Page 35 of Christmas Coffee

Celyn

Night falls and Quin finally shows up. He looks a little roughed up. There’s an angry red scratch on his cheek and his normally pristine clothing is rumpled. He strides over to the hut, stomps up the steps, and slips inside. “Hey, Celyn. Sorry I couldn’t be here earlier. How’d you do?”

There’s no line at the moment, so I walk over and look him over. “You all right? What the hell happened?”

He shrugs. “Bad timing. I was coasting through C.I. and stopped at CVS to grab a bottle of aspirin. I should have stayed in the fucking car.” C.I. is short for Central Islip. It has rough patches, well, fine—the whole thing is a rough patch. Quin must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. From the look on his face he doesn’t want to talk about it. Quin pinches his temple and glances at the machines, and then the stack of receipts by the window. “Looks like you did well today.”

“Yeah, better than expected. The manager you hired—”

He lights up and cuts me off. “That chick is amazing. I pelted her with a ton of situations during her interview and then told her to sell me something. She didn’t waiver once. It’s like her mind thrives on chaos or something. She’s kind of young, but her experience and application overrode the concern.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You hired a teenager as a manager.”

He pulls a slim watch from his pocket. “She sold me this broken watch off her wrist.” He holds it out to me. I reach for it and he lays it in my palm.

It’s a shitty piece of crap, worse than the insult watch Uncle gave me. “How much did you pay for it?”

He grins. “Five.”

I shrug and offer it back to him. “Big deal, she sold you used crap for five bucks.”

He doesn’t take it back. “No man, she sold me on a collectable timepiece for five hundred bucks. Look at it. It’s one of the first, early edition, 1980s Swatches. The face is cracked, but it’s an authentic part. The band is original. It just needs a new battery.” Quin continues to tell me about the watch and I notice my opinion of the piece of trash shifting to something of value. I’m turning it over and examining the casing as if it were worthy of inspection. Quin starts laughing. “I shit you not, by the time she was done talking about that, I wanted it. I figured a girl who can sell like that needs to be on our team. Plus, she’s hot, but that was an afterthought. Her mind is a steel trap. I feel sorry for the sucker who steps in it.”

Yeah, I’m getting that feeling about her. There’s a soft side hidden under a ton of defenses. It’s like she’s battened down the hatches and launched everything she had a long time ago and now she’s living in the rubble.

I say plainly, still looking at the timepiece, “I can see that about her. She’s the reason why we netted our goal today. She tripled the price of everything.”

Quin’s eyes widen. “No shit?”

“Yeah. It was an accident. She sold something before I had signage up or went over anything with her. People have happily paid it all day.”

“Except now.” Quin jerks his chin toward the window. “I would have thought night time would be booming. The mall is packed.” He paces toward the window and looks out across the parking lot. “We need to lure people over here.”

“They wander over during the day.”

Quin glances from one end of the lot to the other, and then turns toward me. “Is it mostly women?”

“Yeah, but that’s because that guy Shannon doesn’t stay in the hut. He wanders.”

Quin laughs. “What the hell? What do you mean, he wanders?”

“The guy needs a nanny. He forgets what he’s doing and wandered the mall for most of his shift.”

“Did he sell anything?”

“The guy can draw in a crowd, but his sales skills suck. The people he attracted lingered and waited for him. They didn’t buy anything.”

Quin nods and leans his hips back against the counter. “Make the rules clear—no socializing on the job.” I tell him about the dick before Christmas and Quin nearly chokes up a lung. “You’re shitting me? There’s no fucking way!” The grin on his face is huge, as if he wished he thought of it.

“I wish I was. What the hell do I do with him?”

Quin laughs. “Use whatever skills he’s good at.”

“Quin, he’s not good at anything.”

“We hired him because he can be a smooth talker if he tries. You gotta get him to try.”

“Easier said than done.”