It’s not that James is a bad guy. I mean, he’s not at all. He’s always polite and nice to little kids after they drop their double scoops on the floor. When the old people come in at five o’clock for their dessert, he always speaks loud into their hearing aids. But he’s just really quiet and only talks about work at work. I tried to fish around when I first started working with him, asking him about movies and books and stuff, but he just stuttered and stammered and finally said, “I think we need more butter pecan.”
What am I supposed to do with that?
He’s really skinny, too. Like, super model skinny. And super tall. Once I saw him running down the hall between second and third periods and I thought his legs would snap out from underneath him and he would shatter into pieces that would slide all the way down the hall to my locker. It’s kind of sad, though. I don’t think he has any friends. If I didn’t work with him, I wouldn’t know who he was. He’s the kid in the yearbook who everyone sees and says, “Who’s that? Does he even go to our school?”
But what can you do, you know? I tried to talk to him and all I got was “butter pecan.” There’s not a lot to build on.
So when I work with James, I try to pick tasks that play to our strengths. My job is Music Supervisor. He is In Charge Of Everything Else. We’re allowed to play the radio there, so I always switch it to KUXV, the college station that plays the good music. We’re supposed to keep it on the adult-contemporary station, but I can’t work at the Scooper Dooper and listen to Céline Dion at the same time. It’s just not gonna happen, I’m sorry. I have my limits.
I flipped the station as soon as I put my hat on, and I could see James already getting twitchy about breaking the radio station rule, but he didn’t say anything (just like always). Pretty soon I was humming along with the Ramones and “Blitzkrieg Bop”-ping to the register whenever somebody wanted a room-temperature Coke with a non-bendy straw. These customers are nothing if not picky.
We worked pretty much in silence for the next couple of hours as the sun set outside and the mall got more crowded with couples and families coming out of the movie theaters next door. Judging from the number of guys practicing their karate moves on each other, most of them had seen some kung-fu movie. The DJ on the radio was doing a good job of playing decent music, and James and I stayed at opposite ends of the store. A whole gaggle of kids and their parents came in around eight forty-five, fifteen minutes until the mall closed at nine. (It never fails that people will walk in at the last possible minute. I suspect it’s a major conspiracy to annoy me.) It was a normal Saturday—nothing too exciting, nothing crazy.
I really miss normal Saturdays.
The kids and their parents were all wearing bright blue T-shirts that said YOUTH CHOIR GLEE-A-THON! on the front, which just goes to show how little parents love their kids, if they’re willing to let them wear a shirt like that in public. James, who lives for this sort of scooping action, was already reaching for sugar cones, and I was about to ask the first customer if he wanted a free sample (said with a Scooper Dooper smile, naturally) when I heard my favorite sarcastic DJ talking through the speakers.
“Okay, someone just put this in my hand. It’s a new single—we got it on Friday. Local band, the Do-Gooders, blah, blah, blah. Call in and tell me if you hate it. I haven’t heard it yet. It’s called ‘Audrey, Wait!’”
The ice cream scoop fell out of my hand and hit the floor so hard that the handle broke. I could hear the first chords and even though I had only heard them strung together once before, I knew the song by heart.
“You said your piece and now I’ve got to say mine! I had you and you strung me on the liiiiiinnnnneeeeee!”
When I first heard the song at the Do-Gooders show last summer, I thought that was the worst moment of my life. Wrong-ola. This was the worst moment ever.
“Straw-berr-eee! Straw-berr-eee!” The kids were starting to chant in a non-gleeful way, completely unaware of the fact that I had gone numb. My Scooper Dooper smile was still plastered on my face and I couldn’t force it to go away.
James gave me an odd look, handed me another scooper, and said, “Scoop now, think later.”
“But…are you hearing this?” How could he be so calm! It was outrageous. “Do you know what this is?”
“Um, no. Just scoop now, think later,” he repeated, like he was the Dalai Lama of frozen dairy desserts or something. I wondered if he wasn’t aware of the whole dramatic situation and was just sharing his personal credo with me. “Hi, sir, how can I help you?”
I turned to the first kid in front of me and I could tell I was freaking him out. “What flavor?” I asked through my teeth, even as Evan’s words were spilling out of the radio and falling all over me.
“Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait! Audrey, wait!” It sounded as good on the radio as it had that night at the Jukebox. Goddamnit.
“Straw-berr-eee! Straw-berr-ee!” The kids were now singing the words in time to the chorus and I suddenly understood why people sometimes show up to work with a gun and a grudge. “Dad, this is a good song!” one of the littlest girls said, her pigtails flying every which way as she clapped her hands.
“It is,” her dad agreed.
“You crucified my heart, took every part, and hung them out to drrrrryyyyyyy!”
“I’ve heard better,” I offered.
“Excuse me?”