Candy Man Read online

  “Still looking,” Darrin said, thinking his new employee would show up damned soon. The Pixy Stix never lied. “In fact… ah! There he is!”

  And sure enough, here was Tall, Dark, and Broody, with brown eyes under sunglasses, bold cheekbones, an equally bold nose, and full lips. The confidence of his no-bullshit military strut and haircut didn’t quite compensate for the lines of anxiety around his eyes and mouth.

  Darrin’s next project was in dire need of some fixing up.

  Finn looked over to where Darrin was looking, and in spite of the fact that the store was full of people, his little gasp of “Oooh” was unmistakable.

  The door closed behind the newcomer, and Darrin raised his eyebrows. “Oooh” indeed.

  Finn turned to Darrin with big, infinitely blue eyes. “Can I come back?” he asked, his knockout grin lighting up the store. “I want to meet this guy!”

  “I don’t know, sugar,” Darrin drawled, playing for time. “Do you work tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday, so that’s a yes! See you then if you don’t need me before!”

  Finn saluted over his little puppy-dog hat (something to do with a cartoon show—Darrin was not ashamed to say he was too old to follow it) and hustled out of the front entrance, past Darrin’s soon-to-be new employee. The store was crowded, and although Finn made an attempt to sidestep, the two of them were jostled together—and that was when Darrin saw it.

  New Guy’s eyes popped open just as he was raising his sunglasses over his head, and when he met Finn’s merry blue eyes, a look that Darrin could only describe as wistful crossed his face. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, whether the people in the crowded store knew it or not. It didn’t breathe again until Finn flashed his grin at Tall, Dark, and Broody and then skedaddled, dynamite in jeans and a hooded Sac State sweatshirt, delivering sandwiches from River Burger to the cobbled streets of Old Town.

  Tall, Dark, and Broody had a moment of visibly pulling his shit back together, and then he seemed to remember the Help Wanted sign in his hand and the thing he’d set out to do.

  ADAM LOOKED around the bustling little candy store, and he had to agree: Candy Heaven was definitely in need of help. He remembered visiting Rico on leave. Adam had liked the charm of Old Town Sac, the little tourist trap across the bridge from Raley Field. After a day of rest (and a chance to coax Rico’s skittish tiger-striped cat, Gonzo, from under the bed), he figured he’d take a bus and start there.

  This was the fifth place he’d gone into with a Help Wanted sign, but so far all the positions had been filled. He’d been a little disheartened—and very hungry—when he’d seen the sign in the candy store. And the kid he’d run into—the one with the bright eyes and knee-melting grin?

  Yeah. That kid had smelled like sandwiches.

  At least that was what Adam told himself, because the sizzle-spark-zing that had traveled his spine when he and the kid had danced, trying to get around each other, had no business taking up residence anywhere in his body.

  Home. Job. School. C’mon, Adam—remember the basics!

  So basically, Adam had to find the boss and ask for a job, and to that end, he had to find….

  Well, the boss, right? Apparently, the boss was the guy on all of the little canvas candy bags, with the long hair and the Willy Wonka hat. And that guy was standing behind the counter and waving at him.

  In that moment Adam had a supreme instance of dislocation.

  He pointed dizzily to himself and looked behind him to see if Willy Wonka—or the guy with the long layer cut standing behind the counter—wasn’t talking to somebody else.

  But the guy kept smiling and gesturing, and then he reached behind the counter and pulled out an apron.

  Adam drew nearer and the guy said, “You’re here for a job, right?”

  “Uh, yeah—”

  Six people suddenly cut in front of him to wrap the already present queue around the stack of candy-filled barrels near Adam. He had to cut back through the line to get to the counter.

  “Well great!” the Candy Man said. “Here, put this on so people know you work here. I’ll clock you in later for twelve thirty, and what I need you to do is stand by the scale and weigh the candy while I check people out. Can you do that?”

  “Uhm, yeah—”

  Oh geez. Adam didn’t even know how much this job paid. But at this moment, it was paying, and when Adam had walked through the store, he’d been making precisely dick.

  “Okay, folks,” he said, using his military training to sound like he meant it. “Everybody stand aside, coming through, we’re gonna move this line a little faster, how’s that sound!”

  The huzzah of the crowd sounded good-natured and excited, and Adam figured what the hell. Even if he walked out of here with one day’s pay to find a better job, one day’s pay would at least buy his dinner and his bus fare, right?

  SEVEN HOURS later, Adam wasn’t sure he was going to make it until dinner.

  “Uhm,” he said, a little desperately, recognizing hunger spots in front of his eyes. “When do we close again?”

  Darrin (his boss—he’d figured that out in the first hour) looked at him with worry in his eyes. He was actually taller than Adam, which was a feat in itself, but that didn’t stop him from seeming really… kind. “Sweetheart, when did you last eat?”

  “Last night,” Adam confessed. Rico didn’t have much in the cupboards, and Adam didn’t have much in his pocket. He’d been going to buy a sandwich or something after he’d found a job.

  “Oh Glory! Here, you go help Joni stock that barrel, and I’ll call Finn for another delivery.”

  “Finn?” Adam asked, feeling hazy. “Like the cartoon character?” The kid he’d bumped into, the one who’d smelled like sandwiches, had been wearing a hat like that.

  “Yup—our resident sandwich boy. Get some of the others to help you, and scoot. We need to stock or people are going to start eating the wood!”

  He wasn’t far off. Candy Heaven was one of those candy by weight places: on the bare floorboards sat big wooden barrels, each one filled with a different wrapped confection, and tied-dyed flags decorated the loft, where Darrin kept stock. For those (like Adam, actually) whose taste went more toward chocolate, there was a glass-covered refrigerated display cabinet in the back where a customer could pick truffles, fudge, or chocolate, along with a small refrigerator case with sodas and water. Darrin had purchased a bunch of canvas bags and had them stamped with his likeness—a thin-featured man with a winsome smile and long-layered red-brown hair—and gussied the image up with a purple top hat and tails. Those were a real plus. People would fill one of those and call that a quickie Christmas or Thanksgiving gift. It wasn’t until Adam looked up in the middle of weighing what seemed to be his one-thousandth canvas bag that he realized, omigod, they were almost out, and many of the barrels were down to the last inch of candy.

  Adam looked around as he walked the short distance from the register to the loft stairs. He saw a surprising number of employees in this little operation—he was pretty sure he’d counted at least five other people wearing brown Candy Heaven aprons, and they were all doing different things. The squat dark-haired girl with the crew cut and glasses was handing out free taste coupons, the sour-looking boy with the nose ring and goatee was behind the counter with the chocolates, and the foxy-faced girl with the skunk-stripe in her dyed red hair was currently stocking from the last batch that had been pulled down from the stairs. A good-looking kid with brown hair and big brown eyes was cleaning out the old boxes from the loft and throwing them out back, presumably to make it easier for Adam to get up there to stock.

  Two new boys had walked in while Adam was working, both of them with sienna skin and curly, shiny black hair. The taller one had a mustache and the shorter one had a jowly face—every now and then when they weren’t taking care of customers, they spattered Hindi at each other in an effort to give directions. In fact, they were the only two people besides Darrin whose nam
es Adam knew. The tall one was Ravi and the short one was Anish. Adam had no idea how they were related, but he knew they probably couldn’t exist for longer than an hour outside the other’s pocket.

  And given that he was going to need help and theirs were the only names he knew, they were about to become his new best friends.

  “Uh, Ravi? Anish? Darrin says he needs stock—can one of you tell me what to look for, and the other stand here at the bottom of the stairs and take stock?”

  They both looked at him, teeth flashing whitely as they smiled. “Yeah, sure,” Ravi said with decision. “Anish, you shout the orders, I’ll take the stock.”

  Oh, thank God. Help. Adam tried not to sway as he pulled himself up the stairs into the loft.

  “Lemon sours!”

  Adam searched until he found the last box, and ran that down the stairs to Ravi. As he was doing that, Anish called out, “Sanded cinnamon drops and sanded cherry drops!”

  And then he repeated the process.

  He was into it, breaking a sweat, in that place where hunger and tiredness didn’t matter, when Anish called out for mixed sour balls. They were on the bottom shelf. He squatted down for them….

  And fell on his ass.

  As he was down there, wondering how he’d gone nearly a whole day without eating, he heard a perky alto calling out, “Darrin! Darrin, you said you needed food?”

  “Finn! Yeah, here. Put the usual on the counter here, but do me a favor, would you? Could you run the burger with blue cheese and mushrooms up to the loft? My new employee just passed out.”

  There was a chorus of “What? Who? Is he okay? Who was that guy, anyway?” And Adam felt like he should contribute his two cents.

  “Didn’t pass out!” he said, but he could hear his own voice wandering. “Fell on my ass. Please tell me I’m getting paid. What time is it, anyway?”

  “It’s almost eight o’clock at night,” said that perky voice. Adam looked to the top of the stairs, and there he was. The kid with the Finn hat, and he was carrying a box of takeout in a plastic bag.

  “Finn,” Adam said, literally so drifty he couldn’t lock down his own brain. “Where’s your goofy little dog?”

  “You watch Adventure Time?” Finn said, sounding delighted. “That’s awesome!”

  “Someone at the base had boxed sets,” Adam said, his brain flashing to the comfortable camaraderie of H-1, outside of Baghdad. Yeah, there was war, but there was a lot of boredom, and he and the troops had passed entertainment around with an almost religious intensity. Paperbacks were golden, and Lieutenant Crandall’s boxed DVD cartoon sets from his kids had resulted in fistfights before Crandall had started showing them for an hour a day in his bunk. “Futurama, Adventure Time, Archer. Adventure Time was my favorite.”

  “Finn” came closer to him, eyeballing him with a certain wariness in the dim light of the loft, like he expected Adam to start foaming at the mouth or something.

  “Your sweatshirt’s wrong,” Adam said soberly. “It should be dark blue. It’s purple. That’s off. What’s your real name?”

  The kid sat next to him and started pulling out the food. “Would it blow your mind if I said it was Finn?”

  Adam started to laugh, suddenly in real danger of just losing it and giggling until he cried, detonating his entire emotional nut in the loft of a candy store he might or might not work at. “Would it blow your mind if I told you I was having the weirdest week?”

  “No,” Finn said gently. “Here. My dad’s best burger. Darrin asked for it special.”

  He put the box in Adam’s shaking hands, and Adam realized he needed to start eating what was in it or he really would pass out. For a few moments there was nothing but the sound of him getting a one-handed grip on the burger and cramming it into his mouth. At about halfway done, he set it down and closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath and let the food catch up to his stomach.

  “Thanks, kid,” he said, trying to get a better look at him. “Nice of Darrin to feed me.”

  “Well, it was nice of you to just start working on faith. I’m not a kid.”

  Adam raised his eyebrows in disbelief, and Finn rolled his eyes.

  “Okay, I’m twenty-four. I keep an apartment over my father’s store, so I officially live on my own, pay rent, and I’m probably about two years away from my degree. So, you know. Grown-up.”

  Adam nodded, his blood sugar still too up and down for real words, and took another bite of his hamburger. He swallowed. Thought, This kid has never had his heart broken. Never sacrificed something for someone who didn’t give a shit. Never tried his hardest and had his ass handed to him on a platter. For a moment bitterness threatened to rear up and bite off the head of this sweet kid with the Finn hat and the goofy smile, but then Finn rooted in the plastic bag and came up with garlic fries.

  “Here!” he said cheerfully. “They’re still hot. Do you want some ketchup?”

  The aroma of garlic fries almost made Adam whimper.

  “Yeah, sure,” he rasped, aware that he didn’t get to bite the head off of anybody when anybody was feeding him and being human. He took one of the fries and fell into the temporary vortex of carbgasm, then resurfaced and tried to resume his questioning. “So, what are you going to school for?”

  “Structural engineering,” Finn said, like everybody said that every day.

  Adam blinked. Figured. The kid was smarter than he was. Of course his life was better. “That’s a good major,” he said seriously. “Beats mine.”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Animation. Went to a school in San Diego, but I lost my grant.” God, he did not want to talk about his stupid car and the fucking death spiral his life had entered in the past month. “What do you want to build?”

  “Bridges, highways, and grain silos.”

  Adam laughed—he had no choice. “Grain silos?”

  “Very phallic. After my last boyfriend, I needed a penis substitute.”

  Adam almost inhaled a fry, he was laughing so hard. Oh God, this kid! “So I guess you’re lucky you’re not making weapons, right?”

  Finn shrugged. “Yeah, well, my idea of a sword fight is very, very different, right?”

  “Oh absolutely.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, and Adam finished off his fries and sighed softly, leaning his head against his knees. “Well, Finn, it’s been great talking to you, but I think I have to pay you and get back to work.”

  Finn shook his head. “No, no, like I said, Darrin took care of it. Don’t worry about paying me. They were going under when you walked in. I think he’s just grateful you took the job on faith.”

  Adam nodded. He wanted to ask What is it with that guy? because he figured no one could be that sweet and that trusting in this day and age, but Finn was getting up, and it was time for Adam to as well. “Well, I’m grateful for the feeding—and it’s time I told him—”

  “What’s your name, anyway? Darrin didn’t say.”

  “Adam, but—”

  “Why were you that hungry, Adam?” Finn asked, barging right into his privacy without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Adam shook his head. “Just got into town. Nothing in my cousin’s fridge. Thought I’d get a job first.”

  “Wow. That’s dedication.” Finn stood and offered his hand down, and Adam took it after only a second’s hesitation.

  A little force, a little lever, and suddenly Adam was standing way too close to the cute sandwich delivery kid. What made it worse was that Finn backed up against a stack of crates and looked at him with big eyes in the suddenly intimate loft.

  “Gee, mister,” Finn said, licking his lips, “you are awfully tall.”

  Adam froze for a moment, thinking that Finn, for all his flirt, was probably not ready for what he and a few guys from his squad used to do in the darkened bunkers, between Humvees, or in the miniscule, sweating supply closet of his base outside of Baghdad.

  “I’m, uhm, six four,” he mumbled, taking two steps b
ack. Finn was maybe five eleven, so not really short, but Adam felt sort of outsized, freakish, and awkward. “Uhm, I’ll walk you down.”

  He was feeling the day now, in the soles of his shoes and the heaviness of his limbs. Maybe he could sign some paperwork or something, sit down, stop thinking about Finn’s wide, pink mouth and the way his straight teeth glinted when he smiled.

  “So, how long have you been in town?” Finn asked as they made their way down the stairs.

  “Thirty-six hours,” Adam replied shortly, thinking that it was probably closer to thirty-eight.

  “What are you here for?”

  “To watch my cousin’s animals and get my shit together. Jesus, kid—”

  “Where’d you come from? Did you leave anybody there?”

  “San Diego, a school that is indifferent to me, and a grandmother that lights black candles to curse my every breath. Do you always—”

  “What kind of animals do you have? I mean does your cousin have? I’m just asking, because if you’re not used to dogs or cats, I can help. I mean, I’m not an expert, but my family has had tons of the critters. I’ve grown up with them. What about you?”

  “I had a boxer in high school. My mom put him in the pound the day I shipped out. Rico didn’t get there in time to save him. He was euthanized.”

  Finn’s barrage of questions stopped cold. “Holy God, Adam, do you have any happy answers?”

  Adam got to the bottom of the stairs and looked around the store, which was almost miraculously cleaning itself up with the help of the hipster elves that seemed to be working there this evening. “Yeah,” he said, bemused. “Ask me if I got a job.”

  Finn’s grin lit up the entire wooden room. “You got a job?”

  “I’m pretty sure I do, but let me go talk to the boss man. You got a problem with that?”

  “Nope. I’ll be waiting when you come out of the office.”

  “Don’t you got a job to do?” Adam asked, confounded. Jesus, who was this kid, and would he ever stop talking long enough for Adam to gently but firmly disengage?

  “Nope. This delivery was my last task of the night. Dad’s cleaning up, I’m off the clock, and, you know, you just got done here—”