The Sharp Time by Mary O'Connell

Author:Mary O'Connell [O'Connell, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-11-07T23:00:00+00:00

FRIDAY

PLAYING WITH THE CHEETAHS

I’m wearing starlet shoes and drinking coffee as I hobble from my parked car to the Pale Circus, a short icy journey that, to an indoors-loving girl like me, is as treacherous as a Himalayan trek on stilts. And so I nearly wipe out in my vintage stilettos when I hit a slick patch. I’m correcting myself, arms arched like I’m surfing, when I notice that the headless mannequin is wearing a long white parka with a full and fluffy hood. Our Lady of the Snows. When I pull open the door of the Pale Circus, I find Henry Charbonneau seated at the cash desk. Despite his general quality of bedazzlement—the sweet celery eyes, the ironic look of heartbreak on a face far, far too pretty for anyone to refuse, his startling hands, the knuckles wide as soup spoons—Henry Charbonneau certainly disappoints me. Wherefore art thou, Bradley?

“Good morning, pretty girl, good morning,” Henry Charbonneau calls out, as if he were a pet-store parrot with green and blue plumage. “We’ve got to get you some keys. Your own set, dearie-doo.”

“Okay,” I say. I will certainly kick off my stilettos later, but for now I hammer across the wooden floor in my lovely and perilous beaded shoes. With each wooden whackuh whackuh Henry Charbonneau winces, his central nervous system unglued by my shoes. Oh, he does so love the varnished hardwood of the Pale Circus.…

“Bradley called me this morning at home, and, apparently, he wasn’t ‘feeling well,’ ” Henry says, hooking his fingers around those two words and giving an exasperated smile, as if we were comrades in the know and Bradley existed merely as a drunken oaf we tolerated out of sheer goodwill.

But I offer up only a concerned and quizzical Florence Nightingale expression, as if Bradley has a new and surprising diagnosis and I am pondering potential sympathies: A balloon bouquet? Banana cream pie?

“I hope he feels better soon.”

“Oh, I’m fairly sure it’s nothing serious and that he’ll be ‘feeling better soon,’ ” Henry Charbonneau says, finger-quoting yet again. “Just as soon as he’s had a few hours to sleep off his hangover.”

And thinking, Wow, overkill, dude, what with all the bitchy finger quoting, I take off my coat and set my coffee cup on the counter.

Though it has a lid, Henry looks at my coffee cup with alarm, as if I’m about to dump it all over the party dresses slung next to the cash register, or maybe slam dance over and splash my coffee on the white fur parka in the display window, an homage to PETA, as the fur is really just acrylic fluff.

I take another sip of my coffee and he rubs his hands together, itching to give me instruction. Like all bosses, Henry Charbonneau believes the wheels of industry should be in motion at all times, that workers should be working, people, working! I realize that he’s just a hipper and certainly more handsome version of bald Herb Winters, the manager at

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.