The sharp time.

Mary O'Connell.

MONDAY.

THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANIES.

Anybody can tell that the pretentious a.s.s who runs the Pale Circus fancies himself an artiste of sorts: a purveyor of poplin and mohair, an architect of nostalgia. A man of his station can't be bothered with the workaday minutiae of references and social security numbers, and so instead of a regular xeroxed job application, he gives me a Big Chief tablet and a handful of pastel-colored pencils.

"I want to know who you are ... your essence.... your, your thing ...," he says, his voice cryptic, trailing off. Mr. Mystical! His eyes are pale, green as celery; his breath is fruited with Altoids. He has the pomposity of a great beauty, which, to be fair, he most certainly is. "Tell me why you want to work here." He strikes his hand to his heart when he says here, as if I'm a freelance cardiologist.

I give him a smile of supplication and hug the tablet to my chest.

He leans back in his chair and looks at me as if seeing me from some great distance, a squinting, owlish lover wondering: Who, who, who are you?

He is seated behind the blond oak desk that holds an old-fashioned cash register, a foot tall and scrolled in bronze. I already know it will make the actual coin-clash kaching! sound when the Sale key is struck. Candy is on either side of the cash register: a mahogany box filled with delicate chocolates and a cut-gla.s.s bowl of circus peanuts, coral-colored and chewy and filling the shop with the candied dreamscape fragrance of Easter lilies and marshmallows. The Pale Circus is entirely without the usual ground-pepper-and-hair-oil scent of vintage clothing shops. Breaking up the sugary aesthetic is a postcard-sized print of Edvard Munch's The Scream taped to the back of the cash register; above the howling figure's open mouth there is a Magic-Markered word bubble that proclaims CREDIT CARDS NOT ACCEPTED. CASH AND CHECKS ONLY, PLEASE. The walls are painted the soft coral of the circus peanuts, so that the Pale Circus glows with the otherworldly sweetness of man-in-the-moon honeycomb.

Mr. Pale Circus startles me by leaning forward in his chair. In an urgent tone more appropriate for alerting someone that her pants are on fire, he demands: "I want to know why! Tell me precisely why clothes are important to you!"

This of course seems like a test, which it probably is. Probably everyone who likes to shop at the Pale Circus dreams of working here. I wish I'd gone home first to change out of my school clothes. School clothes. It makes me sound like I'm wearing a smock top and corduroys, when in fact I am wearing a vintage red swing coat over some basic black. Still, had I known what the morning held, I would have dressed more carefully.

"Oh! Okay!" I take a deep breath that hurts my ribs. Not the entire skeletal cave, just that one spot. "Um, clothes are important to me for so many reasons. G.o.d, about a million reasons-"

He wags his finger, cutting me off. Tragic, as I was about to go all Marcel Proust on his a.s.s, with varied tales of the poignancy of peacoats, of the chlorinated smell of swimsuits flung over the shower rail, which is pure August, pure aquamarine. I might have told him about my mother's winter white angora sweater, worn to fluff and gossamer, the remaining grid of yarn at the elbows so full of memories that if it could, the sweater would certainly open its mother-of-pearl b.u.t.ton mouth and rasp: Recherche, recherche.

He puts his fingers to his lips and reaches out for my hand. He pulls my fingers back taut and with his thick forefinger writes on my palm. I try to smile casually-all righty then!-as if this is the most standard gesture between near strangers, but after a few seconds I fall into it and live in the creep-show ecstasy of this moment. He writes along each finger, a baroque cursive with deep curlicues; he wreathes my palm with-what?-ivy leaves, I think: soft, geometric, replicating. Oh, I am paying attention, yes I am. I am Helen Keller to his Annie Sullivan. The pad of his fingertip is full and beautiful and slowing the bang bang bang bang bang of my heart.

I close my eyes. Valentine pinks and purples and wild navy blues swirl behind my lids: constellations of paisleys and polka dots.

The tablet that I hold across my chest with my other hand is weightless, a mere paper shield over my heart. He moves his finger down my hand. He presses his thumb to the heart of my palm. Just sixty seconds ago I was terrified to walk into the Pale Circus, terrified of forming the question "Are you hiring at the moment?" The rehea.r.s.ed, quasi-British at the moment sounding completely jacka.s.sy when said aloud to another human being. And yet I had gone and done it, hadn't I?

The shock of my morning at school gave me the courage that allowed me to pull open the door of the Pale Circus: O brave new world.

"Write down why you want to work here," he says. Then he drops my hand and says "Now, shoo, you" in a schoolmarmish voice that I guess is supposed to be funny or ironic or what have you, and I think Hey, shoo you too, pal, though of course my hand feels like the softest firecracker and my heart is all agog with sudden cuckoo bird love, but I shoo, people, yes I do.

I walk through the maze of circular racks of clothes, a fabric kaleidoscope that I have perused many times as a mere customer, not a potential employee. At the door I pause to give a little wave, but he doesn't wave back. He is holding up a salmon-pink coat and frowning at the frayed triangular collar until he catches his reflection in the mirror and gives himself a lovelorn gaze.

And then I'm in the cold again.

Because I had wanted to gather my courage before I walked in and applied for a job, I parked a half block down from the Pale Circus on the opposite side of the street, in front of a p.a.w.nshop called Second Chance? The jaunty question mark at the end of Second Chance? seems to be a thematic joke that emphasizes both the inherent corniness and questionable promise of second chances: Second Chance? You think? And of course there's the standard p.a.w.nshop vibe, the seedy sadness of the candy-apple-red drum set in the front window, a single drumstick sitting forlornly on a high hat-some sweet little rock and roller down on his/her luck. Next door to the p.a.w.nshop is Erika's Erotic Confections. In the display window a white chocolate bust, a milk chocolate bust and a dark chocolate bust are demurely covered in bikini tops. I have shopped at Erika's once, intending to buy a gag gift. However, when I walked in and found Erika-six feet, whacked-off hair bleached white, tattoos and a black tank top beneath her chef's ap.r.o.n-glowering at me, offering up a tart and perfunctory "May I help you?", I looked away from the marzipan handcuffs and organic edible underwear and bought one of her artisan chocolates displayed on a silver platter in the cooler. The only other row building that is not boarded up and plastered with handbills is the liquor store on the corner-a liquor store that pains me, pains me, pains me-and then, at the end of the street of deserted blocks, is St. Joseph's Monastery, a towering redbrick beauty that sits on a hill like the gateway to some uneasy Oz: Uh, so, welcome to the Emerald City? I guess? We hope?

I unlock my car and grab my cigarettes from the dashboard and see that a pamphlet has been tucked beneath my windshield wiper: a holly-green brochure with three stenciled kings proclaiming Happy Feast of the Epiphany! in bloated thought bubbles floating above their staffs and camels. I think about the events of this morning and let out a bitter little snort. No f.u.c.king kidding, wise men; epiphanies galore.

I open the brochure and learn that this feast day is a kind of post-Christmas blowout: Now, after contemplating the staggering fact that G.o.d has become a human child, we turn to look at this mystery from the opposite angle and realize that this seemingly helpless child is, in fact, the omnipotent G.o.d, the king and ruler of the universe.

I jam the brochure into my pocket, thinking, Omnipotent? Bang-up job, pal. I take a seat on a bench in front of Second Chance? and choose a melon-colored pencil. I stick the other pencils under my thigh, the sharpened ends poking at my a.s.s like a little bundle of arrows. Why do I want to work at the Pale Circus?

I love the clothes at the Pale Circus! I have no interest in new clothes. New is ever so dull; new can suck it hard. New clothes symbolize the exploitation of third-world children locked in the factory, the modern-day slavery of the Mariana Islands, the workaday misery of Walmart employees. So let's try something else, please: meet me in St. Louis with a cardinal-red Judy Garlandish cape and fur-trimmed m.u.f.f! Help me to express my inner smiley-face decal of happiness in a Marcia Brady poly-blend minidress and stacked sandals. Make me a channel of your peace, if you will, in a rainbow maxidress, a strip of fabric saved for a red-yellow-blue-green headband, and, people, show me the woven hemp espadrilles. Hire me, please!

Thanks a trillion,

Sandinista Jones.

PS I am available anytime Monday through Friday, as well as any weekend hours.

I put the tablet and the pencil on the bench next to me and light a cigarette. A low-riding green Buick rolls down the street, the circular slop-slop-slop of tires cutting through slush, a snippet of buzzy AM radio filtering out: Monday, Monday, can't trust that day.

Understatement.

The air has that iced mineral smell that comes right before new snow falls. I look across the street at the Pale Circus. The awning is striped, a wash of coral and cream, the letters pastel and swollen. In the window, a headless mannequin wears a purple-red taffeta ball gown-I believe the color could be called mulberry, perhaps raspberry-cut to a low V in the front and bolstered by so many crinolines it looks like she might levitate: one hand is already raised and fanning out. Good-bye! So long! The carmine-red flats on her highly arched feet give me the rainbow-confetti feeling of a happy ending. But when I look at the liquor store on the corner, that sweetness vanishes.

The liquor store was once a health-food store, the Sunshine Co-op, where my mother bought the natural peanut b.u.t.ter that all children despise for its grotesque texture of ground bones. But she also bought plenty of nice things: dusty raspberries and green beans, dark chocolate pastilles, pear-peach smoothies. The earnest hippie dude who ran the store had painted a mural on the side of the building, so that all who turned left on Thirty-Eighth Street would be greeted by a somber Cesar Chavez holding out a fistful of purple grapes. Painted over his head were the words WE'RE SOWING THE SEEDS OF CHANGE, which I suppose is true of both a health-food store and a liquor store. But then the organic superstores opened up in the suburbs, and people stopped driving downtown for organic milk and hemp lip balm, and that was that for the Sunshine Co-op. Except nothing ever snaps shut so neatly, there is no spick-and-span denouement, there is forever the image of my mother weighing root vegetables, standing on tiptoe in her espadrilles, peering at the scale's needle, then turning and giving me a brightly exaggerated smile, as if to say, Rutabagas and parsnips and daikon! Oh my!

I think of my mother and I can't believe this morning, this year, this life. I close my eyes and a wild paisley pattern flits along the back of my eyelids: purple, valentine-pink and navy blue figures; oblong, sperm-shaped, kidney-shaped. When I take a sharp breath in, the sore spot on my rib vibrates up to the back of my throat.

I heave myself off the bench and make my way down Thirty-Eighth Street, practicing for my upcoming conversation with Mr. Pale Circus. I make carefree hand gestures and mouth witty asides to the arctic Kansas City air, trying to perfect my confident girl-Friday vibe. Perhaps my aggressive cheerfulness is alarming, because when I walk back into the shop with my insane grin and my head held high, swinging my hair like a prancing Connemara pony on crack, Mr. Pale Circus looks at me and blanches: his shoulders shoot up; his mouth forms a fat, appalled oval. But when I hand him his colored pencils and the Big Chief tablet, he smiles.

"You came back."

His voice is authentic and unflourished: nice.

He looks at what I've written and smiles. "Miss Sandinista Jones. I would have hired you for your name alone," he says tenderly, "even if you were a serial killer or a chronic shoplifter."

But then he gathers himself. "Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth," he says, doffing an imaginary top hat.

He hands me a Pale Circus business card:.

HENRY CHARBONNEAU.

RINGMASTER AT LARGE.

He tells me to come to the Pale Circus tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. He shakes my hand. When I walk out the door, the string of silver bells trembles along the safety gla.s.s.

And then I'm back in the world, squinting up at the monastery and touching the middle of my hand again, the soft, meaty bull's-eye of Christ's agony.

Across the street, a monk walks by in his brown robe, his hood up, so that in profile he looks like the grim reaper. I wonder if he is happy, if his life is all peaches and rainbows and pretty pretty G.o.d love; I wonder if he sleeps with frankincense, gold and myrrh dancing in his head. Or does he celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany by praying all night, only ceasing when the sky finally gives up the violets of dawn?

When he looks over at me he doesn't smile, but he does wave. He lifts his hand and his sleeve falls to his elbow, revealing his bony wrist, his pale forearm. And it seems that this is the very moment when the snow starts, fat, soft flakes that fall slowly and silver: fairy-tale stardust.

But then there is getting though the rest of day, the aimless, creeping hours: smoking and drinking a latte at Buzz Cafe, thinking Right now I would be in American History and then taking the longest way home, not along the gray sweep of the interstate, but through the bisected heart of the city, where I slowly drive past St. Scholastica's-a doll of a school, all pearl-colored brick and sweet girl-saint statuary-the school where my mother wore Doc Martens and ripped fishnet stockings with her black watch skirt, where she reapplied liquid eyeliner and smoked weed in the bathroom before religion cla.s.s so that the saints would tiptoe out of the oil paintings and whisper epiphanies, their candied breath at her ear, their muslin robes brushing her bare knees, her white cotton socks. I say right out loud in the cold car: "Help me Help me Help me."

Of course, it's a made-up prayer, nonfancy and pathetic, because I am not a Catholic, because my mother was no longer Catholic by the time I came along, and chose not to have me baptized. My grandparents were devout, but they lived in Florida, and I saw them only twice a year when I was a child. My cultural Catholicism is specific and spotty, highlighted by delicious ghost stories whispered by my grandmother while we roasted marshmallows over a beach bonfire: "St. Lucy gouged out her eyeb.a.l.l.s for Christ!" My mother and I attended the Zen Center and many Christian churches, her favorite being the Unitarian church with the optimistic banners hanging in the sanctuary: FEELINGS ARE NEITHER GOOD OR BAD-THEY JUST ARE! I'M REAL SPECIAL CUZ G.o.d DOESN'T MAKE JUNK. My mother was mildly troubled by the poor grammar and corn-dog aesthetic, but mostly she was happy that I had "the opportunity to see Jesus as a brother, not as Big Daddy."

As St. Scholastica's disappears in my rearview mirror, I'm thinking of my teenage mother-plaid-uniformed, Marlboro in hand, all her requisite madcap antics-and I'm not paying attention and there's the blare of horns and squealing brakes behind me but in the next second I'm still completely alive.

And then there's coming home but not walking into the house right away, just sitting on the freezing porch swing and smoking before walking around to the backyard-the kidney-shaped flower beds crunchy with ice-glazed leaves, the chain-link fence a geometry of snowy iron diamonds-before I go in the back door and move from the January cold to subtropical heat. I forgot to turn the heat down after I took my shower this morning. Guess who's not paying attention? Yet again.

And there is the big surprise of the cool gray b.u.t.ton on the answering machine. I was expecting the wild siren flash of multiple missed messages: maybe not the police, but at least the princ.i.p.al, the counselor, my Honors English teacher, Ms. Lisa Kaplansky. A friend or two. But no.

And so I eat a fun-sized Almond Joy and pace around for an hour; I watch TV and wait for the official phone calls. On the Discovery Channel, a cheetah outruns a gazelle and plunges his openmouthed face into the gazelle's skinny neck. But after the chase, after all that pouncing and guttural roaring, the cheetah doesn't seem especially hungry for the body and the blood. The cheetah rests his claw on the gazelle's open chest and licks its shoulder, nonchalant: I just did that because I could, people. I switch to the mind-numbing show where celebrities dance, and paint my fingernails black raspberry. When my nails dry, I lie on my back on the couch and put my hand under my shirt, cradling the hurt part of my ribs. I consider the water stains on the ceiling; if I don't blink, if I squint until my eyes water, I see the angel Gabriel with his arched wings and kind out-stretched hands, his head c.o.c.ked to the left, as if imploring me to get off my sorry a.s.s and do something. And so I haul myself off the couch, switch on the computer and Google the s.h.i.t out of Mrs. Catherine Bennett.

There are ever so many-a Playboy Bunny, a marine biologist, a birdhouse builder-but I finally find my own private Catherine Bennett. She teaches at Woodrow Wilson High School. She is a consultant on a textbook called Math Without Fear! She donated fifty dollars to the Humane Society in honor of the late Mr. Fluffers Bennett. She lives at 1207 Ponderosa Lane. I put her address into MapQuest, and while I study the grid of intersections and arrows that leads from my house to hers, my mind wanders to the image of me at school, gathering my books off my desk and walking out the cla.s.sroom door, my cla.s.smates seated, unsure whether to stay or to go, and then the asthmatic gloom of the hallway, of searching for my car keys in my pockets and my purse and backpack, waiting for the small relief of metallic shivering and deciding that I will change my stupid f.u.c.king destiny, that I will drive away from Woodrow Wilson High School and apply for a job at the Pale Circus.

I call my friend Caitlin Jantzen and leave a message on her cell phone: "Bennett lost it today. On me. Freak show extraordinaire. Did you hear? Jesus. Call me." But my hopes aren't that high. I haven't returned her calls in months, and Caitlin has a new boyfriend in a band, a strapping lad, handsome and prehistoric, with high cheekbones and a large, commanding skull that houses a brain the size of a sh.e.l.led walnut. I try to decide who to call next, but then the story itself is so humiliating ... so I zone out and put on cherry lip balm, coats and coats of it, a soothing and useful repet.i.tion, thinking that my waxed lips will never chap, thinking: Hurrah! I am embalmed.

I walk into the kitchen for variety and stare at the mosaic of crumbs on the floor. I briefly consider sweeping and mopping, thinking it will be brisk and medicinal. Instead, I light a cigarette. I flick the spent match into the sink and exhale into the silence. Because I'm paying attention to potential fire hazards. I turn on the tap and let water stream over the match, over the stray cereal bits plastered to the sink. I'm not hungry for any specific thing, but I open the refrigerator to look at my mother's bottle of carrot juice, gone crimson and scalded at the top, a froth of pressed blood that makes me think of the body and the blood, of heaven.

I sometimes wonder if my mother has all-new celestial powers, if she can slice the roof of our house with one breath and float though the kitchen. I hope this is not true. I hope that the atheists are correct, that everlasting life is a mere snow-globe hoax. I hope my mother could not see that I spent Christmas Eve alone, curled up with a bag of fun-sized candy bars, worried that burglars would break into the house and gasp at the sight of me on the couch, silver wrappers littering the living room floor. I would be brave and breezy, saying to the burglars, to the world: Oh, great! I knew I should have gone to my aunt and uncle's house in Florida! In truth that invitation did not come, or maybe it did, maybe my uncle's elliptical "Whatcha doin' for the holidays, kiddo?" was the opening, but I could hear relief in his voice when I told him I was spending Christmas with a friend's family: "Sounds good, Sandinista! There's no young people around here. You'd be bored stiff!"

I hope my mother is not looking down at me from heaven like an angel doll-baby sealed up in a plastic bubble, the most despondent Polly Pocket. My first day of kindergarten, my mother cried and held on to me, frightened as she was by the specter of crayons and glue, by my teacher, Ms. Kelly, who was moderate and kind. My mother would die all over again to see me mooning over her spoiled carrot juice, and I know I am lucky to have been loved like that, but I am also the biggest loser in the world to have had it ripped away, and so I smoke and pace and wait for the phone to ring. The moon is full and my rib is sore.

TUESDAY.

THE FURNACE OF A STAR.

Opening the door of the Pale Circus is like falling into a morning dream of a surprise Technicolor paradise: you walk up any old flight of stairs, open a random closet door and find a dance hall in full swing, a secret garden, a surplus of Starlight Mints. I have tried to honor the aesthetic with my first-day-of-work attire: I wear a soft pink mohair sweater (purchased at the Pale Circus back in October, a world away), a plaid pencil skirt, cream tights, chocolate suede T-straps and a waist-length raspberry fake fur. My hair is glossed and curled into a Veronica Lake peekaboo. I wear false eyelashes I had applied with tweezers and eyelash adhesive, and my fingernails are glittering black raspberries. I look like a glammed-up, wolfish Rosie the Riveter off her shift and searching for love: h.e.l.lo, you big, bad world.

Today there is another Monsieur Cool manning the cash register and the candy dishes. This one is younger, lots younger, around my age, but going retro with his angst: he has on a vintage s.e.x Pistols T-shirt, Levi's with a two-inch rolled cuff and black motorcycle boots. I've seen him many times when I was shopping here-when I was a mere consumer-and I have sensed that he is one of my tribe: ADD, lovelorn. He has dyed licorice-black hair, and a fat Elvis-y pout. He gives me a solemn, unblinking stare. And so I follow the golden rule. Don't smile at someone until they smile at you first. Don't ever wave like a jacka.s.s, How-dee! Be forever cool. Aloofness is your friend, your BFF.

I stare back at him; we lock into a battle of neutrality as I walk across the hardwood floor of the Pale Circus. It's all Whatever, fool, until I am distracted by a display of vintage accessories. I see a golden compact-I'm guessing from the 1940s-scrolled with hearts and crosses, the sweetest iconography, and I imagine the circle of desiccated powder in the compact, a perfumed ghost of melancholy. I imagine the GI brides, all the Sadies and Goldies powdering their noses before heading out to the dance floor to jitterbug in stacked heels, and my own shoes on the gleaming floor of the Pale Circus make the soft, golden click of the compact snapping shut, over and over and over.

So maybe my own life is not so drastic and dreadful ... maybe I am just like all those other girls who have come before me with their oily T-zones and random terrible days and bittersweet triumphs, the world billowing out behind them.

I glance again at the boy-I am but a foot from the cash desk-but then, on the circular rack to my left, I notice a white leather jacket with a fat silver buckle at the waistline and then-whoooosh-I'm riding down Carnaby Street on the back of a skinny boy's Vespa, my eyes teary and squinting from the cold wind, curtained with waterproof Cleopatra eyeliner. My mother appears and waves madly at the lovebirds on the Vespa; she's mod as you please in a Quadrophenia-style army jacket and black leggings. I'm not in the Pale Circus, I have left Kansas City and now live in the London of my dreams for ten sweet seconds and of course I'm not paying attention; I'm daydreaming the lost future my mother and I had planned. When I finished school in May, we were going to sell the house and spend a year traveling in Europe. College could wait, she said. Her own freshman year had consisted of arguing with her b.i.t.c.hy roommates and mooning over her biology TA. She believed my own dorm-room dramas could be put on hold for a year or two while we grooved on life in Europe. But of course, nothing could wait, and now the world sparkles on without my mother.

When I look back up at the real boy, we have five more seconds of Coolfest USA, but then it's as if we've both been tapped by the same lightning rod of goofiness. We suddenly smile at one another, not proper social smiles, but wide, stupid ones: gums prominently displayed, throats wreathed with impending laughter.

"h.e.l.lo," I say. Closer, I see that he might be older than me. Not by much. A few years? He has charming crinkles around his brown eyes that hint at copious nicotine consumption and ... could it be? ... tanning beds.

"h.e.l.lo," he says, imitating my soprano tone, my congeniality. And so I have my social cue to let the games begin.

"I think I am a new employee," I say, employing a musical accent of no discernable origin.

"Indeed," he says, "you are the new girl." On the desk in front of him are vintage valentines, hundreds of them, scalloped and sepia along the edges. Sweet Jesus, Valentine's Day! Next month's doomsday holiday. But compared to Christmas, Valentine's Day seems good-hearted, communal: there will be many, many blue people eating chocolates by themselves and watching bad TV.

He gently stacks the valentines and puts them in a shoe box. He very officiously claps his hands, then takes a circus peanut out of the bowl next to the cash register, holds it up to me, Communion-style, and smiles. "Greetings, new girl."

And so I am the new girl, pierced with-well, I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned-happiness as I think of my fellow students, my "friends" at Woodrow Wilson High School, who are already in cla.s.s and wearing their jeans and T-shirts, their bright sweatpants ensembles and their flat boots with soles like pork cutlets that are currently the rage among the blond and dullardly ma.s.ses. Oh, if they could see me now, that old gang of mine! My nails are perfectly arched blood-black roses, and as I reach out to take the coral candy, what I think is this: the aesthetic of my life has improved about one hundred and five percent.

But then the boy yanks the candy back and whisper-shrieks: "Never, ever touch one of these. Seriously, you'll get hepat.i.tis B. Or C. You'll get the G.o.dd.a.m.n alphabet of hepat.i.tis." He returns it to the bowl with a shudder, then gives me a brilliant smile. "People think: Hotmotherf.u.c.kin' d.a.m.n, free candy, circus peanuts, well, holy smokes. My parents loved circus peanuts when they were kids. Ooh, how very charmingly retro, how admirably thematic. Yum!" He shudders. "They stick their hand in the bowl: filthy fingers, scabby cuticles. Sure, they've just pumped gas or used the facilities; sometimes they grab for a circus peanut whilst," he says, making his voice schoolmarmish for that one beat, "they are picking their nose."

"Yum," I say. "Delish."

He takes a chocolate from the mahogany box next to the circus peanuts. "These, however, are too good to resist. The woman across the street makes them." I want to say that I am well aware of Erika's Erotic Confections, that I know a thing or two about Thirty-Eighth Street, but then who likes a know-it-all? He holds the box out to me, and though I don't really want any communal candy after the germ lecture, I pop a chocolate in my mouth anyway: rum, vanilla, cinnamon, the center a surprise of crumbling meringue ... it's like a piece of pie jammed into a chocolate. I offer up an o.r.g.a.s.mic eye roll.

"Right? Mmm ... Moroccan Meringue." We chew our chocolates, and the slight bob of his Adam's apple tells me that we are swallowing in unison.

"So. I've only seen you in here about a million times."

I have the joy of remembrance, of recognition; my heart a muscled little purple cow jumping over the moon, my throat coated with sugar.

"So what's your name, new girl?"

I hesitate before I rock the nickname: "I'm Sandi."

"As in Beach? As in Duncan?" He chortles. He must a.s.sume I'm devastated by his minor witticisms, because he follows up with a quick "Hey, I'm not winning any prizes in the name department either. My name is Bradley." He motions holding a baby, rocking it back and forth. "What shall I call my little prince: Ian? Jonathan? Holden? Uh ... no, those all sound kind of tacky. I'm going for Bradley. I'll call him Brad! How sonorous, how very magical: Braaad."

I laugh, loud and horsey. "Brad!"

He rewards me with a smile; he holds his hand out to me. "Nice to meet you, Sandi."

"As in Nista!" I say. "Nice to meet you, too." His grip is perfect, neither too tight nor too loose.

"Sandi?" He opens his eyes wide. He says my name again, this time with a short I. "Sandi? Nista? Sandinista!"

Back in the day, my mother wore a safety pin in her nostril, Siouxsie Sioux eyeliner and leather pants. She jammed out to the hard-core bands and the political bands, and her favorite was the Clash. She named me after their seminal alb.u.m Sandinista! She was deeply drawn to their lead singer, Joe Strummer, not in any random wh.o.r.ebag groupie sort of way, but in the way of loneliness, of poetry.

I shrug. "My mother loved the Clash."

"Is there an exclamation point at the end?"