14. The Grand Unveiling
The Grand Unveiling
HENRY
The finished turntable—installed and working—reminded me of a giant lazy Susan. My mannequins and props were salt and pepper shakers that I prayed wouldn’t spill.
I gave the platform a final spin to make sure none of my fastened set pieces proved a hazard during the transition.
Everything, even Aidan in mannequin mode, stayed perfectly in place.
Despite Great Aunt Isla’s skepticism and Alexa’s antagonism, I held on to hope that this would be the golden ticket for a thriving few sales days before Christmas.
A persistent, pessimistic chattering flowed through my mind. My anxieties had anxieties, but I quieted them as best I could. It was a little before seven a.m. when I flipped the lock and the OPEN sign back to CLOSED.
Aidan whooshed to life and patiently waited for me to undo his shoe straps. I’d installed devices like the boot bindings on snowboards. When Aidan finished changing, all he needed to do was step onto the locking mechanism and he’d be held up for the spin.
We were ready. Or as ready as we were going to get with hours left to spare before our first showing on our second biggest shopping day of the year, Super Saturday—the retail world’s nickname for the Saturday before Christmas.
After helping Aidan down and back into his street clothes, we locked up the shop and headed north onto Main Avenue. There were three things I needed on important mornings: coffee, a chocolate croissant, and a view of the ocean.
The world was still dark aside from stark-white streetlamps adorned with wreaths and snaked with garland, and the streets were still quiet save for the sounds of our tandem footsteps.
With provisions in hand, I led Aidan down the blocks toward the Main Street beach access.
We ignored the warning signs and headed straight for the pier.
A bench waited for us at the end to sit together and watch the sunrise.
The waves crashed melodically beneath Aidan’s next words. “It’s amazing that you live so close to the ocean. Almost eight billion people in the world and how many can say they can walk to see a wonder like this.”
I stared out at the first drops of indigo morning that reminded me of unwashed denim, fresh from the store.
Pink squiggled itself between the breaking wall of clouds.
Gradually, the sand separated from the sea and the sea separated from the sky, and the layers of the sunrise became a pleasing, pastel cake that made me hungry even as I picked at the last of my croissant.
While I didn’t want to miss a flicker of color as it crested across the sky, I found the strength to rip my gaze away and swing it toward Aidan.
From the corner of his left eye, a single, perfect teardrop escaped. He reached up to catch it. The sunlight bathed his face as he pulled his hand away and stared at the shimmering wetness with confusion. “I—I’m crying? But I’m not sad.”
“Beautiful things can do that to you,” I said.
“You’ve never made me cry,” he said so earnestly I could’ve disintegrated into granules of sand, lived happily forever on that beach.
Overcome, I squelched the space between us with a single slide. “May I?” he asked, raising his left arm. I nodded and then wriggled underneath, resting my head where his pecs and shoulder muscles met.
We stayed like that as the sun went from the spark of a semicircle to the blaze of a full one.
“Are you nervous?” I asked so I’d stop grinding my teeth.
“Should I be?” he asked.
I shook my head and nuzzled in closer. “No. I was just curious. I’m probably nervous enough for the both of us.”
“Would it help if you told me what you’re nervous about?” he asked.
“It might be quicker if I told you what I wasn’t nervous about,” I joked.
He didn’t laugh. Sarcasm was wasted on him.
Without trying, he cut through to the sincerest parts of me.
“Okay, I think I’m nervous that this won’t work, and if it doesn’t work, I wasted a lot of the store’s money.
We’re behind on rent. Sales have been slow.
Great Aunt Isla’s considering recommending Alexa and her soap shop for the lease come January. ”
“Those soaps are nice. I’ve been using one in the shower.” I smelled it on him then—sage and lemongrass. It suited him, I was loath to admit.
“Still, I won’t let Isla’s store shutter. It means too much to her. To me. Where would I go if I didn’t have it?” I asked. The question was directed more at the universe than at Aidan.
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
The first thought that came to mind was a summer artist’s residency in Provincetown, right at the tip of Cape Cod. I’d trade one queer beach town for another. If accepted, for three whole months, I’d get a room, studio space, and a modest stipend to paint and create to my heart’s content.
After running into Xavier at the estate sale, I’d grown steadily more haunted by the memory of that failed solo exhibition I’d done for my senior thesis.
While my marks were fine—I passed and graduated—the experience left a bitter taste in my mouth.
I never showed again. My art was too personal to display, too ripe for ridicule.
That’s why I stuck to the display windows. People focused on the vintage pieces they could purchase and take home. My art was peripheral. The context was nothing more than a platform to elevate the goods.
If given the opportunity and the space again, though, maybe I could dig up my artistic confidence, I thought.
But summer was peak season in Ocean Glen. The store saw customers. Not hordes, but enough to keep the lights on, the floor stocked.
Unless this doesn’t work, said the devil on my shoulder. Unless Alexa wins, and you’re set free.
I shooed those thoughts away like they were flies circling a picnic spread.
I had responsibilities and a duty to Great Aunt Isla.
Pipe dreams needed to stay unsmoked.
“Nowhere,” I said finally to Aidan. Because it was partially the truth. I was so comfortable with his arm around me. So cozy with the coat I’d purchased for him brushing against my cheek. So calm with the sunlight-dappled ocean advancing and retreating in front of me.
As much as I’d have loved to stay there all day, Aidan’s coat warming one side of my face and the sun warming the other, we had somewhere to be.
We walked back to the store in companionable silence.
Parking spots in town had filled up. Breakfast restaurants, too. I drank the last dregs of my coffee and threw the cup out before we turned onto Anchor Avenue, expecting to see some dog walkers and maybe a jogger or two.
Instead, a tiny crowd had gathered in front of Isla’s Attic. Somewhere between twelve and twenty onlookers huddled together in front of the window.
“Are they here for us?” Aidan asked, pointing up ahead.
“I… I think so. Let’s go around back.”
We circled the block, passed through the gate, and used the rear entrance. We were still thirty minutes away from opening. Word had clearly gotten around.
My nervousness transformed into excitement. Especially when Aidan came out of the dressing room looking rugged for our cabin scene in light-wash jeans and tan boots. We strapped him into the display.
He grabbed my wrist before I stepped down. “Hey,” he said in a small voice. “It’s going to be spectacular.”
And because I couldn’t help myself, I leaned in close and kissed his cheek, which sent a magnificent blush parading over his features. “Thank you for being such a help, and for being my muse.”
Embarrassed suddenly that I’d said too much mushy nonsense, I rushed away to greet our public.
The throng had doubled in size while we were inside. My lips practically glued themselves shut when a hush swept over the crowd. All those eyes. All that expectation. I could’ve choked on it.
Alexa stood front and center, phone camera poised.
In my mind, I was twenty-two again before a jury of my peers and professors, ready to unveil a show inspired by a guy who’d break my heart two hours later. That nausea nearly took me off my feet, until my parents hastened down the street to join the crowd along with a woman in a wheelchair.
The sea of people parted so Great Aunt Isla could see from her seated position.
This is for her, I reminded myself. For all she’s given me.
“Hello,” I said, throat dry and hands shaky.
“My name is Henry Aster. I’m the manager here at Isla’s Attic.
Many of you know me from my Instagram and the windows I’ve designed here over the last…
oh, I don’t know, decade-plus. However, this year, I wanted to do a little something different.
A sort of living, rotating display with a full story and a reoccurring character in every scene.
Think of it like if a CMC movie was a comic strip but in real life?
” I clapped my hands together to bang out some of the apprehensive energy coursing through me.
“Okay, so I’ll unveil the window, let you take your photos, and then go behind the scenes to do some magic and unveil the next one.
We’ll be doing two scenes per day. Sound good? ”
The crowd cheered. Alexa smirked. My parents beamed. Great Aunt Isla… sat still, looking indifferent. I waited for our telepathy to kick in, but she refused again to meet my eyes. Whatever.
Back inside, I counted to ten, flipped on the lights, and drew back the curtain.
The crowd’s immediate vocal delight bled in through the door. I heaved out a sigh of relief.
I poked my head out. The first scene depicted Aidan with his back to the viewer, midstride, hand outstretched toward the doorknob of a cabin bedecked in lights. The artificial trees from the estate sale became landscaping for “The House on Holly Lane”—Aidan’s title for the story.
Fifteen minutes later, I dipped inside, shut the curtains, flipped Aidan to human mode, and spun the platform to the inside scene.
Aidan changed into his pajamas, housecoat, and monogrammed slippers in record speed.
At the fireplace mantel of the cozy Christmas cottage I’d painted him into, he held a photo of his dead wife—there’s always a dead wife in those movies, he’d informed me—beside a gorgeously expensive, ornate urn we’d found at a flea market.
“Let’s tug at their heartstrings!” he’d said, and the aw s that reached my ears were a good sign we’d done our job.
“We’re now open for business,” I said to the furiously clapping crowd. I nearly got trampled as the last-minute shoppers squeezed through our narrow door.
“Quite the display,” Alexa said, though I wasn’t sure if she meant my speech, the crowd, or the window itself. She brushed inside to browse.
My parents rolled Great Aunt Isla up the handicap ramp. Mom and Dad gave me hugs and kisses and praise. Great Aunt Isla gave me the cold shoulder. What gives?
“Alexa tells us you didn’t do this all on your own,” said Dad, leaning on the handles of Great Aunt Isla’s wheelchair.
He was a short man with a stocky build and friendly chipmunk cheeks that had turned scarlet from the cold.
Pale gray earmuffs wrapped around the back of his head, half disappearing into his unruly mop of black hair flecked at the tips with silver.
“And that the man who helped you is your date for Christmas dinner,” added Mom through the thick knit of her chunky scarf.
She sounded as if she was smiling but I couldn’t tell.
She had her coat zipped up to the top, the scarf stacked over her nose, and a hat pulled all the way down to her eyebrows.
She was a floating pair of earthy eyes that matched mine. “Is he here? Do we get to meet him?”
“No, I gave him the day off. He was too nervous about the reception and afraid no one would show up. He’s, uh, really superstitious about stuff like this,” I said. Passing these tidbits off as Aidan’s anxieties made them easier to share.
“I can understand that,” Dad said with a laugh. “If I wasn’t conducting the choir concerts, I’d hide away in my classroom and pretend they weren’t happening. I always feel I’ve got more stage fright than my kids, and the audience is only seeing my back.”
I might have been an only child, but Dad, as an enthusiastic educator, considered every student that came through his choir program at Ocean Glen Middle School one of his kids.
Mom was the Ocean Glen Middle School nurse.
By the time I hit sixth grade, every staff member knew me as Hugh and Margaret Aster’s little boy, which meant everything from my successes—winning the coveted art award in the seventh grade—to my mistakes—getting caught stealing from the art supply closet for my displays at Isla’s Attic the following year—were easily reported.
“We look forward to meeting him,” Mom said with a muffled clap of her heavily gloved hands.
“Let’s peruse a bit, Margaret,” Dad said, tugging Mom inside.
“I can mind myself,” Great Aunt Isla tutted when Dad tried to push her along.
I stood there on the porch with Great Aunt Isla and a few neighbors who’d popped over to see what all the fuss was about. “What did you think?” I asked.
“I think it’s a triumph, doll. It was worth every second I’m strapped into this insipid contraption,” she said, jostling the armrests of her wheelchair that I’d washi taped for her many months ago so it wasn’t a plain, depressing hospital blue.
“Before you ask, it was either this or the oxygen. I chose this. I don’t want to hear a word about it.
” She’d never fully recovered from that flu the previous year.
I mimed zipping my lips and pushed her inside, beaming at her approval.
Later in the day, a new group of people gathered around my window asking to see the first side. With a moment’s notice, I cleared the store, threw Aidan’s original look up on the display, and did the change again.
This happened once more before nightfall, and Aidan appeared ecstatic that word had traveled so quickly through Ocean Glen, up into Asbury Park and beyond.
At closing time, Aidan humanized and raced to dress in the outfit I’d left hanging for him.
Halfway through, he realized the platform wasn’t spinning and that I’d closed the shop for the night.
“Wait, what’s this?” he asked, one leg slipped into the suit trousers.
I averted my gaze from the impressive bulge sculpted in the pouch of his black Calvin Klein boxer briefs.
“I’m taking you out to celebrate,” I said.