Page 13 of Cackle

She scans the shelves until she spots the bottle she’s looking for. She materializes a ladder and begins to climb up the bottom rungs to reach the bottle.

She’s wearing a long, silky black dress. It’s got a low-cut sweetheart neckline and she has it cinched tight at the waist with a braided black leather belt. I peel my eyes away. If I let them linger any longer, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop staring. How is she possible? Is she famous? Why is she here?

She passes the bottle down to me.

“Here,” she says. Her voice is like smoke. “Drink this.”

She climbs down the ladder.

“If you don’t like it, you can bring it back,” she says. “But you’ll like it.”

“Yes,” I say. “I mean, I’m sure I will.”

She looks at me for a moment, her eyes bright and full of affection.

We just met a minute ago, but I swear she’s looking at me like we’re best friends, like I’m her favorite person.

“You wouldn’t tell me, would you?”

“Sorry?”

She circles behind me as she speaks. “If you didn’t care for the wine. You wouldn’t bring it back. You wouldn’t pour it down the drain. You would drink it anyway. Have one glass. Give it another chance. Have another.”

A strange, prickly chill travels up my back.

Am I that transparent?

“I don’t mean this as a bad thing,” she says. “You seem so open. So polite. I appreciate it. These are rare qualities, especially these days.”

She walks behind a counter at the back and begins to write something down in a leather-bound ledger. I assume this store is hers. She seems too glamorous to work anywhere. She should be draped across a chaise longue underneath a large palm.

She has some kind of accent. It’s vaguely European, a little haughty. I can’t identify it.

“Feel free to tell me to fuck off,” she says. “I like to think I’ve got good instincts about people. That I’m intuitive. But what do I know, really?”

“No,” I say. “You’re not wrong. I’d drink the wine. Even if I didn’t like it.”

“Close your wallet, darling. I’m not going to charge you for it. Just marking for inventory.”

“Oh, wow. Thank you,” I say. “Are you sure?”

“Quite,” she says. “You’re new, yes?”

“No, I’m thirty,” I say, losing the battle with my reflex to make everything weird, to tell bad jokes when I’m feeling uncomfortable or overwhelmed.

She laughs, and the relief is euphoric.

“Almost new,” she says.

“I did just move here. Yesterday, actually.”

“Welcome,” she says. “I’m Sophie.”

She reaches out her hand. She wears gold and silver rings. Thin, delicate bands on all of her fingers. On her right index, she wears an enormous garnet. It looks medieval.

I shake her hand, ashamed that mine is clammy, that my nails are short, dirty and broken, the cuticles out of control. I wear no rings.

Her grip is firm, and she puts her other hand over mine, like my hand is something precious or fragile, something that requires extra care. Like a gem or a sick bird.