Know Not Why: A Novel Read online

  And then I get it.

  “I wasn’t going to fist bump you,” I say, offended at the realization. “I’ve been to job interviews before. I know how to shake hands.”

  “Ah.” He actually looks a little chagrined. Haha! Yeah, that’s right, prepare to get put in your place, bitch! This ain’t your momma’s arts and crafts store no more. (I don’t know. I think he’s giving me mad cow disease or porphyria or something, just with his general presence.)

  “I can shake your hand, dude – sir.” Jesus, is this my life? Calling Arthur Kraft the Second ‘sir’?

  He stares down at my hand for a minute. Or, well, a couple seconds. ‘A minute’ is exaggerating.

  At first.

  Seriously, he just keeps staring, like, what, is he trying to sever it with the power of his mind? There’s no way around it, this guy is weird.

  “Unnecessary,” he determines. After eight years. “I’ll contact you in a few days.”

  “’kay,” I say uncomfortably. “Thanks.”

  “Mmmhmm.” There he goes again. Jeez. Words, Encino Man. Words are the future.

  Still, as I step out of the office, I’m feeling good about this. By the time I head down the stairs, through the supply closet, and back out into the store, I may have even upgraded to great. Kristy beams at me from where she’s standing with a customer, some kindly old lady who smiles too. See? This is a positive environment. This is a badass place to be.

  Besides, Kristy sees me being nice to old ladies? Huge turn-on, right? Girls really like that kind of thing. Except Amber, who won’t look at a guy twice unless he’s got a British accent and a crazy-ass wife locked in the attic, or whatever, but she is clearly abnormal.

  “How’d it go?” Kristy asks, bouncing on over to me.

  “Good, I think.” I wisely decide to leave out the Fist Bump That Wasn’t anecdote. It’s time to start burying that memory.

  “I really hope you get it,” she says, putting a hand on my arm. Her fingernails are painted bright pink, and physical contact? So not gonna complain.

  “Thanks,” I say. “We’ll see what happens.”

  What I really mean is ‘I’m gonna ride you more times than the Matterhorn at Disneyland,’ because IT IS ON, but, wow, in a craft store with an old lady like fifteen feet away? Just – not the thing to be thinking. That, that’s in bad taste.

  Chapter Two

  I get the job.

  Not the accomplishment of a lifetime, but it does the trick. The people around me are sent into a frenzy of ecstasy. My mom makes a cake. A cake. My mom never bakes when there’s not a birthday involved. Apparently my ability to get a just-over-minimum-wage job that requires (basically) no skills is about as miraculous as the occasion of my birth. Really, it gets me feeling pretty crappy about myself. Do these people think I’m totally useless?

  I’m not, for the record. I’m useful all over the place. I can figure out remote controls, no matter how many buttons are on them, and most of the time I’m an excellent jar opener. I’m a badass speller. I know how to use a semicolon. I’ve got skills.

  Anyway, I roll with it, because it seems to make my mom happy. Ever since we lost my dad a couple years back, happy hasn’t been her specialty. Besides, I’m not going to pitch a fit about an opportunity to eat cake. That’d just be tacky.

  So she makes me drag Amber and Mitch over for dinner, and afterwards she busts out a bottle of champagne and the cake and we all sit around and try to figure out what goes on at an arts and crafts store. The cake isn’t really that impressive: it’s just an out-of-the-box deal, but she writes ‘CONGRATS, HOWIE’ on it in green icing, and that’s really cool of her, like, infinitely cooler than necessary.

  “You’re going to be forced to become a yarn expert,” Amber predicts, obviously getting some sick pleasure out of the idea.

  “Captain Yarn,” Mitch contributes, snickering.

  “That’s brilliant, Mitchell,” Amber says, rolling her eyes.

  Mitch replies by dragging his finger along her slice of cake and licking the frosting away with flourish. She makes this disgusted noise, but keeps eating anyway. It’s fairly standard Amber and Mitch interaction. When Mitch and I first got to be buds a couple years ago, Amber couldn’t stand him. Maybe because Mitch’s way of saying ‘hi, nice to meet you’ was to merrily throw gummy worms at her. (Mitch is very good at junk food.) But she warmed up to him after awhile, once she discovered that she could lecture him and scowl disapprovingly and chastise him with his full name all she wanted and he’d never really mind. This way, she has an outlet for her inner bitch-snob, he has somebody to tease with sugary snacks, and I don’t have to put up with having two best friends who hate each other. All in all, it’s a pretty nice deal.

  “I think that it’s very sweet, this job,” Mom says, tousling my hair affectionately-slash-mockingly. “My little boy, getting in touch with his artistic side.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “Just watch. Soon, I’ll be able to scrapbook with the best of ‘em.”

  “Captain Scrapbook,” Mitch says admiringly.

  “Seriously?” Amber says to him.

  My mom reaches over and squeezes my hand while Amber and Mitch keep on squabbling. “I’m glad you’re doing something new, hon. It’ll be nice to have something else going on besides classes, hmm?”

  She worries a lot about that. Like I’m not living life enough, or whatever, because all I do is go to class two nights a week, and the rest of my time is pretty much devoted to watching reruns of whatever’s on TV. Because the thing is, it’s not like I’m hurting for money. My mom doesn’t have any financial trouble, between the life insurance after Dad and teaching at the college and – I kid you not – writing romance novels under a pseudonym (which I’m not gonna tell you, because you’ll find her books on the shelf of any grocery store, and the fewer people that know what manner of bosom-heaving freakytimes she’s capable of, the better). I know it’s lame – something beyond lame, lame to the highest power, lametacular to the max – to have my mommy pay my living expenses when I’m twenty-frickin’-two, but I look at where my life is right now, and I figure, what the hell. Besides, she never complains about it, or even brings it up to me. And at least I do my own laundry. Most of the time.

  “Yeah,” I say to her, “it should be okay.”

  I feel a little guilty as she grabs my plate and puts another slice of cake onto it without me even having to ask. What would my mom think if she knew the whole reason I was doing this wasn’t to get a life, to take on some responsibility, to go ‘Fine, this is what I’ve got, I’m gonna make the best of it’? That I wasn’t exactly thinking with my head when I made this decision? And the worst part is that I don’t think she’d be horrified, or anything: she does write those books. She gets it. Stuff’s gotta throb and heave and pulsate sometimes, it’s just the way humans work. No, it’s worse than that: I’m pretty sure she’d just feel guilty, like, terrible, like, ‘oh, if he’d gone to a real college he’d have a girlfriend like a normal boy his age, I’m ruining his life, he’s going to die a withered old pervert because I yanked him out of the real world and he never got to develop any social skills.’ I know she goes off on those guilt trips sometimes, so I try to seem content here. I don’t know if I really succeed, but I do try.

  I even sort of lie for her benefit. She likes to think that I’ve got some secret buried thing for Amber, this true latent love that I’ll realize sooner or later, and I don’t contradict her because I think it makes her feel better to believe it.

  Honestly, I have wondered about it once or twice. Just because, how convenient would that be? But I’ve tried to look at Amber that way, and … nothing happens. She’s beautiful and she’s brilliant, but whatever’s supposed to be there isn’t. Plus, there’s her whole everlasting thing for my brother Dennis. If I did like her, odds are it’d be pointless.

  But whatever, it’s cool, I’ve got Kristy now. Not that that’s going to be true love, but hey, close enough. Maybe I’ll bri
ng her over to meet my mom sometime. Not in a big This Means Something way, but, ya know, casually. Just so Mom’ll feel better about me and my prior lack of ladies.

  See? I, too, can function as a normal human being. And I can sell you some yarn like a motherfucking badass. Pretty soon, I’m gonna be doing just fine.

  Heartened by the thought, I gather everyone’s attention – Mitch has shoved a whole piece of cake into his mouth at once; Amber’s about to roll her eyes out of her head – and, in the spirit of the evening, relate the tale of getting interviewed by Artie Kraft II, Fist Bump That Wasn’t and all. Everyone gets a real kick out of that. Mitch, who’s like the human embodiment of Easily Amused, almost busts a gut laughing. Amber starts trying to remember stuff about Arthur from her high school music adventures, and it’s pretty heartwarming to see everyone pounce on the idea of this stupid guy like vultures on a carcass. Pouncy vultures.

  I sit there, and take a third piece of cake, and bask. One last Ha ha to you, fucker feels pretty damn good.

  +

  I get there twenty minutes early on my first day, because it worked out so well the last time.

  It doesn’t this time: the store’s dark and locked up. Nobody’s even here yet. Shouldn’t my good buddy The Second be here by now? What kind of a boss is he, anyway?

  I get back into my car and turn it on, even though it seems pretty indulgent to waste gas just sitting in the parking lot. I don’t really like the quiet, though, and I’ve got the Violent Femmes in the stereo. There’s no resisting m’Femmes.

  I’m drumming my fingers against the wheel, singing along low to Gone Daddy Gone, when a car pulls up in the spot next to mine. It pisses me off a little, to be honest. The car’s just getting warm again, and I don’t really want to step back out into the early-November misery. This weather’s a bitch.

  And speaking of bitches! Arthur gets out of the passenger’s side. He slams the door shut, which catches my interest. Arthur Kraft the Second is not a door-slammer, like, you can tell by looking at the guy. He closes doors carefully and considerately, and then probably takes the time to ask them, ‘Was that all right? I do hope it wasn’t too startling for you’ afterwards. So the fact that he’s slammin’ car doors like some crazy-ass motherfucker: interesting.

  The car zooms out of the parking lot.

  I bop my head along to one last Gano warble, then turn the car off and climb out. Arthur’s at the front door, unlocking it. He drops the keys and mumbles something that is in all likelihood swear word-y, then bends down to scour the ground for them. He keeps muttering angrily to himself. What now? This is awesome.

  “Good morning,” I say amiably. All of a sudden, I feel pretty on top of the world. I got here on time. I’m not dropping stuff and (more or less) screaming out swearwords, being a general nuisance to humanity. My pal Arthur Kraft the Second, on the other hand …

  “Oh,” Arthur says, looking up from where he’s hands-and-knees-ing it on the pavement, “hello, Howard.”

  Howard. Howard. Seriously? Nobody gets to call me Howard anymore. I don’t even let my grandma call me Howard.

  “It’s Howie, actually,” I tell him. “Always Howie. Never Howard.”

  “Yes, certainly, okay,” Arthur says distractedly. He’s still looking around for the keys, like, how far could they have possibly fallen? I take a few more steps, getting a better look at him. Upon closer examination, I realize that his hair is wet. It’s already starting to freeze, all glinty with ice. Arthur Kraft the Second’s hair is freezing. Scratch any prior anguish on my part. This is shaping up to be the best day ever.

  “Having trouble there, Arthur?” I ask him oh-so-courteously.

  “I can’t seem to find the keys.” Duh. Thanks for the recap, sport. “I had a chaotic morning. I didn’t have a chance to put my contact lenses in, and my glasses are upstairs in my office.”

  Overwhelmed by a charitable sense of mercy, I spot the keys lying on the pavement right in front of the door and snatch them up. Arthur watches me blearily; when he realizes what I’m doing, he stands up.

  “Here ya go,” I say, giving him a great big grin. Employee of the Year, bitches. I hand him the keys. His hands are like ice; I can feel how cold they are even through my gloves. Poor sorry bastard. It really isn’t his day.

  Heeheehee.

  “Thank you,” he murmurs.

  “No problem, boss.”

  He goes back to the front door. I follow him, my step decidedly springy. He takes another stab at unlocking it, but he’s shivering like crazy and he winds up dropping the keys again. Who knew? Winter’s this total badass that can cripple even unendurable douches in two seconds flat. Maybe I’m down with a cruel climate after all.

  Artie lets out a long, weary sigh. It warms me heart and soul. “Would you mind …?”

  “’Course.” I bend down, all dexterous and unfrozen (although, honestly, if we stay out here much longer, that might change), pick the keys up, and unlock the door, easy as pie. Dare I even say: easy-peasy.

  I hold the door open for Arthur, and he slips past with another mumbled thank you. He manages, in his crippling blindness, to find the light switch and hit it. And then there is light, illuminating the place where I will be spending my thirty-plus hours a week for the foreseeable future.

  Honestly, I didn’t look at it much when I was here the first time. I was a little too busy looking at other stuff, namely Kristy.

  I didn’t miss a whole lot.

  The whole place somehow exudes the air of an old armchair. You know: comfy, nice, but inescapably shabby. The aisles are labeled with signs no doubt crafted by a feminine hand (or maybe an Artie hand; get all tingly.zing!): ‘YARN!’; ‘FAKE FLOWERS!’; ‘PUFF PAINT!’ Ooh, puff paint. It’s enough to make anybody

  “Aprons are hanging up in the kitchen,” Arthur tells me, and my soul wilts and dies. “You can pick out whichever one you like. We don’t have a nametag for you yet, but Kristy should be able to whip one up today. Mondays tend to be a little slow.”

  “Great,” I say, finding it suddenly harder to be Golly Gee, The Greatest And Chipperest Employee Ever.

  “I’m just going to head upstairs, and—” Arthur pauses at the storage room door. I take a better look at him, now that we’re in the light, and for the tiniest flicker of a moment, I feel nothing besides bad for him. In addition to having messy, frozen hair, he’s got big circles under his eyes, and he’s rocking some too-anguished-to-shave stubble. Arthur Kraft the Second with stubble seems wrong, inherently wrong. It’s all topped off by the fact that I can tell he’s just sort of staring in my general direction, and, to him, I’m this vague pinkish blob with no recognizable facial features.

  Then I realize that I’m feeling bad for him, and it flares up into this big raging feeling: hatehatehatehatehate, motherfucker.

  “Would you be so kind,” he says, crisp and composed, “as to lead me upstairs?”

  What? “What?”

  “The stairs are narrow, and there’s no light switch,” Arthur explains. He doesn’t even have the decency to sound ashamed of himself for asking something so, I don’t know, invasive and weird and maybe a little bit faggy. “Considering the morning I’ve had, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if I fell and broke my neck.”

  What, like that’s something I would want to prevent?

  But the sick sad truth is that he’s my boss, and I can’t exactly say no. I’m his bitch now. Professionally. His apron-wearing, puff paint-selling bitch.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say miserably.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  “Sure, whatever.” I’m pretty sure ‘whatever’’s not a word you’re supposed to let slip in front of your boss, unless you’re saying it enthusiastically and following it with ‘you want,’ but I haven’t been up this early in months, and he’s making me wear an apron. I can suck at this a little.

  God, I wish Kristy would get here already.

  I follow him through the storage room, which is full of
precariously stacked boxes.

  “I’m afraid I’ve been a little distracted lately,” Arthur says, like he’s reading my mind. “Kristy and Cora aren’t exactly pinnacles of neatness.” (Pinnacle? Who says pinnacle?) “In fact, that might be a good way for you to start off the day. Get things organized in here.”

  Organizing? By myself? Hours and hours in this dank little cupboard? Gee, thanks, Aunt Petunia.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say. Somewhere in my soul, it starts raining.

  The raining turns to pouring, because we’re through the storage closet and at the foot of the stairs. Sure enough, it’s pretty damn dark; the dim light from the closet only casts its glow to about stair number four, and then it’s darkness, darkness, darkness. Lie back and think of paychecks.

  I offer my arm, feeling so far beyond ridiculous, and Artie latches onto it. His hands are still freezing. I try not to shudder.

  We tackle the first step. Thennnn the second. Thennnn the third. It’s a narrow, rickety staircase, one that clearly wasn’t designed with this idea in mind. God, this is fucking weird.

  “So,” I say, because I can’t take the creeeeeak!, silence, creeeeak! anymore, and his fingers are so cold that I can feel each one individually against my arm through my clothes, “bad morning?”

  “Obviously.”

  “What happened?” I’ll admit it, I’m curious.

  “It’s a personal matter. I prefer not to discuss personal matters at work. I’d recommend that you try to do the same, although I suppose I can’t insist upon it.”

  Damn right you can’t, Sir Sucks-A-Lot.

  “Okay,” I say. Maybe I drag it out in that ‘you’re crazy’ way, so it’s a little less ‘Okay’ and a little more ‘Ooookay.’ Oh, sweet small rebellion.