Free Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan Page A

never free of his responsibilities. It may be his lunch break, a quiet halftime in the day, but even as he scans the display windows for something Coach might like, he’s aware that every step takes him farther away from Jacquie and the Lobster— away from the real world where his life waits—and that he’s wasting what little time he has left there.
    He’s walked at least half a mile and is beginning to sweat lightly, but keeps his jacket on to hide his waistline. As he passes The Limited, lost in untangling these knots, a little girl in the doorway behind him laughs. She points at him, covering her mouth, and her mother has to grab her arm and lower it, flashing him an apologetic grimace, as if this happens all the time. He goes on, paranoid, sure that people are staring at him. It’s possible his hair is wet from the snow and curling like a bad perm, and he pretends to look in the window of Old Navy and slicks it back with both hands, just in time to catch a pair of shaggy string-bean teens behind him turning their heads toward him in unison like in a scary movie, and then, when Manny wheels around, walking on as if he’s invisible.
    What the hell?
    Since he’s already there at the window, he twists to see if there’s a KICK ME sign taped to his back and discovers that his jacket is ripped. No, not ripped, slashed, because when he pulls it off and holds it up to inspect the damage he can see someone’s taken an incredibly sharp knife to the leather and split it cleanly all the way from the collar down to the belt in one long slice.
    Fredo. Probably thought it was Ty’s.
    “Motherfucker,” Manny says. And there’s no way to fix it, it’s done.
    Fucking Fredo, can’t even do this right. Now he can really forget about his check. Legally, Manny’s not sure how that’ll work, but right now he doesn’t care. And right now there’s nothing he can do about it, so he folds the jacket over his arm and keeps going. More than ever, he just wants to get this over with.
    The Kmart isn’t busy, but it never is. It’s the second atrium that surprises him, the open space below set up for a choir—a makeshift stage with risers and music stands—but deserted, as if he’s early for the show. The place looks evacuated. Only a female security guard sits in the audience of folding chairs, in the very last row, on the aisle, eating something from a piece of foil. Up here on the second level he’s one of two shoppers, the other a white girl far across the opening, headed the other way as if fleeing him. When he enters the wing where Zales is, he has the hallway all to himself.
    He expects it will be closed—his punishment for abandoning his post—and that he’ll have to walk back past Mansour’s and try again tomorrow, but a small blonde is standing behind the counter in a little black dress and lipstick, hair tucked behind her ears to show off a pair of simple diamond studs—exactly what Manny’s come here for.
    Even though they’re the only two in the place, she lets him look around the glass counters for a minute before coming over.
    “Ken I halp you vit samtink?”
    Like anyone who grew up in New Britain, Manny can recognize a Polish accent. JADWEGA, her nametag says. She sounds new to America, but she’s beautiful—blue-eyed and delicately built—and supremely confident. “For a gehlfriend, is?”
    She doesn’t need many words to steer Manny to a pair of diamonds like her own for $179 (“Dese mek her very heppy”), and before Manny realizes he’s been flirting with her, he asks her to model them. She does, turning in profile, holding a manicured hand with blood-red nails to her neck like on QVC, one way and then the other. On Deena they’ll look completely different, but that doesn’t matter. They’d look different on Jacquie too. Sometimes it’s not the thought that counts, just the present.
    “I’ll take them,” Manny says, and waits as she gift wraps the fancy box.
    “Tenk you,” she says,