Anthology.The.Mammoth.Book.of.Angels.And.Demons.2013.Paula.Guran by Anthology

shopping for his birthday. You know, like he can read.”
    “None of your customers read, Michael,” she says. “They collect .”
    “Hmph,” he says, because he doesn’t like to be reminded, and then, as the next selection comes up on K-FMO, “Oh, listen. It’s your song.”
    It so is not her song. It’s a bad novelty record called “Kinky Boots” about how everybody’s wearing, you know, kinky boots. The only boots Bethany owns are a pair of Doc Martens but it wasn’t footwear that had made the boys declare it her song. Couple of months earlier, Gay Michael, bored on a customer-less afternoon, had treated her to an appraising look as she was leaning on the counter reading.
    “Look at you,” he’d said. “With your jean jacket and your ironic T-shirts.” The one she’d been wearing that day had read “Talk Nerdy to Me”. “With your Aimee Bender paperbacks and your rah-rah skirts and leggings. You know what you are, Bethany? You’re a frumpy little beat girl.”
    Fat Michael had clapped his hands in delight. Sometimes Bethany wondered which of the partners was actually the gay one. “‘Sweet girls, Street girls, Frumpy little beat girls’,” he’d recited, just in case Bethany had missed the reference to the stupid song’s lyrics. She couldn’t be mad at either of them – it was all so obviously coming from a place of affection – but, you know, Jesus Christ. Frumpy little beat girl.
    She takes a sip of her coffee. “Not my song,” she reminds Fat Michael, even though she knows it’s like trying to lose a high school nickname.
    Gay Michael pulls the annex curtain aside. “I have to drive it over at lunchtime,” he says, meaning the Milton.
    “She won’t come here?” says Fat Michael.
    “What, and leave the ’two-one-oh?” Gay Michael says. “She’d melt like Margaret Hamilton.” He raises a pre-emptive hand before Fat Michael can object further. “I am not risking losing this sale, Michael,” he says. “It’s two months’ rent.”
    “It’s just that I have that, you know, that thing,” says Fat Michael.
    “I’ll mind the store,” Bethany says. She knows that “that thing” means a lunch date with a woman from whatever dating service he’s currently using. She also knows it won’t work out, they never do, but Fat Michael is a trier and Bethany sort of loves him for it.
    She’s never been left alone in charge of the store because the Michaels always stagger their lunch hours, so her offer to tend it for a couple of hours without adult supervision prompts – big surprise – a discussion. But they do their best not to make a drama out of it – which Bethany appreciates ’cause God knows it’s an effort for both of them – and it boils down to her receiving several overcautious instructions, all of which pretty much translate as don’t do anything stupid . After she promises that she’ll do her best not to, they take her up on it and Gay Michael’s gone by 11.45 to beat traffic and Fat Michael’s out of there by noon.
    Which is how Bethany comes to be alone when the man in the Chinese laundry initiates the Apocalypse.
     
    Bethany’s lost in her Kelly Link collection when the old-school bell tinkles on the entrance door. She looks up to see the door swinging shut behind a new customer as he walks in, holding a hardcover book in one gloved hand.
    Huh, Bethany thinks. Gloves.
    They’re tight-fitting gray leather and, given that it’s spring in California, would look even odder than they do were it not that the man’s pretty overdressed anyway. His suit is a three-piece and its vest sports a chain that dangles in a generous curve from a button and leads, Bethany presumes, to a pocket watch that is currently, well, pocketed.
    He’s not in costume exactly, Bethany realizes – the suit is of modern cut and fit – but he’s hardly inconspicuous. She flashes on the elderly Hispanic guy she and Mr Slater had seen at the light earlier and wonders if she somehow