The Second Chance Store by Lauren Bravo

Author:Lauren Bravo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

30

“Let’s get you a job.”

It was a quiet Thursday morning, made quieter by Silent Harvey being on steaming duty while St. Michael lay on the back-room sofa beneath a large beach hat, staving off a migraine. The threat of the migraine loomed, somehow, over the whole shop. Even the contestants on Ken Bruce’s PopMaster were doing badly.

Harvey was working at a snail’s pace through a rack of shirts, steaming with the precision of an Edwardian butler, paying particular attention to the small sections of fabric between the buttons. Connie was wrestling with an inflatable pool float shaped like the turd emoji, a task that threatened even Connie’s eternal poise.

The shop bore the evidence of fads and micro crazes from across many decades. But while sixties and seventies knick-knacks were genuinely desirable and eighties and nineties items had become collectible kitsch, it was mostly newer ephemera that flooded the back room and clogged up the shelves. Cinema-style light boxes. Mugs with mustaches on them. Giant hairclips encrusted with plastic pearls. Fairy lights shaped like cacti, adult coloring books, plastic flower crowns, cushions shaped like alpacas, salt and pepper shakers shaped like pugs, gin-scented lip balms and gin-scented bath bombs and gin-scented candles and Hey Sexy Lady: The Gangnam Style Workout. Ring holders shaped like tattooed hands and flowerpots shaped like breasts and more ring holders decorated with signs of the zodiac. Rose gold everything. Decorative boxes of matches and pastel-colored A4 prints that said “But first: cronuts.” I Can Has Cheezburger: The Annual. Finger skateboards and Pikachu onesies and wire head-massagers and velvet sleep masks and makeup bags shaped like slices of watermelon and miniature washing lines to hang up Polaroid photos and unicorn yoga mats and phone cases painted with tiny, freeform vulvas and countless other souvenirs from times too recent to have acquired any nostalgic value but not recent enough to have retained any monetary value, either.

Gwen felt a twinge of melancholy whenever she sold one of these things, though it was hard to say why. If a person had space in their life and heart for an inflatable drinks holder shaped like an avocado, who was she to deny them?

Connie was less open-minded. More than once now, Gwen had watched her lean across the counter, place a hand on top of a customer’s hand as though sharing a profound secret, and tell them: “You don’t need this crap.” What Connie expected to happen after this was unclear. What did happen was that the customer usually bought the crap anyway, scowling.

Today, Gwen was counting jigsaw pieces. The first time Lise had asked Gwen to do this she had laughed, believing it to be a joke. Now, she scrabbled to write “352” on the nearest Post-it note before looking up at Connie.

“Let’s get you a job,” Connie said again, successfully propping the turd against a floor lamp and turning to face her. She said it the same way she said “let’s get you a taxi” and “I’m buying you a gin.

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