by Dana Moss
"My pleasure, Hon." Aubin dug around in the file with Taffy’s information and pulled out a magnetic name tag. “Ah, here's yours. All the elves go by first names only."
"Elves?"
"Our associates are called sugar elves."
Taffy thought she might vomit from the sugarcoated sweetness of it all, but she smiled tightly and took the name tag. Its edge was trimmed with fake sprinkles.
"Where's the chocolate thingy ma-doodle?"
"Third floor, Hon. You'll do fine. Here, take a lolly for luck." She hoisted a silver bowl full of suckers onto the counter. "I only hand those out to the sweetest elves.”
Taffy politely retrieved a lollipop, but she had a feeling she'd need a lot more than a luck sucker to get through this day.
"Don't forget this." Aubin handed over a plastic-wrapped, folded pink-and-white-striped jacket. “You're so petite. This is the smallest we've got."
Taffy tucked it under her arm.
“Oh, and this,” Aubin added, handing her a small, clear pouch with something hay-colored inside. “It’s a hairnet. All the elves wear them.”
Taffy proceeded through a brown padded door that resembled a bar of chocolate.
She didn’t have a clue how she was going to survive two days here, let alone two weeks.
* * *
By the end of the day, Taffy was covered in chocolate. The manager, Anthony Herbert, was not impressed. He was tall, with a receding hairline partially covered by a comb-over, and he wore thick dark-framed glasses. After assessing the one hundred chocolate-covered cherries that were mostly covered, he cast a critical gaze on Taffy.
“Do you have any experience making candy?”
She shook her head.
He glanced at his clipboard. “Do you have any work experience at all? Anything that makes you remotely qualified for this job?”
“I’ve been in all of the best chocolate shops in Manhattan. That should count for something.”
“Been in?” He narrowed his small eyes at her. “How did such a princess get this job?” he muttered, shaking his head and marking something on his clipboard.
She was tempted to tell him to go dip his comb-over in toffee pudding, but she had to make it through at least one pay period if she wanted to buy a plane ticket home. "I promise I'll do better. I’m a fast learner.” She was supposed to say that, wasn’t she? Even if it wasn’t true?
"If you don't, you won't last the week. Tomorrow I’m moving you to wafer layering. Chocolate dip is too complex for you.” He noted something else on his clipboard and then moved on to check the other elves' progress.
Disheartened, Taffy left the chocolate level and headed for the staff room on floor 3. A pudgy twenty-something blonde wearing a hairnet followed her.
"Don't you worry. Herbie’s hard on all the newbies. My name's Ellie.” She held out her soft, doughy hand. Taffy stared at her smiling mouthful of tiny white teeth.
"I'm Taffy."
"No way! You belong here. You've found the perfect job!”
If this was a perfect anything, it was a perfect hell.
Ellie chattered on. “I thought of changing my name to Candy when I first got this job. Wouldn’t that have been just been so cute?” Ellie held the door open to the staff room. Taffy slipped out of her chocolate-stained jacket and yanked the hairnet from her head.
"Where do I put this?"
"Oh, we all have to do our laundry. I'm pretty neat so I only have to wash mine once a week."
Taffy had never done laundry in her life. She didn't even know how.
She turned her jacket inside out and rolled it up so she wouldn't get chocolate on her other clothes. Ellie handed her a tissue from her purse. "You have chocolate on your chin."
"Thanks," said Taffy, rubbing her chin with the tissue, which smelled faintly of roses.
"And your cheek," said Ellie, pointing. "And nose, and forehead. Yeah, pretty much all over."
Taffy found a mirror in the bathroom. She was smudged from wrist to temple. She turned on the warm water and worked at washing it off. The greasy chocolate smeared all over. Taffy could feel it clogging her pores. She dried her face with paper towels and muttered, “I bet there’s no place for a decent facial around here.”
Ellie said, “There’s a fancy-shmancy spa at the Castle Rock Resort. Gillian from accounting goes there sometimes.”
It would be a while before Taffy could afford that.
Ellie proceeded to inform her that Gillian was having a fling with ‘the Herbster,’ only it was very hush-hush because dating between staff was against the rules, even though Herbert was the one who made the rules, and Ellie made Taffy promise not to tell anyone because if Herbie found out he’d demote her to jujubes.
"Don't worry," Taffy assured her. “Doesn’t matter to me who's dating whom. I don't plan to be here long enough to keep up with the local gossip."
Ellie looked crestfallen. "What do you mean? I thought we'd be friends."
Were those tears building in Ellie's big brown eyes? She seemed to be a girl who really wore her heart on her sleeve.
"Sure, sure, we can be friends," said Taffy, assuring her again, which made the tears disappear and an excited smile warm her cheeks. Ellie slid her arm through Taffy's as they headed down the hall toward the main doors.
"Good! Then I'm inviting you to my house for a party next weekend."
That was the last thing Taffy wanted, but she nodded politely and said, “Thanks, I’ll try to make it.”
“You have to. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
Ellie's clutch on Taffy’s arm was annoyingly tight, and the girl wasn’t all that bright, but Taffy wasn’t exactly on a roll making friends here either. Apart from Ethan.
“Can I bring someone to the party?”
“A date? As long as it’s not someone from work. Nudge, nudge, wink wink.”
They turned down a hall. Up ahead on the wall Taffy noticed a framed picture with fresh flowers tucked around it. As she got closer, she saw it was a portrait of an older woman in a candy-making jacket like the ones Ellie and Taffy had been wearing.
“Who’s that?”
Ellie sighed and shook her head. “Poor Janet Harken.”
“That’s her?” Taffy peered closer. "Did you know her?”
Ellie tossed her head back and laughed. “Everyone knew Janet. She was so amazing. She used to give me piano lessons. And even though she had officially retired, she came to the candy factory every week, like clockwork.”
“She worked here?”
Ellie looked at her as if she had just flown in from Mars.
"Silly! She owned half the factory. Everyone knows that."
Not everyone. Not Taffy.
Ellie tucked her arm tighter to Taffy’s and explained that Mr. Herbert had been promoted after Janet retired and it was rumored that he’d been romantically involved with her before Gillian. He hardly seemed the Don Juan type.
In the parking lot, a fancy white Mercedes coupe purred past. A woman with starlet sunglasses and several sparkling rings was behind the wheel. As the coupe turned out of the lot, Taffy read the vanity plate: GILLS.
Ellie said, “That’s Gillian.”
“How does an accountant at a candy factory make enough money to wear Gucci glasses and drive a Merc?”
Ellie shrugged. “She’s good at her job?”
Taffy slid her key into her Aveo while Ellie unlocked an older model Toyota Camry.
Ellie waved to her. “See you tomorrow.”
* * *
Pulling away from the factory, Taffy could now make out the sign in front of the forested lot across the road: ‘Castle Rock Bird Sanctuary.’ An application for rezoning was pasted across the bottom of the sign. Taffy merged onto the stretch of road that hugged the coastline.
Apart from sucking at chocolate dip, earning the stink-eye from Mr. Herbert, and attracting the sticky sweet Ellie, working for a day hadn’t been quite as hellish as she’d thought. In fact, she felt a
little proud of herself. She would have liked to share her news with her friends back home, except they would have laughed at her. She wondered what her dad would say, if she even knew where to find him. Her Nana would smile smugly and be proud of herself for setting Taffy up like that. And then it hit her. The person she really wanted to tell was her mom. A lump started growing in her throat. She tried to swallow it away, but it kept coming back.
She knew what she had to do. The only solution was to drive.
She pressed on the gas and let the Aveo fly. It rattled and strained to reach a higher speed, but its smallness made it easy to maneuver. She took the curves a little too fast, but maintained control. She loved the rush of adrenaline that came with speed. She turned on the radio. She didn't recognize the song, but it had a good beat. She cranked it louder. Soon it devolved into a techno mash-up, and a blaring siren sound was ruining the chorus. When she changed the station the siren only got louder. She looked in the rearview and saw red and blue lights. She banged her palm against the steering wheel before she slowed down and pulled off to the side.
She hoped it would be a different cop, not the woman from the other day. What was her name? Salinas. Maria Salinas. Why did that name seem familiar?
Taffy pulled out the car registration from the glove box and dug around in her purse for her driver’s license.
She glanced in her side mirror. Darn it. She recognized that feminine swagger.
"Well, well, well. We meet again."
"Was I really going that fast?" Taffy said, handing over her papers and license.
"How fast do you think you were going?"
"Just a good first day of work kind of speed. Nothing too dangerous."
"I clocked you at one-ten. It couldn't have been that good of a day. Not at the candy factory."
Did everyone know everyone's business in this town?
"I didn't get fired. That made it a good day."
Officer Salinas gave her a funny look. She tucked a short curl behind her hair, and for some reason the gesture seemed familiar to Taffy, but she didn't know why. None of her friends had curly hair, or if they did they got the keratin treatment that smoothed out all the curls.
"I'll be right back.” Salinas headed back toward her car.
"Do you think you could just give me a warning this time?" Taffy called out.
Officer Salinas just shook her head. What had Taffy done to piss her off? She really did have a stick up her tush.
For the rest of the drive home, Taffy stuck to the speed limit. The cop car tailed her the whole way. Taffy was fuming. When she finally pulled onto the road that led to her place, the cop car carried on down the highway.
She stomped up her front steps, still fuming from the encounter. She needed to cool off.
She headed straight for the fridge, where she’d seen a few cans of iced tea, and nearly slipped in a puddle of water on the kitchen floor.
A thin stream of water trickled from under the sink. She looked in the cupboard. A curved what’s-it-called attached to a straight whatchamacallit seemed to have come loose. Water pooled under the sink and trailed across the kitchen floor until it hit the lowest point, of which there were several because nothing in the house seemed to be level.
Taffy leaned under the sink to tighten the fitting. This had an opposite effect.
A thick stream of water hit her in the face, and she fell backwards onto her rear. Water seeped through her pants as mascara ran down her face. She pushed her wet hair off her forehead and tried her best not to scream bloody murder. She scrambled around looking for a dishcloth to tie around the jet of water, tourniquet-style. She’d seen that in a movie once to stop blood flow. The dishcloth was soaked and limp within seconds. The puddle on the floor was quickly becoming a pond. Taffy panicked. “WhatdoIdo?WhatdoIdo?WhatdoIdo?”
She threw every dry thing she could find onto the puddle to soak it up, including her new chocolate-stained work jacket, but the water just kept coming. In New York, she would have called the building superintendent, and he would have taken care of everything while she went out shopping. Here, there was no super to call. But wait, there was someone.
She dug around in her purse for her phone and punched in Ethan’s number.
When he picked up she yelled, “Help! I’m drowning!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“How was I supposed to know how to turn the water off?”
It was the first thing Ethan had tried to get her to do.
“The taps are off, the taps are off!” Taffy had screamed back at him after wrenching the hot and cold levers back as far as they could go. She’d gone utterly blank when he said to look for the main tap bringing water into the house. Never in her life had she wondered where the water came from. She just assumed that when you turned a tap on, water came out, and when you turned it off, it stopped.
“I mean, I can’t know what I don’t know, right?” Taffy stood next to the sink talking to Ethan's legs. He was under the sink, fixing the leak. She’d been in the process of trying to mop up the puddle but decided to take a little break.
“True. But you can find out. You can learn.”
“Not when water’s shooting up my nose.”
“You’re a homeowner now. You’ll have to deal with stuff like this.”
Taffy banged the mop against the floor in protest. “I never wanted this.”
Ethan shimmied out from under the sink and gave Taffy one of those lopsided grins.
He said, “You know, you can’t always get what you want…”
Taffy frowned. She did always get what she wanted. Until her Nana handed her that stupid envelope.
“But if you try … sometimes…” Ethan continued to recite the famous Rolling Stones lyrics. He finished with a little drum riff with the wrench against the toolbox.
When Taffy stared blankly, Ethan’s jaw dropped open.
“You don’t recognize the song? What planet are you from?”
He closed up the toolbox, rose to his full height, and said, “After you finish mopping, you’re coming with me.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
Half an hour later they were bouncing down the road in Ethan’s pickup, but he hadn’t told her where they were going.
It’s not that Taffy hadn’t recognized the Rolling Stones. She’d grown up with a rock-star father, after all. But after middle school, after her parents separated, after her mother died, none of that seemed cool anymore. She wanted nothing to do with music or bands or lyrics, unlike a lot of her friends. They all thought her dad was uber-cool, but at a certain point, Taffy couldn’t stand to look at him.
She’d tell Ethan the truth eventually, but for now, her feigned ignorance had inspired him to take her out to cheer her up. She wondered if she could consider it a date? Whatever it was, she appreciated having someone to talk to about her day.
She told him about getting stopped by the police on her way home.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you were such a troublemaker.”
There was that lopsided grin again. Taffy was not going to melt. She held on to her indignation. “I mean, speeding I kind of understand, but who gives tickets for jaywalking?”
Ethan laughed. “I guess you did get on her wrong side.”
“I don’t think she has a right one.”
“You’ve got to give people a chance.”
Taffy crossed her arms and looked out the window. She didn’t like Ethan defending that cop.
He cleared his throat. “So how was your first day of work?”
Taffy went along with the change of subject.
“You happen to be sitting next to a newly minted sugar elf. Though I think I got on the wrong side of the manager, too.”
“Mr. Herbert? He’s got some sort of chip on his shoulder.”
“You know him?”
Ethan shrugged. “Small town.”
“I also met this girl, Ellie. She’s a bit of a pushover but wants
to be my friend.”
“Is that the Ellie who works at the gas station on Tuesday and Friday nights?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Does everyone in a small town do at least two things?”
She and her friends did practically nothing back home.
"Or more."
"Like you? You're the park ranger, and fixer-upper guy, and you make killer coffee." Taffy counted off three of her fingers.
"You've barely scratched the surface."
Taffy wasn't sure about scratching, but she wouldn’t mind touching the surface of Ethan, especially around his chest. She looked down at her hands in her lap to avoid looking at his perfect smiling lips and sparkling green eyes. And then she blurted out, “Ellie invited me to a house party this Saturday. She said I could bring a friend. Do you want to come?”
When she glanced up he was holding up four fingers. “That would add something else to my list.” He touched the tip of that fourth finger. “Taffy Belair’s friend.”
“Think you can handle it, Mr. Park Ranger?”
He wrapped his fingers back around the steering wheel. “It would be a privilege.”
Taffy felt all warm and syrupy inside.
“So where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise. We’re almost there.”
They were passing a neon sign of a massive bowling pin sitting atop a low, wide windowless building, but Ethan drove on by, which was a relief. She did not want to go bowling on her first date with him.
“Is that where Janet used to bowl?”
“I suppose so.”
“How many bowling alleys are there in this town?”
“Just the one.”
“Ellie told me Janet owned half the candy factory. Did you know that?”
He nodded. “She was going to sell her shares and her house to finance her move to Arizona.”
“So much for best-laid plans,” Taffy said as Ethan signaled to pull into the parking lot of a small dive-y looking bar, one of those concrete squares with a door, no windows, and a flashing neon Budweiser sign.
There was also an event sign, one with the interchangeable black letters on a lined white background. Some of the letters were wrong or missing, but the meaning was clear.
“Good Lord, please tell me this isn’t happening.”