by Lee, Dana
“And you didn’t send this McCrory person in here to flirt with me?”
“I am so flattered that you think I could accomplish that,” she said.
“Then I’ve just made a total fool of myself in front of a complete stranger?” I asked. “Worse. I’ve just made a total fool of myself in front of a famous complete stranger who probably now thinks I’m a crazy groupie or something?”
“Yeah, probably.” She shrugged her shoulders as if to say it was no big deal. “But on the bright side, that sort of thing probably happens to him all the time.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel any less like an idiot?”
“Oh, lighten up. If you weren’t such a music snob, you probably would have heard of Levi McCrory and all this wouldn’t have happened,” she said.
Music snob? Me? Could I help it that my dad, who had played bass in a jazz band in his spare time, had insisted on jazz piano lessons for me? And that throughout my childhood, the radio at our house was almost always tuned to a jazz station? Still, Jess liked to tease me about my taste in music.
And I might have teased right back if I didn’t feel like crawling under the nearest rock. Fortunately for me, just then a family of four walked through the door—mom, dad, and two teenage sons. It was the perfect excuse to drop this embarrassing conversation and get back to selling shoes and running my store, the two things I do best. Dan, a newly hired college student who worked for me part-time, was in the back putting away new stock, and I quickly buzzed him to come out front. It took Jess, Dan, and me the next half hour to get the mom, dad, and younger brother fitted and then write up an order for some size 16s for the oldest boy. By then, I’d forgotten all about Levi McCrory.
Well, almost.
# # # # #
It was nearly 1:30 before I could retreat to the little corner of the stockroom that I’d claimed for a makeshift office and sit down to eat my lunch. Before I left my apartment this morning, I’d juiced some carrots and an apple—I preferred natural juices even though my store sells a score of different energy drinks—and made myself a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, no mayo. At the bottom of my lunch bag there was an Oreo cookie that I planned to eat when I was sure Jess and Dan weren’t looking. Hey, nobody’s perfect.
I thought again about the notice I’d received from the landlord. I had opened The Finish Line about nine months ago, and word was spreading up and down the Connecticut coast that we were the premier running shoe store for a terrific selection and an excellent fit. I sponsored fun-runs, outreach in local schools, training sessions, and basically did everything I could think of to get our name out there. And sales were building, slowly but surely.
It had taken me months of visiting the shopping districts in more than a dozen Connecticut coastal towns to find the perfect location. I knew what I wanted: a small town with local shops run by local business people. I also wanted my store to be near the shore since I love running along the beach.
What I hadn’t counted on was the impact one “mall” store would have on our little shopping district. A few months after we opened, a Victoria’s Secret had appeared in the middle of the next block, followed by a Gap. Now landlords were seeing dollar signs. What they could charge a national chain was a lot more than they were charging local merchants.
And a lot more than I could afford. So a slow build of sales just wasn’t going to make it work. I had to figure out how to send sales skyrocketing. Or figure out how to get additional investors, which I was very reluctant to do since I liked being the sole owner.
As I munched my sandwich, I thought about sharing my worries with Jess. But I knew she had her own problems, including a just-widowed mother who was leaning pretty heavily on her for support.
A memory of my father came into my mind. What was it he always said? “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” That was what he told my sister Ally and me when we were kids. When I worked at his law firm, he added, “Rely on yourself and you’ll only have one person to blame if things go wrong.”
I owed the existence of The Finish Line to my dad. He had given me a job in his office right after I graduated from college. I had been an English major, which, to him, meant that I would have to go to graduate school before I could actually get a job in the real world. So he took me on. He never even bothered trying to conceal his ulterior motive: he wanted the firm to be Addison and Addison someday. He knew he could count on my work ethic and he repeatedly told me I had inherited the brains for working in law. My methods, like his, were slow, steady, and absolutely reliable.
He was right. He gave me the freedom to research the defense of an important case myself, one that involved a father of three who suffered burns on almost 90% of his body when his truck caught fire. The liability was stalled until my persistence uncovered a memo from the manufacturer of the truck that said they knew a faulty twenty-five cent part was likely to result in engine fires… but that it would be cheaper to litigate than to issue a recall and fix the part.
The punitive damages the court assessed in that case were a state record. The firm’s recovery was substantial. And my father gave me half his share, expecting me to use it for law school.
I dutifully put in my application to the Yale School of Law and the University of Connecticut Law School that summer, and waited, still working for my dad. In my spare time, to clear my head, to remove thoughts of the harsh world where good people are often harmed through no fault of their own, I started running competitively.
At first I entered short races—5K (a bit more than three miles), then 10K (a little over six). And then… a marathon. I’m not a speedy runner; slow and steady was my motto in the marathon, too. But when I crossed the finish line, I knew what I wanted to do. I was determined to open my own running store.
My father passed away only a few months after I opened The Finish Line, but I knew how proud he had been of my hard work and determination.
Now I was on my own and I had to stay strong. I gave myself a mental pep talk. I would have to figure out how to take care of this rent increase myself. Slow and steady, I told myself.
# # # # #
So there I was, still munching my sandwich, doing my best to repress the way I’d behaved with Levi McCrory, and looking forward to guilty pleasure of my Oreo, when I glanced at the closed-circuit TV overhead and saw a long, white limousine pull up in front of the store. I swallowed as quickly as I could and made my way out front.
I enjoy watching celebrities as much as anyone, and here in New Chester, CT, where the nearby casinos host nightly concerts, we get to see plenty of them—though, as today’s debacle had shown me, I didn’t always know much about who’s who.
The man getting out of the car wasn’t anyone I recognized, but, like Levi McCrory, he was wearing a Stetson. Two cowboys in one day was something of a record for me.
He looked down at a slip of paper in his hand and then leaned back to check the sign above my door. His hat added nearly a foot to his already tall frame, so he had to duck a bit as he came in. He saw me walking toward him and tipped his hat. Twice in one day! I was really on a roll here.
“Miss Kitty?” he asked. I nodded, though that wasn’t a name I usually answered to. More than a little too Gunsmoke for my taste. Plus, I have to admit I was still embarrassed enough by my earlier performance that I was reluctant to say anything at all to anyone who looked like a cowboy. Who knew who he might be?
“Then these are for you.” He handed me the envelope, tipped his hat once again, and ducked his way out. The limousine was pulling away from the curb before the thought crossed my mind that I should have said something—thank you, at least.
I looked at the envelope. On the front in a large scrawl it said,
For a Friend
Chapter 2
I tore open the envelope and found myself looking at a pair of tickets to Levi McCrory’s concert tonight, row J, seats 23 and 24. Sounded like the center of the orchestra section. And there was a smaller envelo
pe that contained a printed invitation to a private party after the concert. Scrawled on the invitation was a note:
Hope you can make it, pretty lady. — LM
I tossed the envelopes, tickets, invitation and all, into the recycling bin. As a matter of general policy, I try to limit myself to one moment of mortifying, toe-curling embarrassment per day. At the top of the list of things I didn’t need was another encounter with Levi McCrory. I inwardly cringed as I recalled telling him he was wearing a nice “costume.” And assuring him that I could get plenty of dates on my own. I stopped myself from continuing the awful litany of humiliating things I’d said to him.
I couldn’t imagine what had prompted him to even send me the tickets. Maybe he just needed another good laugh, I thought ruefully. More likely, he simply sent tickets to a lot of local merchants to make sure all the seats were filled. That was probably it.
I told myself that I couldn’t spare the time, that I really needed to catch up on my sleep tonight. The 14- and 16-hour days I’d been putting in at the store were beginning to take their toll. When I added a daily three- to five-mile run and some weight training to my work schedule, which I did most days, I was lucky if I got five hours of sleep a night. And country music? Well, that was just a bunch of songs about how somebody done somebody else wrong, wasn’t it?
Plus, even though I had in fact nothing to do tonight but sleep, I found it more than a little irritating that a complete stranger would assume I had nothing else to do tonight. Did I have “hopeless case” written on my forehead or something?
Of course, Jess had been watching me the whole time, casting curious glances my way while waiting on a regular customer who needed some new race walking shoes. As soon as she was free, she came flying over to me. Her questions tumbled out in a rush.
“Who was that man in the limo? What did he want? What was in the envelope?”
“It was just a publicity stunt,” I told her. “Some guy was trying to pad the audience for his concert at the casino tonight.”
But that didn’t satisfy her curiosity. She grabbed the envelope from the recycling bin and gasped, “Orchestra tickets for a concert that sold out in twenty minutes? Kitty, aren’t you even the tiniest bit curious?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but she didn’t wait for an answer.
“Well, curious or not, you are going to this concert.”
I tried protesting that I needed to get some sleep. I was reluctant to admit even to Jess just how embarrassed I felt at the thought that I might run into Levi again.
She ignored my excuse. “And you are definitely taking me! You owe me big time for thinking I’d send you an unannounced blind date.”
I instantly felt guilty that I’d misjudged her. I sighed.
“Okay, Jess,” I said. “Just do me a favor and keep me from getting anywhere near Levi McCrory.”
“Are you kidding me? With all the girls who’ll be swooning over him at this concert, your face will be lost in the crowd.”
“And that,” I said, “is the way I plan to keep it.”
# # # # #
The rest of the afternoon Dan and I spent in the stockroom doing inventory while Jess handled the store. A new shipment had just come in from one of our major distributors. I needed his help with some of the heavy lifting, but part of me wished I could have handled things alone.
“Want to go for a run later?” he asked me as we unpacked boxes and collapsed corrugated packing crates for recycling. I knew he wanted our relationship to be more than just professional.
“Not today,” I said. “Jess and I are going to a Levi McCrory concert tonight. I have to get gussied up.”
Dan and I had been on a couple of dates and I’d even given him a peck on the cheek one night, but I just knew that on my end at least, there was no hint of romance there and no chance that there would be. Still, he didn’t stop trying. Not that he was ever pushy about it—just persistent in a way that often left me feeling guilty.
“Wow! He’s a pretty big star. How’d you get tickets?” he asked.
I avoided the question. “Jess apparently has a crush on him.” I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m bringing my Kindle along.” Fortunately, he hadn’t seen the cowboy who had hand-delivered the tickets.
Dan snorted. We had similar tastes in music and swapped iPods sometimes when we were running. His collection mixed contemporary jazz with a lot of classic rock, while mine was mostly jazz piano. Neither of us had any country western on our playlists.
“Well, be careful,” he said. “Those country singers pretend to be all home, mother, and apple pie. But I’ve read that the concert venues keep ambulances lined up outside because of all the heavy drinking that goes on.”
“You know me, the heaviest juice drinker on the block.” I didn’t want to talk about the concert or Levi McCrory anymore. I was doing this for Jess and that was all.
And I really didn’t feel like talking about heavy drinking. My sister Ally, six years my junior, was in college now and I was finding it impossible to keep her safe and sober even though the small campus she’d chosen was only about ten miles from my store.
Another worry. I pushed it as far back in my mind as I could.
“Just take care of yourself,” Dan said.
“That’s one of the things I do best,” I said. I smiled to reassure him I’d be okay.
We continued working steadily until closing time. At five, Jess balanced the day’s receipts, told me she’d drop the deposit in the after-hours drawer at the bank, and then left, saying, “I’ll pick you up promptly at 6:30. Be sure to wear something sexy.”
Dan raised his eyebrows at that and I shrugged. There was no way I could explain to him that the awful embarrassment I’d been feeling all day was somehow being replaced by a tingly feeling of excitement and anticipation. How could I explain that to Dan when I couldn’t explain it to myself?
# # # # #
After Dan left, I shimmied out of my jeans and into some running shorts in the store’s tiny dressing room. I’d said no to a run with him mostly because I needed the mental space that my daily run gives me. It was my time to relax, to let my mind drift. I made sure the front and back doors were locked and then took off.
My usual route home meandered along one of the most beautiful coastal roads in Connecticut. There were other streets that would have made the trip shorter, but none was as beautiful. I tried to clear my mind and just stay in the moment of this gorgeous run, tried not to think of Levi.
I didn’t really succeed. What would tonight be like? I knew that every concert held back a few complimentary tickets for newspaper reviewers, local DJs, people who might have done a favor for the star or a member of his band. Would he even know whether I was in the audience or not? I blushed and told myself that I certainly hoped he would not.
I’m not a super fast runner, but I must have picked up the pace as my thoughts drifted. I made it home, a distance of a little less than five miles, in just a little over 40 minutes. Not bad. I gave myself a mental pat on the back.
Home for me was the third floor of a gorgeous hundred-year-old Tudor style house on one of New Chester’s quiet back streets. An empty-nester couple and their two dogs occupied the first two floors and were thrilled to have a renter who was a local merchant. It worked great for me, too. They made me feel like family, and that had helped take the edge off the grief I felt when my dad died.
I showered quickly, towel-dried my hair, and thought about what I should wear. I don’t fuss a lot with my hair or make-up. My hair is blonde, wavy, and about shoulder length. Most of the time I pull it back in a ponytail. Tonight I added a wide black ribbon around the ponytail. I figured that was plenty good enough.
I dug through my closet for the little black silk dress I had worn to the last concert I’d attended at Lincoln Center. I’d made the trip into New York City to see Wynton Marsalis and a jazz septet as a special treat to celebrate my first six months at The Finish Line. Honestly, I didn’t own a
lot of dresses, so this was going to have to do.
I pulled it on over my head and felt the silk slide over my body. It came as a shock to realize that I was remembering Levi tucking my hand in the crook of his arm, and imagining what it might be like to feel a man’s hands—Levi’s hands?—caressing me. I felt myself blushing even though I was all alone. Maybe Jess was right. Maybe it had been way too long since I’d been on a real date.
Just then I heard the first few notes of the theme from Rocky, my ring tone. I know it’s a little corny, but hearing it gives me a lift. I mean, who doesn’t want to feel like a champion? I recognized the number immediately; it was my sister. Boy, did I have something to tell her for a change! She’s such a pop-culture maven; I knew she would have heard of someone like Levi. I couldn’t wait to tell her where I was going tonight.
But it didn’t take more than hearing Ally say, “Hi, Kit,” for me to come to the realization that I always dreaded, that she had had more than a few drinks. Inevitably, this conversation would be argumentative on her end and futile on mine. By tomorrow she will have forgotten what was said, but I won’t be that lucky. “Why can’t I get my own apartment?” was a recurring theme whenever we spoke lately.
I tried to keep our talk from heating up, but she ignored my efforts and insisted, in a voice slurred by alcohol, that she was “too old to be locked up in a dorm.” I had no answer that would penetrate the alcohol haze. My dad had made me her guardian until she reached the age of 21 and that was a good eighteen months away. I would do what I could to protect her until then, but she wasn’t making it easy.
I had to get her off the phone. I pretended to hear someone at the door, told Ally I loved her, and then quickly dialed Ava, a friend of Ally’s who sometimes looked in on her for me. Fortunately, Ava was available and sober (not always the case—how do these undergrads do it?) and said she’d do her best to keep Ally from getting into trouble. That would have to do for now.
Seconds later the doorbell rang. Jess was, as always, right on time. She was dressed in jeans, a rhinestone-covered tee-shirt, and cowboy boots. Right. I definitely should have Googled “What do you wear to a country concert?” It was pretty obvious that I could have used some advice.