“You,” he said, searching for the key to the store. “What are you doing here so early?”
He was genuinely surprised, Teresa could tell — there wasn’t a hint of malice in his voice. “Just a few minutes is all,” she replied.
“Well, don’t expect to get off early,” he said, holding the door open for her. The giant round oak clock read twenty minutes to nine, and without needing to be told, Teresa walked quietly to the back of the store, through the archway blocked off with a thick beige curtain, and to the aisles and aisles of boots and sandals.
She and Candy had a small worktable near the back door, all of the inventory ledgers neatly stacked, the single rolling chair waiting. The floor was cement, and all day came the echo of their clicking shoes as they searched for a requested pair from the stock shelf, or the scrape of the ladder being pulled into place. A second phone could be accessed from their desk, its bell to be answered by the third ring if Mr. Carson failed to get it at the front of the store. A large floor fan, for the moment, sat turned off. The room, Teresa realized, was actually quiet for once. She listened to the silence, the clock’s tick, the slight creak from one of the shelves settling, everything so faint she could hear the shuffle of Mr. Carson’s newspaper out front as he turned the page, then the quiet again, as if he were thinking.
She knew Candy had arrived when Mr. Carson’s deep-throated but friendly voice greeted her, a little muffled because he’d been caught with his mouth full. The two exchanged morning banter with an unforced pleasantry, something he rarely did with Teresa.
It was not yet nine. Candy finally parted the thick beige curtain and walked across to their worktable. She smiled wanly at Teresa but did not say good morning, passing a few minutes shuffling papers, and when the clock finally struck nine, she turned to Teresa with a clipboard and a stack of salmon-colored index cards.
“Will you do the inventory of the shoes on those racks over there?” Candy pointed to the far wall. “We’re getting a shipment sometime next week, so Mr. Carson is planning to put those ones on sale.”
“Of course,” Teresa replied, taking the clipboard and then going over to the worktable for a sharpened pencil. It would be slow and tedious work, checking each of the boxes, noting the condition of each pair of shoes — some of them had lost their shine after being tried on so many times — but it would keep Teresa occupied until lunchtime.
Fifteen minutes passed in quiet. They were intolerable, lunchtime forever off. This is what it was to be in love, Teresa thought, her heart possessing complete control, allowing her neither rest nor distraction, relentless and constant as a star. She looked at the clock yet again, the long hours until noon.
She was on the ladder when she heard Candy’s footsteps approaching, and she looked down in time to see her appear at the front of the aisle, arms crossed.
“You were here so early today,” Candy said. It had not been a question, but she looked up at Teresa with a measure of genuine curiosity. But there was something else, too, Teresa saw, a vague shadow of suspicion.
“I was up at dawn,” she told Candy. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, so I ended up leaving my apartment very early this morning.”
“You have a record player?” Candy asked.
“Well … no, I don’t,” Teresa answered, but now her admission felt almost like a defeat, like when the salesman at Stew-art’s Appliances had approached her the one time she dared step inside, the way he had asked her, “Are you interested in purchasing this television, miss?”
“I have one,” Candy said. “Pricey.”
“I’d imagine so.”
Candy moved fully into the aisle now, her arms still crossed in front of her.
“You going to buy one someday?”
She looked down at Candy, unsure of how to answer. “Maybe I’ll save for one.”
“They’re expensive, you know. Did you know you have to buy needles all the time? Or else they scratch your records if they’re not sharp enough.”
“What do you mean, needles?”
“For the record player,” Candy answered, her mouth opening a little in surprise when Teresa looked back at her blankly. “The arm on the record player,” she explained. “It has a tiny needle that fits exactly — exactly — into the groove of the record.”
“I see,” said Teresa. They remained looking at each other, Teresa on top of the ladder and Candy at the bottom, arms still folded, the silence drawing longer, more awkward. She realized then that maybe Candy had seen her in front of the record store.
“All of that — the needles and the records — starts to add up. That’s a lot of money for a salesgirl,” said Candy.
“Who bought yours?” Teresa asked.
Candy’s arms tightened in their fold. “A boy I’ve been seeing.”
“That’s generous of him.”
“He’s a sweetheart,” said Candy.
Though she was on the ladder and above Candy, Teresa felt vulnerable and intimidated, as if it were not Candy at the bottom of the ladder but Mr. Carson’s awkward teenage son, trying to look up her skirt. Candy’s banter was odd — she rarely spoke to Teresa except to give orders.
“I saw you,” Candy finally said. “In front of the record shop. I was on my way to get a couple of doughnuts for me and Mr. Carson and I saw you standing out by the window.”
How long? she wanted to ask Candy. Teresa pictured her standing across the street the entire time, silently watching, with hardly anyone else around to notice either of them. She imagined seeing herself as Candy had, looking at a still figure admiring the glacial turns of the records hanging from fishline, the shimmer of the window, and how easy it was to guess what she desired.
But there was nothing — was there? — in Candy making note of her standing in front of the shop. Teresa looked down at the clipboard and the salmon-colored index cards as if they might give her an idea of what to say. Candy, though, spoke first.
“You stand in front of store windows a lot,” she said.
Teresa swallowed. “I like to watch the variety shows at lunch,” she said calmly.
“The singers,” said Candy. “I didn’t know you sang.”
“Well, I don’t—”
But Candy interrupted. “I saw you yesterday, too. Riding in Dan Watson’s truck.” She looked up at Teresa, and the tone in her voice was unmistakable: accusatory, yet not mean spirited, a flat statement that dared to be denied, as if she were confronting Teresa with an empty cashbox, wordless, yet with the facts in hand, a fact that needed to be explained.
“He was taking me home,” Teresa said cautiously, the words feeling too deliberate. She knew immediately that she would not be able to say either too little or too much.
Candy already had a story in her head, standing there in her pleated purple skirt, a thin gold bracelet shimmering on her wrist, her blue blouse with a stitched pattern on the collar, a sheer pink scarf knotted at the side of her long throat. She shopped at department stores rather than make her own clothes from Simplicity patterns from TG&Y — that much Teresa could tell just by looking at her, though in truth she knew nothing about Candy. Candy gave her things to do, instructed her as if she were the boss when in fact they were hired to perform the same tasks. A pretty girl who shopped at department stores, who owned a record player, was being courted by a sweet boy, and yet somehow still wanted more and could not hide it.
Teresa knew she shouldn’t say any more, but she wanted Candy to know and not know at the same time: “He plays guitar and he’s teaching me,” Teresa said, and the moment she said it, she realized for the first time that maybe her own life could be an existence that others could dream about. That everyone, at one time or another, stood near a window and looked out, imagining a life that was not their own. “How do you know him?” she asked, because she wanted to ask the questions now, not just answer them.