Holden’s facial expression did not change, “I have no doubt about that, Ethan. You also have been going out of your way to avoid her and she’s been going out of her way to make sure you can’t.”
“Whaaaaa?” Ethan asked.
Holden was actually laughing when he told him, “Janie never wears shorts, or halter tops for that matter. Outside of those stupid tee shirts, which she also has stopped wearing, she is usually covered up.”
Ethan was shaking his head. “Man, I’m being honest with you. I’m trying my damndest. I want to keep everything professional between us. Getting involved physically or romantically could mean the death of our business.”
“You don’t seem to get it, Ethan. You may not have a choice. She has chosen you, and she has every intention of making you her own,” Holden told him.
Holden patted him on the back, “The question is Ethan have you determined your terms for surrender?”
“You say it as if I have no say in the matter, Holden. I have every choice and as a responsible adult, I will make a responsible decision,” he told Holden adamantly.
Holden wasn’t buying it. “Sure. Let me know if that works for you. You are barely getting through waxing a floor, unless that kind of thing turns you on...”
“To be honest, you have no idea who or what I was thinking about; you can’t automatically assume it was your sister,” he told Holden, hoping to get the dude off his back and away from such an uncomfortable subject.
“Ethan, if Janie were black, would you have such a crisis in conscience?”
It was a question he didn’t know how to answer. “It is not question of skin color. It just isn’t right. I am going to have to work with her every day or buy her out if we do something stupid that doesn’t work out. I have to eat. I have to live. I have a mortgage, a car note, and that damned Sallie Mae. I can’t afford to risk all of that based on what...desire?” I can’t and I won’t.”
Holden understood. “Just don’t break her heart.”
“I’m trying to be the good guy here,” Ethan said, but the rest of his words were cut off.
The doorbell jangled and everyone looked up. Janie was working on the upper right side balcony and walked to the edge of the balustrade to see who had come inside The Roxy. Her eyes were drawn to the pretty, statuesque black woman. She reeked of class and money. Janie could tell the lady was someone important. The lady was also important to Ethan, who stopped his conversation with Holden to greet her at the door.
Janie was ashamed that she felt a tinge of jealously as Ethan embraced the lady. Maybe this was why he hadn’t made any advances towards her; he’d left Kate for Ms. Classy Money Lady. Her purse is worth more than everything in Janie’s closet. Janie doesn’t like the pretty classy lady. She closed her eyes when she hugged Ethan. Intimate. My Ethan is intimate with this woman.
Holden was also watching her closely.
Ethan turned to introduce the lady. “Hey guys, come on over. I want to introduce you to my sister, Dr. Tallulah Strom.”
Janie was dirty and covered in a layer of grime, but she didn’t care as she threw her arms around Tallulah and her pretty linen suit. Ethan wanted to warn his sister ahead of time, but it was Janie. There was no preparing anyone for an encounter with Janie.
“What a pleasure to meet you,” Janie said. She hugged Tallulah out of relief that she was not the new woman in Ethan’s life as well as being genuinely happy to meet her. “Are you are doctor of letters or a doctor of medicine?”
Tallulah was so taken aback by the friendliness of her brother’s new partner that she looked at Ethan, who only shrugged. She answered Janie’s question, “I am a doctor of medicine. I’m a pediatrician,” Tallulah answered.
“How hellacool is that?” Janie said with her nose scrunched up. “Come on, let me show you around our new store.”
Ethan watched them walk off arm-in-arm, his sister surrendering to the enchantment that was Janie Cimoc. Janie’s words were marinating in his brain. Our new store. Just like that, they were a couple. They were mated together as long as the store stood. However, he understood better than Holden or Janie ever could that the feelings in his pants didn’t equate to feelings in his heart. He also understood that it was not time yet to negotiate surrender because he wasn’t in the fight.
His heart he was not ready to surrender. He had been careful to keep it guarded, but Janie...she was wearing him down. Maybe it is time...
It was a quiet Saturday afternoon in the Comic Book. A few teens hung out in the back playing cards while other customers looked through trays of comics. Jimmy Earl had been in the store for nearly three hours and had not seen hide nor hair of his Janie. He knew he couldn’t ask Meg or Alice because they would give him some flip answer that would only make him madder than a caged up rattler. Instead he would ask Jem.
The teen was a lot friendlier than most of the family. Jimmy Earl slithered his way around the large table of Batman comics, coming up on the left side of the young man.
“Hey there, Jem. I haven’t seen Janie around the store. Is everything okay with her?” Jimmy Earl asked.
Jem, thinking nothing of it, responded, “I dunno. I know Ethan has been keeping her tied up a lot lately.”
One of his teen friends made an off-color remark that made Jimmy Earl’s ears go all hot and get red at the tips. Jimmy Earl needed to know, “So Janie is dating that Ethan guy?”
“They’re partners,” Jem said offhandedly.
What he meant and what Jimmy Earl understood were two different things. “This will never do. Ain’t no fancy pants dude gonna take my Janie away from me,” Jimmy Earl mumbled under his breath.
I will give her one more chance to come back to me...
Chapter 16. Bonding the Characters...
It had to be the longest sermon Ethan had ever sat through. He wasn’t sure if his dad was hyped up on sugar or too much coffee or had been visited by the Holy Spirit, but either way, Ethan was tired and wanted it over. His bed called to him for a midday nap; now that was something for which he was willing to negotiate a surrender.
“Ethan, are you coming to dinner with us this afternoon?” Hester wanted to know.
“No Mom, I am completely dead on my feet. I am headed to bed,” he told her while he hugged his sister and shook his father’s hand before pointing his car towards Delaney Street.
Inside of his overpriced tiny townhouse, he didn’t even bother to undress; he loosened his tie, kicked off his shoes, and plopped down in his big daddy recliner. In his mind he wanted his bed, but his body only made it as far as the chair. His eyes closed in silent remembrance of a time when everything on him did not ache; within seconds, he was sleep.
An hour into an uncomfortable dream, which revolved around Janie and a pair of hot pink shorts that left little to the imagination, he awoke with a start. His phone was buzzing.
It stopped.
He closed his eyes.
It started buzzing again.
His first thought was to ignore the call and turn it off altogether, but he thought maybe something could be wrong with his parents. Reluctantly he answered it, not even bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Hello,” he said groggily.
“Ethan, something’s wrong with Johnny! He’s not responding, and my mom is freaking out; I don’t know what to do!”
At first Ethan had to remember who in the hell Johnny was. It was the youngest brother whom he had never met.
“Take him to the Emergency Room, Janie,” Ethan told her.
“No! My parents don’t like or trust doctors. His skin is clammy. His pupils are fixed and dilated. There is a temp....wait Mom...don’t give him that!” She yelled at Alice.
“Janie, calm down. You have to maintain a level head,” he told her.
“You maintain a level head. My brother is dying and these two stoned hippies will not let me take him out of the house!” She yelled.
In the background, he could hear her father telling at her
to watch her tone. Janie hollered back, “You watch your tone! If you took him to the doctor like normal parents, he wouldn’t be in this condition!”
Those were the two words which made Ethan act: normal parents. “Janie, text me the address.”
Twenty minutes later, he pulled up in front of the double wide trailer with Tallulah in tow. The house, if it could be called that, looked like the backside of Woodstock where the people who never left resided. There were peace signs on the trailer. There were peace wind chimes, and wind mills in the shape of peace symbols were sitting beside garden gnomes holding peace signs.
Tallulah stepped one foot out the car asking, “What in the world?”
“Oh thank God, you are here! Tallulah, thank you. I will pay you whatever the rates are for coming out here; I don’t care how long it takes to pay you for your time, I will do it...my Johnny...he is so sick...”
Inside the trailer was even stranger than the outside, starting with the orange, brown, and yellow shag carpet. Her father sat back with a giant joint smoking it as casually as possible while her Mom pulled fresh baked cookies from the oven.
Alice was smiling when they entered, “Janie told me we were having guests, so I baked some cookies.”
“Good grief, Mom, your son is dying in the back room and you are baking frickin’ cookies? Daddy,” she yelled at her father. “Put that damned thing out. That is probably why he is sick; he is high as hell!”
Tallulah stopped at the door. “I cannot enter while he is smoking an illegal substance.”
Janie moved so quickly that Ethan’s eyes began to water. She doused the joint in water and yanked her father out of the chair and pushed him out the back door. “It’s the best I can do, Doc,” she told Tallulah.
“Show me where your brother is,” Tallulah told Janie. Her eyes were on Alice, who seemed fixated upon the cookies and making coffee. Incredulously, Janie’s mom was humming White Rabbit, and Tallulah garnered an immediate understanding of why Janie called.
The bedroom where Johnny lay was sticky and hot. “Let’s get some fresh air in here. Get me a cool cloth, some ice, and water for him to drink,” Tallulah said.
Janie rushed about collecting the needed items while Ethan kept Alice out of the way. It did not take him long to understand that Janie’s mother seemed to be disconnected from reality. Holden, Meg, and Jem came through the front door and spotted Ethan at the table. He nodded his head in the direction of Johnny’s room, and all three took off down the hall.
Tallulah emerged from the room a few minutes later. “Janie will need to bring him into my office tomorrow for some additional testing, Mrs. Cimoc, but it looks like a case of the measles. We will need to update his vaccinations.”
Holden spoke up, “What vaccinations? None of us were ever vaccinated?”
Everyone looked at Alice. “What?” she asked. “I was not going to allow the government to inject our children with toxins and tracking devices.”
Janie stood up with her fists balled up at her sides. “I have to get out of here before I kill someone.”
She stormed out of the door followed by Ethan and Tallulah.
“Go to her, Ethan,” Tallulah told him.
“I will come back to her; first I need to get you home,” he said.
Tallulah sat in the car, watching the trailer fade into the distance as her brother drove away. Janie, pacing in front of the shambled house, furious beyond reason. “That is an off family, Ethan,” she told her brother.
“Yes, her parents were a part of that community of new agers and they never assimilated into regular society like all the others,” he said.
“Oh, that commune of hippies from a few years back...” was all that Tallulah added. She was uncertain if Johnny was given the marijuana as a treatment for the measles or if the boy had a contact high from all the fumes inside to hot trailer. It was a toss-up whether or not Janie would bring the boy into her office tomorrow, but all of it was a waiting game. The measles had to run their course. The others, since they were not vaccinated, would probably also get infected. The other thing that troubled her was that this was the only case of measles in the whole county. Where could the kid have come into contact with a live virus? Tallulah had a lot of questions that were not going to get answered today. The only thing she could do was wait for her brother’s direction before she did anything other than treat the boy.
Ethan arrived at the Comic Book to find Janie still sitting in her car. She was gripping the steering so tightly her knuckles were white. A light tap on the window pulled her out of her fugue. It took some coaxing to get her out of the car and into the building, but once they reached her living space, Ethan was at a loss for words for the third time in one night.
It wasn’t an apartment, but a storage space with a small bathroom. The room held a small desk that also served as a dressing table. A clothes rack served as her closet. The twin-size bed had seen better days. An apartment-sized stove and fridge in a corner created a kitchen. There was a small sink and a hand-me-down table.
“It’s not much but it’s what I call home,” she told him. She flopped on the bed and gathered her pillow close to her chest. “They aren’t bad people, Ethan. They loved us unconditionally and did the best they knew how...they just didn’t know much. As the others in the commune who traveled down here from Colorado with them moved away and took corporate jobs, my parents stayed true to their beliefs, even when it was to our detriment.”
The tears had started to well in her eyes and she used the back of her hand to wipe her nose, “Holden and I have worked since we were teens and supported our family. Jem and Johnny are the last two in the house. We all work to make sure they have a normal childhood, but how can you protect a child from his own parents?”
Her tears were flowing while he pulled her into his arms. Janie pulled away from him, “Don’t feel sorry for me, Ethan. I’ve worked hard to get what I have. It may not be much, but I have two more payments on this building and it is mine. Meg is starting college in the fall and Holden is a damn good electrician. He makes really good money. We even have a college fund for Johnny.”
“What about you, Janie? You’ve taken care of everyone else; who takes care of you?”
“I take care of myself,” she told him.
For some reason that didn’t sit well with Ethan either. Janie was only 27. She started working in the Comic Book when she was only a teen so she could support her family. Ethan found himself wanting to take care of everything she needed.
“The moving truck is coming tomorrow, so you need a good night’s rest. Tallulah will take care of Johnny and get him well. You have to make sure you are getting enough rest to stay healthy yourself,” he told her.
Ethan planted a soft kiss on her forehead. “I will see you at the Roxy in the morning. I saw everything was packed downstairs and ready to go.”
She only nodded.
“Come on downstairs and lock up,” he told her.
Outside, Jimmy Earl watched Ethan leaving Janie’s upstairs private space. The idea of what they could have been doing up there made Jimmy Earl start pulling at the stringy hair that hung from his head. Janie is cheating on me with that fancy bastard! I will fix them both. They will not make a fool out of me!
Chapter 17. The Game Changer...
Ethan couldn’t believe he had overslept. He was plumb tired and weary down to his bones. His initial thoughts on the upstairs space in the Roxy was going to be an open loft type of living area, but he had an idea that he was certain she was going to love. He added a few extra dollars to the budget and worked after Janie left to make it a homey spacey. The end result was going to be great, especially after he had seen how Janie had been living. He knew starving artists in New York who lived better than she did in that hovel; some changes were coming. What are you doing, Ethan?
It was after ten when Janie arrived at the Roxy. The moving truck had picked up everything from her shop and delivered most of it; the moving men had set th
e tables and racks in the exact locations they had chosen. Janie’s comics were located on the left side of the main auditorium. Many of the racks, along with items that were slow sellers, were placed under the balconies in the walkways. Since the areas were not well lit, Janie thought it would be more cost effective in the long run to string Christmas lights under the balconies as opposed to directional lights that would use more electricity. Ethan didn’t think it was true, but it added a magical effect to the space and he liked the feel of the room.
The transformation of the space would be welcoming to customers. The front of the house had a brass covered bar that was used to sell wine and refreshments to the music hall customers. It was now going to be used to house his beautiful copper coffee maker. The movers were coming tomorrow to move his store to The Roxy and he was excited that they were almost ready to open.
The word also came in that the new big box bookstore was breaking ground as well. They had a few months lead time on the corporate machine to make The Roxy the best place to get books and more in the town of Venture. True, they could not stave off the glitz and newness of a big box store, so a homey folksy appeal was going to have to work. If there was anything Janie could provide, it was a homey folksy appeal.
“This looks really good,” he told her while he aided in the placement of the last table. Many of her shelves did not make it to the store; they were too high for placement under the balconies. The game tables, with the exception of Middle Earth, were placed in the gutted balcony areas, with the four boxes becoming four separate play areas. The Yu-Gi-O area and Game of Thrones play tables were fixed. The other two would vary for game play as well as be used for chess or checkers. Thus far, the calmness of the store was going to be a great place for family and friends to connect.
Jimmy Earl peddled his way to the front door of the Comic Book. It was 7:30, just a half hour before closing. That would more than enough time for him and his Janie to work out some of the finer details of their relationship. Confusion overrode the amorous side of him as he saw the store was unlit, like it was closed. A sign on the door read: Join us July 4th Weekend for our Grand Reopening.
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