I’d be one of the worst targets for any sort of scam.
I put the Etnies into their box and put it on the shelf. “This is just weird,” I said. “Plain old weird.” I found a gray Prada pump and looked for its mate.
Charlie handed it to me, as if by magic. I had neither seen the shoe nor seen Charlie sneak up on me. I put the pair in their box and put it back on the shelf.
“What about this, dear: What if you simply try to believe for just a moment? I think it would make all of this so much easier.”
Intellectually it sounded like more predator talk, but I didn’t feel an ounce of fear. I just felt this was a crazy old lady looking for some purpose on a lonely Christmas Eve.
She probably hadn’t gotten trapped in here on purpose. That would have been a very hard thing to predict and plan on. Even I hadn’t realized that Lex would close the store early.
Maybe she was just a sad old lady who had come in from the cold and found herself locked in and in need of a purpose so she didn’t just look … foolish.
But how did she know so much about me?
How did she manage to manipulate my imagination so that, for every memory I had, I was able to see an alternate outcome?
“Everything you can even imagine happening in your life could have happened if you’d gone a different direction,” Charlie answered, as if I had asked the question aloud.
But I knew I hadn’t.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You were wondering what I was doing to put stories in your head, weren’t you?”
“No.” Lie.
“Well, it would be natural if you were,” Charlie said, unbothered by my denial. “And the answer, if you were wondering that, would be that our lives are like … what do you call it? A highway. A big long road with lots of turns off of it. You can take any of those roads to get to the end. You can even turn around on them and come back to a road you were on before. That’s what the timid tend to do.”
I didn’t say it, but I had the sense that I fell into that category. The timid. Had I returned to an old “safe” road in my own life? I felt I had, probably many times. An astrologer once told me I was a typical Cancer: “the crab who creeps out of its home, looks around and gets scared to death, then runs back in.”
Well, that was about the size of it.
The speakers kept on playing holiday music, as they did ’round the clock, and in the distance I could hear the sound of Elvis singing “Blue Christmas.” It reminded me of a snowstorm when I was in college, but I dared not mention it to Charlie for fear that I’d be transported yet again to another regret.
And that, I thought suddenly, seemed like a good point. “If you are here to show me the error of my ways, so to speak, what good do you imagine it does to make me regret my choices?”
“Why, child!” Charlie looked genuinely surprised. “Are you not heartened by the idea that those sad times could have been turned into happy times?”
“They weren’t, though, so it’s not really so heartening.”
“But you’re so young still—”
I snorted. I didn’t feel young. In fact, some days I felt downright old. Ancient.
“—and you still have so many choices to make. Don’t you think it’s helpful to see how very well things can go when you try something out of your comfort zone?”
“I’ve been out of my comfort zone many times and lived to regret it,” I retorted. “Trust me.”
“Let’s look around the store,” Charlie said suddenly.
“What?” I indicated the still-large pile of shoes strewn across the floor. “We’ve got our work cut out for us here.”
“Oh, come on, dear, we’re in such a unique situation. Let’s have fun with it. Let’s go to the toy department!”
I barely heard her. I just kept collecting one shoe, looking for the second, then finding the box and shelving them. I was like an automated robot, doing one single job. “Let’s finish here before we go out wandering anywhere.”
“You don’t even know how much snow is out there!”
“Apparently it’s enough to keep us trapped in here.”
“But don’t you want to see it? What is more beautiful than a freshly fallen blanket of snow?”
“It’ll be there when we finish.” I wasn’t going to insist that Charlie help, because, frankly, she wasn’t that good at it. Yes, the mess might be her fault, but the poor thing seemed to have done it by accident. And if she was speaking with sincerity, then even though I knew this wasn’t really my guardian angel, maybe the woman thought she was; maybe she thought she was really destined to help people, in which case I should probably just shut up and not tell her to pipe down and let me work at fixing her mistake.
So, fun as it did sound, I still couldn’t just stop working and dillydally around the store when there was this chaos to straighten out.
“Cup of tea in Filigree?” Charlie suggested.
“No, thank you.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Charlie said, “You know, I guess I’m just going to go pick out a bed to sleep in tonight. We are stuck for the night, are we not?”
“We do seem to be.”
“Well, my goodness, I have already found this exhausting, so I’d just as soon go pick out my sleeping place.”
“All right, all right.” I didn’t want her wandering around the store by herself. “I’ll take you to the bedding department and maybe you can catch some shut-eye now, eh?”
Charlie shook her head. “Certainly not. I have my work to do.”
“Your work?”
“You might as well start believing me. It will save ever so much time and energy for us both.”
The truth was, part of me did believe her. Or at least wanted to. But her story was so preposterous that I couldn’t truly go with it. Guardian angel. Not unless I was asleep and this was all a dream. But I’d had realistic dreams before, and none went on as long as this.
And if dreams were the work of the subconscious, I honestly wasn’t sure I was this creative.
No, this—whatever it was—this was real.
“I have an idea!” Charlie said. “I have the most wonderful idea!”
“What’s that?”
“Do you play checkers?”
The question was so unexpected that I laughed. “Not in years, no. But yes. I mean yes, sort of.” I shook my head, tangled in my own surprise. “Why?”
“How would you like to make a little wager?”
“What’s that?”
Charlie’s face fell a little. “It’s a bet. I predict one thing and you predict another and one of us wins and—”
“I know what a wager is,” I said, a bit impatient. “I meant what wager did you have in mind?”
“We play a game of checkers. If I win, you tell another story from your past.”
I considered this with amusement. “And if I win?”
“Then you tell another story from your past.”
“Tricky. I see what you did there.”
Charlie beamed, and her whole pudgy face lit up. “Do we have a deal?”
“Sure.” Why not? It was eleven thirty on Christmas Eve and we had the entire night to pass before—surely!—the salt trucks and plows would come through and clear out the streets so we could leave.
“Let’s do it!” Charlie said, then danced her way toward the toy department, lighter on her feet than I would have imagined she could be. “Let’s go!”
The toy department was fully lit and as delightful as one could imagine. It was something else Simon’s was famous for—even in a world where online sales had taken over the retail market for mass-marketed toys, Simon’s managed to stay relevant with a wonderful collection of specialty toys that were heirloom quality yet, at the same time, genuinely engaging and fun.
“Here’s a board,” she said. A checker- or chessboard wasn’t hard to find in Simon’s toy department, but she did pick the most beautiful, a hand-painted one made from carved white
oak.
We sat down on either side of a table and played, agreeing on two out of three for the win.
If there was such a thing as a checkers savant, it had to be said Charlie could fit the bill. There was not a move I could make that Charlie couldn’t counter. It was almost as if she had God whispering in her ear on how to win. Which, of course, she would have said she did, but she didn’t. Not really.
Charlie beat me handily two games in a row.
“Fine,” I said, trying to repress my laughter. She was going to get her way. Of course she was! “One more. But we’re going to work on the shoes while I tell it.”
“Certainly we are. You’re going to have to find an appropriate pair to wear.”
“Oh, is that part of the rules?”
“It has been so far, hasn’t it?”
I smiled. “Well, why on earth not? To the shoe department!”
Chapter 7
We went back and spent about an hour sorting through the shoes and putting them away. It was surprising how much we got done, and it was a good thing, too, because it needed to be tidy in there.
But when I came across a gorgeous pair of Manolo Blahniks—yes, yes, I know, old school, not the newest thing on the market—I couldn’t resist putting them on.
Prior to that, I hadn’t been able to come up with a good story, but, I swear, the moment I slipped them on, it was like magic. Like enchantment. Like, it was hard to admit, the work of a guardian angel.
The words just came to me.
* * *
In her midtwenties, about five years ago, Noelle found herself at a holiday party given by someone whose name she never could remember when she thought about it later. In fact, as she pictured the scene, she didn’t even recognize a great many of the faces, so she thought it might have been a friend of a friend of a friend.
All she really remembered was that her friend Suz was there, and the reason she remembered that was because Suz was drunk to beat the band and sobbing about some ex-boyfriend of hers, whose name she also didn’t remember. Eric? Maybe it was Eric. Whoever he was, he wasn’t memorable enough to stick with her.
But, boy, had he stuck with Suz that night.
“I’m … never … going”—sob—“to … find … someone … like him.” Hiccup. Sob. I’m pretty sure she swiped snot out from under her nose with her forearm. “I … can’t…”
It was embarrassing. She was a total mess.
“Listen, Suz, let’s go. I think you need to sleep this off.”
“Go? Go? I can’t go. I can’t go. He might come.”
“In that case, you definitely should get out of here.”
“No.” She shook her head. Resolute. “I have to wait. If he comes, then I can explain everything to him.”
Noelle had noticed, in her lifetime, that if there’s one thing people don’t want after a breakup, it is for the other part of the breakup to explain everything. She always thought that about the poor guy in that Adele song—maybe he didn’t want to clear the evening to go over everything.
She was pretty sure Eric or whatever his name was wasn’t going to want to do that tonight. Hell, it was two days before Christmas. Everyone was supposed to be festive and happy. This was a catastrophe.
“Listen,” she said to Suz. “You stay sitting right here. Okay? Stay right here, and I’m going to go get you some coffee.”
“And a pinot grigio,” she said with a nod.
“No. No more wine. Coffee. If he comes, you need to have your wits about you, right? So you can talk to him?” Man, she hoped the poor guy somehow had the sense to not show up. “So you just wait right here, and I’m going to get that coffee.”
“Okay,” she said, and her head slumped down. She might have been asleep before Noelle even turned to head for the kitchen.
And a good thing, too. There was nothing Suz needed more than sleep. Except maybe to get out of there and prevent the almost-certain embarrassment and humiliation that she was going to bring down upon herself if she stayed.
There was a DJ at the party, playing a fun mix of modern holiday music, some of which she’d never heard before. At a table in the corner, a psychic was doing five-minute readings for whoever wanted them. Elsewhere a massage therapist had set up a chair for doing shoulder and neck massages for guests.
She’d never remember who the host or hostess was, but whoever it was, they’d certainly done it right.
She went into the kitchen and found an electric kettle. She heated it up, determined to make coffee from ground beans and a paper towel filter if need be, but fortunately she found a jar of General Foods International coffee in Café Vienna flavor over the stove.
“That’s no fun,” a voice said behind her shoulder.
She turned to see a strikingly hot guy with dark hair and light eyes, his mouth quirked into a half-smile. “Coffee?”
“No thanks.” He raised a glass of something amber and serious-looking to her. “I’m set.”
“No, I meant, the coffee? What’s no fun?”
“Oh, yes. The coffee. The drink of the nearly departed. Are you leaving?”
Noelle frowned, scrutinizing his vaguely familiar face. “Do we know each other?”
“We do not.”
She had no time for this. “Okay, well, it was nice almost meeting you.” The water was boiling, and she found a mug to stir the powder and water into.
He hesitated, and she sensed he wasn’t nearly as confident as his manner had suggested, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead he slipped away, back into the next room.
She followed shortly after, holding the mug and looking like the world’s least fun partygoer, but as long as she could get the caffeine into Suz, she didn’t care.
“You there!” Noelle looked around. It was the fortune-teller, pointing at her. “Yes, you. Come this way.”
“I … can’t.” She nodded at the coffee and gave an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“But I have a sign from the other side for you. Do you not want to know about your love life? There is a tall, dark, and handsome man very close to you, closer than you think…”
She laughed out loud. “If tonight is any advertisement for love, no thank you. Sorry.” She didn’t want to be rude. “I just have to get this to my friend.” As she walked away, back to Suz, she could have sworn she heard the gypsy woman say, “Sorry, Jake. I tried.”
She went back to Suz and basically poured the hot liquid down her throat. “Can you get up and get to the car?” she asked her.
“You don’t need to go,” Suz said, then hiccupped. “I’ll go, but you can stay. I know I need to go. He’s … not…” She dissolved into tears again. “You stay. I can take a cab.”
“No way,” Noelle said. “I’m going to take you back. There is no way I’m pouring you into a cab at this point.”
“It’s fine.” But it sounded like she said sfine. “I mean it. I don’t want to ruin your night.”
Suz was definitely not fine.
“Come on.” She gave her the last sip of the Café Vienna, then hoisted her up.
“Do you need help?” It was the guy with the dark hair and light eyes, hurrying over. No one else even seemed to notice them.
“Oh hiiiiiiii,” Suz said upon seeing him.
Lord, it was easy to see where this could go. From bad to worse, real damn quick.
“No thanks,” Noelle said. “We’re just leaving. But thank you. Seriously.”
“Are you sure?” He looked concerned. But by then Suz was walking on her own, if unsteadily, and there was no need for a knight in shining armor to push his way in.
“Thank you,” Noelle said again, and walked Suz carefully out into the cold and to the car.
* * *
There was no point in elaborating on the story for Charlie. It was just more of the same. More party, more stranger, more embarrassment, more drunken mess. Then a silent drive back with a passed-out Suz, and that was about it. To elaborate would just be to whine. It was an
other crummy holiday, it was that simple.
“But those shoes,” Charlie said, pointing to the Manolo Blahniks. “Something about those shoes inspired you to tell it.”
Shrug. “Nothing that interesting. I got some shoes like this for the party that night, for the whole holiday season actually, and that’s all that reminded me. Don’t women always buy shoes and clothes with a scene in mind? My scene had nothing to do with the reality I ended up with, believe me.”
“Such a pity.”
“You have some magic you can do to make me see why I should have left my drunk friend passed out on the couch?”
“Certainly not!” Charlie gave a mysterious smile. “But I do think there are better alternatives.”
* * *
“You don’t need to go,” Suz said, then hiccupped. “I’ll go, but you can stay. I know I need to go. He’s … not…” She dissolved into tears again. “You stay. I can take a cab.”
“No way,” Noelle said. “I’m going to take you back. There is no way I’m pouring you into a cab at this point.”
“It’s fine.”
Noelle hesitated. Was it fine? Suz didn’t seem on the verge of throwing up or passing out anymore. “Let me get you a coffee and see how you feel,” she said, considering staying, not because the party was that great but simply because it was always her impulse to leave, and she always followed her impulses, and thus she never stuck around to see if anything different might ever happen in her life.
“Make it a double,” Suz said as Noelle got up.
“You got it.”
She went into the kitchen and found some instant coffee, had a couple of words with an unusually good-looking guy, then took the drink back to Suz, who seemed a little more with it than she had when Noelle had left.
“He’s a jerk,” Suz said.
“Who is?” Noelle asked, still thinking of the good-looking guy she’d seen in the kitchen.
“Eric,” Suz answered, as if it were obvious. Actually, it probably was. That’s who she’d been talking about all night long.
“Yes, he is. So what are you going to do about it?”
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