Good Luck, Fatty

soggy mushroom and change the subject. “How long are you guys staying?” I ask. “I mean, when are you going back?”
    Marie squints. “Back?”
    “To… wherever, ” I say with a twirl of my fork, embarrassed about not remembering which country they’ve most recently conquered. “On your mission.”
    “We’ve got a new mission now,” Marie says, beaming at her belly. She locks eyes with Duncan, who looks abnormally emotive. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
    A bulb of a tear forms in the corner of Duncan’s eye. “Perfectly right,” he murmurs, the tear spilling. “ Perfectly.”

 
     
    chapter 5
     
    EXACTLY ONE important person has ever hailed from Industry, North Carolina, as far as I know anyway: Lex Arlington (at least that’s his stage name). As the legend goes, he began his career in local theater (meaning three counties over, in Guilford), where he honed his craft before launching for the big time: a squalid Los Angeles apartment and a steady trickle of TV spots for soda pop and mini hamburgers. Two years ago, he got cast as a hunky young lawyer on Penal Code 911. Now he’s a household name.
    And he just strolled into The Pit.
     I’ve heard the rumors of Lex sightings around town, which seem to pop up once or twice a year, especially around Christmastime. But I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to witness one firsthand. “May I help you?” I say in my pleasant, public-persona tone to Lex and his companion, a leggy, sunglasses-clad brunette with a warm, orange glow and Silly Putty lips.
    Where the hell is Harvey? He’s missing the biggest thing to hit The Pit since…well, ever.
    Lex is athletic and blond, with eyes like freshly mown grass. The irises of a pharaoh. “Didn’t this place used to be a barbershop?” he asks, a hand nonchalantly draped over the handlebars of a Trek Speed Concept 9.5, the most expensive bike in the shop. Maybe now that he’s rich and famous, luxury goods are drawn to him like planets to the sun.
    I form my lips into a nervous smile. “I think it did,” I find myself saying, not at all sure this is true.
    The brunette laces her fingers around Lex’s and pulls him toward our meager selection of rollerblades, which conjures a wholesome image in my mind of the twosome skating hand-in-hand along a sunny California boardwalk. “Looking for anything in particular?” I ask, following along behind them but keeping my distance.
    While the brunette spins the wheels of a sweet K2 skate with her thumb, Lex asks me, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
    This is perhaps the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me. I glance toward the backroom in hopes of spotting Harvey, but he must be bogged down with the monthly inventory. “You’re on TV, right?” I say.
    He smiles. “You’re good. You had me going for a minute there,” he says with the same wink he’s employed to melt the hearts of a hundred gorgeous starlets back in Hollywood. “What’s your name?”
     I have the weirdest feeling that he should know my name already, like we’re friends through the TV. “Bobbi-Jo Cotton.”
    “These should work,” the brunette interjects, dangling a raspberry-colored K2 by its tongue. “Size eight and a half.”
    My feet are tiny. Size six. Stumps on a bloated tree. “Okay,” I say. “Let me check out back.” I scurry for the stockroom and, as I pass Harvey’s office door, raise my voice and say, “Hey, Harv, come here.”
    I don’t wait for him to answer, my eyes trained like a laser on the neat rows of rollerblades I can see through the door-less stockroom entry. When I reach the K2s, a glad rush washes over me for the fact that Harvey’s made me organize the back-stocked merchandise so meticulously.
    But there are no eight and a halfs. I pull an eight and, miraculously, a nine (a size we don’t order too often due to its sluggish sales rate) and spin back out into the hall, where Harvey drifts from his office into my path.
    The size nines bang into his arm, then crash against the wall. “Sorry!” I gasp.
    Harvey rubs at his elbow and eyes me with confusion. “Everything all right?”
    “Come on,” I say, pushing past him. “You’ll never believe…”
    Harvey trusts me, no questions asked. With a minimal sigh, he shuffles toward the sales floor, where Lex and the brunette are curled around each other on the extra-deep window ledge, my advertisement for the Yo-Yo race looking childish over their tilted heads, which are poised to