Designing Morgan

by Lucey Phillips

  There was also the matter of Lee. I’d caught myself, a couple times, sounding like a whiney, pampered artiste when I talked to him about Candy Blue. He never said anything, but his expression hardened just slightly when I acted like that. I’m not a woman who changes to please a man, but when that happened, I saw myself as unattractive.

  Hilltop is always held during the second weekend of October, which is peak leaf-turning season and also the height of pumpkin spice latte season. High-end coffee was like a religion among the clientele here. Also, it was finally cool enough for the wives to break out their uber-chunky knit scarves. Like everything else with the people in this tax bracket, the scarves were a bit much. They were inverted funnels of loosely-knit organic alpaca (or maybe unicorn) wool enveloping the women from their shoulders to their ears.

  One unnaturally blonde frozen-faced lady walked up to our booth looking like she’d been caught in a tuna net. I was helping a nice college-age guy pick out a birthday present for his mom when I saw Sophie greet the woman. Sophie’s smile was stiff, her eyes wide. Her ponytail bobbed rapidly, as if it also had to fake enthusiasm for the conversation with this customer.

  If I hadn’t been busy helping someone, I would have had fun making faces at Sophie and mocking the woman behind her back, daring Sophie to keep a straight face.

  When I looked up from handing the college guy a pair of earrings for his mom, there was a familiar man smiling at me. If I hadn’t spent so much time admiring his handsome appearance last time I met him, I might not have even remembered who it was: Tommy Patterson, the Art Cloud guy. He was holding a cardboard drink holder with three coffee cups in it. As he approached me and said hello, he glanced sideways toward Sophie.

  “I have regular coffee on the left, the one on the right is PSL,” he said, holding the drinks out toward me.

  I thanked Tommy and reached for the regular coffee, prying it carefully from the drink holder.

  “I should have known,” he said. “You don’t seem like the frou-frou drink type.”

  “Pumpkin spice is good, but I’m not in the mood for dessert right now,” I said. “I need actual coffee. This is perfect, thanks.”

  I expected Tommy to make another Art Cloud pitch, but he didn’t. We just chatted about the festival and, of course, the beautiful fall weather. He frequently glanced toward Sophie. It was obvious he was just killing time with me until she was done helping her customer.

  Finally, the tuna net lady walked away with several purchases. She thanked Sophie in a cheerful voice, but her expression remained unchanged.

  I was in mid-sentence when Tommy turned his back on me and walked quickly toward Sophie, holding the coffee out toward her.

  Sophie gave him her usual businesslike smile, but there was something different as she reached for the coffee. She held herself in a more relaxed posture than she typically did at work. I couldn’t hear their conversation and I quickly got the impression that I was not invited to join in.

  Sophie and I had been on a great streak with Candy Blue: The new fall line was selling, Hannah was finally happy, and our products had been making new appearances all over Pinterest. I wondered what Sophie and Tommy could be talking about. Could she be interested in Art Cloud now? It didn’t make sense.

  “Since we’ve slowed down here for a minute, Do you care if I take a little break?” Sophie asked me.

  I shook my head, hoping my expression wasn’t showing Sophie how weird I thought this was. She never wanted to leave the booth and miss an opportunity for networking or making a sale.

  Sophie simply said, “Ok,” and left without telling me where she was going or offering to bring me anything.

  “Ooookaaay,” I muttered to myself as Sophie and Tommy disappeared into the crowd, Tommy leading and Sophie following.

  A tall thin woman and a man, maybe her husband, walked up to the booth. They were smiling and holding hands.

  The woman had a scarf tied on her head, covering the place her hair should have been. I recognized the scarf immediately. It was made of light, gauzy synthetic fabric — white with pale blue flowers and green leaves. The print had a watercolor look. I had embellished the edges of the scarf with tiny matte green beadwork.

  “I’ve seen that scarf before,” I said, smiling. “We actually retired that design.”

  The woman smiled. Her skin was sallow. She reached a hand toward her head and gently touched the scarf along her right temple. “My friend gave me this,” she said. “I was hoping you might have it in some other colors?”

  I could feel my expression fall immediately. We’d stopped making those scarves and had sold all but about a dozen.

  “I’m sorry, we only have a few of those left. I’ve been focusing on those infinity scarves,” I said, pointing to a display on a side table. “That’s all people seem to want lately.”

  “Those are pretty,” the woman said. “But I was looking for a square or rectangle-shaped scarf. Infinity won’t work for this.” She touched her head again: her gaze went to the ground. The man placed his hand on the woman’s back.

  “I think I have a few left that might work for you,” I said.

  I rummaged through a couple of plastic totes we had stored under the tables. Finally I found what I wanted. It was a box of scarves from the same collection as the one woman was wearing on her head.

  “Now, these have creases from being folded in the box, so I’ll take the price down a little,” I said while I unfolded the scarves and laid them out on the table.

  One was peacock blue with a black paisley pattern. Another was monochromatic navy blue with navy blue beads sewn on in a swirl pattern. I had a similar scarf that was burgundy in color. There was an ivory scarf with a red ribbon as trim.

  “I made this one for the holidays,” I said. “I gave one to my mom.”

  The woman’s eyes softened. She picked up the peacock blue scarf. “I love this color,” she said.

  “Why don’t you get two or three honey?” The man asked her.

  She nodded and picked up the ivory scarf. “I’ll still be getting chemo when it’s Christmastime.”

  Then she looked at me and said, “I thought about getting a wig, but that’s just not me.”

  I nodded and passed my fingertips over the material, “These are nice and soft, too.”

  The woman paid for her scarves, thanked me, and walked away.

  Business at the booth became steadily more busy. Every few minutes, while I was helping customers, I glanced toward the midway area to see if I could spot Sophie coming back.

  Finally she came hurrying into the tent carrying a small box with “Deep Creek Confections” printed on the top.

  “Sorry,” she whispered as she walked behind me to help a customer who was peering into our glass case of more pricey necklaces.

  “There better be something in that box for me,” I said, smiling. Playing hooky was my thing—it was strange for Sophie to have gone missing for so long.

  The rush didn’t slow down until dinnertime. I had almost forgotten about Sophie’s little field trip with Tommy until she brought out her box of confections, opened the lid, and offered me a cupcake covered with white frosting and pink sugar sprinkles.

  “So,” I said before taking a big bite of whipped vanilla frosting.

  “So?”

  “So. Tommy Patterson? Art Cloud?” I raised my eyebrows and started to take a giant bite of cake.

  Sophie tapped my cupcake-holding hand, causing me to get frosting on my nose and upper lip. I laughed, spitting cupcake crumbs in her direction. Sophie giggled and put her arms up defensively.

  “Don’t change the subject!” I said. “I’m worried. Are you plotting something with him? Do you want to join Art Cloud?”

  “No, I don’t want to join Art Cloud,” she said in a juvenile mocking tone that made me laugh-spray more cupcake into the air.

  “Will you just tell me?” I asked. “You’re killing me. The thought of selling Candy Blue is giving me the sads
.”

  Sophie looked like she was fighting to hold in a smile.

  “We’re dating.”

  She said it without looking at me. She looked closely at her brownie and pulled off a small piece with her thumb and index finger.

  “Shut up!” I said, nearly screeching the words out of my throat.

  “Tell. Me. Everything,” I demanded. “No, don’t tell me everything. Just skip to the good stuff.”

  Sophie’s cheeks turned bright pink. I think my face might have started glowing too, I was so happy for her.

  She had lived with her last boyfriend, Andrew, for two years. They had been together since our last year of college and it seemed like they would probably get married. Sophie had talked about it like it was just a matter of time and logistics. But when Andrew’s work with a tech firm transferred him to Germany, Sophie didn’t go with him.

  In typical Sophie style, she didn’t openly mourn the end of her relationship with Andrew. She put the loss into pragmatic terms.

  “It’s a blessing,” she had told me once. “He wasn’t willing to change his career plans to stay here with me. And I wasn’t willing to give up my family and friends and entire life to go with him. If we hadn’t been tested like this, we may never have realized that our relationship was based on lukewarm convenience, not passion.”

  Her outlook felt entirely wrong to me. I worried that she was in denial or something.

  “Don’t you miss him?” I’d asked her. “Where’s the tears and the angst and all that stuff?”

  She looked at me over her glasses. “Morgan. Really.” And that’s all that was said.

  Now, at Hilltop, it was refreshing to see a glow on Sophie. There was a little mischief in her eyes.

  “So how did this even happen? You and Tommy?”

  “We were both on the Decker’s Stream jogging path one day. He asked if he could run with me and promised he wouldn’t try to pitch Art Cloud. I said ok. Morgan, it was the perfect first date.”

  “Yeah! No eye contact!”

  “That would be the perfect date for you,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes. “But really, there was no time or energy to be nervous. We had to just be ourselves, you know?”

  Sophie and I paused our conversation because three women came into the booth. Two of them wore scarves on their heads, scarves I recognized as my own designs, and the other woman had a short pixie cut.

  “Are you ladies the owners of Candy Blue?” the woman with short hair asked.

  Sophie introduced us.

  “I’m Isabelle Jackson,” the woman said. “I facilitate Keystone Survivors in Pink. We’re a breast cancer support group?”

  Sophie nodded.

  “When I was going through chemo, one of our members gave me a scarf from Candy Blue. It was so beautiful and colorful. I wore it every day until my hair started growing back. It became sort of a symbol of my survivorship.”

  I looked at Sophie, who always had something professional and business-ey to say. She was silent.

  Isabelle continued. “When I didn’t need it any more, I gave it to another member of the support group.”

  “I’m so glad something from our shop had that kind of meaning for you,” I said. I was a little bewildered that my baseline hum of social phobia seemed to subside in this context.

  “The material was soft and the design was unique. I know they’re not one-of-a-kind, but it was special like that,” Isabella said as she strolled through our booth, casually touching a couple of the necklaces. “And when you have cancer, and you’ve lost all of your hair, people never know what to say. They’re afraid of saying the wrong thing or being patronizing. When I wore that scarf—I don’t know—it was just a nice conversation piece. It let me keep my individuality.”

  “That’s just,” Sophie glanced at me blankly. “That’s awesome.”

  I’d rarely seen Sophie speechless. I smiled and patted her shoulder.

  “I had never even thought of using the scarves as a head wrap,” I said. “I only made infinity scarves new for this year, but if anyone from your group wants a square scarf, we’d be happy to make some more.”

  “Absolutely,” Sophie said. She seemed to have pulled herself together and reclaimed her ability to use multi-syllabic words. “Do you have a business card?”

  The women each purchased one of the scarves I’d found earlier. They also picked out some jewelry. When they were gone, Sophie started talking about us making a special line of pink ribbon scarves or jewelry and donating the proceeds to Keystone Survivors.

  “Uh, for real?” I asked as I began wrapping up the necklaces that had been on display. It was getting late—time to pack up for the night.

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “I don’t know, I just never knew you were interested in, you know, charity.” I said. “But I’m cool with it.”

  “It’s important to be a good corporate citizen, Morgan,” Sophie said as she gently folded the infinity scarves and placed them in a tote box. “All of the major corporations get involved in philanthropy somehow.”

  I put my hands up. “You don’t have to convince me,” I said. “It’s great.”

  Sophie nodded. “It’ll be good. Good for both of us.”

  13.

  I was supposed to be working on a wood sculpture for my portfolio, but as I shaved and sanded and coaxed the aromatic cherry into looking like what I’d seen in my imagination, my mind kept slipping back to an idea I’d had for a new line of scarves—hand-painted silk scarves.

  When a splinter slipped under my thumbnail for the second time, I gave up. I put down my tools and went looking through my paints. Of course I’d painted on canvas hundreds of times. I’d used oils and acrylics and watercolors on all types of materials — paper, wood, even metal. But I’d never painted on silk. Maybe it should be a cotton/synthetic blend. I tried reading the labels on my tubes of paint, but most of them were covered in paint. The labels I was able to see were in a foreign language.

  What paint would stick to silk, hold its color, and be safe for prolonged contact with skin? Obviously this was a question for Google. I opened my laptop, but I never got the chance to look up the information.

  There were eight new messages. They were all from Sophie. My stomach lurched as I realized I didn’t even know where my phone was. It was 2 p.m. and I’d been absorbed in my wood sculpture all day. I started skimming the messages but they didn’t make much sense. Maybe they were out of order.

  I scrolled down to the first new message.

  “E-commerce server must be down,” she’d written. “The purchase screen on our site is frozen and we haven’t gotten any orders since 7p.m. yesterday. I’m calling tech support.”

  The next one said, “If anyone emails or tweets you asking what’s up, just tell them we’re sorry and we’re working on it.”

  A few minutes later she’d written, “Oh my God.”

  Sophie never freaked out. Now I was really getting nervous.

  The remaining messages were variations of “Call me,” “Where are you?” and “911.” Then I heard Franklin’s chirp-like “hey-I-know-you” bark.

  Even though Sophie always let herself in, I walked toward the door. We met in my living room. She was pale-faced and clutching her laptop to her chest. She was wearing pajama pants and a bulky sweater. Sophie was not one of those people who wore pajamas in public, ever.

  “What happened?” I asked her. My throat was dry.

  “We crashed the server.”

  “Oh. Well, they’re fixing it, right?”

  “It’s fixed.”

  “Ok?”

  She walked into my kitchen and opened her laptop. She pointed to our sales dashboard. “It crashed because of this!”

  Nothing looked unusual.

  “Here!” Sophie pointed to an item on the screen. Her tone was even more impatient than usual.

  I looked at the number of orders. In less than one day, we got the same number of sales that we typically have in an en
tire month.

  “It’s a mistake,” I said. “It’s gotta be a mistake, right?”

  “No! I’ve been trying to figure this out all day. That number is real.” Sophie said. “Hannah tweeted about us again. There were a ton of re-tweets including the twitter account for her sorority—a national sorority.”

  “Wow,” I smiled. “Are we gonna be, like, rich?”

  “No,” Sophie shook her head. “We’re gonna be, like, screwed.”

  I crinkled my nose. This was getting annoying. “How?”

  “We aren’t set up for this volume,” She said. “We’ll never get all this product out in time, people will get mad and give us bad reviews. The negative feedback could go all over Twitter just like the good stuff did.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. And the orders are still coming in.” She clicked “refresh.” There were another 20 orders just in the few minutes we’d been talking.

  “Crap.”

  “Yep.”

  For a minute we just stared at the screen.

  “Waiting list?” Sophie asked. “Do you think we should start a wait list?”

  “We can do that?”

  “We have to. Even if we found enough people to make all this stuff, we might not even be able to get the materials to get it all done in time.”

  We wrote a nice little blurb about the high order volume and how “to ensure Candy Blue is able to maintain quality and expedite existing orders, we are presently not accepting new orders.” She created a new mailing list for customers who want to be placed on the waiting list.

  I shrugged. Even I knew that wouldn’t be good for business, but what could we do?

  “Now,” Sophie said. “We have enough backstock for about a third of these orders. I already put out an email to our freelancers asking if they could work extra. I offered bonuses. But that still isn’t enough to get us caught up.”

  “Ok. Well. Let’s make some jewelry, I guess.”

  Sophie smiled.