he told her, “You take care, Maggie.”
“If you ever need me for anything,” she said, “you know where I am.” Then she turned and walked away. The wind gusted across the lot and blew up a great column of dust and paper scrap. Maggie staggered a moment in the wind and turned to say something more. But the wind tore the words away. She staggered again and maybe it was the wind or maybe it was the Oxys. James Carpenter knew that Maggie Boylan, Oxy-addled, thieving Maggie Boylan, was wasted down to the near side of nothing. But in her oversized coat she looked slim as a girl.
Black Friday
IT WAS the day after Thanksgiving at the Once Removed secondhand store and Maggie Boylan burst through the door, already talking. Sarah Hunter was on the phone with her mother, her poor sick mother in Columbus, but you could not shush Maggie Boylan.
“Sarah, I got to get some money,” Maggie said. She was dressed in a big, loose, oversized denim coat with the sleeves rolled back, jeans all out at the knees, and a pair of men’s work boots. But she held out a pair of shoes—flawlessly white walkers like nurses wear and a pair of jeans, crisp and new and embroidered with flowers and spangles, hung over the shoulder of that big loose coat.
Sarah Hunter had hoped for more customers today. She had put up her Christmas decorations and she had discounted some of the better items. But there had been hardly anybody in all day. Now, at midafternoon, two women stood over by the children’s bin, rummaging for school clothes. They eyed Maggie carefully. They were in their own big coats. They continued to turn over jumpers and T-shirts but their eyes worked back and forth from Maggie to Sarah to the bin.
Maggie set the shoes and the jeans on the counter where Sarah could not miss them.
“Hold on,” Sarah said into the phone. “I’m getting interrupted.”
“I need you to help me,” Maggie said, “Christmas is coming up. I got to get my babies’ presents out of layaway.”
“Let me call you back,” Sarah told her mother. “I got to deal with something here.”
“You know I’m sober now,” Maggie said. “Can you tell? I’m getting fat.”
Maggie was not getting fat. She raised her shirt to show her belly and she was not fat at all. Her ribs were like a line of coat hangers; her belly was gaunt. In fact, Maggie Boylan was all elbows and knees; she flopped about in her open coat like a horsefly inside a tent. Sarah Hunter had known Maggie since they both were girls. They had grown up friends and she could not bear to look at the hollow of her belly. She could not bear to look at the bones of her face.
“See? No more of that crack. No more Oxys. I can’t live without my Vicodin on account of my back, but I don’t do no more of that crack.”
Sarah looked at the shoes and the jeans. Brand new; neither had ever been worn. But there was no tag on either one. “Where’d you get these, Maggie?”
“I got them for myself,” Maggie said. “But my babies come first. How about ten dollars for each. Those are fifty-dollar jeans.”
“Maggie, where’d you get them?”
“I got them at Target.”
Sarah shot her a skeptical eye.
“I swear,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Dennis Hunter limped out from the back office with a stomp and a shuffle. He was in his coveralls and he had a wrench in his hand. The truck was up on ramps out back and muffler parts were strewn across the yard. He had been stomping and shuffling in and out for tools and warmth all day.
“There’s your old man,” Maggie said. “He’s the one I want to talk to.” She grabbed up the shoes and the jeans. “Hey, Dennis,” she called. “Dennis,” she said. “I got to talk to you.” She pushed him back into the office and slammed shut the door.
“Well damn,” said one of the women at the children’s bin. The women looked at one another, raised brows, looked down for a moment, then back to the office door. The first woman asked, “You gonna leave her alone with your man like that?”
“If it was me,” the second one said. “I’d bust that up real quick.”
Sarah Hunter would have joked about it if she had been in a joking mood. But she did not trust these two and her mother was sick and she was in no mood.
“You got to watch Maggie Boylan like a hawk,” the first woman said.
“I won’t let her in my house no more.”
“The jeans, she might have got legal, but those shoes is definitely hot.”
“They probably come straight out of Walmart.”
“Or Payless.”
“Or Pay-Nothing.”
“She comes in your house, you got to watch her ever minute. If she ain’t stealing now, it’s cause she’s casing the joint for later.”
“Ever time she comes in my house I end up with something missing.”
“Like your CD player.”
“She got that for sure. I can’t prove it . . .”
“But you know.”
“That’s why I don’t let her in my house no more.”
“And hell if she ain’t doing crack. She had to stand up twice to make a shadow.”
“She must of lost fifty pounds.”
Sarah interrupted. “Well,” she said, then trailed off. She did not know what to say, exactly, but she wanted to hear what was going on in that office.
“You sure you want to leave Maggie back there with your old man?”
Sarah tapped a cigarette out of her pack. She could hear Maggie Boylan from behind the door. Her husband’s quieter, gravel-yard voice was in there too, but not so often as Maggie’s. Sarah tapped her cigarette on the counter.
“She kind of give you the brush-off, didn’t she?”
“She knows I won’t put up with none of her bull.”
“And she thinks he will?”
Sarah shrugged. “I reckon he can handle Maggie Boylan.” She was not at all sure he could handle Maggie Boylan, but she was not about to tell these two. She was of half a mind to go to the office and bust them up, but she lit her cigarette, put her elbows on the counter, and waited. She kept an eye on the women at the children’s bin, too. They might talk about Maggie, but the two of them were not above slipping a little something into the oversize pockets of their coats—a little dress if they liked it, or a pair of shoes. They would be happy to have Sarah turn her back.
The first woman held up a child-size blouse with a frilled collar. “What do you want for this one?”
“What’s it say?”
“It
