Instead I just smile at the gal. “You’re the exact reason that we open up shop every day,” I say. “We’re in the business of helping people buy books.”

“This is just like that Meg Ryan movie.” She squeals. “You know, where the nice girl has the small shop and she falls in love with the man with the big shops?”

Curtis fucking sings, “You’ve Got Mail!?”

“You’ve Got Mail,” she cries and she laughs. “Oh, I love that movie! Do you have that here? DVDs?”

This sloth won’t use her cookbooks. She will buy a small shelf at Target and have someone nail it into the wall in her kitchen. She will line up those cookbooks and love the way they look and throw a pizza in the microwave and tear into the DVD of You’ve Got Mail that she’ll truck across town to buy. She’ll never come back here again.

When she goes, Curtis gets it somehow. He knows he’s done.

“Dude,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I thought I was helping you out. That chick was hot. Bangable hot.”

“You don’t give out my address to strangers.”

“She said she knew you. And did I say bangable? Mad bangable.”

Let it be known that I only punched him once and not in the face. You better remember that, Beck. It’s not like I’m some monster and it’s not like I hurt him. I fired him, man to man, boss to worker. It wasn’t personal and it wasn’t hardcore and that fat lady was the first customer he treated well since week fucking one. Also, you’re not bangable, Beck. You’re beautiful. There’s a difference.

26

THE day after our sleepover without sex, you asked me to meet up with you in midtown. Curtis was gone and I was alone in the shop, but the day after a woman is naked in your apartment, everyone knows the only thing to say to her is yes. We picked up your new cable box. The line was a mile long. Then you sent me home.

And it’s been more of the same for the past two weeks. Today, you asked me to meet you in front of a Starbucks in Herald Square, where I stand now as you kiss me hello (on the cheek). You’re not gonna sit on my lap in an overstuffed chair and lick whipped cream off my upper lip. You’re in get-it-done daytime mode and Christmas shoppers walking by probably think I’m your gay best friend. My dick hurts, Beck. Where’s my holiday?

“So the good news is, I know exactly what I want.”

“You do?” I say and I hope you’ll ask me to eat you out in the bathroom at Starbucks.

“I want to get my mom those headphones that double as earmuffs.”

“Ah.” Digital earmuffs are the physical opposite of oral sex.

“And the better news is, I have a coupon,” you say and we are on our way into Macy’s.

Now you start in about money. You’re strapped for cash. I pretend that I didn’t read the e-mails you exchanged with your father this morning. I know that you’re waiting to see if your old man the Captain is gonna help you out.

We are in the ladies’ shoes section (didn’t you want earmuffs?) when you ask me about Curtis. I tell you that I caught him stealing and fired him. I do not tell you it was because he gave you my address. You sigh; he seemed like a good kid. Ha. We wander through jewelry (didn’t you just need earmuffs?), and you want to know when I’ll hire a new clerk. I tell you that the only thing more impossible than finding good help is running the store on my own. You nod and agree that most people are unemployable and is this really how it’s going to be, small talk about résumés and shit?

“Wanna go for a ride?” you say and if you mean that you’re gonna go for a ride on my dick, then yes.

But instead, you take my hand and lead me onto the escalator. It is crowded and sweaty and Christmassy and I would rather be balls deep in a trash can. There is no privacy on an escalator at Macy’s in December, but you’re a little performer, and here you go.

“So, my grad school adviser, the one on sabbatical who’s on a grant at Princeton.” And you pause, as if the Mexican chick in front of you cares. “He wants pages before we break, which is obviously ridiculous.”

“What’s his name again?” I say even though I have never asked.

“Paul,” you say and you don’t offer a last name and the conversation is over, thank God. We get off at the fourth floor. It’s loud and smells like pretzels and perfume. A Miley Cyrus song plays and it’s too hopped up in here. Loud skanks picking fights with each other assault my senses and I ask you if the headphones are on this floor and you tell me you need to return something.

Fortunately, the line at the Young Sluts Department isn’t that long because most Young Sluts can’t afford to buy shit. As it turns out you weren’t telling me the whole story and when it’s our turn, you pull out leggings and a wrinkled receipt out of your bag and the poor girl behind the counter has never done a return and, of course, we have to wait.

“Is there a reason this is taking so long?” you snip.

“Well, you bought these more than a hundred days ago.”

“So?”

And holy shit, you really are broke because why else would you be digging up pants from three months past? You grab the pants and the receipt and you shove them in your bag.

“I’ll just come back when there’s a manager.”

“Fine by me.”

You are stung now; you were depending on that refund. You take it out on everyone in the Young Sluts, plowing through rayon and neon without saying excuse me. A couple of bitches say they want to kick your ass, but they won’t; they’re in high school, they are happy just to call you a beeatch. I tell you to slow down and you don’t listen and I almost love what a cunt you can be because one of these days you’re gonna tie me to a bed and slap me and lord over me the way you lord over all the people who get in your way. You’re so revved up and I want to play with you and I do.

“Beck.”

“What?”

“Look, I don’t know shit about girls’ clothes, but those pants that you were trying to return, they look good.”

“They don’t look good on me.”

“Can I see?”

You fight a smile but you lose. “Here?”

“Yeah,” I say and you’re walking more slowly now and there’s nobody monitoring the dressing room because it really is Christmas and Santa knows I’m a good boy. We walk down the corridor of dressing rooms toward the handicap one on the end. You don’t tell me why you’re pushing that door open and you don’t invite me into the room but I follow. I sit down on the bench and you stand in front of the three-panel mirror. You pull the pants out of your bag and what is wrong with you that you’re still thinking about pants?

You sigh. “See, what I really want are jeggings.”

But what you really need is an orgasm and I tell you to try them on. You are blushing, naughty and a door slams and someone’s muttering get a room and we did get a room, we have this room and your furry boots are off and you’re unzipping your jeans and they’re so snug that when you pull them down your panties start to go with them.

“Come here.”

“Joe. Shh.”

I motion for you to come here. Because you are shy at heart, you pull your pants up and even start to zip them as you walk over to me. I look up at you and you look down on me and you start to crouch down and reach for my belt buckle but no. I grab your hand, firm.

“Stand up.”

You do. And when I start to unzip your pants you step closer and wiggle and help me get you out of those pants and I get you all the way out of them and throw them at the mirror and finally, at long last, in the Young Sluts Department of Macy’s in Herald Square, Christmas comes early. I taste you. I lick you. And when you cum you cum at the top of your lungs.

I love shopping.

Sex clears the mind and the orgasm agrees with you. We leave the dressing room and you decide to give the pants you were trying to return to your mother—I knew we were never getting any earmuffs. You hold my hand hard and tight and we ride the escalator four flights back down and you do not want to browse anymore. The music softens as “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” begins, my favorite sad holiday song. You ask me what I’m doing for the holiday, and I tell you that I’m working, of course, and you tell me that you’re going to have to get a job. You lead me into men’s hats and you pick up a red and green wool monstrosity. I shake you off.