks out.
At home, she sets her purse and plastic grocery bag by the door and kicks off her shoes. She puts on a Buddy Holly CD and starts to run a shower, letting it run until it is scorching hot, then adding cold until it is just right. She steps out of her clothes, leaving a puddle of fabric on the bathroom floor and turns up the stereo. Buddy Holly sings Rave on, it’s a crazy feeling, and I know it’s got me reeling, and she steps in, letting the water rush over her head and down her face, and then the water is all she hears.
****
Eighteen months ago, or twenty. It gets harder and harder for her to remember how long it’s been, how many summers she’s spent sweating in her car in polyester and tweed. One, two? She marks the time as one gives a toddler’s age, but she stopped marking at some point. Those months ago, those days and days upon days and more days ago, it was just an ad in the classifieds. She had been fired from another waitressing job, this time for continuing to pour iced tea after the glass was already full just one too many times. She always apologized, but sorry doesn’t get the stain out. It was their own fault for having those giant windows that looked out over a cliff. She would stare out, imagining that this was the edge of the earth, the spot where gravity petered out, that each time she stepped out the door at the end of her shift, she was taking the chance of drifting up and off. She couldn’t keep her mind on the task at hand.
She didn’t know what she should do instead, but something different seemed in order, something with less immediate potential for calamity.
Seeking receptionist for busy office. Must be self-starter, multi-tasker.
There was an address, and instructions to apply in person between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m. She wasn’t sure what it meant to be a self-starter or a multi-tasker, but she had gone to college, hadn’t she? She could probably do anything she was asked to do. She showed up at 9:15 the following morning dressed in a navy pencil skirt and white blouse, her one professional outfit. She pressed the button for suite 2A and announced herself. She waited, but there was no answer. She tried again. “Hello?” she said, holding down the button. “I’m here about the job?” But there was only the faint radio crackle.
So she stood on the steps until a FedEx deliveryman was buzzed in and she followed him inside. When she found 2A, she knocked. She waited. She opened the door and walked into a flurry of activity, people huddled together over computers, arguing, doors flying open and shut, the phones ringing ringing ringing. It seemed to her that she had never heard anything so loud. She turned and walked out, she hoped, before anyone noticed she was there.
She went back a couple of days later wearing the same outfit, again waited for someone to follow, again walked in when her knock went unanswered. This time, things were calmer, just a few people at desks typing in silence. Then one by one, their phones started ringing, until everyone was saying hello how are you I’m great all at once and the din of voices was too much and she started to walk back to the door when a voice distinguished itself from the others.
It was clear and strong, and it said, “Can I help you?”
Iris looked back and there he stood, a small, pale, reddish-blond-haired man in a suit. He had translucent gray eyes that looked right at her.
“I’m here about the receptionist job?” she asked.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Good good,” and led her to his office.
Iris had never been in a professional setting like this. At least she had never gone past the lobby, into the guts of the place. A place. Since her dismissal from the Blackbird Diner, she had been coasting on her meager savings and postponing the inevitable until her time ran out and she was out of money, completely out, a balance of zero, satisfying almost, the flatline of it. As she followed him down the hallway, she glanced into each office decorated with fake plants and fake art and real families, tacked up in two dimensions on particleboard, everyone drinking coffee coffee and more coffee. Why don’t people drink lemonade or ice water, she thought. It’s hot out. Then the chill of the air conditioner penetrated her skin, and she understood that the weather didn’t matter. In here, her body wouldn’t know hot from cold or up from down either. When they got to his office, he sat behind his desk and directed her to the chair across from him. He pushed a few piles of papers aside so there was a clear space between them, where he rested his hands palms down for a moment before folding them.
She wondered if she was supposed to say something.
Seemingly sensing her discomfort, he nodded toward the mess of papers on his desk and smiled. “This is precisely why I need you. To rein me in.”
Iris nodded, smiled with closed lips.
“You’ve answered phones, yes?”
“Yes,” she nodded again. Her own phone. Her parents’ phone.
“Good. Listen,” he said, rising, “I need to be going now— we’ll go over everything Monday.”