The Woman Before You: An intense, addictive love story with an unexpected twist.... Carrie Blake

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СКАЧАТЬ I say, The Customer—stood in the doorway, back lit. Tall, thin, broad-shouldered.

      I walked toward him, slipping into character; welcoming and friendly, but not pushy, hungry, or aggressive. That was what the mattress professional instruction manual said to do.

      Close up, he was so handsome I had to look away—but not before I noticed his glossy dark hair, dark eyes, eyelashes longer than mine. His features were chiseled. He looked a little like Gary Cooper, a little like Robert Mitchum—like old-school movie stars used to look before actors began to look like the guy next door who’s going to get fat and bald and jowly the minute he turns forty.

      In other words: He was hot.

      I said, ‘Can I help you?’

      He said, ‘I hope so. I’m moving soon, and I don’t see any point in taking my old mattress with me.’

      If I had ten dollars for every time I heard someone say those exact words, I could have quit and lived on the money for the six months it might take me to find a better job. But sex and beauty change the conversation. Things you’ve heard a million times sound interesting, fresh and new.

      I wanted to know everything. Where did he live? Why was he moving? Who would be sleeping on the new mattress? I loved this adaptation of my game—for two players now instead of one.

      ‘What sort of mattress are you looking for?’

      He smiled and shrugged. He had a beautiful smile, a charming shrug.

      ‘A comfortable one,’ he said.

      I said, ‘Okay, let me ask you.’ This was on script. ‘Do you like your current mattress?’

      ‘My mattress is ten years old, what would like mean?’ He smiled again.

      I smiled back. So there we were.

      I asked him the standard questions. Side sleeper? Back sleeper? Skeletal problems? Sleep issues? He slept like a baby. He closed his eyes and fell out, slept straight through the night. I wanted to lie next to him, with my head nestled on his chest.

      I had never felt quite like that before. Certainly not about any other mattress store customer. It threw me off script.

      ‘Lucky you,’ I said.

      He didn’t respond. He was making me do all the work.

      ‘I think I know what you might like. We have one on the floor that I can show you. Please come this way.’

      ‘Thank you,’ he said.

      I walked down the aisles lined with mattresses, looking back from time to time, as if to make sure that he was still behind me. I thought of Orpheus—don’t look back!—mostly to avoid thinking about how self-conscious I was, how aware that a man was following me, looking at me, at my back, my ass. Sometimes I wondered how a customer was responding to Steve’s weird medical decor, but now I wished The Customer would actually look at the gurney, at the bizarre medical stuff—at anything but me.

      I stopped at the foot of the most expensive and luxurious mattress we had, twelve thousand dollars’ worth of organic German cotton, French wool layers, inner hand tufting. The celebrity movie star mattress, the Executive Deluxe Comfort Natural Pillowtop Set. As far as I knew, Steve had never sold a single one of them, but he insisted on having it on display. He said it improved the look of the ‘establishment,’ like my shorty jacket, I guess.

      I could read The Customer’s mind well enough to know that this was the mattress he would want. But I also obviously knew he wasn’t going to buy it. I had no idea what he was thinking right that second. It was as if those circuits—my mind-reading window—were jammed by how sexy and handsome he was.

      He asked, ‘Is this the best one you have?’

      ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I mean yes. Would you like to try it?’

      ‘No. You. I want you to try it. I’d appreciate that very much. If you wouldn’t mind lying down for a moment.’

      It wasn’t that this never happened—that people asked me to lie on the mattress. But mostly it happened with very old people, or people with some physical damage, who came in with their caretakers. They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, risk being a spectacle, struggling to lie down. Or they couldn’t lie down without help. In that case, they might want to see me lie on the mattress, to see if I looked comfy.

      ‘Comfortable?’ they’d ask.

      ‘Totally,’ I always replied, though nothing could have been less comfortable than I felt at those moments.

      In the ten months I’d worked at Doctor Sleep, not one—not one!—young, handsome, hot guy had ever asked me to try out a mattress for him.

      Actually, I did mind. I felt sort of queasy and flushed. I wanted to say that this wasn’t my job.

      I could tell that he wouldn’t have insisted. He was too polite. But I was a nice Midwestern girl. I wouldn’t want to be rude to a customer…

      And besides, I wanted to do it.

      ‘Lie down,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me see.’

      That please did the trick. ‘All right.’ I couldn’t look at him.

      I climbed onto the mattress. My white jacket rode up. I had to lift my ass to tuck the hem of my dress around me. All this time I was conscious of how intently he was watching me. I saw myself through his eyes. The mind-reading corner of my brain was glowing red.

      When I saw myself through his eyes, I realized that I was already shaking.

      I lay the way all the customers did, on my back, with my arms crossed, like a mummy.

      I was so nervous that I started babbling. ‘Do you know anything about feng shui? It’s an ancient Asian … I don’t know … science, I guess you could say. What matters is not only which mattress you buy but also how and where you set it up in your room. It’s important for how you sleep and how healthy you’ll be. There are principles, guidelines…’

      I stopped. I sounded like an idiot. He didn’t seem to be listening, and I didn’t blame him. Why was I blabbing on about all this to the last guy in the world who would be interested? I lay back and stared at the ceiling.

      ‘No one sleeps like that,’ he said. ‘Like you’re lying now. On your back with your arms crossed. Do you?’

      ‘No,’ I told the ceiling.

      ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Show me how you really sleep.’ His voice was low, gentle but firm and insistent.

      I rolled over on my side. I reached back and yanked down my skirt. He walked around to the other side of the bed so he was looking straight down at me.

      Was I ashamed? I was ashamed to think that I would never have done this if The Customer hadn’t been drop-dead handsome. I thought: What a shallow person you are, Isabel.

      ‘How does it feel?’ The Customer asked.

      ‘Comfortable,’ СКАЧАТЬ