CHASTITY

The sound of breaking glass doesn’t even turn my head anymore.  Working as a picture framer, the back room at the gallery is a mixture of nail guns, glass crashing in the scrap bucket, the lame piped in gallery music, and low conversations between co-workers.

My friend Andrea works here with me at Westwood Gallery and Framing.  She was a model for a while, and trained as a flight attendant after high school except the airline went belly up before she could start. 

We met at the Humane Society on one of my volunteer days and she was there doing some court ordered community service.  She made a bad decision one night and egged an ex-boyfriend’s car with four dozen eggs.  Found out that was what’s known as a misdemeanor.  We bonded over homeless mutts, tragic rescue intakes, and cleaning cat boxes.

Someday I’d love to have my own rescue shelter.  Save all the animals I can’t save there. 

I was unemployed when we met.  Taking care of Mom had kept me busy for the most part, but when money started becoming even more of an issue, she encouraged me to step out.  She knew I needed the push.  Andrea helped me get the job here at the gallery, even though I had zero retail or picture framing experience.  She’s as close to a best friend as I have.

As close to any friend as I have.  Moving seven times before I turned sixteen didn’t lay the ground work for building lasting friendships.  Toss that in the blender with my facination with Disney princess movies, my voluptous shape, and my brain’s unique way of evaporating my power of speech around strangers, and you can safely say I was far from winning any popularity contests.

Andrea is typing away on her phone standing next to me while I work on a family photo.  She looks like a cross between Whitney Houston and Heidi Klum, minus about eight inches in height.  Oh, and the freckles. She has a nose full of them, and flawless, deep olive skin with runway-model cheekbones.  Yeah, she’s that girl.  The one men will break their neck to ogle. And whenever we are together, I’m definitely her wing-man.

Woman.

Wing-woman?  Is that a word?

Well, I may be on her wing, but I don’t feel like a woman.  I’m grown up on the outside, but not on the inside.  Not much about being an adult appeals to me to be honest.  I’m tough when I need to be.  I can take care of myself and others, but deep inside, I wish someone would take care of me. 

The thing that drew me to Andrea at first was when I told her my favorite movie she didn’t laugh in my face.  Almost anything Disney will have me snuggled on the couch, wide-eyed with anticipation. But then there’s Beauty and the Beast. I can recite every line in my sleep.  Sing every song with gleeful emotion into my hairbrush, hopping from my bed to the floor, spinning around and around.  I’m not afraid of a dramatic drop to my knees either for the big finish.

Favorite food?  I’d go with cotton candy and cupcakes if it wouldn’t rot my teeth and send me into a sugar coma.  I’m a fan of Mac and Cheese as long as the pasta noodles are shaped like cartoon characters or circus animals.

I sleep with more stuffed animals than pillows, and I still have to have a nightlight too.  Not just any nightlight either, but the one that casts pink stars around it.

Andrea is giggling softly to her self as I’m working on finishing up framing a collage of family photos.  Clipping the fasteners into the back ridge of the frame.  Before she needed to tend to her phone, Andrea and I were discussing my most recent run in with our area manager, Eddie.

She tugs the hair tie out of the messy bun on top of her head, flips her hair up and over her head a couple times then puts it right back up flashing me her best mother hen look.  “Then what did he say?”  She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, making a face like she’s just sucked on a slice of lime.  I’d just finished recounting my miserable morning with Eddie.  A miserable morning which comes on the heels of a miserable few years. 

“He said he wouldn’t tell Julie, but to remember he’s doing me a favor.”

“That man is suuuuuuch a prick.  That is going to come back to haunt you, mark my words.”  She stabs a finger in the air toward my nose.

“I’m sure it will.  Then, when Julie walked in after and called me upstairs my heart stopped.”  I brush my bangs back; I need a haircut but that has not been in the budget.  Andrea has been trimming my bangs for me for the last six months during our lunch breaks.

She sticks her tongue out at one of our co-workers who is staring at her.  She gets that a lot, even here at work; the guys just can’t seem to help themselves.  The back room at the gallery is fitted with five enormous, flat-topped tables, where we do the framing for the artwork both for the gallery displays and client custom work.

I like the work itself quite a lot.  It’s creative, hands-on, and doesn’t require all that much human interaction.  Or reading.  Because although that is a simple task for most people, for me letters like to spin and find ways to make it impossible for me to make sense out of them.

But, when I’m on my own, when no one is watching or waiting for me, I love books.  Stories.  I just need to take my time, so although most people would think I would hate reading I don’t.  I just don’t like doing it in front of people. 

Waiting on the customers here isn’t so bad.  You show them what you think will look good on their artwork, make some small talk if necessary.

Andrea looks down at her freshly manicured fingernails as she turns to say something.  “Bet it was a surprise when Julie offered you a promotion insteading of firing you.”

I smile down at the piece of artwork I’m sliding into a frame and Andrea hops up and takes a seat on the table next to me, leaning down closer to keep our conversation private. 

None of the other employees know I’m being transferred to our newest flagship store in Belvedere, three hours north of here.  It’s a very upscale, vacation community that surrounds Lake Sherwood.  You can’t touch a property around there for less than the upper six figures.  But it’s straight out of a magazine.  The houses are all set behind long, stone fences, looking like fortresses along the shore.

Mom and I used to go up that way for lunch, or just to drive around the lake sometimes on the days she was feeling up to it.  When the sun would go down, I always looked at the houses, the lights on inside, wondering what it would be like to be on the inside looking out instead of the other way around.  It always reminded me of The Great Gatsby.  I used to look for the single green light, far away across the lake.  Thinking of Daisy and Gatsby.

Anyway, I start at the new store tomorrow, and I’m thankful my mom’s old beat-up Corolla is still humming and I have a half tank of gas to get me there.  Hopefully.

They offered me an assistant manager position, and both the money and the change of pace are welcome.  What isn’t welcome is Eddie will be there as well.

I flip over the large photo portrait and secure the corners with the metal frame brackets, blowing an errant tendril of mud-colored brown hair out of my eyes. 

“I almost punched Eddie when Julie asked if I would mind moving.  If I would be willing to give up my apartment.”  I heave out a breath, which takes more effort than it should, the anxiety still tight in my belly.  “I had to tell him everything this morning when he found me sleeping on the sofa in Julie’s office.  I hated it.  He just smiled the entire time.”

Julie is the regional manager of the chain of galleries and picture framing shops I work for, and Eddie is the area manager.  Julie is as by the book as they come, and if she knew I used my key to come in here last night and camp out, I’d be at the unemployment office right now, not getting promoted.

There is a low thud starting in my temples as I tell her the rest.  “Julie offered to put me up in the same hotel where Eddie is staying.  That was so akward.  I panicked, said I had an aunt that lived near by just so I wouldn’t have to stay in the same place as him.  Good thing we get paid today, I will have to find someplace else and pay for it myself.  I doubt it will be as nice as the Hampton Inn she offered.”  I wince when I slip my finger on a piece of wire and it jabs me with a pin prick.

Eddie is married, but he has already made it clear he would be more than happy to entertain Andrea on the side.  Now he seems to be setting his eyes on me.  He’s a fifty-something, chain-smoking, cheating son-of-a-bitch, and my stomach turns every time he enters my personal space. 

He walked in early this morning and found me asleep on the couch in Julie’s office, snoring and drooling, dressed in a t-shirt, pink panties and nothing else. The contents of my duffel bag, which I usually keep in the car, were all over the floor of the office.  Because, as of yesterday, I don’t have anywhere to go.  That one duffel bag is everything I own.

It’s not even full.

“Your life sorta sucks right now, Cassie.  I’m sorry I can’t help.  I’ve been camping out at my Aunt’s house since Jimmy and I broke up.  I get it.  And losing your mom and Cherokee in the same month.”  Andrea drops her eyes and shoves her hands under her thighs.  “I heard Eddie’s wife left him too.”

That doesn’t surprise me.  But my mind is on my own predicament.

My throat tightens, like there is an egg or baseball lodged in there, and my hand shakes a little as I wire the back of the picture and turn it back over to clean the glass one more time.  Then I’ll wrap it up for the customer and move on to the next one.  I look down as I wipe the glass cleaner away, my reflection staring up at me with pity.  Or is it contempt?  I don’t know what I feel right now.  Even about myself.

The mention of Cherokee and Mom choke me up, and a burning tear drops onto the glass.  I quickly wipe it away with my thumb, not wanting Andrea to see.  Cherokee was my dog.  That doesn’t really describe him and his importance in my life, but he was a dog.

And, well, my mom was my mom. 

She was the kind of mom you sang ‘Proud Mary’ into your hairbrushes together.  She gave me enough boundaries to keep me safe but not so many I ever felt caged.  She brought home purple hair dye one Christmas Eve. We were flat broke and I knew Santa would be flying right on by our house that year.  So, with purple hair and a few strings of Christmas lights, she read Charles Dickens to me and we strung popcorn onto thread then draped it over the five-dollar tree she managed to bribe the guy at the corner tree lot to sell to her.  It made Charlie Brown’s tree look like the one outside of Rockefeller Center. 

Later on, she gave me the wisdom that only someone who knows they’re dying can give.  She made me smile and she made me want to take care of her until the last day.  Which I did.

She named me Chastity, but everyone calls me Cassie.

Her first breast cancer diagnosis came eight years ago, but the problems started long before that. Since Dad hightailed it out of our life when I was seven, Mom struggled to put food on our table.  She had a small disability check from the federal government, and a paltry pension, but when she passed away there was no way I could catch up on the rent that was already behind.

As of approximately twenty-four hours ago, I’m homeless.  I only have the possessions I managed to stuff into the duffel bag. Everything else is pad-locked in the apartment until there is a court date to finalize the eviction in thirty days.  If I don’t come up with the back rent and court costs, I’ll lose everything that’s left inside.

My life is a suck hole right now – Andrea is on the nose as far as that goes.  Hers isn’t much better. She’s got a nose for the wrong kind of men and it’s landed her in a similar financial situation as myself. 

“Well, maybe the move is good for you right now.”  Andrea hops down from her seat on the table and digs for her phone in the back pocket of her perfectly fitted jeans.

“Yeah, except I have exactly seventy-two dollars in my checking account and that is not enough for an apartment.  I’ll have to find a crumby motel for a month until I get some paychecks saved, but then I still owe the back rent on the other place, and if I don’t pay that then I lose everything.  Mom’s furniture, her jewelry, our photo albums.  Everything.”  I close my eyes and try to breathe.

The bell rings on the front door of the store, notifying us a new customer is in the shop, and someone is supposed to greet everyone that comes in.  It’s not my turn though, so I pivot on my heel and step forward to pull a long sheet of brown Kraft paper off the giant roll and wrap up the framed picture; it’s a smiling family, wearing jeans and matching white button-down oxfords, all sitting far too randomly in a park somewhere.

Andrea shuffles off the other station and I try to stave off the weight of everything that is spinning around in my head. When she sneaks back up behind me it makes me jump a foot off the ground.

“You’re up.  He’s back,” she whispers, japing a finger out toward the framing counter, and I screw up my face as I look at her, but she’s just snickering.

“It’s not my turn, I —”  A sudden hot flash takes over as I look out to see the customer striding through the clean white walls and dark oak floor of the gallery.  I’m too young for hot flashes, but it’s an affliction I’ve developed over the last couple months.  They are directly related to one person.  The one I’m looking at right now.

I look out toward the front counter and my breath catches in my throat, my stomach doing an Olympic gymnastics routine.

“When are you two just going to get to it?”  Andrea gives me a wicked smile and picks up my calculator and pen, handing them to me. 

“He’s not interested in me like that.”  The hot flash has my palms sweating, and red blotches form on my neck and chest.

“The hell he isn’t.”

“He’s just polite.  It’s just business.”

“What about the wine he brings you?  That doesn’t look like business.  And the way he looks at you.  He spends two hours here talking to you every time he comes in.”  She sighs dramatically as she looks out to see the man she’s nicknamed “Hulkerson” closing in on the long, custom-framing design counter toward the back of the store.  “You’ve talked to him more in the time he’s been coming here than you’ve talked to me in two years.  He probably knows more about you than anyone.  I listen when I go out there.”

“Yes, like I said, he’s polite and I am polite back.”

“I don’t see him being ‘polite’ with any of the other staff here.” She makes little air quotes as she says it.  “And if you’re not here when he comes in, he leaves.  I mean, you’re good at your job, but you’re not that good.  We’re not talking brain surgery here.  Besides, when I eavesdrop on your little polite business conversations, y’all ain’t talking no business.”  She snaps her head back and forth as she says it.  “I heard you telling him the names of your stuffed animals, for crissake. And he was listening.”

“Shut up, it’s not like that.  He asks me a lot of questions and I just answer.  He’s nice, Andrea.”  I glare at her and my mouth is watering.  “And, he says he likes what I pick out for the posters.  He’s just getting things done for the Wine Distributorship he owns, passing time.  Once the building is done and decorated, he won’t be back.  He just wants everything to be consistent.  Since I started with him, he just wants the same person.  That’s it.”

I stifle my groan because she’s right.  At least about part of it. 

From the first time I waited on him, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.  I’ll never tell anyone how I laid in bed that first night after he’d come in the store and imagined him sitting there next to me.  Then as time went on it was more.  Me wishing he would hold me in his lap.  Read to me.  Help me pick out my clothes.  Even brush my hair and give me a bath.  It still shocks me.  The fantasies I have about this stranger who would want nothing to do with me in that way.

But that’s not even the worst of it.  I think about all of him.  I wonder how he would feel as he pushed inside me.  How he would look without his clothes.  If all his dark facial hair is balanced out by more in other places.  I’ve never fantasized about anyone before him.  I’ve tried to masturbate when I think of him, but I can never quite get there. 

With all the strange thoughts I’ve had about him, I’ve decided there must be something wrong with me.  That part of me must be broken.  I’m a deviant.

No, no one would understand the things that go through my mind, and I’ll never tell. 

Andrea turns toward me, lowering her voice.  “Well, whatever.  You can tell yourself all sorts of stories, but I know if it was me I’d be climbing that like a tree and swinging from every branch.  That guy is a beast.  And I bet he’s got beast mode down low too.  Have you Googled him?”

“No!”  I snap at her.  She knows better.  The calculator and pen shake in my hand as I step toward the door out to the gallery floor.

“You’re a technophobe.  It’s not natural at your age.  Your phone is from the seventeenth century.  I would be embarrassed to pull that thing out in public.”  Andrea mocks me by flipping open an invisible phone, bobbing her perfectly arched eyebrows.

I laugh and shake my head, shouldering open the door. “Shut up.”

He’s at the counter.  I snap my eyes his way and he’s looking back at me with those eyes.  

Those eyes that remind me of black coffee.  Sometime I think I even see steam rising off of them, they draw me in, make me warm and giddy.  Just like a good Starbucks.  Gah, I’m a mess. 

Magnus Leonard. 

He sets down a stack of posters on the long design counter out front and my menopause symptoms kick in again when he looks back to the door where I’m standing.  “Technology is the root of all evil, Andrea.  I’ve never ‘Googled’ someone in my life and I’m not starting now.  And don’t you dare, either.”  I point at her with a scowl.  Part of the problem is even if I did have a computer, and internet and all those first world things, my spelling is so crazy even Google would scratch its head.  Not to meantion it would take me so long to figure out what I was reading in the search results, it’s just not worth it. 

I gather my breath.  If I’m honest, I know I’m the only one that he will let wait on him and for some reason it makes it harder to go out there. 

My feet feel like they are encased in lead as I force them to lift and propel me forward. Heat is already radiating from my cheeks as I walk out of the back room and to the framing counter where he’s standing, hands down in his pants pockets, chest as broad as a billboard.  He’s like a wall.  His black t-shirt is stretched across his shoulders, like XXXL is still a bit too small, tapering down to a narrow waist where it’s tucked perfectly into pressed, gun-metal-gray dress pants.

Whenever he comes in, whatever he’s wearing, it looks like he just stepped out of the dry cleaner.  Even his t-shirts are pressed and perfect.  His onyx-colored hair looks freshly cut as well.  Every time.  He’s got this GQ caveman vibe and I have to be honest, I’ve never had this kind of reaction to a man or a boy in my life.  Must be some powerful pheromones he gives off.

Either that, or I’m having a stroke. 

I’ve probably helped him frame at least a hundred wine posters already, but he just keeps bringing in more.  He never asks the price, just tells me to pick out what I like and slips his black Amex into my hand. 

Oh and there’s the wine.  He gives me two or three expensive bottles of wine every time he comes in.  I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t drink. He’s clearly a wine connoisseur and I’ve never taken a sip of alcohol.  Nor do I plan to.  Been there, seen that, want no part of it in any way.

Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s like some big deal.  He owns this wine distributorship, but from what Andrea says, he used to own or be part of some big demolition company.  Whenever she tries to tell me something about him I hush her and walk away.  I don’t know why, but I don’t want to know.

But, from the bit she’s managed to sneak through my defenses, apparently there is a lot of money in blowing things up.  So, he’s him and I’m... well, I’m me.

I’m homeless.  And chubby.  And dyslexic. 

And homeless.

Did I mention homeless?

I’m surprised the ‘L’ on my forehead isn’t visible from Mars.

I wish I could enjoy the wine he brings me.  Sometimes I consider downing a bottle to lose myself for a while.  But I won’t do it. 

My Dad drank.  He had good reason, I guess.  I don’t remember a lot, but I remember enough.  Mom said things were good with all of us in the early years.  Then there was an accident at the steel mill where he worked.  A furnace he was working on exploded and killed one of his co-workers.  Mom said he never got over the guilt.  She said he was never the same after that.  She told me to marry someone kind, someone without a damaged past.  It hurt her as much as it did Dad.

He disappeared one night when I was seven, but I still remember when he was drunk.  The sweet and sour smell on his breath when he would lean down and yell right in my face for not picking up my room or not finishing my dinner.  That was enough for me.  I’m sure wine can be delicious, but I’m not going to find out.

Magnus has spent more here in a couple months than I make in a year.

“Hi.”  I gulp down my nerves as I come up behind the counter.  Those Starbucks eyes following me like a painting in a haunted house.  “Haven’t you filled all those walls yet?”  The inferno generating inside me makes trickles of sweat traverse slowly down the indent of my spine, only to be lovingly absorbed by the too-tight waistband of my skirt. 

It took me a good year working here to be comfortable waiting on customers.  But that seems to be a hat I can put on, as though I’m acting a part.  I have to take my time taking names and information, but I have a system that helps hide the fact that I’m writing as slow as a second grader.  And, I’ve got Andrea.  She double checks everything for me as well.

“Hi Cassie.”  His voice turns my girl parts to molten lava.

From the first day he came in here, he and I seem to have had things to talk about, despite my antisocial streak.  You would think with his imposing presence and form it would be the opposite, but I feel comfortable, like I can talk to him about anything.  It’s very strange for me.

I’m uncomfortable in general because it’s conversation and socializing, and still somehow it’s at least tolerable with him because he doesn’t seem to expect anything.  He asks me things about myself.  And I answer.  Truthfully, most of the time.

And then sometimes I ask him things. And when I do he answers.  It’s going on three months now, and we’ve managed to find out quite a bit about each other.  I love listening to him.  He seems so disciplined, so controlled and sure.  There’s this twinkle behind those dark chocolate eyes that feels soft. 

Talking to him is like listening to someone read a classic book.  The words roll out of him with such ease yet each one is chosen perfectly.  There is no filler.  No posturing.  He’s sincere and honest and I can feel things while around him.  Nice things.  Comforting things.

I have a feeling there is a lot more going on inside that calm, controlled demeanor.  But I don’t delve too deep. 

Because after all, he’s him and I’m me.

I do my job as I try to keep from drooling and jumping across the counter and doing the things I read about in my books.

Oh and what about his name? 

Magnus.

His name is seriously Magnus.

It couldn’t be more fitting.  I have to crane my neck to look up into his face when he’s standing; falling upward into those stout-brown eyes, dark and clear.

And today, fire shoots up and down my spine when his full lips turn upward at the corners as I settle on the other side of the counter; his slightly crooked smile always looks a bit out of place, like he doesn’t smile often enough.  It pulls at his lips and reveals just a hint of white teeth.  They’re not perfectly straight, nor is his nose for that matter and I like that.  I think his rough imperfections are exactly what makes him perfect. 

“These are for you.”  He slides two bottles of wine toward me.  “Did you enjoy the last two?  The Bordeaux was from a particularly good year.  Good Bordeaux is hard to come by these days.”  His voice rumbles out like a train from a tunnel, sweeping me along with its momentum so that I feel like I have to say something.

“Yes, it was...a good year,”  I mumble like an imbecile.

What the hell do I know about Bordeaux and years?  Nothing, that’s what.  If you ask me about strawberry-flavored milk or what kinds of sprinkles taste best on top of a hot fudge sundae, then I’m your girl.

Blood rushes in my ears as I try to follow up with something less idiotic.   “It was smooth.”

What the heck?  Smooth?  I give up.

I drop my eyes to the table and start to measure the dimensions on the stack of posters, scribbling the numbers on the order forms.  My face is so hot it’s about to go super nova, and I think my nipples just stabbed right through the fabric of my blouse.