_Little Rituals_ opening for comment
Jan. 9th, 2006 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaTime to see what we've all been talking about.
Behind the LJ cut below is the opening of _Little Rituals_, the mainstream/chick lit book that I'm currently tweaking. I don't know how I would prune the prose here (because part of the chicklitty voice is to be somewhat prolix, I think), but I certainly wouldn't mind hearing suggestions. Also, it might be interesting to hear if anyone sees this as not-so-episodic, because I have added a few lines here and there. I mean, it's only the first couple of scenes, but perhaps you'll know from just reading THAT far (if you get that far) whether you feel she has a goal or it's just a slice of life. I'd like to hear any and all comments. Please don't feel obligated to read any of it. However, if you've been in on some of the comment threads, it might interest you to see what the book actually looks like.
You Have Been Warned.
LITTLE RITUALS by Shalanna Collins
There are rules and rites and rituals older than the
sound of bells and snow on mountains.
--James Thurber, THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS
Chapter One
LITTLE RITUALS by Shalanna Collins
There are rules and rites and rituals older than the
sound of bells and snow on mountains.
--James Thurber, THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS
Chapter One
My life is filled with little rituals. I don't know when or how I invented them; I simply know I do them, even if I don't always rationally believe they work. Like blowing a kiss for luck when I see a black cat. Or whistling at every passing yellow VW.
Since childhood, I've acknowledged the power of folk traditions and superstitions. Everyone knocks on wood and avoids the thirteenth floor. Who doesn't cross her fingers now and then? But the most powerful rite is more abstract: do something selfless, something selfish, then a random, anonymous act of kindness. In that order. Within a span of forty-eight hours.
This is the charm that heals, I hope. This week the ritual started when I gave away my place on the DART train to a kid desperate to get home on time. Then I indulged in several scanty bras for no reason at all. As for the third, it has to stay anonymous for the magic to work.
And I need some magic in my life right now.
I think I've jinxed myself. Magic, as anyone knows, must be pure and step-by-step perfect if it is to work. If you do any part of it incorrectly, naturally you're going to get side effects or even the opposite of what you intended. It's easy to screw up, which pretty much keeps casual try-it-out types away (because having one sudden image of a celebrity's naughty bits appear in your mind's eye as you twist the final crank on a ritual can completely blow it, pun intended). And if you get nervous--or if you're a scatterbrain like I've been lately--your anxiety can mess things up, contaminating or ruining the magic. Fumbling the spell. Hexing you.
The reason I suspect I'm cursed is that ever since I tried a ceremony to commemorate the ending of my relationship with Patrick Carter, in an attempt to free myself from any lingering power he has over me, things have gone wrong. A lint-covered sourball formed in the pit of my stomach immediately after, so I must have fumbled it. If I knew which unlucky number crossed my mind at the wrong moment and caused this, I would unthink it.
As I back out of my parking place at the grocery store, I feel a sudden thump behind my seat. The jolt sends me flying forward a couple of inches, and the shoulder harness catches me painfully across the collarbone. Adrenaline-fueled panic as I slam on the brakes causes a ringing in my ears that nearly drowns out the sounds of crunching metal and a shattering taillight.
A quick mental inventory says I'm unhurt. As the initial shock subsides, I glance in the rear view to find a frowning dwarf emerging from a black pickup that sits at an odd angle behind me. I could swear nothing was there a moment before.
So much for my spidey-sense.
He's actually not a dwarf, a closer inspection reveals, just a stumpy Hispanic man wearing a two-gallon Stetson and scaled-down cowboy boots. He stands, hands on hips, surveying the damage like an angry hobbit as I climb out of my green Junebug. "I don't have time for this," is the first thing out of his mouth. His truck's tailgate is down, with two metal shelving units hanging over because they're too long for the bed. The corner of the top one has rammed into my Junebug's trunk. My trunk lock looks like a belly button, an "innie." The leg of the other shelving unit is stuck in my left taillight. His tailgate has a few scratches. Overall, the damage looks mostly cosmetic on both sides.
We must've started backing out at exactly the same time. Does anyone else realize that the side mirrors tell NOTHING about what's directly behind your car? I might've misjudged the distance in the rear view mirror because I didn't see that lolling tailgate, which adds two feet to the length of the pickup. To hear him talk, there's no question that this is all my fault.
In Texas, fenderbender victims don't call the police unless there's over two hundred dollars' worth of damage. We exchange insurance information and phone numbers, and he hops back into his truck's cab like a toad into its hidey-hole. His tires squeal as he speeds away, narrowly missing two other cars that are backing out.
On my dashboard is mounted a figurine of Ganesh, the Indian god of new things. The statue was put there by my ex, Patrick, back when he and the car were brand-new. I kiss my fingertips and pat the figure, although it's a bit too late to invoke the Ganesha for luck. Still, as the guy who was giving CPR to the fried chicken said, "It couldn't hurt."
I can't afford to get the car fixed right now. I've got a $250 deductible; besides, if I made another claim on my car insurance, they'd hike my rates. But I've got to report the accident in case Frodo tries to make a claim (although there wasn't any damage on his end that I could see.) As usual, my cell phone's battery is dead.
Raindrops begin to splatter on my windshield as I venture onto the freeway. I should've stayed in bed today, crawling out just in time for Ruth's party, but I couldn't bear to waste my day off. I knew it was a bad omen this morning when I reached into my purse for my checkbook and pulled out the keepsake program from Cheryl's funeral.
It was a sign, I'm sure of it. She sent me some kind of warning from the next world that I should've heeded. If only I could figure out what it is.
This luck thing is getting to me; before I get flattened by some cowboy's semi, I need to do some research. How would you Google-search it--"hexes, removing"?
Ouch: that belt really grabbed my shoulder. It's kind of numb. I'm going to have a bruise.
I can't imagine how I'm going to start another set-of-three charm in the mood I'm in. As I step out of the cold drizzle and into my apartment--actually the entire first floor of a regal restored Victorian right on the old-fashioned main street of Renner, Texas, just north of Dallas--I find my dear-but-crazy roommate Elaine dancing the cha-cha around the sectional sofa.
Elaine's got her own rituals. This is one of them, the post-scrounging or thrifting dance to celebrate all the great stuff she got cheap or free.
"I'm in loooove," she sings, to a tune from an old musical. "With the Goodwill Store, and Family Thrift, and that heavenly Community Ministries drop-off box." She twirls, holding a 1950s-ish prom dress up to herself. It's a pouf of purple tulle, with a big spray of netting for a skirt and sequins dyed to match sewn all over a fitted violet satin bodice that has a large silk orchid pinned on like a corsage; the flower's obviously not original, but probably got added by some teenybopper going to a retro dance.
"Does that fit you?" I survey the stacks of shabby, vaguely soiled clothing covering the kitchen countertop where I need to set my grocery sacks because they're getting heavy. The mound exudes that musty, gamy odor characteristic of fabric that's spent a while in a damp basement. The first pile has one worn brown plaid flannel kilt (of no known tartan; bagpipes wouldn't even squeak for it); a black corduroy circle skirt with a few bald spots (go team go); a pilled orange (and I don't mean peach; I mean construction orange) cable-knit cardigan at least three sizes too large for Elaine; a large black vinyl messenger bag covered in some unidentifiable but sticky-looking substance (probably spilled on it long before she pulled it out of the dumpster); and the only decent find she has today, a short-sleeved blouse sprigged with tiny pink flowers on a yellow ground. When I look closer, though, I notice its underarm seams have been ripped open.
Elaine always wears her flea market finds. Today she has on a silk dress, or rayon maybe, from like the 1940s, with a lace collar and seamed-up-the-back nylons. She's also wearing these tottery "tart" high heels that must've come from the Goodwill dollar bin. Like thongs with a heel, but turquoise leather. With a huge flower between the toes.
She has no idea that her faboo vintage costumes look absolutely dowdy on her chubby Midwestern frame. It doesn't help that her cropped brown hairstyle is so unflattering. Or that her nose and arms are currently peeling from a sunburn.
Not that any of this matters to me. Elaine is beautiful on the inside. If she'd make more of an effort, she could have guys lined up at the door, but it's not my place to say anything to her. I pride myself on seeing past whatever façade people choose to present to the world, like a good little humanist. Besides, I'm no beauty queen.
And why am I being so bitchy? Today, I rate up there with the two cranky Muppet Show heckler guys hurling insults from the balcony. The truth is I'd never want to offend Elaine, and I usually go out of my way to spare her feelings. I worry sometimes that she'll never grow up, but maybe she doesn't have to.
I jiggle my grocery bags. "Um, Earth to Elaine."
She doesn't answer me, just keeps waltzing around the room with the dress held up to her as if she were Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Suddenly seeming to notice me, she stops and sings out, "Daffy!" Then she claps her tiny chartreuse-nailed hand over her mouth. "Sorry, Daph. I forget."
"Twenty demerits. See that you don't do it again." I make my tone light, but leave in a hint of warning. Patrick got away with calling me that, because from him I would put up with anything, but now that he's dumped me and I am finished with men and dating, possibly forever, I won't tolerate that dimwit nickname. Once all of Patrick's friends started calling me "Duck," but I put a stop to that immediately.
"I'm sorry. Daphne Celeste, I mean. Or should I stick to Ms. Dilbeck?" Her tone is only slightly mocking. "By the way, that's really bad luck to walk inside with your umbrella still open."
She's absolutely right. I shake the umbrella, watching for droplets, and decide it isn't that wet. Easing it closed, I lean it up against the corner.
Elaine spins for me. "What do you think? It only needs a few little alterations. I think there's a couple of inches in the side seams of the bodice."
It depends on whether she wants the seams to rip completely out the first time she tries to bend over. Vintage fabric is notoriously brittle. "Well, you might want to wait until you lose a few pounds," I mutter, scanning the dinette table for a clear spot. The bags' plastic handles are cutting off the circulation in my forearms.
"What?" Elaine looks right at me, challenging me to repeat that.
"I said, that's a great find. Zounds!" I shift my groceries. My shoulder doesn't feel right. Although there's no reason to alarm Elaine by telling her about that little fenderbump that set my charm bracelet jingling. "I must be getting Granny's rheumatiz. These bags are heavy." I don't dare touch any of the paperwork Rachel has left piled on the table; there's also a stack of those potholders Elaine weaves. "Could you come move some stuff?"
She waves a hand vaguely. "Go ahead and set your bags on top of it. You can't hurt anything."
Thinking of Rachel's probable reaction should I crease any of her Priceless Documents, I decide to risk getting blood clots and struggle past the dinette with the bags strangling my wrists.
It's not Elaine's fault that there's a lack of counter space. We share an authentic retro-chic "kitsch-en," restored by an eccentric flea market dealer and therefore authentically equipped with a 1930s Magic Chef range and pink 1950s Westinghouse fridge with the freezer on the bottom, complete with those metal ice trays that eject square cubes when you pull their handles up. When we first moved in, Rachel and I went half-sies on a Jetsons-style stainless steel microwave with round front window reminiscent of a Speed Queen clothes dryer so we'd actually be able to cook.
I start unloading my groceries directly into my designated areas. We each have one shelf in the fridge, one in the freezer, and one in the pantry. Anything put on the communal shelf or in the door is fair game. I don't often put stuff on the communal shelves.
"You had a couple of calls." Elaine admires herself in the full-length mirror that she's got nailed to the wall in the passageway between bedrooms and living room. It was a flea-market find, natch, and although its reflections are spotted and wavery, she forgives it. The effect is of you, but you in a faded, aged photograph out of Grandma's cedar chest.
Maybe Patrick called. It's such a remote possibility that my heart doesn't even bother to speed up; after one hopeful leap against my ribs, it resumes its normal pace. Patrick's style is to show up without calling at the most inconvenient of times, such as when I'm coloring my hair or entertaining another date. But hey, maybe that little ceremony worked in reverse: instead of banishing him, it brought him closer. If he has called, I've got to remember to play it cool. No jumping up and down, no excitement in my voice.
"Who called?" I set my milk in the door of the fridge because my assigned shelf isn't tall enough. I reach for an orange sticky note to mark it as mine. Orange is my color. Elaine's is yellow, and green means Rachel. (We never see green flags, except on Styrofoam take-out containers.)
Lainie has tugged the prom frock on over her clothes. Man, is that a tight fit. Two inches isn't going to help. However, no diplomatic way to say this comes to mind.
It doesn't matter, as long as she's happy.
She looks at the ceiling, thinking. "Oh--um--let's see, the first call was your mom. She just wanted to check in, wondered if you'd heard from that nephew of her neighbor's sister-in-law who she gave your number to, and did you send your Aunt Jean a birthday card yet, 'cause it's next week." She takes a much-needed breath. Oddly enough, although she has total recall on Mama's message, she's rather vague about the next. "The other was some guy, and he sounded pretty upset. He said it was urgent, that I should ask you to call him right away as soon as you got back."
This is typical Lainie. Reporting the news in reverse order of importance, like an upside-down journalist's pyramid. That is, the pyramid is upside-down, not the journalist--wait: in this case, I was pretty much right the first time.
Tugging on my charm bracelet (which I know I shouldn't do; sterling silver isn't reinforced steel), I squeeze the charm representing Patience. (He's the only charm my mother has so far contributed to my collection: a replica of one of the lions flanking the entry steps leading into the New York City Public Library, the one representing Patience. The other stands for Fortitude; I still don't know how Mama could tell which one posed for this charm.) "Oooooo-kay. Did he leave a number? Or a name?"
Still staring into the mirror, Elaine adjusts the bodice of the dress. It clearly has no intention of zipping up on her. "Oh . . . um . . . I think it was something like Baron. Maybe Aaron. I don't remember. He acted like I ought to know who he was, so I couldn't really ask. But he sounded pretty ticked off."
I feel PMS coming on. "So you actually talked to him? He's not on the answering machine?" At first I'd assumed she meant she'd listened to the messages. I shove my oatmeal into the dark recesses of the pantry and pull the old, nearly empty box to the front as a decoy for Rachel.
"Um. Yeah." Elaine looks at me strangely. "That's what I said."
My current streak of ill fortune cannot be allowed to mess with my relationship with my boss. As soon as she turns back to her reflection, I pour a handful of salt out of the shaker Elaine keeps on the stove, mutter my boss's full name (true names always hold the most magic), and throw it over my right shoulder.
Suppressing a sigh, I address Elaine's mirror-self. "I wish you'd asked him to call back and let the machine pick up." I've suggested this to both my roomies before, because no one ever writes down my messages. They rely on their photogenic (but not photographic) memories.
Okay, I'm persnickety. I'd prefer not to share an answering machine, let alone the phone line, but there you are. What am I doing at twenty-nine still living in a shared rental? I should be able to afford a condo. But in this economy, this is my financial reality.
"The machine's full." She flings one arm wide as she dips down low. "Rachel's got messages."
Thirty minutes' worth? Why can't Rachel listen to them once and then punch the "Delete" button instead of "Save"?
Of course, Rachel is not used to sharing. Her daddy never let her ask for anything twice; she didn't have to, because he supplied it the first time, and sometimes double. Rachel is my distant cousin on my mother's side (I think it's fourth cousin, once removed.) She wouldn't be sharing this bachelorette pad with us if she weren't terrified of living alone, which is a secret that supposedly only her daddy and I know, though I'm sure Elaine suspects. Rachel's always been convinced she'll choke on a chocolate-covered cherry while watching TV one night and there won't be anyone around to do the Heimlich, or that she'll pass out in the tub and hit her head and drown, not to be discovered for days, after the neighbors complain of a funny smell. I don't know where these fears came from. She hides her insecurities under a solid front of confidence and invulnerability.
Rachel weighs about seventy pounds, much of which is blonde hair and jewelry. I don't think she buys food at all. Once when she came home a little tipsy, she explained to me how she eats only one meal a day, preferably while out on a date, and she lets her date pay. They're always astonished by how much she can eat and still maintain her perfect figure. Now that she's engaged and has only Randall escorting her, it's tougher, but she gets a lot of mileage out of their engagement parties and showers. She can live three days off of one fête, if she gets doggie bags.
I think she also measures out an inch of my oatmeal a day and steals Pick-A-Mix candy out of the grocery store bins. But I never say a word about it.
Stuffing the empty plastic sacks into the recycling bin, I slam the pantry door. An examination of the caller ID box reveals the call came from the cell phone of my boss, Barry Earl.
Frackersnackit. How could Elaine not recognize Barry's voice?
"Oh, God," I moan, forgetting for a moment that Elaine's listening. "What's the crisis this time? There's a bomb threat in the office, and they need me to lead them to the emergency exits lined up by twos, as if they were my first-grade class? He needs to pour water out of his boots, and there aren't any instructions on the heel?"
I'm exaggerating, but not by much.
"That was your boss?" She blinks at her reflection. "Well, he was really rude. If I'd realized, I'd have told him not to bother you on your day off." She smiles slyly until I meet her gaze in the mirror.
"Please." I pinch the bridge of my nose. It doesn't help, but I always see people doing it, so I try it. "He's bad enough without your antagonizing him."
"You take an awful lot of guff off of him," she says to the mirror.
"He's really okay." I wish. "Besides, if I play it right, in a couple of months some other poor slob will be kowtowing to the Duke of Earl, and I'll have my promotion."
Elaine's expression is unreadable. Oh, ye of little faith.
But I know I'm right. If I show him I'm a team player and keep proving I'm capable of so much more than I'm doing now, then Barry will promote me to the position of office manager that I so richly deserve, the one that's going to open up when Juanita Darley retires in a few months. I've got the degree in business administration and the extra computer training and all the certifications I'd need, and Barry knows I'm qualified. He hinted at it last week, when he asked me to spend the weekend at the office working on his extra-urgent hurry-up project. Today's supposed to be my comp time.
Currently, I'm a lowly administrative assistant. Which translates to keeper of the keys, finder of lost documents, picker-upper of dropped balls, buyer of doughnuts, feeder of insane workaholic obsessions, high priestess, and sympathetic counselor.
It's a pain-in-the-rear job, but it's one of the most powerful positions in the average office. Who else could lose your paycheck, cancel your conference room, and forward all your clients' phone calls to the bit bucket, all in an hour?
Still, I want that promotion. I know I can handle the job. And it's well within my grasp, if I just don't screw up.
"Around when did he call?" I glance at the clock to find it's already noon. My stomach isn't growling, but now it will start churning. Barry Earl does not care for delays in calling him back.
"I don't remember. A while ago. Couple of hours, maybe." She shrugs. "Don't worry about it. I guarantee they're all still alive over there." To her, it's that simple.
Elaine doesn't understand having to work for a living. She doesn't work; she volunteers and does some free language-arts tutoring at the nearby middle school, but she lives on a monthly stipend from some kind of trust fund or bequeathment sent by her late father's estate. I guess she must feel it's enough, but since she's living here with us, I can only assume her allotment isn't that much per month. Yet that security blanket means she has no clue as to why I'm stressed about anything going wrong with my job, as in income.
Rachel says Elaine's like a cat: completely useless for anything other than cuddling, shedding, and entertainment value. I wouldn't go that far; Elaine laughs at my jokes, is a devout liberal, and I've never heard her turn down a person in need who asked for a (reasonable) favor. But today I can picture her as a contented feline, lazing away the day on the windowsill as the household bustles around her.
I must be channeling Rachel. If my roomies used my credit cards, made long distance calls on the communal line and then denied it, or never had the rent money by the first, I'd have something to complain about. A few botched phone messages aren't that big a deal in the larger scheme of things.
I'm sure Barry has been trying my cell every few minutes. He's probably as fried as a buffalo wing that never learned to fly. I snatch the portable phone off its base and dial.
For good luck, I pinch my earlobe while it rings.
When he barks hello, I snap to attention. "Bair? I just got in, sorry. What did you need?"
Near-deafening crunching noises blast through the receiver. It's probably paper being crumpled--innocent, blameless documents precious to someone else, but which aren't what Barry currently wants. "Dammit, Daph," he goes. "Where is my presentation, those color slides for the sales meeting?"
"It was on your desk yesterday afternoon. Top of the IN basket. In a yellow box that blank transparency film comes in. Marked SALES MONTHLY on a green label. Rubber band around the box."
A metallic crash fills my ear. "Well, it's not there now. Nothing's here."
My teeth start to itch. Barry can't find his presentation transparencies that I printed out in color and snapped lovingly into those plastic frames that make them look like old Kodachrome 25 slides on steroids. With those, he can throw an impressive slideshow for the VPs and VIPs, one just like Daddy used to have after every one of our family vacations.
It took me forever to tweak that into shape, plus an additional couple of days to get it to print properly. I can't let anything happen to it. "Stop. Don't look any more. I'll be right there."
Just my luck--I need to spend the afternoon researching how to get out from under this jinx that affects every part of my life, but instead I'm going to have to do Barry's scutwork, as usual. With luck, maybe I can pop in and out of the office without anyone catching me and asking for a favor.
After all, it's lunchtime.
# # #
The scene in Barry's office reminds me of one of those five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. The ones in which all the pieces are the same color and the same shape. The ones billed on the box as "impossible."
And somebody's been playing "Five Thousand Pick-Up." The panic and chaos filling the office is even worse than it was that time the temp lost the staff performance evaluation forms Barry had spent a week filling out. Barry's crewcut looks like a cornfield smashed down by a crop-circle team after a fruitless harvest, probably because of all the hair-tearing he's been trying to do (he's used to a longer style).
"It's in a yellow box," I try to tell Barry, holding my hands in the L7 position to demonstrate the concept of "box," but he can't listen in his panicked state. He has pulled the innards out of all his file drawers. Loose papers fly in every direction. He'll never get this straightened out without help. Guess who will be tapped to do all the putting-back-together?
Barry is the guy you always see pounding on the elevator button . . . swearing at the photocopier or its hapless operator . . . kicking the vending machine because it isn't dispensing his Spittles fast enough. (He's a Spittles addict.) He has severely limited patience, and half the time he doesn't even see what's sitting right in front of him. He's too busy visualizing what ought to be, in the ideal world, to see what is, in the (inadequate) real one.
The woman who's helping Barry look is some Twinkie from marketing whose name escapes me. On the outside she's a squishy man-magnet, but on the inside there's an empty tunnel containing a dab of dried-up vanilla filling where good sense ought to be. "Airhead" doesn't do her justice, because her head isn't inflated to the proper PSI. She acts like she has all the intellectual development of your average preteen baton twirler. She types like the wind: she blows every word. She's also surreptitiously reading the secrets off of Barry's yellow-sticky-note wallpaper.
Surely the box is here someplace. I'm a little afraid they've already found it without realizing what it is and upended it into the trash, losing half the slides. Barry sends Twinkie to search the conference room in case he already took it in there, then stomps out, muttering. Good riddance. Now I won't have to shove her out of my way.
I commandeer the brass yardstick Barry got as a business gift when the bank around the corner opened ("Your Measure of Success") and poke cautiously around behind his bookshelves and cabinets, having felt out various lost items that way over the years. My charms knock against the back of the desk. When I crawl under the desk to check behind it, I overhear a man speaking in low tones. He's using the phone on the other side of the office wall. It's Barry, disguising his voice as a raspy baritone, but it's him, all right.
"I need that kitten. So just make sure it happens. Capisce?" He hangs up with a bang and stomps loudly away.
A cat? Barry's allergic. Had a full-blown attack once when I came in from lunch merely because I'd stopped by an SPCA adoption booth at the mall and loved on a fluffy black Persian. He can't breathe if a speck of cat dander is hidden somewhere on his person.
After a moment I resume my prodding with the yardstick from below. I've got that tingly feeling. It's here. All I need is a soupçon of luck.
Science tells us (and it knows Everything) that there is no such thing as "luck," that you have a fifty-fifty chance of heads or tails every time you toss a penny, no matter what result you got the last time. This is the TwentyFirstCentury, f'godsakes, and there should be no room in a reasonable woman's mind for this pile of superstitious hooey. Fears of untethered yellow balloons, tails-up coins underfoot, Dreaded Bad Luck Songs that suddenly come on the radio when you're on a date, and Fridays that fall on the thirteenth are irrational and therefore not allowed. Consciously, I admit that my personal bugaboos (according to the wise voice of Reason) have no basis in fact, that they're holdovers from an overimaginative childhood, and that they're more about fear and habit than self-protection. Still . . . I'd be afraid not to say "Bread and Butter" if when I'm walking with someone a column comes between us, and terrified to skip the charm of blessing or "Gesundheit"-ing someone who sneezes. Who knows what might happen if I quit holding off the forces of evil and doom with my daily touching of the lucky waterfall wall outside this very building as I come in? (Tapped it twice today.)
I have a feeling the slides are really close. Like in the kids' game "Hot and Cold." Warm warm hot scorching you're on fire if it were a snake it would bite you. I hold my breath and count to four repeatedly as I prod.
Finally I locate the box, dented and scuffed. The transparencies inside look unharmed. The box apparently fell behind Barry's desk and slid, becoming wedged halfway. Actually, it looks as if someone jammed it there rather carefully. Deliberately. I wouldn't have seen its orange corner peeking out had I not been flat on my back with my head in the desk's kneehole.
If this happened accidentally, it's the darnedest thing I've seen in a while.
So assume Barry knocked it backwards out of his in-basket. That has to have made a racket. Why didn't he hear it? Maybe he didn't notice because it happened while he was shtupping that Twinkie on the desk. Before I can laugh out loud at the thought--Barry swore off sex forever after his torturous divorce from The Recluse two years ago, and I know he's too smart to fool around with a current employee--I put the image out of my mind by imagining George C. Scott giving that rousing opening speech in Patton.
"Found it," I call to Barry, who's now out in my cubbyhole, frantically pawing through my filing cabinets. He comes running in and snatches the box out of my hands. He doesn't thank me or express wonder and admiration for my locatory skill. He doesn't even ask where it was. He just turns and pounds down the hall toward the meeting room where the dry run is taking place.
Twinkie shoots me an irritated glance through the door and disappears.
I survey the mess. It'll take hours to get everything organized and put away, so I decide to do it in the morning. After checking to be sure Barry hasn't "temporarily" laid a stack of important folders across the mouth of the wastebasket, the way he did last month while "reorganizing"--the janitorial staff shrugged and hauled it all away, and I had to reconstruct the contents--I grab my purse out from under my desk and prepare to bail. Somebody's bound to need a "quick" three hours of help, and I'm not going to be the one who gets cornered.
Sure enough, here comes Wade Weller. He almost undoubtedly wants the photos pulled off his digital camera again, because he can't be bothered doing it himself. But I have to be nice, because he is our Techie Geek who not only installs software upgrades but can make your e-mail address stop working and change your password to "G6X$t4!" without telling you. Maybe I can escape before he makes eye contact.
Too late. As he toddles toward my desk with his usual expectant attitude, I paste on a questioning look. What's odd is that he's dangling that expensive and delicate camera in front of him by the strap, at arm's length. It looks as though he's presenting the winning trout, still flopping on the fishing line, for me to measure at the lake fishermen's lying contest.
His lanky frame leans halfway across my desk. A whiff of cinnamon-spice aftershave follows. "Could you download these pictures and stick them into the public directory? I'm kind of in a bind. Supposed to be at Barry's dry run, and looks like it's starting." His tone is only slightly apologetic.
As soon as I accept the camera, he wipes his palm on his pants leg. "Thanks. By the way," he says over his shoulder as he hustles away, "you're not one of those people who's sensitive to poison ivy, are you?"
Suppressing a yelp, I drop the camera into a plastic grocery sack (I find it useful to keep a few in my desk) and stuff that into my bottom drawer. Then I rub Purewell hand sanitizer between my palms and wipe down my hands with baby wipes. Tomorrow morning's soon enough for me to deal with the possible toxins. If I remember to bring rubber gloves.
What are the pix for, anyway, a porn site? They're probably pictures of his model railroad.
As I pass the conference room, I peek in the window. The scene inside is not unlike one of those early Flemish paintings of Hell. I send up a prayer of thanksgiving that I am not sitting in there, flipping transparencies and melting under Barry's glare.
Some upper management type is skulking around the lobby. She's tall, regal, and X-ray slim, showing all the signs of having had a recent facial peel. Small teeth with excessive gum-exposure. That has to be a three-hundred-dollar suit. If the jewelry were real, it'd be dangerous for her to be out on the street without a bodyguard. But she couldn't walk far in those spike heels. She must've been dropped off by her chauffeur. Or maybe we've instituted valet parking.
I'm almost out the door when she collars me. Her chilly gaze freezes me to the spot. In a commanding Mary Poppins voice, she says, "I'm here to see Barry Earl."
Mazel tov. "Um, he's in a meeting."
"He's expecting me. Can you get him out?"
"Let me check," says my autonomic nervous system. I can't seem to switch the workforce-slave attitude off while under this roof. Like a meek Girl Scout, I lead her back to my desk. "What may I tell him it's in regard to?"
She sniffs. "I wouldn't know." Her tone is snotty. "He phoned me." Looking pointedly at her Rolex, she adds, "Said it was urgent."
"The Customer Is Always Whining." That's our motto here at PRG Communications. ("Priorities Really Gross." "Perhaps Rotten Goods." "Perpetually Running Gauntlets." Actually, I don't know what the initials stand for. Nor do I especially care. We don't try to understand them; we just rope, tie, and brand them.)
I get her name and buzz the meeting room. I tell Barry I'm sending her in, urgent, and that I'll see him tomorrow. Then I drop her off at the door to "Abandon All Hope" on my way out. She looks at me as if I'm throwing my life away on the streets as I depart. Horrors. She thinks I'm leaving early.
I kind of enjoy that.
Chapter Two
As luck would have it, my cell phone is nowhere to be found. I'm sure I left it sitting on the charger. I swing by home to retrieve it.
Behind the house, my parking spot is empty. But what I see parked crookedly across Elaine's and Rachel's vacant spaces almost sends me crashing into the bushes lining our fence. The vanity license plate on the metallic blue Zotzcrate, an expensive imported two-door sports car, reads BOYWNDR.
Oh, my God. What is HE doing here?
That banishment ceremony. I must've mispronounced half of it. Never mind, because it has done what I couldn't have hoped: brought back the Boy Wonder.
Patrick Carter. He's my "Noel" from Marjorie Morningstar, "Jerry" to my "Pookie" from The Sterile Cuckoo, "Fink" to my pathetic "Nesmith" from the Abandonment Story website. He looks like a pre-Batman Val Kilmer, only with dark hair and mahogany eyes with impossibly green rings around the pupils. I still love him fiercely.
Despite the way he keeps breaking up with me.
But it looks like our on-again, off-again romance is on again. All is forgiven!
I check myself in the rear view. Casually, I slip off my glasses. No lip gloss, and it would be bad form to be seen putting some on, so I bite my lips together and whisper a prayer. There is only one reason he would come here, and that is to get back together.
He's rolling his window down. Of course he wouldn't want to seem too eager by bounding over, snatching me up, and crying, "I was wrong! I can't live without you!" One must play the game. I am happier than I have possibly ever been as I saunter up to his car, trying not to look too interested. I just barely restrain myself from falling on him with kisses.
He doesn't say, "You look good," or "What's up," or even "Will you marry me?" Without preamble, he says, "I need my stuff back."
I take another step forward before this registers. "Oh, um. I don't have anything of yours." I already gave back his racquetball equipment and the laser printer I borrowed, along with most of the oddments he's left behind on various overnight stays. Surely he doesn't mean the opal earrings he gave me? Or the stuffed unicorn?
He narrows those almond-shaped chocolate kisses he uses for eyes. "Yes, you do."
Uh-oh, he knows I hung on to his SMU T-shirt, one of his beach towels, and his Scout pocketknife, which I found between the sofa pillows.
My heart has gone all tippery-tattery. God, he turns me on. Though he's not good-looking in the conventional sense. Pale freckled skin, a serious gaze, smooth caramel-corn-colored hair in the haircut that everyone on MTV who isn't shaven has, those little wire Ben Franklin eyeglasses with the lozenge-shaped lenses that don't correct your peripheral vision, Wrangler jeans, hiking boots, and a face like a young George Segal except with a nose that fits his face. Not a big lumpy honker like mine or George's.
Objectively, Patrick's offbeat-average. But to me, his very scent on my tongue (which is where it immediately goes whenever I stand near him) is irresistible.
I take a deep breath. "No . . . remember, I made up that box of your stuff, you came by and picked it up last week and left the key with Lainie, so we're even, right?"
Patrick blinks. "No." He tosses his head, and the gesture endears him to me all over again. Tender feelings rise in my chest as a tingle begins in and around my loins, or whatever that area's called in women. His Irish tenor booms out and wraps me around the Maypole like a limp pink ribbon. "For instance. You may have forgotten, but. . . ." He taps his bitten fingernails on the custom steering wheel. "My stereo and my laptop."
That momentarily throws me. Okay, the stereo I can kind of see him asking for; it's a neat compact system, which he gave to me when he got his fancy stereophile setup with the transparent wall-mounted speakers. Before I realize that I'm being argumentative again (one of his major bugaboos), I whine, "But you said the stereo was old junk. That you were giving it to me to keep." I feel a stab at the thought of surrendering it, although I suppose I can get one cheap at Wally World that would be okay for playing my CDs and listening to the independent radio station. I'm no audiophile.
He shrugs. "I guess I may have said that. But I want my laptop."
Well. The laptop is a different story.
It's the laptop he had when we met. One of our first "dates" was to scamper through computer stores comparing the various new models, and he soon bought a state-of-the-art number and told me I could buy his old one for three hundred dollars. I gave him a hundred on the spot, which was all I'd had to spend. Our relationship progressed in fairy-tale fashion, and soon we both forgot that I sort of owed him the rest. What did it matter, when we were going to get married any day?
We'd thought we were going to get married. At least I had. What he said, as I now recall, was actually more like, "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be married to you. I'm not sure I'd feel as completely suffocated as I always thought I would." These romantic sentiments were uttered on a night of celebration, while we were finishing a bottle of Riesling we'd brought back from a long-weekend tour of Texas vineyards.
All right, he was the first guy I ever went all the way with. So I'm old-fashioned. I'm not ashamed. I waited until I was truly in love and met My One and Only. I know I was his first, as well. I still believe we're meant to be together.
This is what always happens. I resolve to get him out of my system, but before I'm fully purged, he comes back while I'm still too weak to withstand the force of his personality. I can barely prevent my fingers from reaching out to run through his hair. I'm supposed to be playing hard to get.
Besides, I'm a little taken aback. "Excuse me, the laptop?"
"Yeah, the Szell. Remember? It's actually still mine."
His attitude is beginning to irritate me. He doesn't need that computer. He could buy another with part of one paycheck. As a software engineer and networking specialist, he makes three times what I do. "You don't have to rub it in. I know I never finished paying. You only had to ask."
"Don't want the money." He looks me in the eye. For the first time ever, I see in his gaze no affection and no attraction, only standoffishness and a warning: don't touch. It throws me slightly off balance. "I like that laptop. The screen's nice, and they've stopped making that model. You can get another."
My hands curl up against my chest. Normally, I'd knock my butt off to give him anything he asked for. But. . . .
I steady myself against the side of the car. I suppose I could march inside and pull my files off to diskette--my Christmas card list, a few FAQ files I downloaded off the Internet, and a couple of work documents--and let him take the thing, if it's that big a deal. I certainly don't want him feeling that I've ripped him off. Still. . . . "What's wrong with your new laptop?"
"Nothing. I just need a backup." He looks away again, half-smiling at his reflection in the rear view mirror. I notice he has a bruise purpling low on his neck. Or maybe that's . . . a hickey?
Suddenly it comes to me that he wants this computer for some specific reason. Such as to give to another woman, playing the big, generous sugar daddy. "But I'm used to this one. Why don't you just buy another and let me pay you the rest?" I can give him my savings and live on credit cards for a couple of months.
He pushes his hair back with both hands, although it immediately rearranges itself and falls coyly around his eyebrows, as always. I clench my fists so I won't pick up a strand. I'm supposed to be angry at him, not revved up for lovin'. Instead of answering me, he re-checks himself in the rear view.
Finally, he speaks. "Get over it. You're wasting my time and yours. I suggest you just go get me the stuff. Don't try to hold on to the past, Daffy." From him, the mocking name sounds charming.
"But . . . I need my files." I ought to shatter that laptop into a zillion pieces, then melt the pieces in the microwave, then send the resulting brick through the windshield of this beloved car of his, angled so it lands right in his insensitive crotch. But, as always, I cave in to his demands. "Okay. Why don't you step inside and take the stereo down while I copy off my files. You can have a Coke while you wait." Why do I remind myself of a pathetic used-car salesperson who's trying a last-ditch gambit to hustle a customer into the finance office?
A gleam comes into his eyes, but it isn't a good gleam. He starts the car and the radio blasts into life. Willie Nelson, singing "If You Cain't Live Without Me, Why Ain't You Dead Yet?"
Country music? Patrick hates it. He banishes those stations from the dial. He wrote to the local UHF station protesting their re-runs of Hee Haw. He dropped cable in favor of a dish partly so he could choose not to pay for the country music video network.
He lifts his left hand as though it weighs a ton and combs his fingers slowly across his head. "Let's not make this any tougher than it is. I'll wait right here."
Dammit, both of those things are heavy. I'll have to get Elaine or Rachel to carry the speakers. Wait, neither one's car is out here, so nobody's home. Hands on hips, I make the situation clear. "I might not be able to manage them both by myself. I really need you to help." I hate that I sound so pleading, like a pathetic ex who has been . . . dumped.
He narrows his eyes. His wrists sit on the steering wheel, reminding me of snakes draped over a tree limb. That is probably some kind of Freudian image, but I can't manage to banish it. "Do your best. You're stronger than you think."
He's being ridiculous. I know I can charm him out of this mood. I lean into the car window to loom over him, ready to rest my forehead against his and snap him out of it, but he jerks away.
"Daphne, please. Just get me the laptop. I'll pick up the stereo later." He wipes his cheek, although I didn't even touch him. "And don't pull this crap on me. It's over, remember?"
He can't be serious. We're really still in love. He's going through an awfully elaborate ruse just to save face. That's got to be it.
So why is he doing such a good imitation of a flaming jackass?
I sigh. "Right, I know. So let's get this over with. If you'll come stand at the door, I'll hand you everything, one piece at a time. I'll stack it in your arms quite chastely. No hassles."
Perhaps he suspects that I secretly plan to seduce him as soon as he gets inside. I've done it before several other times when he came back to make up with me, but initially held back in order to be macho. It'll be easy once he stops hardening his heart and starts concentrating on other anatomical features.
"It's not gonna happen," he mutters. But he grasps the door handle inside and unlatches the car door. He still doesn't make eye contact. He stares intently at the expensive watch on the wrist that's still draped over the wheel, and then nods silently, as if to himself. Without looking at me, he cracks the door.
I take a step back, expecting him to get out. Instead, he shoves the door hard so it whams into my midsection. It knocks me backward, and I stagger against the hedge. The impact takes my breath away for a second. He throws the car into reverse and roars across the gravel, which flies up to spatter me like a dozen meteorites. It stings.
Before I even know I'm going to give chase, I'm scrambling up out of the brambles and limping across the yard after his exhaust pipe, shouting, "Wait!"
My legs slow down as the Zotz hits the street. It gains speed and screeches around the corner, like a teenager's first hot rod. I pound to a stop at the curb and realize I am not even inside this body. The real "me" could not be associated with such an ass-woman as would put on this little display.
Slowly I come to my senses and stand on the curb, blinking. What was that he just tried to pull? What did I just try to pull? Who was that inner child of my past? She certainly was needy. No wonder the man wants his freedom.
I have absolutely no explanation as to why Patrick James Carter affects me the way he does. Every fiber of my being yearns, just like in the cliché, and every cell in my body wants to vibrate at his wavelength. Never mind that it's approximately the same frequency as Torquemada's, that gifted torturer of the Inquisition.
Why is he so hostile? What have I done to make him stop loving me . . . and start hating me? And why the hell do I have to still care so much?
When our relationship progressed in fairy-tale fashion, I should've remembered how most authentic fairy tales actually end.
Grim. No matter who writes them.
I imagine curtains twitching up and down the street as I walk back to the house, dragging my ruined dignity behind me like a strip of toilet paper stuck to the heel of my shoe.
This is karmic payback. It is the punishment for that time in eighth grade when I spurned the affections of Theodore Michael Keegan.
I actually broke a date with T. Mike to go to the eighth grade Spring Fling (shades of "Happy Days") with John Grackle. I broke our date the night before because the Grack (the equivalent of the Fonz) called me at the last minute. And then at the dance when Mike saw me, I gave him some line about how John and I had run into each other here, plus I told him that the aunt who'd been sick yesterday had made a miraculous recovery. I knew that he knew I was lying, but I still did it.
I was, surprisingly, never shamed for that. Until today.
Behind the LJ cut below is the opening of _Little Rituals_, the mainstream/chick lit book that I'm currently tweaking. I don't know how I would prune the prose here (because part of the chicklitty voice is to be somewhat prolix, I think), but I certainly wouldn't mind hearing suggestions. Also, it might be interesting to hear if anyone sees this as not-so-episodic, because I have added a few lines here and there. I mean, it's only the first couple of scenes, but perhaps you'll know from just reading THAT far (if you get that far) whether you feel she has a goal or it's just a slice of life. I'd like to hear any and all comments. Please don't feel obligated to read any of it. However, if you've been in on some of the comment threads, it might interest you to see what the book actually looks like.
You Have Been Warned.
LITTLE RITUALS by Shalanna Collins
There are rules and rites and rituals older than the
sound of bells and snow on mountains.
--James Thurber, THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS
Chapter One
LITTLE RITUALS by Shalanna Collins
There are rules and rites and rituals older than the
sound of bells and snow on mountains.
--James Thurber, THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS
Chapter One
My life is filled with little rituals. I don't know when or how I invented them; I simply know I do them, even if I don't always rationally believe they work. Like blowing a kiss for luck when I see a black cat. Or whistling at every passing yellow VW.
Since childhood, I've acknowledged the power of folk traditions and superstitions. Everyone knocks on wood and avoids the thirteenth floor. Who doesn't cross her fingers now and then? But the most powerful rite is more abstract: do something selfless, something selfish, then a random, anonymous act of kindness. In that order. Within a span of forty-eight hours.
This is the charm that heals, I hope. This week the ritual started when I gave away my place on the DART train to a kid desperate to get home on time. Then I indulged in several scanty bras for no reason at all. As for the third, it has to stay anonymous for the magic to work.
And I need some magic in my life right now.
I think I've jinxed myself. Magic, as anyone knows, must be pure and step-by-step perfect if it is to work. If you do any part of it incorrectly, naturally you're going to get side effects or even the opposite of what you intended. It's easy to screw up, which pretty much keeps casual try-it-out types away (because having one sudden image of a celebrity's naughty bits appear in your mind's eye as you twist the final crank on a ritual can completely blow it, pun intended). And if you get nervous--or if you're a scatterbrain like I've been lately--your anxiety can mess things up, contaminating or ruining the magic. Fumbling the spell. Hexing you.
The reason I suspect I'm cursed is that ever since I tried a ceremony to commemorate the ending of my relationship with Patrick Carter, in an attempt to free myself from any lingering power he has over me, things have gone wrong. A lint-covered sourball formed in the pit of my stomach immediately after, so I must have fumbled it. If I knew which unlucky number crossed my mind at the wrong moment and caused this, I would unthink it.
As I back out of my parking place at the grocery store, I feel a sudden thump behind my seat. The jolt sends me flying forward a couple of inches, and the shoulder harness catches me painfully across the collarbone. Adrenaline-fueled panic as I slam on the brakes causes a ringing in my ears that nearly drowns out the sounds of crunching metal and a shattering taillight.
A quick mental inventory says I'm unhurt. As the initial shock subsides, I glance in the rear view to find a frowning dwarf emerging from a black pickup that sits at an odd angle behind me. I could swear nothing was there a moment before.
So much for my spidey-sense.
He's actually not a dwarf, a closer inspection reveals, just a stumpy Hispanic man wearing a two-gallon Stetson and scaled-down cowboy boots. He stands, hands on hips, surveying the damage like an angry hobbit as I climb out of my green Junebug. "I don't have time for this," is the first thing out of his mouth. His truck's tailgate is down, with two metal shelving units hanging over because they're too long for the bed. The corner of the top one has rammed into my Junebug's trunk. My trunk lock looks like a belly button, an "innie." The leg of the other shelving unit is stuck in my left taillight. His tailgate has a few scratches. Overall, the damage looks mostly cosmetic on both sides.
We must've started backing out at exactly the same time. Does anyone else realize that the side mirrors tell NOTHING about what's directly behind your car? I might've misjudged the distance in the rear view mirror because I didn't see that lolling tailgate, which adds two feet to the length of the pickup. To hear him talk, there's no question that this is all my fault.
In Texas, fenderbender victims don't call the police unless there's over two hundred dollars' worth of damage. We exchange insurance information and phone numbers, and he hops back into his truck's cab like a toad into its hidey-hole. His tires squeal as he speeds away, narrowly missing two other cars that are backing out.
On my dashboard is mounted a figurine of Ganesh, the Indian god of new things. The statue was put there by my ex, Patrick, back when he and the car were brand-new. I kiss my fingertips and pat the figure, although it's a bit too late to invoke the Ganesha for luck. Still, as the guy who was giving CPR to the fried chicken said, "It couldn't hurt."
I can't afford to get the car fixed right now. I've got a $250 deductible; besides, if I made another claim on my car insurance, they'd hike my rates. But I've got to report the accident in case Frodo tries to make a claim (although there wasn't any damage on his end that I could see.) As usual, my cell phone's battery is dead.
Raindrops begin to splatter on my windshield as I venture onto the freeway. I should've stayed in bed today, crawling out just in time for Ruth's party, but I couldn't bear to waste my day off. I knew it was a bad omen this morning when I reached into my purse for my checkbook and pulled out the keepsake program from Cheryl's funeral.
It was a sign, I'm sure of it. She sent me some kind of warning from the next world that I should've heeded. If only I could figure out what it is.
This luck thing is getting to me; before I get flattened by some cowboy's semi, I need to do some research. How would you Google-search it--"hexes, removing"?
Ouch: that belt really grabbed my shoulder. It's kind of numb. I'm going to have a bruise.
I can't imagine how I'm going to start another set-of-three charm in the mood I'm in. As I step out of the cold drizzle and into my apartment--actually the entire first floor of a regal restored Victorian right on the old-fashioned main street of Renner, Texas, just north of Dallas--I find my dear-but-crazy roommate Elaine dancing the cha-cha around the sectional sofa.
Elaine's got her own rituals. This is one of them, the post-scrounging or thrifting dance to celebrate all the great stuff she got cheap or free.
"I'm in loooove," she sings, to a tune from an old musical. "With the Goodwill Store, and Family Thrift, and that heavenly Community Ministries drop-off box." She twirls, holding a 1950s-ish prom dress up to herself. It's a pouf of purple tulle, with a big spray of netting for a skirt and sequins dyed to match sewn all over a fitted violet satin bodice that has a large silk orchid pinned on like a corsage; the flower's obviously not original, but probably got added by some teenybopper going to a retro dance.
"Does that fit you?" I survey the stacks of shabby, vaguely soiled clothing covering the kitchen countertop where I need to set my grocery sacks because they're getting heavy. The mound exudes that musty, gamy odor characteristic of fabric that's spent a while in a damp basement. The first pile has one worn brown plaid flannel kilt (of no known tartan; bagpipes wouldn't even squeak for it); a black corduroy circle skirt with a few bald spots (go team go); a pilled orange (and I don't mean peach; I mean construction orange) cable-knit cardigan at least three sizes too large for Elaine; a large black vinyl messenger bag covered in some unidentifiable but sticky-looking substance (probably spilled on it long before she pulled it out of the dumpster); and the only decent find she has today, a short-sleeved blouse sprigged with tiny pink flowers on a yellow ground. When I look closer, though, I notice its underarm seams have been ripped open.
Elaine always wears her flea market finds. Today she has on a silk dress, or rayon maybe, from like the 1940s, with a lace collar and seamed-up-the-back nylons. She's also wearing these tottery "tart" high heels that must've come from the Goodwill dollar bin. Like thongs with a heel, but turquoise leather. With a huge flower between the toes.
She has no idea that her faboo vintage costumes look absolutely dowdy on her chubby Midwestern frame. It doesn't help that her cropped brown hairstyle is so unflattering. Or that her nose and arms are currently peeling from a sunburn.
Not that any of this matters to me. Elaine is beautiful on the inside. If she'd make more of an effort, she could have guys lined up at the door, but it's not my place to say anything to her. I pride myself on seeing past whatever façade people choose to present to the world, like a good little humanist. Besides, I'm no beauty queen.
And why am I being so bitchy? Today, I rate up there with the two cranky Muppet Show heckler guys hurling insults from the balcony. The truth is I'd never want to offend Elaine, and I usually go out of my way to spare her feelings. I worry sometimes that she'll never grow up, but maybe she doesn't have to.
I jiggle my grocery bags. "Um, Earth to Elaine."
She doesn't answer me, just keeps waltzing around the room with the dress held up to her as if she were Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. Suddenly seeming to notice me, she stops and sings out, "Daffy!" Then she claps her tiny chartreuse-nailed hand over her mouth. "Sorry, Daph. I forget."
"Twenty demerits. See that you don't do it again." I make my tone light, but leave in a hint of warning. Patrick got away with calling me that, because from him I would put up with anything, but now that he's dumped me and I am finished with men and dating, possibly forever, I won't tolerate that dimwit nickname. Once all of Patrick's friends started calling me "Duck," but I put a stop to that immediately.
"I'm sorry. Daphne Celeste, I mean. Or should I stick to Ms. Dilbeck?" Her tone is only slightly mocking. "By the way, that's really bad luck to walk inside with your umbrella still open."
She's absolutely right. I shake the umbrella, watching for droplets, and decide it isn't that wet. Easing it closed, I lean it up against the corner.
Elaine spins for me. "What do you think? It only needs a few little alterations. I think there's a couple of inches in the side seams of the bodice."
It depends on whether she wants the seams to rip completely out the first time she tries to bend over. Vintage fabric is notoriously brittle. "Well, you might want to wait until you lose a few pounds," I mutter, scanning the dinette table for a clear spot. The bags' plastic handles are cutting off the circulation in my forearms.
"What?" Elaine looks right at me, challenging me to repeat that.
"I said, that's a great find. Zounds!" I shift my groceries. My shoulder doesn't feel right. Although there's no reason to alarm Elaine by telling her about that little fenderbump that set my charm bracelet jingling. "I must be getting Granny's rheumatiz. These bags are heavy." I don't dare touch any of the paperwork Rachel has left piled on the table; there's also a stack of those potholders Elaine weaves. "Could you come move some stuff?"
She waves a hand vaguely. "Go ahead and set your bags on top of it. You can't hurt anything."
Thinking of Rachel's probable reaction should I crease any of her Priceless Documents, I decide to risk getting blood clots and struggle past the dinette with the bags strangling my wrists.
It's not Elaine's fault that there's a lack of counter space. We share an authentic retro-chic "kitsch-en," restored by an eccentric flea market dealer and therefore authentically equipped with a 1930s Magic Chef range and pink 1950s Westinghouse fridge with the freezer on the bottom, complete with those metal ice trays that eject square cubes when you pull their handles up. When we first moved in, Rachel and I went half-sies on a Jetsons-style stainless steel microwave with round front window reminiscent of a Speed Queen clothes dryer so we'd actually be able to cook.
I start unloading my groceries directly into my designated areas. We each have one shelf in the fridge, one in the freezer, and one in the pantry. Anything put on the communal shelf or in the door is fair game. I don't often put stuff on the communal shelves.
"You had a couple of calls." Elaine admires herself in the full-length mirror that she's got nailed to the wall in the passageway between bedrooms and living room. It was a flea-market find, natch, and although its reflections are spotted and wavery, she forgives it. The effect is of you, but you in a faded, aged photograph out of Grandma's cedar chest.
Maybe Patrick called. It's such a remote possibility that my heart doesn't even bother to speed up; after one hopeful leap against my ribs, it resumes its normal pace. Patrick's style is to show up without calling at the most inconvenient of times, such as when I'm coloring my hair or entertaining another date. But hey, maybe that little ceremony worked in reverse: instead of banishing him, it brought him closer. If he has called, I've got to remember to play it cool. No jumping up and down, no excitement in my voice.
"Who called?" I set my milk in the door of the fridge because my assigned shelf isn't tall enough. I reach for an orange sticky note to mark it as mine. Orange is my color. Elaine's is yellow, and green means Rachel. (We never see green flags, except on Styrofoam take-out containers.)
Lainie has tugged the prom frock on over her clothes. Man, is that a tight fit. Two inches isn't going to help. However, no diplomatic way to say this comes to mind.
It doesn't matter, as long as she's happy.
She looks at the ceiling, thinking. "Oh--um--let's see, the first call was your mom. She just wanted to check in, wondered if you'd heard from that nephew of her neighbor's sister-in-law who she gave your number to, and did you send your Aunt Jean a birthday card yet, 'cause it's next week." She takes a much-needed breath. Oddly enough, although she has total recall on Mama's message, she's rather vague about the next. "The other was some guy, and he sounded pretty upset. He said it was urgent, that I should ask you to call him right away as soon as you got back."
This is typical Lainie. Reporting the news in reverse order of importance, like an upside-down journalist's pyramid. That is, the pyramid is upside-down, not the journalist--wait: in this case, I was pretty much right the first time.
Tugging on my charm bracelet (which I know I shouldn't do; sterling silver isn't reinforced steel), I squeeze the charm representing Patience. (He's the only charm my mother has so far contributed to my collection: a replica of one of the lions flanking the entry steps leading into the New York City Public Library, the one representing Patience. The other stands for Fortitude; I still don't know how Mama could tell which one posed for this charm.) "Oooooo-kay. Did he leave a number? Or a name?"
Still staring into the mirror, Elaine adjusts the bodice of the dress. It clearly has no intention of zipping up on her. "Oh . . . um . . . I think it was something like Baron. Maybe Aaron. I don't remember. He acted like I ought to know who he was, so I couldn't really ask. But he sounded pretty ticked off."
I feel PMS coming on. "So you actually talked to him? He's not on the answering machine?" At first I'd assumed she meant she'd listened to the messages. I shove my oatmeal into the dark recesses of the pantry and pull the old, nearly empty box to the front as a decoy for Rachel.
"Um. Yeah." Elaine looks at me strangely. "That's what I said."
My current streak of ill fortune cannot be allowed to mess with my relationship with my boss. As soon as she turns back to her reflection, I pour a handful of salt out of the shaker Elaine keeps on the stove, mutter my boss's full name (true names always hold the most magic), and throw it over my right shoulder.
Suppressing a sigh, I address Elaine's mirror-self. "I wish you'd asked him to call back and let the machine pick up." I've suggested this to both my roomies before, because no one ever writes down my messages. They rely on their photogenic (but not photographic) memories.
Okay, I'm persnickety. I'd prefer not to share an answering machine, let alone the phone line, but there you are. What am I doing at twenty-nine still living in a shared rental? I should be able to afford a condo. But in this economy, this is my financial reality.
"The machine's full." She flings one arm wide as she dips down low. "Rachel's got messages."
Thirty minutes' worth? Why can't Rachel listen to them once and then punch the "Delete" button instead of "Save"?
Of course, Rachel is not used to sharing. Her daddy never let her ask for anything twice; she didn't have to, because he supplied it the first time, and sometimes double. Rachel is my distant cousin on my mother's side (I think it's fourth cousin, once removed.) She wouldn't be sharing this bachelorette pad with us if she weren't terrified of living alone, which is a secret that supposedly only her daddy and I know, though I'm sure Elaine suspects. Rachel's always been convinced she'll choke on a chocolate-covered cherry while watching TV one night and there won't be anyone around to do the Heimlich, or that she'll pass out in the tub and hit her head and drown, not to be discovered for days, after the neighbors complain of a funny smell. I don't know where these fears came from. She hides her insecurities under a solid front of confidence and invulnerability.
Rachel weighs about seventy pounds, much of which is blonde hair and jewelry. I don't think she buys food at all. Once when she came home a little tipsy, she explained to me how she eats only one meal a day, preferably while out on a date, and she lets her date pay. They're always astonished by how much she can eat and still maintain her perfect figure. Now that she's engaged and has only Randall escorting her, it's tougher, but she gets a lot of mileage out of their engagement parties and showers. She can live three days off of one fête, if she gets doggie bags.
I think she also measures out an inch of my oatmeal a day and steals Pick-A-Mix candy out of the grocery store bins. But I never say a word about it.
Stuffing the empty plastic sacks into the recycling bin, I slam the pantry door. An examination of the caller ID box reveals the call came from the cell phone of my boss, Barry Earl.
Frackersnackit. How could Elaine not recognize Barry's voice?
"Oh, God," I moan, forgetting for a moment that Elaine's listening. "What's the crisis this time? There's a bomb threat in the office, and they need me to lead them to the emergency exits lined up by twos, as if they were my first-grade class? He needs to pour water out of his boots, and there aren't any instructions on the heel?"
I'm exaggerating, but not by much.
"That was your boss?" She blinks at her reflection. "Well, he was really rude. If I'd realized, I'd have told him not to bother you on your day off." She smiles slyly until I meet her gaze in the mirror.
"Please." I pinch the bridge of my nose. It doesn't help, but I always see people doing it, so I try it. "He's bad enough without your antagonizing him."
"You take an awful lot of guff off of him," she says to the mirror.
"He's really okay." I wish. "Besides, if I play it right, in a couple of months some other poor slob will be kowtowing to the Duke of Earl, and I'll have my promotion."
Elaine's expression is unreadable. Oh, ye of little faith.
But I know I'm right. If I show him I'm a team player and keep proving I'm capable of so much more than I'm doing now, then Barry will promote me to the position of office manager that I so richly deserve, the one that's going to open up when Juanita Darley retires in a few months. I've got the degree in business administration and the extra computer training and all the certifications I'd need, and Barry knows I'm qualified. He hinted at it last week, when he asked me to spend the weekend at the office working on his extra-urgent hurry-up project. Today's supposed to be my comp time.
Currently, I'm a lowly administrative assistant. Which translates to keeper of the keys, finder of lost documents, picker-upper of dropped balls, buyer of doughnuts, feeder of insane workaholic obsessions, high priestess, and sympathetic counselor.
It's a pain-in-the-rear job, but it's one of the most powerful positions in the average office. Who else could lose your paycheck, cancel your conference room, and forward all your clients' phone calls to the bit bucket, all in an hour?
Still, I want that promotion. I know I can handle the job. And it's well within my grasp, if I just don't screw up.
"Around when did he call?" I glance at the clock to find it's already noon. My stomach isn't growling, but now it will start churning. Barry Earl does not care for delays in calling him back.
"I don't remember. A while ago. Couple of hours, maybe." She shrugs. "Don't worry about it. I guarantee they're all still alive over there." To her, it's that simple.
Elaine doesn't understand having to work for a living. She doesn't work; she volunteers and does some free language-arts tutoring at the nearby middle school, but she lives on a monthly stipend from some kind of trust fund or bequeathment sent by her late father's estate. I guess she must feel it's enough, but since she's living here with us, I can only assume her allotment isn't that much per month. Yet that security blanket means she has no clue as to why I'm stressed about anything going wrong with my job, as in income.
Rachel says Elaine's like a cat: completely useless for anything other than cuddling, shedding, and entertainment value. I wouldn't go that far; Elaine laughs at my jokes, is a devout liberal, and I've never heard her turn down a person in need who asked for a (reasonable) favor. But today I can picture her as a contented feline, lazing away the day on the windowsill as the household bustles around her.
I must be channeling Rachel. If my roomies used my credit cards, made long distance calls on the communal line and then denied it, or never had the rent money by the first, I'd have something to complain about. A few botched phone messages aren't that big a deal in the larger scheme of things.
I'm sure Barry has been trying my cell every few minutes. He's probably as fried as a buffalo wing that never learned to fly. I snatch the portable phone off its base and dial.
For good luck, I pinch my earlobe while it rings.
When he barks hello, I snap to attention. "Bair? I just got in, sorry. What did you need?"
Near-deafening crunching noises blast through the receiver. It's probably paper being crumpled--innocent, blameless documents precious to someone else, but which aren't what Barry currently wants. "Dammit, Daph," he goes. "Where is my presentation, those color slides for the sales meeting?"
"It was on your desk yesterday afternoon. Top of the IN basket. In a yellow box that blank transparency film comes in. Marked SALES MONTHLY on a green label. Rubber band around the box."
A metallic crash fills my ear. "Well, it's not there now. Nothing's here."
My teeth start to itch. Barry can't find his presentation transparencies that I printed out in color and snapped lovingly into those plastic frames that make them look like old Kodachrome 25 slides on steroids. With those, he can throw an impressive slideshow for the VPs and VIPs, one just like Daddy used to have after every one of our family vacations.
It took me forever to tweak that into shape, plus an additional couple of days to get it to print properly. I can't let anything happen to it. "Stop. Don't look any more. I'll be right there."
Just my luck--I need to spend the afternoon researching how to get out from under this jinx that affects every part of my life, but instead I'm going to have to do Barry's scutwork, as usual. With luck, maybe I can pop in and out of the office without anyone catching me and asking for a favor.
After all, it's lunchtime.
# # #
The scene in Barry's office reminds me of one of those five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. The ones in which all the pieces are the same color and the same shape. The ones billed on the box as "impossible."
And somebody's been playing "Five Thousand Pick-Up." The panic and chaos filling the office is even worse than it was that time the temp lost the staff performance evaluation forms Barry had spent a week filling out. Barry's crewcut looks like a cornfield smashed down by a crop-circle team after a fruitless harvest, probably because of all the hair-tearing he's been trying to do (he's used to a longer style).
"It's in a yellow box," I try to tell Barry, holding my hands in the L7 position to demonstrate the concept of "box," but he can't listen in his panicked state. He has pulled the innards out of all his file drawers. Loose papers fly in every direction. He'll never get this straightened out without help. Guess who will be tapped to do all the putting-back-together?
Barry is the guy you always see pounding on the elevator button . . . swearing at the photocopier or its hapless operator . . . kicking the vending machine because it isn't dispensing his Spittles fast enough. (He's a Spittles addict.) He has severely limited patience, and half the time he doesn't even see what's sitting right in front of him. He's too busy visualizing what ought to be, in the ideal world, to see what is, in the (inadequate) real one.
The woman who's helping Barry look is some Twinkie from marketing whose name escapes me. On the outside she's a squishy man-magnet, but on the inside there's an empty tunnel containing a dab of dried-up vanilla filling where good sense ought to be. "Airhead" doesn't do her justice, because her head isn't inflated to the proper PSI. She acts like she has all the intellectual development of your average preteen baton twirler. She types like the wind: she blows every word. She's also surreptitiously reading the secrets off of Barry's yellow-sticky-note wallpaper.
Surely the box is here someplace. I'm a little afraid they've already found it without realizing what it is and upended it into the trash, losing half the slides. Barry sends Twinkie to search the conference room in case he already took it in there, then stomps out, muttering. Good riddance. Now I won't have to shove her out of my way.
I commandeer the brass yardstick Barry got as a business gift when the bank around the corner opened ("Your Measure of Success") and poke cautiously around behind his bookshelves and cabinets, having felt out various lost items that way over the years. My charms knock against the back of the desk. When I crawl under the desk to check behind it, I overhear a man speaking in low tones. He's using the phone on the other side of the office wall. It's Barry, disguising his voice as a raspy baritone, but it's him, all right.
"I need that kitten. So just make sure it happens. Capisce?" He hangs up with a bang and stomps loudly away.
A cat? Barry's allergic. Had a full-blown attack once when I came in from lunch merely because I'd stopped by an SPCA adoption booth at the mall and loved on a fluffy black Persian. He can't breathe if a speck of cat dander is hidden somewhere on his person.
After a moment I resume my prodding with the yardstick from below. I've got that tingly feeling. It's here. All I need is a soupçon of luck.
Science tells us (and it knows Everything) that there is no such thing as "luck," that you have a fifty-fifty chance of heads or tails every time you toss a penny, no matter what result you got the last time. This is the TwentyFirstCentury, f'godsakes, and there should be no room in a reasonable woman's mind for this pile of superstitious hooey. Fears of untethered yellow balloons, tails-up coins underfoot, Dreaded Bad Luck Songs that suddenly come on the radio when you're on a date, and Fridays that fall on the thirteenth are irrational and therefore not allowed. Consciously, I admit that my personal bugaboos (according to the wise voice of Reason) have no basis in fact, that they're holdovers from an overimaginative childhood, and that they're more about fear and habit than self-protection. Still . . . I'd be afraid not to say "Bread and Butter" if when I'm walking with someone a column comes between us, and terrified to skip the charm of blessing or "Gesundheit"-ing someone who sneezes. Who knows what might happen if I quit holding off the forces of evil and doom with my daily touching of the lucky waterfall wall outside this very building as I come in? (Tapped it twice today.)
I have a feeling the slides are really close. Like in the kids' game "Hot and Cold." Warm warm hot scorching you're on fire if it were a snake it would bite you. I hold my breath and count to four repeatedly as I prod.
Finally I locate the box, dented and scuffed. The transparencies inside look unharmed. The box apparently fell behind Barry's desk and slid, becoming wedged halfway. Actually, it looks as if someone jammed it there rather carefully. Deliberately. I wouldn't have seen its orange corner peeking out had I not been flat on my back with my head in the desk's kneehole.
If this happened accidentally, it's the darnedest thing I've seen in a while.
So assume Barry knocked it backwards out of his in-basket. That has to have made a racket. Why didn't he hear it? Maybe he didn't notice because it happened while he was shtupping that Twinkie on the desk. Before I can laugh out loud at the thought--Barry swore off sex forever after his torturous divorce from The Recluse two years ago, and I know he's too smart to fool around with a current employee--I put the image out of my mind by imagining George C. Scott giving that rousing opening speech in Patton.
"Found it," I call to Barry, who's now out in my cubbyhole, frantically pawing through my filing cabinets. He comes running in and snatches the box out of my hands. He doesn't thank me or express wonder and admiration for my locatory skill. He doesn't even ask where it was. He just turns and pounds down the hall toward the meeting room where the dry run is taking place.
Twinkie shoots me an irritated glance through the door and disappears.
I survey the mess. It'll take hours to get everything organized and put away, so I decide to do it in the morning. After checking to be sure Barry hasn't "temporarily" laid a stack of important folders across the mouth of the wastebasket, the way he did last month while "reorganizing"--the janitorial staff shrugged and hauled it all away, and I had to reconstruct the contents--I grab my purse out from under my desk and prepare to bail. Somebody's bound to need a "quick" three hours of help, and I'm not going to be the one who gets cornered.
Sure enough, here comes Wade Weller. He almost undoubtedly wants the photos pulled off his digital camera again, because he can't be bothered doing it himself. But I have to be nice, because he is our Techie Geek who not only installs software upgrades but can make your e-mail address stop working and change your password to "G6X$t4!" without telling you. Maybe I can escape before he makes eye contact.
Too late. As he toddles toward my desk with his usual expectant attitude, I paste on a questioning look. What's odd is that he's dangling that expensive and delicate camera in front of him by the strap, at arm's length. It looks as though he's presenting the winning trout, still flopping on the fishing line, for me to measure at the lake fishermen's lying contest.
His lanky frame leans halfway across my desk. A whiff of cinnamon-spice aftershave follows. "Could you download these pictures and stick them into the public directory? I'm kind of in a bind. Supposed to be at Barry's dry run, and looks like it's starting." His tone is only slightly apologetic.
As soon as I accept the camera, he wipes his palm on his pants leg. "Thanks. By the way," he says over his shoulder as he hustles away, "you're not one of those people who's sensitive to poison ivy, are you?"
Suppressing a yelp, I drop the camera into a plastic grocery sack (I find it useful to keep a few in my desk) and stuff that into my bottom drawer. Then I rub Purewell hand sanitizer between my palms and wipe down my hands with baby wipes. Tomorrow morning's soon enough for me to deal with the possible toxins. If I remember to bring rubber gloves.
What are the pix for, anyway, a porn site? They're probably pictures of his model railroad.
As I pass the conference room, I peek in the window. The scene inside is not unlike one of those early Flemish paintings of Hell. I send up a prayer of thanksgiving that I am not sitting in there, flipping transparencies and melting under Barry's glare.
Some upper management type is skulking around the lobby. She's tall, regal, and X-ray slim, showing all the signs of having had a recent facial peel. Small teeth with excessive gum-exposure. That has to be a three-hundred-dollar suit. If the jewelry were real, it'd be dangerous for her to be out on the street without a bodyguard. But she couldn't walk far in those spike heels. She must've been dropped off by her chauffeur. Or maybe we've instituted valet parking.
I'm almost out the door when she collars me. Her chilly gaze freezes me to the spot. In a commanding Mary Poppins voice, she says, "I'm here to see Barry Earl."
Mazel tov. "Um, he's in a meeting."
"He's expecting me. Can you get him out?"
"Let me check," says my autonomic nervous system. I can't seem to switch the workforce-slave attitude off while under this roof. Like a meek Girl Scout, I lead her back to my desk. "What may I tell him it's in regard to?"
She sniffs. "I wouldn't know." Her tone is snotty. "He phoned me." Looking pointedly at her Rolex, she adds, "Said it was urgent."
"The Customer Is Always Whining." That's our motto here at PRG Communications. ("Priorities Really Gross." "Perhaps Rotten Goods." "Perpetually Running Gauntlets." Actually, I don't know what the initials stand for. Nor do I especially care. We don't try to understand them; we just rope, tie, and brand them.)
I get her name and buzz the meeting room. I tell Barry I'm sending her in, urgent, and that I'll see him tomorrow. Then I drop her off at the door to "Abandon All Hope" on my way out. She looks at me as if I'm throwing my life away on the streets as I depart. Horrors. She thinks I'm leaving early.
I kind of enjoy that.
Chapter Two
As luck would have it, my cell phone is nowhere to be found. I'm sure I left it sitting on the charger. I swing by home to retrieve it.
Behind the house, my parking spot is empty. But what I see parked crookedly across Elaine's and Rachel's vacant spaces almost sends me crashing into the bushes lining our fence. The vanity license plate on the metallic blue Zotzcrate, an expensive imported two-door sports car, reads BOYWNDR.
Oh, my God. What is HE doing here?
That banishment ceremony. I must've mispronounced half of it. Never mind, because it has done what I couldn't have hoped: brought back the Boy Wonder.
Patrick Carter. He's my "Noel" from Marjorie Morningstar, "Jerry" to my "Pookie" from The Sterile Cuckoo, "Fink" to my pathetic "Nesmith" from the Abandonment Story website. He looks like a pre-Batman Val Kilmer, only with dark hair and mahogany eyes with impossibly green rings around the pupils. I still love him fiercely.
Despite the way he keeps breaking up with me.
But it looks like our on-again, off-again romance is on again. All is forgiven!
I check myself in the rear view. Casually, I slip off my glasses. No lip gloss, and it would be bad form to be seen putting some on, so I bite my lips together and whisper a prayer. There is only one reason he would come here, and that is to get back together.
He's rolling his window down. Of course he wouldn't want to seem too eager by bounding over, snatching me up, and crying, "I was wrong! I can't live without you!" One must play the game. I am happier than I have possibly ever been as I saunter up to his car, trying not to look too interested. I just barely restrain myself from falling on him with kisses.
He doesn't say, "You look good," or "What's up," or even "Will you marry me?" Without preamble, he says, "I need my stuff back."
I take another step forward before this registers. "Oh, um. I don't have anything of yours." I already gave back his racquetball equipment and the laser printer I borrowed, along with most of the oddments he's left behind on various overnight stays. Surely he doesn't mean the opal earrings he gave me? Or the stuffed unicorn?
He narrows those almond-shaped chocolate kisses he uses for eyes. "Yes, you do."
Uh-oh, he knows I hung on to his SMU T-shirt, one of his beach towels, and his Scout pocketknife, which I found between the sofa pillows.
My heart has gone all tippery-tattery. God, he turns me on. Though he's not good-looking in the conventional sense. Pale freckled skin, a serious gaze, smooth caramel-corn-colored hair in the haircut that everyone on MTV who isn't shaven has, those little wire Ben Franklin eyeglasses with the lozenge-shaped lenses that don't correct your peripheral vision, Wrangler jeans, hiking boots, and a face like a young George Segal except with a nose that fits his face. Not a big lumpy honker like mine or George's.
Objectively, Patrick's offbeat-average. But to me, his very scent on my tongue (which is where it immediately goes whenever I stand near him) is irresistible.
I take a deep breath. "No . . . remember, I made up that box of your stuff, you came by and picked it up last week and left the key with Lainie, so we're even, right?"
Patrick blinks. "No." He tosses his head, and the gesture endears him to me all over again. Tender feelings rise in my chest as a tingle begins in and around my loins, or whatever that area's called in women. His Irish tenor booms out and wraps me around the Maypole like a limp pink ribbon. "For instance. You may have forgotten, but. . . ." He taps his bitten fingernails on the custom steering wheel. "My stereo and my laptop."
That momentarily throws me. Okay, the stereo I can kind of see him asking for; it's a neat compact system, which he gave to me when he got his fancy stereophile setup with the transparent wall-mounted speakers. Before I realize that I'm being argumentative again (one of his major bugaboos), I whine, "But you said the stereo was old junk. That you were giving it to me to keep." I feel a stab at the thought of surrendering it, although I suppose I can get one cheap at Wally World that would be okay for playing my CDs and listening to the independent radio station. I'm no audiophile.
He shrugs. "I guess I may have said that. But I want my laptop."
Well. The laptop is a different story.
It's the laptop he had when we met. One of our first "dates" was to scamper through computer stores comparing the various new models, and he soon bought a state-of-the-art number and told me I could buy his old one for three hundred dollars. I gave him a hundred on the spot, which was all I'd had to spend. Our relationship progressed in fairy-tale fashion, and soon we both forgot that I sort of owed him the rest. What did it matter, when we were going to get married any day?
We'd thought we were going to get married. At least I had. What he said, as I now recall, was actually more like, "Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be married to you. I'm not sure I'd feel as completely suffocated as I always thought I would." These romantic sentiments were uttered on a night of celebration, while we were finishing a bottle of Riesling we'd brought back from a long-weekend tour of Texas vineyards.
All right, he was the first guy I ever went all the way with. So I'm old-fashioned. I'm not ashamed. I waited until I was truly in love and met My One and Only. I know I was his first, as well. I still believe we're meant to be together.
This is what always happens. I resolve to get him out of my system, but before I'm fully purged, he comes back while I'm still too weak to withstand the force of his personality. I can barely prevent my fingers from reaching out to run through his hair. I'm supposed to be playing hard to get.
Besides, I'm a little taken aback. "Excuse me, the laptop?"
"Yeah, the Szell. Remember? It's actually still mine."
His attitude is beginning to irritate me. He doesn't need that computer. He could buy another with part of one paycheck. As a software engineer and networking specialist, he makes three times what I do. "You don't have to rub it in. I know I never finished paying. You only had to ask."
"Don't want the money." He looks me in the eye. For the first time ever, I see in his gaze no affection and no attraction, only standoffishness and a warning: don't touch. It throws me slightly off balance. "I like that laptop. The screen's nice, and they've stopped making that model. You can get another."
My hands curl up against my chest. Normally, I'd knock my butt off to give him anything he asked for. But. . . .
I steady myself against the side of the car. I suppose I could march inside and pull my files off to diskette--my Christmas card list, a few FAQ files I downloaded off the Internet, and a couple of work documents--and let him take the thing, if it's that big a deal. I certainly don't want him feeling that I've ripped him off. Still. . . . "What's wrong with your new laptop?"
"Nothing. I just need a backup." He looks away again, half-smiling at his reflection in the rear view mirror. I notice he has a bruise purpling low on his neck. Or maybe that's . . . a hickey?
Suddenly it comes to me that he wants this computer for some specific reason. Such as to give to another woman, playing the big, generous sugar daddy. "But I'm used to this one. Why don't you just buy another and let me pay you the rest?" I can give him my savings and live on credit cards for a couple of months.
He pushes his hair back with both hands, although it immediately rearranges itself and falls coyly around his eyebrows, as always. I clench my fists so I won't pick up a strand. I'm supposed to be angry at him, not revved up for lovin'. Instead of answering me, he re-checks himself in the rear view.
Finally, he speaks. "Get over it. You're wasting my time and yours. I suggest you just go get me the stuff. Don't try to hold on to the past, Daffy." From him, the mocking name sounds charming.
"But . . . I need my files." I ought to shatter that laptop into a zillion pieces, then melt the pieces in the microwave, then send the resulting brick through the windshield of this beloved car of his, angled so it lands right in his insensitive crotch. But, as always, I cave in to his demands. "Okay. Why don't you step inside and take the stereo down while I copy off my files. You can have a Coke while you wait." Why do I remind myself of a pathetic used-car salesperson who's trying a last-ditch gambit to hustle a customer into the finance office?
A gleam comes into his eyes, but it isn't a good gleam. He starts the car and the radio blasts into life. Willie Nelson, singing "If You Cain't Live Without Me, Why Ain't You Dead Yet?"
Country music? Patrick hates it. He banishes those stations from the dial. He wrote to the local UHF station protesting their re-runs of Hee Haw. He dropped cable in favor of a dish partly so he could choose not to pay for the country music video network.
He lifts his left hand as though it weighs a ton and combs his fingers slowly across his head. "Let's not make this any tougher than it is. I'll wait right here."
Dammit, both of those things are heavy. I'll have to get Elaine or Rachel to carry the speakers. Wait, neither one's car is out here, so nobody's home. Hands on hips, I make the situation clear. "I might not be able to manage them both by myself. I really need you to help." I hate that I sound so pleading, like a pathetic ex who has been . . . dumped.
He narrows his eyes. His wrists sit on the steering wheel, reminding me of snakes draped over a tree limb. That is probably some kind of Freudian image, but I can't manage to banish it. "Do your best. You're stronger than you think."
He's being ridiculous. I know I can charm him out of this mood. I lean into the car window to loom over him, ready to rest my forehead against his and snap him out of it, but he jerks away.
"Daphne, please. Just get me the laptop. I'll pick up the stereo later." He wipes his cheek, although I didn't even touch him. "And don't pull this crap on me. It's over, remember?"
He can't be serious. We're really still in love. He's going through an awfully elaborate ruse just to save face. That's got to be it.
So why is he doing such a good imitation of a flaming jackass?
I sigh. "Right, I know. So let's get this over with. If you'll come stand at the door, I'll hand you everything, one piece at a time. I'll stack it in your arms quite chastely. No hassles."
Perhaps he suspects that I secretly plan to seduce him as soon as he gets inside. I've done it before several other times when he came back to make up with me, but initially held back in order to be macho. It'll be easy once he stops hardening his heart and starts concentrating on other anatomical features.
"It's not gonna happen," he mutters. But he grasps the door handle inside and unlatches the car door. He still doesn't make eye contact. He stares intently at the expensive watch on the wrist that's still draped over the wheel, and then nods silently, as if to himself. Without looking at me, he cracks the door.
I take a step back, expecting him to get out. Instead, he shoves the door hard so it whams into my midsection. It knocks me backward, and I stagger against the hedge. The impact takes my breath away for a second. He throws the car into reverse and roars across the gravel, which flies up to spatter me like a dozen meteorites. It stings.
Before I even know I'm going to give chase, I'm scrambling up out of the brambles and limping across the yard after his exhaust pipe, shouting, "Wait!"
My legs slow down as the Zotz hits the street. It gains speed and screeches around the corner, like a teenager's first hot rod. I pound to a stop at the curb and realize I am not even inside this body. The real "me" could not be associated with such an ass-woman as would put on this little display.
Slowly I come to my senses and stand on the curb, blinking. What was that he just tried to pull? What did I just try to pull? Who was that inner child of my past? She certainly was needy. No wonder the man wants his freedom.
I have absolutely no explanation as to why Patrick James Carter affects me the way he does. Every fiber of my being yearns, just like in the cliché, and every cell in my body wants to vibrate at his wavelength. Never mind that it's approximately the same frequency as Torquemada's, that gifted torturer of the Inquisition.
Why is he so hostile? What have I done to make him stop loving me . . . and start hating me? And why the hell do I have to still care so much?
When our relationship progressed in fairy-tale fashion, I should've remembered how most authentic fairy tales actually end.
Grim. No matter who writes them.
I imagine curtains twitching up and down the street as I walk back to the house, dragging my ruined dignity behind me like a strip of toilet paper stuck to the heel of my shoe.
This is karmic payback. It is the punishment for that time in eighth grade when I spurned the affections of Theodore Michael Keegan.
I actually broke a date with T. Mike to go to the eighth grade Spring Fling (shades of "Happy Days") with John Grackle. I broke our date the night before because the Grack (the equivalent of the Fonz) called me at the last minute. And then at the dance when Mike saw me, I gave him some line about how John and I had run into each other here, plus I told him that the aunt who'd been sick yesterday had made a miraculous recovery. I knew that he knew I was lying, but I still did it.
I was, surprisingly, never shamed for that. Until today.
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 01:51 pm (UTC)I don't get enough sense of your protag as an individual to _want_ to read her story. It's too heavy on internalisation, and too light on description -problems I am all too familiar with. Too much of the story takes place in her head - and my attention was wandering.
What I'd need to read on is a sense of what matters to Daphne, a sense of where her life is going - what does she want? Fame? Fortune? To get even with her nasty ex? The problem is that you're throwing in a lot of leads - she's hexed herself, no, she's cursed for some trivial misdoings, she wants to have a good career, she wants her boyfriend back, she wants to rid herself of his memory, she wants to be married to a man who loves her - all those things come in little drips and drabs, there's no continuing narrative in there.
And then you throw a mystery on a curve ball - why is her ex acting so suspiciously, not wanting to cross her threshhold, charging off in the rudest possible manner, and why is he suddenly into Country music?
Last but not least, this story could go either way - her rituals and bad luck being coincidence, or being real. As a reader, I'm willing to be strung along only for so long - I want some hints either way.
You might want to read a bit of rasfc - look for Patricia C. Wrede and threads titled 'Livening up a Scene' 'First round of descriptive/external exercises' 'Warp and Weft of stories' 'One of Arbet's Crowd - scene for rewriting' 'Revision Problem - Rhailed, I'm booored' and 'Big Picture vs Expanding Viewpoint' (in reverse order). On second thoughts, it would take you weeks to wade through all the stuff, so maybe not...
There is some good writing in here, and I like the idea of someone inadvertedly hexing themselves, but I'd agree with the editor who critted it that right now it reads too fragmented.
I hope this is of help.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 09:20 am (UTC)I have the feeling that I have, in response to comments over time, put in TOO MUCH about what Daphne wants. Of course, what she thinks she wants is not what she really wants. Patrick has another woman on the string (one who listens to country music--thus the car radio is tuned to the new woman's station as a clue) and has issues (Daphne doesn't need to be with him!!) I'll take another look at the way the hints are put in there.
It may be that readers demand to know whether the magic is real or not. I was planning to leave it to the reader . . . is this real, or was this just Daphne's imagination, or a little of both? I am told there is a TV show with an OCD lead character, "Monk," and that I should watch it to see how this is handled there. Time to fire up the TiVo. But I'm a bit daunted, because I thought that I *finally* had come up with something that they'd never done before with the OCD stuff. (sigh)
Thanks for your comments!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 02:08 pm (UTC)You're probably going to hate this suggestion, but why not simply tell everyone at the beginning that it hangs together? You talk about the luck (or not-luck) of the selfless-selfish-random act ritual; I think you just need to bop us over the head a little harder with "I don't think it worked, and _______ proved it." Then go on to show us how it was proved.
Hope that was helpful. :)
Lissa
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:51 pm (UTC)Frex, the descriptions of the guy in the truck: any one of them would've been fine solo. But taken together: First he's a frowning dwarf (quick, easy mental image -- grumpy Gimli). The dwarf resolves into a stumpy Hispanic man wearing a two-gallon Stetson and scaled-down cowboy boots (a more specific image in the reader's mind, though not necessarily one that naturally flows from 'frowning dwarf'; this particular description also adds to the characterisation of the narrator). Then he's an angry hobbit (which in my mind does not jive with Hispanic or dwarf or cowboy boots). Then he's a hopping toad (yet another, very different image). Then he's back to being Frodo -- making him, ultimately, a curly haired hobbit with straight black hispanic hair, who wears brightly coloured clothes including a cowboy hat, has bare hairy feet on which he wears cowboy boots, has a pleasant open face that looks like that of a toad....
Perhaps my imagination is lacking, but I couldn't resolve those into a single image, or even a constellation of images. So IMO, JP Kelly's advice to "murder your darlings" would be appropriate.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 09:10 am (UTC)Come right out and tell 'em
Date: 2006-01-10 09:13 am (UTC)This is helpful! I thought I *did* clue in readers that things were working, what with that little speech early on saying she has jinxed herself and so forth. Didn't want to put in TOO much about that for fear of hitting them over the head TOO hard. I'll see what I can put in that won't be "too much." It's such a fine line.
The next book in line has a more linear plot, with things happening in response to the previous scene's events, and the heroine's desire pretty clear from the start. Thank goodness!! It shouldn't be so tough to tweak (or so you'd THINK. But remember, this is me we're talking about.) *grin*
Thanks for your comments!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 04:05 am (UTC)I saw a few spots where I'd suggest pruning, mostly when Daphne starts over-explaining or over-describing things--but you knew I was going to say that. (And you should see the mystery MS I'm trying to revise right now--looks like I bled all over it myself!!) I was interested in how uncharitable Daphne is toward almost every woman who crosses her path--I assume that's going to be dealt with, and maybe has something to do with her cheating ex?
There's a lot in here I liked, but I think, to me, there's a point a which I got the point that her luck is bad, and the extra examples ironically lessened the dramatic effect rather than adding to it. It's a bit like getting dressed and then taking off one piece of jewellery.
Thanks!
Date: 2006-01-10 09:09 am (UTC)Daphne's not into women at the start, is she? The ending is a road trip with her roommates, and she comes to a better understanding of herself. She understands herself better, and so things improve all around.
The work scene is tough to move because I have her losing a charm off her bracelet behind Barry's desk (and I'd like to introduce Wade Weller, who becomes her love interest near the end of the story, when she finally realizes that someone who is good for her and has been showing his interest for quite some time might be fun, too). When she gets to the party, the bartender who is flirting with her (and who becomes one of her Mistakes) sees the charm is missing when he's going through her charm bracelet. Later on, the Black Moment (when she gets fired) is partly caused by the charm she lost, because Barry finds it under/behind his desk and immediately assumes she is snooping in his office. He has something to hide (the "kittens" mentioned in that conversation she overhears), so this is the third strike as far as he's concerned. So it does all add together in the end. I need her to lose that charm early on, and the reader forgets about it, as she does, but then it comes back to whap her.
This stuff is hard . . . but if it weren't tough to write a book, everybody would be doing it. (*grin*)
BTW, from your journal--you should use that incident with the pink boots and the salt blocks in your novel . . . and then the store clerk can accuse your sleuth of killing the victim that way. That would be something I've never seen yet in a mystery!
Thanks for your comments!
Re: Thanks!
Date: 2006-01-10 12:21 pm (UTC)Or you might consider keeping the fender-bender and having Daphne go from there striaght into the office, fuming silently about having to come in on her day off and wishing her latter-day-hippie roomie had just lost the message as she is inclined to do. Or something like that? That would mean we're aware of the roomies and expect to meet them later--as we do--but takes a little of the crowding out of the front end. (I had to do that at least twice with my own first MS. It took some rethinking but ended up working well.)
The salt block is totally going into the third mystery I have planned for my horsey characters. I envision three murders and two killers--the third murder is by blunt-force trauma. My character goes looking for the mineral block she distinctly remembers putting in her tack box and is puzzled at its disappearance. She thinks another boarder has snaffled it, but when one of the cops (who know her pretty well by now, this being the third friggin' murder at her barn) (and incidentally the third murder in the province since the series started--it's hard to set a mystery series on PEI) mentions the reddish substance in the wound that is not sand--she gets it.
And that means the killer is someone from the barn, because she can't quite believe in a random miscreant happening to drop in and rummage through tack boxes looking for a weapon. Nope, it's probably someone who saw her place that block in her box.
And that leads directly to a friend of hers.
Obviously this is going to take some thinking-about, but it's the third mystery in an unpublished series. I have plenty of time!
Sadly, I can't quite think how to work in the pink bell boots...
Where does the story start?
Date: 2006-01-10 07:17 pm (UTC)It's very well written, with very cute turns of phrase. However, I'm left going, "What's the point?" a lot.
If the story is about a road trip, then my diagnosis is that it's starting in the wrong place. I need an inciting incident to draw me in.
Finally, if there's a "next story in line" then I would go to that one. I always find it easier to start fresh than to tyr and re-engineer faulty structure.
Re: Where does the story start?
Date: 2006-01-10 10:12 pm (UTC)Thank you SO MUCH for coming by and reading and commenting! I read your journal all the time. I can't believe you came over. I really appreciate any and all input (even the stuff I seemingly ignore--*just kidding*).
I've been busy editing so readers will realize what the story is about. In the very first draft, I showed the ritual of three and what she did to start erasing Patrick from her heart. But then my first beta readers were rationalists--people who think Harry Potter, Narnia, and fairy tales are a waste of time and/or sinful, but hey, they love chick lit. (grin) And they said, "Get rid of THAT OCCULT STUFF." (Even though it could also be just OCD and superstition.) They felt that showing any details of the rituals would lock me into submitting only to DAW, Baen, and fantasy/SF houses. I wanted it to be women's fiction/paranormal.
*But, but, and again but!* (as Ian Fleming writes in _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_) Intrepid Editor said that if magic is real (or I want readers to think it could be), I need to make something impossible happen in the first ten pages. I think this is also sort of what you are saying, or at least it's compatible.
Okay. So . . . remember the "dwarf" who backed into her car? He's her fairy godfather/guardian angel, but I didn't want readers to know that yet. Hints start coming later on that she HAS one, but it could still be all in her imagination, etc. Well, I decided that I'd just throw caution to the wind (remembering to stay UPwind of it) and let people know he is magical (or that Daphne is cracked) up front. Now he's going to do something impossible right there in the parking lot, *but* no one else is going to see it.
I'll post the revision just for fun. Am polishing it up now. He was already shown winking in the final scene, so this sets THAT up.
There is a road trip with roomies at the end, after the Black Moment when all seems lost. (That's what guys at loose ends would do!) The road trip leads to a crisis and then to Daphne's epiphany. But it's not what the story's about.
The story is about Daphne's character arc, a change from being someone "things happen to" and who has bad luck that she blames on circumstances and unchangeable problems INTO a person who takes personal responsibility for her actions and tries to take control of a situation instead of relying on luck. It's about rituals and how they play a part in everyone's lives because they help us make sense of the world, put a structure in place where we would be otherwise lost. It's about how Daphne learns to be a grown-up. But it's also supposed to be funny and make observations about the way people react to things and their superstitions.
I can't figure out an earlier starting point or a later starting point (which is why it's so frustrating--I've done books with the throat-clearing that could be ripped off the beginning so that they started with chapter 3, and that wasn't so maddening.) For example, Daphne has to lose that charm off her bracelet in the boss's office so that later on, he can find it and accuse her of having snooped. And we need to know that Wade Weller is in the picture (he becomes her love interest at the end.) What I need is to show the significance of what's happening when it happens without giving away too much and overwriting it, and I think that with the suggestions I'm getting (some through e-mail), I'll be able to do that. Daph's always working on trying to fix her luck, and what I need to do is show it better.
(continued on next rock)
Re: Where does the story start? next rock
Date: 2006-01-10 10:14 pm (UTC)Thanks for coming by, and thank you for the suggestions! It's always nice to hear someone say that my stuff is well written. That apparently doesn't mean anything any more, although it may have in the Olden Days when my teachers were so excited and expected to see my work published any day. (sheepish grin) I still believe I'll find the way to integrate this narrative, though. One must have one's dreams, after all. . . .