First Avenue (32 page)

“Do you need some help?”

She was surprised how difficult it was to talk to him. They had hardly spoken since she started working.
Bill
looked at her suspiciously.

“
Pierre
said you should show me. I wouldn’t mind doing that,” she said. “It looks kind of fun.”

“It’s no fun,” he said. “You do this for a month and see how fun it is.”

He was still angry with
Pierre
. She wondered if he were angry enough.

“Have you worked here that long?”

“Longer than that. Why?”

“Just asking, that’s all. It seems like
Pierre
trusts you a lot, leaving you in charge and all.” Oh puke, she thought as she walked over to the stinking oil. I hope I don’t puke in his face.

“I know how to do this, I guess.” His voice lost some of its edge.

If she could think of one pleasant thing, he might soften even more.

“
Pierre
must be tired,” she said. “He’s really in a lousy mood today.”

“You think he gets tired making doughnuts?”

“I don’t know. What else would make him tired?”

Bill’s face hardened back into its familiar scowl.

“You ask him if you want to know.”

“I don’t want to know anything,” she said, scowling back. “You’re ruining the doughnuts again.”

She walked abruptly to the front of the store. She thought about walking farther than that. The Market was across the street. She could see it through the dirty windows and the fog that had hung there all morning. Silve’s restaurant was there. She could work over there as soon as she wanted. She didn’t need this job or this boy. She would never learn anything from him, or from the kids who waited for doughnuts, or from
Pierre
. He acted as if she were not even there. She had stayed to learn something, but she would never learn anything. Across the street it was different.
Sam
said it would be different.

Maria saw
Pierre
walking on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. He didn’t belong over there. She watched him pass the newspaper stand where
Sam
had waited for her and disappear into a flower shop on the opposite corner.
Pierre
would never buy flowers.

She walked quickly back to the counter, but no farther.
Bill
stopped the conversation he was having with himself as he picked out the doughnuts from the hot oil and tossed them into the garbage. She was past wanting to talk.

“I’m taking a break,” she said.

She didn’t wait for his approval. It would take him much too long to think of a response. She was out the front door before her words would even enter his brain.

She walked straight across
First Avenue
, although she stayed away from the flower store. She passed the newsstand and the nut shop and circled around the produce market at the end of the first row of stands. She stopped there a moment to get her bearings. Indistinctly she heard the voices of the fish men as they shouted orders and called out for business. A fish flew in the air as a worker in a white coat tossed it back over the counter to be wrapped. She didn’t turn to watch. She crossed the street so that she was on the same side as the flower shop.

Maria took a deep breath and continued east, back toward
First Avenue
. She wished that the fog would be so thick that she would become invisible. She stopped breathing as she came to the first window of the store. When she peeked inside, it was not what she expected. There were books, not flowers. She stepped back from the window and looked around. It was the right place. There were flowers in the front by the door but books at the back.

Less than ten feet from where she stood, she saw
Pierre
at a bookshelf with a book in his hand. He was looking away from her. There was a man beside him who was much taller. He also had a book. They were talking to each other. The man was well dressed, not dirty like
Pierre
. Two men like that would have nothing to talk about.

Pierre put the book back on the shelf and walked toward the door.

Maria looked behind her for a place to hide and walked quickly back to the next doorway.
Pierre
walked out of the store and stood on the corner. Other people waited with him for the light to change. When it did, he crossed diagonally toward the Donut Shop.

Watching
Pierre
and hoping he would not turn around,
Maria
walked boldly forward to the front door of the flower store. She walked into the store through the flowers to the books in back. The tall man, who had been with
Pierre
, was now at the counter waiting behind another person. He was buying a book. She felt excited to watch him. He didn’t know who she was. It was like playing hide-and-seek on the beach by herself when she was little and visited her grandparents’ village. This time she would find somebody.

She stopped at a book rack close to the counter and watched the tall man step forward when it was his turn to pay. She picked up the nearest book, a cookbook with a smiling lady on the cover. It was too expensive for her game. She looked for something cheap and found a magazine at the end of the rack. She took the magazine to the register and stood behind the man.

He paid no attention to her. She heard his voice and saw his face from different angles. She noticed the book he bought—something about war. There was an old cannon on the cover. The man was taller than her father. He had broad shoulders and wore a gray suit coat. His brown hair was combed over a bald spot on the back of his head. He might have been good-looking once.

He walked out the door with his book in a paper bag. She put her magazine on the counter and took money out of her pocket. She wanted to pay quickly and follow the man. She saw him walk north on
First Avenue
, away from the Donut Shop.

The young woman at the cash register made a mistake and had to start over. The register beeped at her when she tried to correct the mistake, and
Maria
was stuck at the counter with a beeping register. An older woman came over to help, touched a few keys for the younger clerk, and explained how it worked.
Maria
told the clerks she had changed her mind and didn’t want the magazine after all.

By the time she walked out of the bookstore, the man had disappeared. She could walk up the block after him, but she wouldn’t know which way to turn. For the first time she began to feel a little uneasy about her game. The Donut Shop was just across the street, and her break had gone on long enough.
Pierre
wouldn’t like that she had left. Too bad what
Pierre
would not like.

She walked back into the Market where she bought a shiny red apple from the produce stand on the corner. She took big bites from the apple as she headed back to work.

She walked into the Donut Shop and made certain
Pierre
saw her take the last bite from the apple. He was behind the cash register.
Bill
didn’t look up from the doughnut machine.
Pierre
watched her, but said nothing. She expected he would at least say something.

She threw the apple core into the garbage and washed her hands at the triple sink.
Bill
remained intent upon not seeing her. He hardly saw anything when he tried.

“I took a break,” she told
Pierre
. “It was slow in here.”

“Next time you wait until I come back,”
Pierre
said.

“Sure. It was after ten. I thought
Bill
could look after things.”

“You wait next time.”

“Okay.”

He went into his little office and closed the door, and she took care of the customers who bought the doughnuts
Bill
made with such diligence. There would never be enough customers for all the doughnuts.

As soon as Sam walked into the Donut Shop, he experienced an eerie sensation. He felt like ants were tiptoeing across the back of his neck. He looked around for the ants’ nest.
Maria
was in back washing dishes.
Bill
, with his scowling face, was at the front counter.
Sam
walked up to the counter and nodded to the cold pair of eyes behind it. There was no clue in those eyes why the scowling boy was at the front instead of
Maria
.

“Your boss here?”

“No.”

“When do you expect him?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Sam swiveled back and forth a quarter turn in the stool and scanned the room carefully.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee,” he said, although it was close to
noon
and he had already had all the coffee he wanted.

Reluctantly
Bill
poured him a cup. He spilled onto the counter and pretended not to notice.
Bill
and his scowling face moved to the opposite end of the counter and looked away.
Sam
saw
Maria
in the back. He wished she would come forward.

“I’ll have some milk with this,”
Sam
said to the boy.

“It’s in those packets,”
Bill
said. He flicked his finger toward the wire rack that held sugar and creamer packets.

“I’d like some real milk. That packaged stuff will give you cancer.”

The boy hesitated as his brain clinked through the options he might have.
Sam
looked to the back.

“Young lady, do you have any milk back there?”

Maria went to the refrigerator beside the doughnut machine and brought out a carton of milk. Without saying anything she came to the counter and poured the milk into his cup. Then she lifted the cup and wiped up the spilled coffee with a napkin. Her expressionless face was loaded with meaning, but
Bill
was too close for her to unload it.

She went back into the kitchen.
Sam
heard metal pans striking the metal sides of the sink.
Sam
looked at
Bill
who looked out the window.

“The fog is lifting,”
Sam
told the boy in case he would not know what he was seeing. “The wind is blowing it off. Got a storm coming, they say.”

Bill nodded perfunctorily, but it was clear he wasn’t eager to enter a conversation.

“Going to have rain sometime tomorrow. Do you like rain,
Bill
?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders and then began to fidget with something below the counter.
Sam
leaned forward to see what the boy was fidgeting with. It was a box of plastic spoons.

“Do I make you nervous?”
Sam
asked.

The boy folded his arms across his chest and looked at
Sam
.

“I’m not nervous.”

Sam waited until the boy looked away again.

“Did you make this coffee?”
Sam
asked.

The boy’s face twitched as he contemplated that question.
Sam
wondered if the boy would have the nerve to ignore it.

“She did.” The boy gestured toward
Maria
with a brief movement of his head.

Now he wondered how long it would take the boy to move.
Sam
took a sip of the coffee
Maria
had made and waited.