The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Four by Jonathan Strahan Page B

State University.
     
    I met Destiny Creech during my afternoon shift at the register at a chain bookstore that a 19 th -century novelist might here identify with a capital B and a series of dashes but that I am pleased to call Yarns Ignoble. As usual, I was working the register nearest the Yarns Ignoble mall entrance, which compared to the register nearest the parking-lot entrance gets fewer customers but a higher percentage of sketchiness. People who already are angry, needy or neurotic even without chemical assistance toke up on carbs and caffeine at the food court and are propelled straight to my register. So I've had to cultivate a sort of furtive efficiency. I'm the prop girl in black who darts onstage with two inverted wineglasses in one hand and a picnic basket in the other and darts offstage with the previous scene's princess phone and beanbag chair just before the light comes up on the lovers' idyll. I don't make eye contact; I don't tarry; this ain't my show. So I was wholly unprepared when I turned back to the register after rearranging a Nicholas Sparks display to find myself facing a 5-foot-10 blonde with porcelain skin, Cate Blanchett cheekbones and eyes the color of the green flash at sunset that portends good fortune in love.
    I gaped. She smiled, plucked at her Hermès scarf and slid a trade paperback a half-inch nearer me on the counter. Her fingers were free of rings. The book was Best Lesbian Erotica 2008 .
    I snatched up the book, clutched it in both hands and blurted: "Oh, is the 2008 out already? Seems I just finished re-reading the 2007!" I felt a junior-high giggle coming on and suppressed it as best I could, so that what came out instead was a junior-high chirp of pleasure abruptly swallowed, like a gnat.
    My special guest star, still smiling, closed both eyes and opened them again—sort of like a wink, only doubled—and said, in a throaty voice, "Time flies when we're having fun, doesn't it?"
    I pounded the keys one-handed and told myself, Jenny Jenny Jenny get a grip. This is Yarns Ignoble, not The L-Word , and Hagerstown is not Showtime, and for the afternoon shift, parental discretion is not advised. I calmed a little when she paid not with an Amex black card but with a tatty twenty on which someone had stamped "John 3:16." "Need a bag?" I piped, my voice cracking.
    She shook her head, picked up the book with its pert little white receipt poking out, began to turn away—then set the book back down. With one long burgundy nail she rotated it so the cover faced me—two punk girls locking pierced lips—and pushed it another half-inch toward me. "You read it first," she said, "and then we'll talk." She double-winked and turned and strode around the Dover clip-art rack and into the food court and was gone.
    "Ahem," someone said—just like that, not a throat-clearing noise but two spoken comic-book syllables, "A-hem." It was the woman next in line, a girl really in a denim vest, with a crooked grin and a pointed chin and red hair cut short except on top, so that it fell across half her face like a curtain.
    "Busted," she said.
    "Sorry," I said, my face burning. I dropped my gaze and reverted to the prop girl. I scanned her Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD set, rang it up, made her change. "Would you like a bag?" I asked, already reaching for one; those boxed sets are heavy and eight-pointed and awkward.
    "She won't be back," the girl said.
    I looked at her. She was biting her lower lip and tilting her head like an owl's. She let the lip go, sucked in a deep breath, like a diver bracing on the edge of the pool. "I don't know her?" she said. "Only I sort of do, I mean, from experience? I think maybe she was playing a game? And now the game's over?" She shrugged. "Sorry."
    My blush had never quite gone away, and now it flamed anew. "Fuck you," I said, slamming the till on the first syllable and glancing toward Sally the Snitch's register on the second. Score! Smoke break.
    "O- kay ," the girl said.