Soft Spot

When the sign on the door of Raymond’s Vintage Shop is flipped from Closed back to Open again there was a certain red-headed Southern boy already standing on the walk with a big ol’ smile on his face. With one foot on the top step of the front steps and her hand still on the sign as she leaned out the door to flip it around she looks at me with that signature ‘blank stare’, this one blanker than most.

Today Mei wore a blazing yellow and orange sundress beneath her apron. Beneath the sundress she had on a skin tight sweater that went down to her knuckles and corduroy pants, both purple, and over all of it was a duster length brown cardigan. Yesterday she looked like a old-timey school marm ready to bend me over for a yardstick paddling and today she looked as if her wardrobe had exploded and blasted random clothes onto her. Despite the chaos of it…it worked! For her at least. Even all those layers couldn’t hide those thick, juicy curves that had ruled my imagination during last night’s session with Little Dusty. Her hair was up in two…abso-fucking-lutely adorable pigtails held in place with bright red scrunchies. Her makeup was more pronounced today and less monotone as the day before as there was actually some pink to her cheeks and a charming wisp of green across her eyelids. The dark eyeliner extended out in sharply defined little tapered wings pointing toward her temples.

She tilts her head, her loose pigtails shifting like floppy dog ears and nearly making me swoon from the cuteness of it.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” Is her greeting to me.

“Ah, Barb and I have an understanding.” I say. “She’ll call if she needs me.”

“I see.” She says flatly, though the narrowing of her eyes told me she hadn’t forgotten my call yesterday that forced me to leave so abruptly.

“I told you I was interested in those cards.” I say brightly with an equally shiny grin. “My bad luck to have run out just before your closing time.”

She doesn’t say anything for a solid minute, just staring at me, before at last she breaks the silence.

“Indeed.” She straightens up to her full height, unconsciously straightening her apron as she settles with poise into a most ladylike posture. Standing on the top step as she was allows her to look down on me like a high Queen in her tower upon a lowly peasant. It sends a little shudder straight through me. “But good for me.” With that curious statement she turns and enters her shop.

Jogging to catch up I grab the door before it can slam behind her. Following in her orange blossom scented wake I try to keep the conversation flowing. “I wasn’t exactly sure when you opened. You don’t have a website and there were no hours on the door.”

“Noon to six.”

“Noon to six.” I echo back as she leads me back into the room with the cards. “Monday to Friday?”

“Noon to six today.” She answers. “Friday and weekend hours are different.” Leaving me to guess what those hours might be she waves an arm to reveal that she’d laid out two binders and a box for me on a section of table she’d cleared to display them. “These are all of the baseball cards. I separated them by team and year, arranged alphabetically.”

A grin plays at my lips on hearing the effort she’d gone through. “You didn’t have to do all that for me.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” She bristles. “It’s been something I’ve been meaning to get around to. Easier to sell when you can find what you’re looking for. They were mostly organized already anyway.”

“Of course.” That grin begins to fade when I open the first binder to find a pricing sheet at the front. My eyes skim the columns. What!? “Three bucks each for commons!?”

“Or four for ten dollars.”

“Rookies for twenty each!? All of them?”

“I read that rookies are sought after.”

“If they went on to do something.”

“I’m not a card shop. I can’t be expected to know every player.”

“Mei, most of these are junk. Base cards. Barely worth the cardboard they’re printed on. Not one of them is even close to mint.” I look at her to receive disinterested shrug for my protest. “Was this the price yesterday?”

“No.” She answers with what I swear was a twinkle of amusement in her dark eyes. “But yesterday I didn’t know anybody was interested.”

Was she…punishing me for running out yesterday? Nahhh. She was just extorting me like she had out on the highway.

“Aw, come on!” I say. “I could get most of these online for pennies a card.”

She steps up to me and without warning she grabs my wrist and moves it off the pages and plants it down onto the table and holds it there as she stares up at me in that fearless way of hers. For a moment it is as if time stops. Her firm grip around my pinned wrist as her cold stare penetrated my soul…my spirit shrinks as my cock SWELLS.

“It is rude to waste an honest businesswoman’s time showrooming.” She scolds, letting go of my wrist and flipping the binder closed in the same movement. “You can take your business elsewhere.”

“N-Now h-hold on.” Did my silver tongue just stutter!? “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. I was just saying the cards are overpriced.”

Her eyes wanders toward the exit then back to me and for a moment I worried I was about to be tossed out. And then her gaze, just for an instant, flit downward and right back up again. Did she just check me out? She just checked me out!

“Two each.” She says.

“One?”

“Two.”

“One fifty?”

“Two each.” She says again firmly, then after a pause adds. “Or…twenty for twenty.”

“Deal.” I reach for the binder.

Whap!

With the speed of a striking rattler Mei slaps my hand! Recoiling the hand back to my chest I rub it more from shock than because of any sting. I stare at her slack-jawed and whisper. “You hit me!” It was not a complaint.

“Oh stop. I barely touched you.” She grabs my rubbing hand and tosses it down and away from the other one. Waggling a finger up into my face she says firmly. “First I have to go through these to make sure there are no rare finds or anything like that. Come back tomorrow.”

“B-But…we just agreed a price.”

“The new discounted rate requires further research.” She says. “I’m not going to get taken advantage of by some fast-talking pretty boy.”

A slow smile spreads across her face at the exact same rate of her eyes widening as we both catch what she just said. “You think I’m a pretty boy?”

“Pbbfft!” I scoffs and rolls her eyes, her careful persona slipping. “You THINK you’re a pretty boy is what I meant.”

“I mean, you’re not wrong.” My playful wink has exactly the opposite effect it usually did as Mei pulls back into her shell.

“You have a really high opinion of yourself, don’t you Dusty?” She says, deadpan, as she collects up the binders and boxes.

“I am my biggest fan.” I say, trying to keep things light. “Well, not including my big brother Ric.”

She pauses and glances back at me. “Is he the one you’re buying these for?”

“Yeah. He’s my only sibling.”

“Hrm.” She kneels down and puts the binders and such back into the cupboard. “I assumed it was a younger brother. A kid.”

“Nope. He’s going to be 30 this year. Still a kid at heart. We’ve got that in common.” Sensing an opportunity for a connection I keep the sibling talk rolling. “Though in many ways we’re so different. Night and day. I’m the trouble maker, he’s the good one. I’m the demon child, he’s the angel. Everybody loves Ric.” My voice softens as my banter was beginning to cut a bit too deep. “It’s tough sometimes. Being the kid brother of a guy whose always the center of attention.”

Mei goes still, disturbingly still even by her standards. I’d touched on something here, something to do with Grace. Maybe I’d found my in. She puts the binders and boxes away and closes the cupboard doors. She slowly stands and straightens her apron.

“But…I love the guy to pieces. I still look for baseball cards for him.” I say. “Siblings. They drive ya crazy but they’ll always be there for ya. They say it’s the longest relationship you’ll have in your life, for better or worse, right? Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, ya know?” Already knowing the answer I casually ask. “You got any brothers or sisters?”

Mei’s expression had returned to that flawless placid mask. I’d pried a bit too quickly. But I’d learned something and for now that was enough. In a cool, firm voice she says. “Come back later for those cards. Now, unlike you, I have some work to get done.”

“Right. Right.” I smile. “I’ll be back tomorrow. Count on it.”

***

Bap! Bap! Bap!

With the sun setting in the west Terry and I toss the ball back and forth across the deserted highway, the sound of hard leather hitting padded leather echoing off the wall of the motel behind me. For miles in either direction there wasn’t a car to be seen. As we play catch we talk.

“I’m telling you. She’s warming up to me, man.”

“If you say so.” Terry says dubiously. “Many have tried, many have died.”

Bap! Bap! Bap!

“Nah. This is happening.” I shiver as I remember her hand around my wrist and the mild sting of her slap. “We’ve got something. A chemistry. I can feel it! She invited me back to see her cards. I don’t think that was really about finding out card values.”

“I don’t know, dude. I think you’re imagining things.”

Bap! Bap! Bap!

“No way. Trust me. I know women.” I chuckle. “And I’ve found her soft spot. Hey! What can you tell me about Grace?”

Bap!

Terry mitts the ball and holds it, his brows furrowing. “Grace Ling? Mei’s sister?”

“Yeah.” I say. “Grace.” I laugh. “Mei’s sister, obviously. Sounds like she’s a perfect ray of sunshine. The popular one.”

“Yeah.” He says. “She was.”

There was something in his tone, something in his eyes. My heart begins to sink as an unseasonably cool breeze blows in off the plains. “Was?”

“Grace passed on years ago, Dusty. Not long before graduation.” He nods off to the east. “Fell off the old train bridge.”