Lowboy by John Wray

Author:John Wray
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Literary, Police Procedural, Psychological fiction, Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Fiction - General, Boys, Schizophrenia, Psychological, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, General
ISBN: 9780374194161
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-03-09T07:38:27.274000+00:00

Some time later they passed the window of a bakery and stopped in front of it and looked inside. She appraised the shelves of bright potbellied jars and he shifted and blinked and sidestepped his reflection. With his head behind hers they looked like a twoheaded baby. He liked the idea of that. “What’s in there?” he said to Emily, but he’d already seen for himself. The wall behind the counter was graced by a menagerie of pastel forms. Green and pink clots cupped in pleated waxpaper. Green for her afterimage, pink for his skin. He could tell by her expression that she was inspecting them closely.

“This place only makes cupcakes,” she murmured. “Sometimes there’s a line around the block.”

He leaned back on his heels. “Cupcakes?”

“Not worth waiting in line for,” she said. “Too much frosting.” But her forehead was pushed flush against the glass.

“You want one,” he said.

She stuck out her tongue. “To be honest with you, Heller, I couldn’t—”

“Wait here.”

Before she could answer the powderblue shopdoor was closing behind him. People were standing alone and in clusters, sighing and whispering, running their fingertips along the glass. Across the top of the case sat the row that he’d seen from the street. That part of it was easy. A girl behind the counter smiled and asked him what he wanted.

The rest of them are thinking, he said to himself. Thinking it over. They’re having a hard time making up their minds.

“What can I get you?” the girl said again. She was taller than he was by at least half a foot. There was some kind of construction underneath her: some sort of a platform. To lend stature or the illusion thereof. He decided to keep the conversation brief.

“Cupcakes,” he said, pointing at the display.

The girl sighed and propped her elbows on the counter. “What can I get you?” she said a third time, as though he hadn’t spoken. He felt like the stranger in the first scene of a Western. The encounter at the saloon. When he repeated his order her head rolled lackadaisically to one side.

“Cupcakes is the only thing we sell.”

“Those,” said Lowboy. He tapped the case with his knuckles. “The pink ones and the green.”

Her head clicked woodenly into place. “Angelfood cake and red velvet.”

Lowboy blinked at her and nodded.

“Which do you want?” said the girl. “What kind?” A second girl slid into view behind her. Not a girl at all but a woman with a wrinkled mouselike face.

“Give me the cupcakes,” he said under his breath.

The girl’s eyes dug into him. Her pink mouth hung open. “Red velvet’s the favorite.”

“Give me those. The red velvets.”

“How many would you like, sir?” the woman cut in. The girl moved the least possible distance away from the glass. Gawking at him pigeon-eyed and leering.

“How many?” said the woman. “The red velvets are $2.75.”

Lowboy considered her question. The sun through the window made the two of them look spotlit. “I don’t know the answer to that,” he said finally.

The girl started laughing.

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