“It must be great there,” he said.
She smiled and looked away. “It’s okay.” She bit her lip. “I don’t think I like working retail,” she said.
“Ah, retail!” he said. “Retail would be fantastic if it wasn’t for the fucking customers.”
She giggled.
“Don’t let them get to you,” he said. “Get to be really smart about the stock, so that there’s always something you know more about than they do, and when that isn’t true, get them to teach you more so you’ll be in control the next time.”
She nodded.
“And have fun with the computer when it’s slow,” he said.
“What?”
“A store like that, it’s got the home phone number of about seventy percent of the people in Toronto you’d want to ever hang out with. Most of your school friends, even the ones you’ve lost track of. All the things they’ve rented. All their old addresses—you can figure out who’s living together, who gave their apartment to whom, all of that stuff. That kind of database is way more fun than you realize. You can get lost in it for months.”
She was nodding slowly. “I can see that,” she said. She upended her coffee and set it down. “Listen, Arbus—” she began, then bit her lip again. She looked at Link, who tugged at his fading pink shock of hair.