The Sharp Time Read Free Page A

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: Hello, 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 Sex 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 jackass, 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