by Cathy Lamb
He opened up his rat’s mouth and bit my face off.
I woke up and tried to scream, but my breath caught, my voice caught, my life caught.
I ripped off all the sheets, looking for the rat between the folds, under the bed, behind the dresser, but I couldn’t find him.
He was inside of me, invisible, giggling.
I lay naked on the couch the rest of the night, with all the lights on, and watched the sun come up.
It was the only way to keep the rat outside and a fingerhold on my sanity.
I fired four employees within the first few weeks of being at Lace, Satin, and Baubles.
“You’re a firing machine,” Lacey said to me.
“You betcha.”
“I was going to do it . . .” Tory said.
“No, you weren’t,” Lacey interrupted.
“Yes, I was.”
“You should have done it earlier, both of you,” I snapped. “They weren’t working. They didn’t appreciate the job or the product.”
“When I talked to Agnes about being more productive, she said I was trying to fire her because of her age and threatened to sue because of ageism,” Lacey said. “She’s only sixty-one.”
“And you should have said that sixty-one is young,” I said, “and the Petrelli sisters are all in their seventies, their jobs far more complex and difficult, and they are more competent and work more efficiently than she does. You should have told her she needs to do her job, to do it without complaint, and if she can’t she can find employment elsewhere.”
“I didn’t want the lawsuit, Meggie.” Lacey rubbed her forehead. “I was afraid of that threat.”
“I’m aware of that. That’s why I had a camera pointed at her since the third day I arrived.”
Lacey’s and Tory’s mouths dropped. “You did?”
“Yes. I also had a camera on Willy because he threatened to sue because he said we weren’t accommodating his medical issues well enough.”
“He says his joints hurt, his knees hurt, hips hurt . . .” Tory said. “Always in pain.”
“He doesn’t have a medical issue,” I said. “He’s obese. He doesn’t like to move. Being obese and hurting because you’re carrying two hundred extra pounds is not a medical issue, and I was sick of him asking people to do things for him. We have Kara’a here who’s battling a kidney disease, and I understand she’s hardly missed a day of work in marketing. Sharoq has only one hand and she always does her work and does it quick. I had a camera on Tamish and Monique, too.”
“You are a tough bird, sister,” Lacey said.
“Yep. But I don’t want to be sued, either. Yesterday when Agnes’s attorney called, I sent him a copy of the tape showing how Agnes takes naps repeatedly, comes in late, wanders around the production floor, and does nothing except read her celebrity magazines and pick at her pointy teeth.
“When Willy’s attorney called, I sent him a copy of the tape showing Willy smoking out back and looking at porn for hours on his computer. I gave him the phone records of Willy’s calls to Vegas to some phone sex place. If Tamish and Monique hire an attorney, I will produce evidence from Tamish’s computer about her continual chats with a psychic on company time. Monique liked the psychic, too.”
“How do you know?” Lacey asked.
“Because I’m psychic.”
“Super. What am I thinking right now?” Lacey asked.
“You’re thinking that you feel enormously pregnant.”
“No, I’m thinking that I’m glad you’re back.”
“Thank you.” I felt my irritation lower.
“Me too,” Tory said.
I eyed her. “Is this a trick?”
“No, not a trick at all.” She crossed her arms. “I’m glad you fired them. I’d been wanting to get rid of them, but the lawsuits scared me.”
“You’re not scared of anything.”
Tory sat back in her chair. “I am of lawsuits. I’m not stupid. I understand the financial morass we’re in, and I envisioned the costs of those lawsuits sinking us to the bottom of the ocean. They could have gone on and on, and attorneys, those demented sharks, are so expensive. What if we lost the lawsuits? I did the math and thought it was easier to pay ’em. I didn’t even think about filming them.”
“It’s not easier to pay them.” My voice sounded sharp, ticked off. “They’re lazy and spineless. Plus, I hate when people try to take advantage of me.”
He’d done it. He’d pushed and pushed, believing I wouldn’t take that final step.
“I hate when people take and take and don’t give back.” I kicked my chair, then stood and glared out the window at that stupid Mount Hood, mocking me for not skiing anymore.
“I hate when people try to cheat.” He had cheated me out of a choice. He had sucked me dry. I had let him because I felt I had to.
I inhaled, my breath sounding like scraped sandpaper.
“I hate when people manipulate other people.” I hadn’t even known I was being manipulated for a long time. I was so over my head with his emotional issues, his fury, I couldn’t even see truth. That was the way he wanted it.
“I hate when people use threats to get what they want.” I picked up a mug on my desk. He had threatened again and again.
I threw the mug. It shattered against the wall. I liked the sound.
I was his crutch, his toy. He broke the toy.
I threw another mug. It broke, too.
I hate myself.
I bent over, my hands on my knees, one debilitating flashback after another churning through my mind.
I do hate myself.
When I could breathe again, the fury simmering back down, I noticed that Lacey and Tory were staring at me, mouths open. “I’m sorry. Sometimes my anger gets away from me.”
“No problem,” Lacey said.
“Looks like your anger not only got away from you, it went flying up and around, smashed some ceramic mugs, then settled back in,” Tory said.
Lacey waddled over and gave me a hug. “Give me a hug, baby.”
Tory said, “Might as well give you a hug, too, since you’re so deranged and crazy. Who knows what you’ll do next, like a rabid animal.”
I hugged them for a second, my past making me sickly dizzy, then said, “Okay, that’s enough. I’m not totally whacked out.”
“Yes, you are, my sweets,” Lacey said.
“You are a whacked-out woman,” Tory said. “Teetering. Edgy. You’re like a cannon and you just shot off a ball, but it’s partly your star sign, so don’t blame yourself.” She patted my shoulder. “That’s why I don’t blame myself for checking up on Scotty, the Viking slug-face algae.”
I laughed. I would not further contemplate a Viking slug-face algae. I looked at the broken pieces. I hadn’t liked those mugs anyhow. “Where do we keep the broom?”
If I were to say that being the CEO of Lace, Satin, and Baubles was a challenging position, it would be putting it mildly. It would be like saying Mount St. Helens blowing its peak off was a wee blast.
I will not get into the full details of running a company like this, but there are many people and many moving parts. The people and the moving parts explode on a regular basis.
Tory’s the design director, Lacey’s chief financial officer. We also have a creative director beneath Tory who is in charge of seasonal ideas and direction, whose job it is to figure out what the consumer wants to wear. Plus about a hundred other things. We have sales and distribution people. This involves all of our orders, retailer relationships, shipping and warehouse management. Also, another hundred things.
We have a brand director, who mostly does our advertising and works with our marketing director.
We have an operations manager. I’ll simply say she operates.
We have a product director. She works with the designers and the developer. The designers and the developers often scream at each other. What the designer wants to do and what is economically feasible may be at extreme odds. Sort
of like two fencers going at it, their swords clanking, only the designer and developer battle with their mouths and an occasional thrown catalogue.
We design products, we develop prototypes, we edit the prototypes, we do fit testing, we try out new colors and materials that we hope our consumers will adore, and we endlessly try to figure out how to advertise and package our lingerie so it’s, in my grandma’s words, “a delightful process . . . makes a woman feel her inner sensuality or her temper tantrum, whichever is closer to the surface.”
We also work with the stores that sell our products. There are many relationships there, too, that have to be managed and—I’ll say it—soothed. We have Web site people, catalogue people, and people that handle the models and photographers for both.
There is Kalani’s factory abroad, the supplies, product development, the supply chain, her employees, and our employees here. Most of our employees like each other, some don’t, a few hate each other. There are personnel issues that come up. Accounting /financial/payroll issues take up boatloads of time.
We try to solve problems we know are upcoming, we solve problems we didn’t know were upcoming, and we solve problems that are tiny and easily remedied. We also work through gargantuan and mind-numbing problems that sometimes don’t have any clear answer. We do our best based on our analysis of that situation, at that time.
All of our employees report to Lacey, Tory, me, or Grandma. I am involved with all pieces. I don’t micromanage, but I manage pretty tightly.
Then there’s my grandma’s expectations of me and the company. “All of our lingerie, all of our products must be perfect, don’t ever lower that standard, Meggie. Never. Everything must be perfect.”
The thing is, I agree with Grandma. Everything we make must be perfect, down to the tiniest bow on panties or lace-trimmed garter. Perfection must prevail.
I am not real worried about hurting people’s feelings while I turn this place over and revamp. We either get it together or all of us, including the women in the factory in Sri Lanka, who may or may not be able to line up something else, who may sink into poverty as soon as you can say the word brassieres, will lose their jobs.
I am fighting for the life of this company. I am fighting for my grandma’s legacy, her employees, and her massive scholarship fund at the community college.
I am fighting. I am trying not to fail. Failure would not be acceptable to my grandma.
It really isn’t that pleasant.
Falling in love with Aaron Torelli was like having my breath taken away, my heart lassoed, and my mind hijacked.
It was a rush. It was a thrill. It was like nothing I had experienced before.
We met in India. I was making a film about orphans living on the streets, and he was there with a crew making a film about Bollywood and the impact it had on the youth there. Amidst the cacophony, color, spices, cows, temples, squalor, rickshaws, and music, we met, smiled, and were in bed together in three days.
Aaron was magic. Heat, sensuality, intensity, and finely honed intellect all wrapped up in a tall, muscled package with longish black curls. He had a black feather tied into one of the curls and smoldering brown eyes that said, “I want you, you want me, it’s all a matter of time.” He was independent, free thinking, and had a smile that stopped my heart in its tracks.
He had been in the independent film business longer than I had, and he had made several films that had done well at indie film competitions. I had worked with another filmmaker recently in Watts on a film about kids trying to get out of Watts via education. I had also worked on a film in the Appalachian Mountains about the ingrained poverty there and had been involved in another film following veterans of the Vietnam War and how their lives had turned out.
I loved it. I lived for filmmaking. Filmmaking was part of my soul, as it was Aaron’s.
We talked for hours. He was specific in his compliments of me and my work. “You understand how you have to dig deep, sometimes get dirty, get imbedded with your subjects to make a film . . . you know that your film can have a huge impact, for years, on other people . . . that your films can show our failure as a country, a society, a materialistic and selfish culture, the sickness of the world . . . did you know, Meggie, that you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met? It’s like our brains are one, even though we just met. We’re one, we’re like a cosmic gift to each other.”
I can honestly say I have never been as physically attracted to any man as I was Aaron. Chemical reactions? Brain waves? Zen goes sexy? Whatever you want to call it, it was there and sizzling. He started calling me My Meggie.
Our relationship wasn’t even a whirlwind romance. It was as if I were picked up by a tornado of love and lust and flung through the eye of the storm and the only one there to catch me was him, with that endearing smile.
I was unprepared for his personality.
I was unprepared for the force of it, the charisma, the romantic aggression, the sweet words.
I fell hard.
I had never fallen like that before. I doubt I ever will again.
For that, I am grateful.
I saw Blake at his house as I drove home that night. He was on his wraparound deck, talking on the phone. I liked his house. I liked the classic, Oregon style to it. I liked all the lawn. I knew he had a view west, as his house was up on a hill, so he would be able to enjoy spectacular sunsets through towering pine trees.
I wondered what he did, where he worked.
It didn’t matter much, though. What I wanted to do was to get lost in that body. I didn’t want an intellectual connection, I didn’t want an emotional connection, I didn’t want the mess that comes with being involved with a man.
I never wanted to be involved with a man again in my life.
But I did want him.
Physically, that is.
I wanted relief. I wanted some time out. I wanted him to be for me alone, a time for fun and release, a sunny vacation, so to speak, in the midst of a life covered and flattened in stress.
I sizzled and simmered for that man.
I wanted the sizzling and simmering to help me forget.
She called and left a message on my cell phone. She was in contact with her attorneys. They would be calling me soon. She was suing me. I would be ripped down to nothing.
I sucked in air as waves of dizziness roared through, twirling me around and upside down. When my head cleared, I deleted the message.
“We need to do something to the Web site to make it more alluring,” I said. “More fun, more intriguing, more depth, make the customer stay longer, buy more.”
Lacey and Tory leaned over my shoulders at the table in my office. Lacey smelled vaguely like morning sickness. Tory had a musky, fruity perfume on. I would have to say I preferred Tory’s scent.
“Our Web site doesn’t need to be a sadistic bondage circus act,” Tory protested, flicking her black hair back. “Or a bordello.”
“No one said it did. It’s not oomfy,” Lacey said.
“What does oomfy mean?” Tory said. She was wearing a red dress with a ruffle. I tried not to dwell on the red or I’d start feeling sick.
“It means it’s not catchy enough,” I said. “We have to liven it up. Make it edgy but seductive, sexy but not slutty . . . a new setting behind the models, a new layout, new colors, maybe a theme.” I kept studying the Web site, page after page. “Something radically, splendidly different . . . and we need to get our strawberry in there more.”
“What do you think we should do?” Lacey asked.
“We have to sell our image, ourselves. We need to stand out against all these other lingerie companies who have so much more money than we do. The photos here of the models are what all our competitors use. Tall, way too-skinny, anorexic-looking young women with bouncy chests and frowns modeling our stuff. They’re frowning because they’re hungry, probably.”
“But we sell lingerie,” Tory said. “We need the tall, skinny girls with bouncy chests. That way our custome
rs buy into it. They want to be those girls. If they buy our stuff, they can trick themselves into thinking they’ll look like our models.”
“No one can look like a model. The models don’t even look like models,” I said. “You two know that because of all the shoots we’ve been on. They have good bones in their faces and they’re thin. An army of stylists, perfect lighting, excellent photographers, and Photoshopping take care of the rest. It’s false. It’s a false image. False advertising, when you think about it.”
“We aren’t false advertising,” Tory huffed.
“Sure we are. Women do not look like this in real life.”
“Help me see inside your tricky brain, Meggie,” Tory said. “No one wants to look at heavy or obese women or women with no chests, flabby stomachs, and cottage cheese thighs in lingerie. Brutal, but true.”
I flicked to the last page of the Web site. “No, they don’t. But we have to give this a makeover. It’s not working.”
Lacey darted for the bathroom, red curls flying behind her. Tory was quiet for a second, but I could feel her anger careening around the room, prickly and hard. “You come in here and want to change the whole company, strip it down and rebuild it, Meggie.”
“I wouldn’t rebuild if things were working.”
“And you’re the lingerie genius, Miss Brilliant Panties, Thong Woman. Hail to Meggie, even though you’ve been gone for years.” She threw her arms up. “You’re an arrogant know-it-all. You don’t even wear nice clothes. You don’t even wear our newest lingerie. Your underwear is probably stained beige!”
She had me there. Except it was white. Old, white, unraveling. Yesterday I noticed my white underwear had a hole in it.
“Have you ever taken the time to appreciate what I did, Meggie? How hard I’ve worked? All I get from you is criticism and what I’ve done is wrong and you can do better and you’re taking over and it’s your way or the highway. Gee. Maybe I should have left the company for years to make a bunch of films and tramp around the world. Think you would have liked getting stuck here dealing with Grandma? With the factory? With all the employees? With a tanking economy?”