“It’s okay baby. I’ve got you,” Emma whispered in her ear.
Cynthia felt a rush of emotion overcome her and she was soon crying hard into Emma’s shoulder. Her new friend patted her back and whispered, “it’s okay,” and “let it out.” The whole exchange felt cathartic, and by the time Cynthia released her grip, she felt renewed. Emma took her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Looks like you have a lot to tell me,” she said. Then she fished a clean handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it over.
Cynthia wiped her face and nodded. She wasn’t quite ready to use her voice yet.
“Billy will take care of your things. You just come on with me,” Emma commanded.
Cynthia nodded again and followed Emma into the building. They went behind the front desk and into the residential part of the inn. Emma settled into her chair and patted the couch across from her. “Sit,” she ordered.
Cynthia slumped into the couch and pursed her lips. “I don’t know where to begin.”
“Does he have a girlfriend? That author woman?”
She shook her head. “No. He did, but that ended a while ago. Before we even started chatting.” Cynthia paused. “I mean, before I started chatting with a completely different person who was pretending to be him.”
“What?” Emma asked, drawing out the vowel sound. “What completely different person?”
“Turns out I wasn’t chatting with him all along. I was chatting with his stalker. Some woman who is obsessed with him and pretends to be him on Twitter.”
“Makes your stalking of him seem not so bad,” Emma observed.
Cynthia laughed. “Yeah! I suppose that’s true. Silver linings.”
Emma smiled. “Okay, so he doesn’t have a girlfriend, and it turns out you were chatting with someone else. Why the waterworks in the parking lot?”
“He isn’t who I hoped. He isn’t the man from my dreams. He looks like him and almost sounds like him a little, but the real man is just an ass.”
“No spark, huh?” Emma asked.
“Not even close.” Cynthia turned and reclined fully on the couch. She stared at the ceiling. “This whole thing. The last few months of my life. All a total waste. None of it was real.”
“Maybe not a total waste,” Emma said.
Cynthia flopped her head to the side. Emma was smiling. Cynthia screwed up her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“Child, I think it’s time for you to make a change in your life.”
“What kind of a change?”
“How do you feel about your job?” Emma asked.
“I hate it.”
“And your apartment?”
“Meh. It’s fine. It’s just a place.”
“You live near Portland, right? Have any ties there?”
“Not really.”
“Come stay with me,” Emma said.
Cynthia sat up and stared in stunned silence. After a few moments she managed to utter, “Huh?”
“You heard me. I like the company. And Lord knows I could use the help. I can’t pay you much, but I can give you a nice room and we can have meals together. You can help with the gardens. Mind the front desk. Stuff like that.”
Cynthia stared.
“What do you say? Want to pursue an exciting career in the hospitality industry?” Emma said with a big smile.
“You sound like a TV commercial,” Cynthia replied, returning the smile. She bit her lip and thought a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I really do.”
Emma put her hands on her knees and stood up. “So that’s settled then. I’ll have Billy take your things to your new room, and you can start making arrangements.” She walked briskly out of the room, leaving Cynthia staring at an empty chair.
What just happened? she thought.
THIRTEEN
Cynthia measured out the tequila and added it to the log of frozen margarita mix she had dumped into the blender. Alice looked on expectantly from the kitchen table while Julia inspected the Lego Death Star atop the Cabinet of Shame. “This is really impressive. How long did it take you?”
“A few weeks,” Cynthia replied. “I chronicled the whole ordeal on Twitter. My fingernails are only just now starting to look normal again.”
“You’re on Twitter?” Alice asked. “I didn’t know that! What’s your handle?”
Cynthia pulsed the blender a few times. “My full name. First and maiden.” She removed the pitcher from the base and filled three glasses.
“Found you!” Alice exclaimed. “Whoa! Look at you in the bikini! Damn girl. You fine!”
The women all laughed as Cynthia distributed the glasses. “Thank you. It’s not a recent picture,” Cynthia demurred.
“I’m following you. Follow me back,” Alice commanded.
“When are you going to change your name back to your maiden name,” Julia asked. “I remember you said you wanted to… geez a long time ago, right?”
“I did,” Cynthia replied. “Maybe when I get my California drivers license.”
“Your what?” Alice interjected.
Cynthia bit her lip and looked at her two colleagues as she sat at the table. “That’s why I asked you guys over. Sit down.” The women sat at the table and looked at her. “I’m leaving.”
“What?” Alice shouted.
“No!” Julia added.
“Yeah. Did you see the truck outside? I left my car down there and flew up. I’m packing up my stuff and moving. You can consider the rest of my vacation time as my two-weeks notice, I guess.”
Julia sat dumbfounded as Alice took a huge pull from her margarita. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Brain freeze!” Alice yelled.
Cynthia laughed. “Press your thumb against the roof of your mouth.”
Alice did as she was told. After a moment she slumped in her chair. “Wow. That’s magic. How did I not know that trick?”
Julia shook her head. “Anyway,” she rolled her eyes. “What the fuck, Cyn?”
“Let’s eat. I’ll fill you in over dinner,” she said, unpacking a paper grocery bag filled with plastic containers. “I got us take out Mexican. I hope that’s okay.”
The women filled their plates and started in on the meal. “Alice, did you bring it?” Cynthia asked.
Alice looked at her for a moment with a puzzled expression. Then she raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes wide. “Oh! Yeah!” She dug around in her purse and produced the framed picture of Evan. She handed it to Cynthia.
Cynthia opened the frame and slipped out the thin paper with the photograph on it, as her two friends looked on. She place it in an ashtray in the middle of the table, picked up the lighter she had sitting next to the ashtray, and lit the corner on fire.
“Hey!” Alice yelled. “What the fuck?”
“Trust me. It’s for the best. This guy is bad news.”
The women watched as the paper quickly turned to a fragile ash rectangle. “Goodbye gorgeous,” Alice said.
Julia looked from the ashtray to Cynthia to Alice and then back to Cynthia. She said nothing, raising an eyebrow.
Cynthia stared at the ashtray a few seconds longer, then looked up and saw Julia’s mystified expression. Cynthia started to laugh, and then they all started to laugh.
¤
After dinner, Cynthia prepared another batch of margaritas and the women settled down in the living room. She had shared a highly edited version of her story, omitting the parts about the dreams altogether, but including the part about her Twitter relationship with Evan’s stalker Samantha.
“I still can’t believe you are leaving me,” Alice said. “I mean, who retires at 45? Who does that?”
“Do you like your job?” Cynthia asked.
Alice looked at her. “Of course not. I hate my job.”
Cynthia turned to Julia. “And you?”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean… Well… Yeah, okay. I hate my job, too.”
“Exactly,” Cynthia said, somewhat smugly. “I got a chance to get out of this, and I’m taking it. I
have no idea whether I’ll like working at the inn, but I’m absolutely sure I’ll hate it a lot less than getting yelled at every day by idiots who can’t follow simple directions.”
Julia laughed. “I’ve never heard the job described that way.”
Alice looked at Julia, “Really? That’s pretty much how all of us describe it. You should come out of that office more.”
Julia looked at Alice, opened her mouth, then closed it and said nothing. Cynthia watched the two of them and smiled. “So,” she said, breaking the tension, “I have some parting gifts for you.”
Alice clapped her hands. “Oh boy! Presents!”
Cynthia laughed. “Over there in that cabinet. That’s all the stuff from projects I started but never finished. I’m ready to leave it all behind. Have at it.”
Alice bounded from the couch over to the Cabinet of Shame and opened it. She screamed a horror movie scream.
“What is it?” Julia shouted.
Alice pulled out Tragic Monkey and fell into hysterics. “What… what the…” she gasped for air. “What the fuck is going on here?”
Julia and Cynthia were now both laughing too. “Oh my God what is that?” Julia asked.
“You can’t have that! I’m keeping him. Only I know how to love him,” Cynthia declared, before falling into laughter again.
Alice threw the monkey at Cynthia and shook her hands as though trying to get the horror of it off her skin. Cynthia caught it and wrapped it in a big hug. “There, there baby. Don’t listen to the mean ladies. You’re beautiful in your own way.”
Alice laughed and started digging through the cabinet. “Hey, there’s some great stuff in here. Get over here Julia, or I’m going to take it all.”
The women divided up the various craft supplies, and Cynthia found some grocery bags to pack everything up. Once that exercise was done, they settled back into their seats in the living room.
“So I’m really interested in this Samantha person,” Julia said. “Have you talked to her since you found out?”
“No. Evan gave me her full name, and I found her address and stuff online. It’s such a weird situation. I’m not even really mad at her, you know? I guess I just feel sorry for her. She’s totally obsessed with this guy and there’s no way he’s the man she thinks he is. Because nobody would get obsessed over someone so arrogant and shallow.”
“Um,” Alice said. “Yeah they would.”
Cynthia looked at her.
“Like, celebrities? I mean, really,” Alice explained. “Everything you hear about them is what jerks they are on the set or whatever. But that doesn’t keep everyone from dying to meet them, or get a picture with them, or keep them on the freebie list.”
“The what list?” Julia asked.
“The freebie list. Didn’t you watch Friends?” Alice said.
“I watched it. But, I didn’t memorize every episode.”
“I remember that,” Cynthia interjected. “She means the list of people you can sleep with if the opportunity comes up, and it doesn’t count as cheating.”
Julia looked from Cynthia to Alice, who was nodding vigorously. “Huh. I don’t remember that. I’ll have to take your word for it. So that’s a thing?”
“I don’t think that’s an actual thing,” Cynthia said.
“It totally is a thing!” Alice protested. “I mean, I don’t need one because I don’t have a husband or anything, but if I ever got married, God forbid, I’d have a freebie list with like a hundred men on it.”
“No women?” Cynthia asked.
“A couple women,” Alice said, paused, and then burst out laughing. “Ow! Ow! My marg… Out my nose!” she got up and ran to the bathroom.
Julia and Cynthia looked at each other a moment then started laughing. As the moment passed, Julia said, “I’ll take care of the off-boarding stuff at work. Is there anything else I can do? I’m really impressed with this leap you’re taking.”
Cynthia shrugged. “Nothing comes to mind. I’m just going to pack up over the next couple days, and when the truck is full, I’m gone.”
“Wow. That’s just amazing. I’m proud of you,” Julia said, pulling Cynthia into a hug.
Alice came back into the room. “I want a hug, too!” she said. “After I go make some more margaritas.” And she disappeared into the kitchen.
FOURTEEN
“Would it be okay if I looked over the books?” Cynthia asked Emma at dinner. She had been living at the inn for almost a week, helping with the gardens and the front desk. And that was fine, but she was wondering if there was more she could do to help.
“Only if you promise to be nice,” Emma said with a sheepish look. “Phillip showed me what to do shortly after we bought the place, and that’s how I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“Oh, Emma. Of course I’ll be nice. I’m just curious about the business end of things.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Emma said. “I’ll get them for you after dinner.”
Emma wouldn’t hear of letting Cynthia help cook, but she allowed her to wash dishes. After the kitchen was clean, Cynthia found Emma in her sitting room with a few large bound volumes in front of her. Cynthia sat down and looked through them. There was a general ledger, using the old two-entry system Cynthia vaguely remembered from accounting class in high school. There was a weekly appointment calendar that Emma used to keep track of which rooms were booked. And there was a guest log, containing a carefully written name, phone number, and home address of each guest that had stayed in the inn over the past forty or so years.
“This is great! It looks like you keep very good records,” Cynthia said.
Emma smiled. “Like I said, I just do what my Phillip showed me to do.”
“Do you check the ledger against your checking account?”
“No, ma’am. I look at the checking account statement when it comes, and it seems to match up to the cash line there pretty well. But it’s so complicated with checks still outstanding and all that, I don’t try to make the numbers match up exactly.”
Cynthia looked at the cash line in the ledger. “Hmm. You don’t have a lot in the bank, Emma. What if there was an emergency? If you needed to replace the boiler or something?”
Emma shrugged. “I just trust that the good Lord will make everything work out. It always has.”
Cynthia raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. Your faith is a little stronger than mine, I guess.”
“Maybe so,” Emma agreed.
“Okay, well I’d like to take these back to my room and look through them some more, if that’s okay.”
“Oh sure. Just if you could do it at night, that would be better. I like to have everything handy during the day as people make reservations, check in and out, and all that. I’ve got my system, you know?”
“Of course. I’ll have them back at the front desk in the morning.”
Cynthia bid Emma a good night and took the heavy books back to her room. After spending several minutes looking through them, she decided she wasn’t going to be able to figure anything out with them on paper. She opened her laptop and started transcribing everything from the past year into spreadsheets.
Two hours passed and there was a gentle tapping on her door. “It’s open,” she said, still typing.
Emma stepped into the room with a tray. “I saw your light on under your door. Thought you might be having trouble sleeping, so I brought you warm milk and cookies.”
Cynthia stopped typing and turned to look. “You did not! How incredibly sweet! You didn’t have to do that!”
“Never you mind,” Emma said. “What are you up to?”
“I’m digitizing the business. I’m putting everything into my computer. It’s easier for me to understand something if I can sort and add up things and whatnot.”
Emma shook her head. “You kids these days and your computers. I’m happy with my pencil and my ledger. Just the way Phillip showed me.”
“You keep doing things exactly the way you are, Emma. This is jus
t something for me, so I can figure things out.”
“What are you figuring? If you don’t mind my asking,” Emma asked.
“Oh, just to understand the business. What your expenses are. When it’s busy and when it’s slow. Where people are coming from. That sort of thing.”
Emma nodded. “I could probably just tell you that.”
“Oh, I’m sure you could! But like I said, this is just the way I like to do things. To get a handle on all of it.”
“Don’t stay up too late, child.” Emma put the tray down on Cynthia’s bed and kissed her atop the head. Then she turned and left, closing the door behind her.
Cynthia smiled and shook her head, then went back to work.
¤
A week later, after Cynthia finished washing the dishes, she joined Emma in the sitting room. “We need to talk,” Cynthia said.
“Well sit down then, and let’s talk!” Emma said with a big smile, patting the chair across from her.
“I’ve gone through the books every which way, and Emma, you can’t afford to pay me.”
“Nonsense, child. It’ll work out. Things always work out,” Emma said.
Cynthia smiled a tight-lipped smile and shook her head. “Not this time. You are just barely scraping by here.”
“So are you saying you need to go?” Emma asked, tilting her head a little.
“No. I’m saying if you want me to stay, we’re going to have to make some changes around here.”
“What sort of changes?”
Cynthia swirled the wine in her glass as she thought about how to approach the subject. “Remember when I first came here? It was a Tuesday.”
Emma shrugged. “Sure, honey. You joined me for lunch and dinner, and you told me your crazy story.”
“Right. Any idea how I chose this place?”
Emma shook her head.
“I went to Yelp and called the top-rated place. They were fully booked. Then the next place. Booked. Got to this place, you had vacancies. I think there was just one other couple here that night.”
“Sounds about right,” Emma said. “Tuesdays is always slow.”
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