makes sure they’ve gotten what they’ve ordered and paid for. The atmosphere is good, focused; only Peter, as usual, is slow and shy. Thomas joins in, and the work agrees with him. It’s simple, it’s manageable: most of the boxes need to be taken to the basement and the products arranged properly, shelf by shelf, by number and name. The slick boxes have to be shoved into place and stacked and organized. Thomas knows the basement like he knows his own pocket; it’s their treasure chamber, and it has nothing in common with the dark, dusty labyrinth he’d rushed around in Saturday night. Now it feels as though that never happened, that it was all a dream, a fantasy, a figment of his imagination. He grows warm, he puts eight boxes of plastic folders on the shelf, he presses the felt-tip pen against the cardboard and writes the folders’ colors clearly and legibly on the front of each box. They’d started doing this after they hired Peter. He was never able to find the right colors; maybe he’s colorblind. Maloney’s whistling a tune down the aisle near the glossy paper. Hunched over, Peter lugs the heaviest boxes of paper downstairs. “We’re also missing H4 and B2 upstairs,” Annie says, clearing her throat. “And recycled Double Demy gray.” “What about white?” Maloney calls out. “Didn’t that bookkeeper buy the last of it yesterday?” Annie goes upstairs to check. But there must be customers in the store, because she doesn’t return. Thomas follows Peter up the narrow stairwell to bring the rest of the stuff down. They’ve often discussed replacing this stairwell with a new and wider one, so they could haul a dolly up and down and spare their backs. But Peter’s young and fairly strong. And isn’t that why you have an apprentice?, was how Maloney put it when Thomas brought up the idea. He needs a cigarette. He tugs the last boxes through the store and out to the hallway. Peter sticks his pale, acne-scarred face through the hatch, ready to grab them. They work in silence. Thomas hands Peter the boxes, Peter balances them down the steps. “I’ll take it from down here!” Maloney shouts from within the depths of the basement, though they could’ve heard him easily if he’d used his normal voice. But Maloney needs to make noise, to shout. There’s no life without noise—that would be his motto if he could formulate it. But that’s the thing with Maloney, Thomas thinks. He doesn’t even know it. He doesn’t know much about himself, it doesn’t interest him. Maloney acts and suffers and parties and rages and loves and hates, and it’s all noise. Is this an expression of a simple, beautiful life? Now he thrusts his red face past Peter, who’s struggling with a large box. “Time we have some friggin’ coffee!” “Now?” Thomas says, “Shouldn’t we finish first?” But Maloney can’t wait. Peter has to brace himself against the uneven basement wall as Maloney’s corpulent body presses him out on the edge of the stairwell. Here he stands, teetering and about to fall. It’s a long way down. “Be careful, Peter.” Thomas points at the pale-faced apprentice, who at that moment lets go of the box and grabs hold of something. The box lands with a heavy thud on the basement floor. “What the hell was in that?” Maloney asks, squeezing himself up the stairwell. He stands beside Thomas, huffing now. They stare down through the hole in the floor. “Sorry,” Peter says. “But I was about to plummet.” “Plummet? It’s not a damn mountain. What’s in the box?” Peter looks almost frightened. “Come here, kid.” Maloney offers his hand and hoists Peter up. “I think it was glass,” Peter whispers. “Candlesticks.” Maloney sighs heavily and walks into the office. “Go down and check whether or not it’s all smashed,” Thomas says.
Thomas stands in the doorway of the office and gets Maloney’s attention. “Who ordered candlesticks?”
“I did.”
“I thought we agreed no party supplies in the store.”
“Candlesticks are not party supplies. Candlesticks are decorations.”
“Decorations are party supplies. Besides, we don’t sell ‘decorations,’ either.”
“C’mon, Thomas. They’re damaged now anyway. I’ll cover the costs.”
“I don’t like the thought of you ordering tasteless things behind my back.”
“For God’s sake, Thomas.”
“You know how much I hate party supplies.”
“And I love them. The kitschier the better! Novelty toys and clown noses! Balloons and fake beards! Bibs for grown men with pictures of naked ladies!”
Thomas shakes his head, grumbling.
“But candlesticks aren’t kitschy,” Maloney continues. “I’ve carefully selected them so that I wouldn’t offend your aesthetic sensibility. They’ll sell like hotcakes.”
Maloney looks at Thomas. Then Thomas turns to leave and bumps into Peter, who’s returning to give his report.
“Fourteen red candlesticks smashed, eight transparent, seven green, and only two blue. All in all, one hundred twenty-nine candlesticks aren’t broken. I’ve thrown out the damaged ones and noted them on the purchase order. Thirty-one pieces were lost.”
“Good work, Peter. Go out and have yourself a smoke now.” For a moment Peter looks flustered, but then he goes. A wide smile crosses Maloney’s face.
“They’re even tinted?” Thomas says.
“They look awesome,” Maloney smiles, propping his legs up on the desk. “You can take a few home to Patricia on my tab.”
Time passes. Lunch and more coffee. Maloney takes a nap on the office floor, his legs tucked under the desk. Toward evening, Thomas assists Maloney in filling the empty slots on the shelves by putting out the recently received products. Envelopes, letter paper, notebooks. They discuss arranging a spring cleaning of every shelf and cabinet, but when? And can Eva do it by herself? Can they afford to hire additional staff to do it? If they decide to go ahead with it, Thomas thinks they should be on-hand to make sure everything stays in order and nothing gets damaged. He imagines Eva emptying a bucket of dirty, soapy water on the gilt-edged paper that he now holds in his hands. “We did it last year with Peter and Annie,” Maloney says, dropping to one knee to fill the pencil cases in a metal box on the lowest shelf. “We didn’t even pay them extra, did we? That was drudge work.” They decide to speak to Eva. “Because I won’t do it again, I tell you,” Maloney announces once he’s on his feet again. After that, he entertains Thomas by telling him about his trip to the bar over the weekend. He’d played pool and drunk piña coladas, then he’d gone to a different place and had beer and played more pool, until a few guys he knew showed up with some women. They’d wound up at some place with live music, where they danced, and Maloney found himself dancing, mostly with a girl named Lauraine, who was very blonde and a little older. “But she had these fantastic hips.” He succeeded in coercing her home with him, and they’d executed a coitus uninterruptus, despite the fact that he’d been piss drunk. “You can keep the coitus uninterruptus part to yourself next time,” Thomas says. No longer does he see images of water spilling onto letter paper, but Maloney in his bed having sex in the gray morning light; he imagines the gently intertwined flesh, hears the half-choked sounds. “I think it was quite a feat,” Maloney remarks cheerfully. “But I slept all Saturday, and Sunday I washed clothes, did that sort of thing. Then Jenny visited me in the evening.”
Thomas stiffens. “Jenny visited you? Why?”
Maloney shrugs. “I think she just needed to talk.”
“But you haven’t even seen each other for years.”
Maloney smiles. “You don’t know anything about that. Love doesn’t fade that easily.”
“Jesus. I don’t understand anything.”
“There’s nothing to understand. She
