by R. R. Banks
“It’ll be fine,” she said with a shrug. “Just tell her that you went as vapor and that you had a really convincing costume.”
She tugged her mine cart further into the office and walked over to the trashcan to empty it. She glanced down at the papers that tumbled into her trash bag, reached down, and looked at me. Giving me a mischievously suspicious look, she held a candy wrapper out to me.
“Looks like you might have been celebrating Halloween even if you didn’t know it.”
“I was kind of wondering why the secretary had a giant bowl of candy on her desk. I thought that maybe she and her boyfriend had just broken up again and she was letting everyone in the office in on her mourning.”
“Does that happen frequently?”
“More than she’d probably like to admit. I’ve gotten pretty used to it.”
She nodded and tossed the candy wrapper back into the trash.
“So why are you here all by yourself?” she asked. “When I saw the light on I just assumed it would be all of you.”
“I got roped into putting the final touches on the Black Friday ads,” I said, giving a deep sigh.
“You should be thrilled about that.”
“We’ve been working on them since summer. I’m getting a little tired of thinking about the same things. I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be able to get these done and just sleep until December.”
“Then I should probably stop distracting you and let you finish working. I’ll just head back to the salt mines.”
“I thought they were jewel mines.”
She glanced at her cart and the plastic jewels that lined the top.
“Well, it wouldn’t have looked as good with a bunch of salt around the top. A whole bunch of white powder around the top of a cart that I was pulling around might send a message that I wasn’t really intending.”
I laughed.
“That was probably a safer choice.”
She gave me a smile that seemed more tense than she had just a few moments before, and turned back to her cart. I realized that I hadn’t even asked her her name and was embarrassed by the oversight. She already thought of me as her boss. Now I was her arrogant boss. Fantastic.
“I’m Josh, by the way,” I said. “Josh Worthington.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Worthington,” she said.
“No,” I said. “No. Not Mr. Worthington. Josh, please.”
“Are you going to say Mr. Worthington is your father?” she said playfully.
I shook my head, feeling a hint of sadness settle over me at the question.
“My father’s dead,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, looking slightly startled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –”
“It’s fine,” I said. “Really. It’s been a long time. But that’s why I’m here.” She nodded and turned back to her work. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Cristina,” she said. “Cristina Isabel.”
“Isabel?” I asked. “Is that your last name or is this a double name situation?”
“Last name,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Isabel.”
“Cristina,” she said. “And Miss. Not Mrs. Mrs. Isabel is my grandmother. And she’s dead, too.” She gave a playful smile that broke some of the tension that had built when I mentioned my father. “Wooooo-ooooo-ooooooo,” she said, making a ghostly sound that went well with her costume, “Happy Halloween.”
I laughed, and she went back to work, moving through the room with amazing efficiency. Each task was finished quickly and meticulously, and far sooner than I wanted her to be, Cristina was finished cleaning and heading toward the door.
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“It’s my job,” she said with a smile. She hesitated for a moment and then took a step closer to the table. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded.
“Sure.”
She started to say something, but then shook her head.
“Never mind.”
“No, ask me. Go ahead.”
Cristina looked reluctant and I found myself drawn to her, not wanting her to leave. Each time that I caught sight of her since the first night that we had stayed late, I had been fighting the attraction that I felt to her. It didn’t feel right for me to sit there beside Willa and do everything I could to steal glances at the beautiful dark-eyed woman. Now, though, Willa wasn’t there, and I didn’t see the harm of at least enjoying a few minutes of interacting with someone who wasn’t always thinking about business.
She looked back at me and let out a breath as though she was still hesitant, but now that I had told her to ask, she couldn’t really turn back.
“I know that I shouldn’t have been listening, and I really wasn’t trying to, but a few weeks ago I heard Willa say something about a concept store. What’s that all about?” As soon as she said it, Cristina looked like she wished she hadn’t. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be asking. You don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s fine,” I said, feeling like I had used that phrase more in that one night than I had in recent memory. “You’ll hear about it soon enough anyway. But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”
“Promise,” she said.
“It’s totally confidential.”
“Absolutely.”
“And you aren’t a corporate spy or anything?”
I tried to keep a straight face, but I knew that there was a sparkle in my eyes. She managed to keep her serious expression much more effectively, but the glimmering blue and white ghost makeup that she was wearing took something away from the affect.
“Not anymore. Totally reformed.”
“Good. I’ve put a lot of work into this in the last year and I would just hate to have to throw it away because a competitor steals it out from under me.”
“I can see how that would ruin your fiscal year.”
“I would think. Alright. So basically, we are working toward combining our businesses. There’s an official merger coming, but Wilton and I started toying with the idea of not just having the companies held by the same entities and continuing on in the same way as two different retail chains. Instead, we’re thinking about opening bigger stores that combine both businesses under a newer, fresher model. That way we’ll be able to maintain the two original chains, at least a few locations, for those loyal consumers who want to stick with the traditional shopping styles, and also have the more cutting edge stores for younger or more tech-savvy consumers.”
“What do you mean tech-savvy? They’re going to a brick and mortar store, not shopping online. Don’t you think if they wanted to use their technology they would just pull their little computers out of their pockets and order online?”
“You mean their phones?” I asked, chuckling.
She fumbled around under the tattered clothes that she wore over her uniform and pulled out a black flip-style phone that looked like something I carried in high school.
“No, this,” she said, holding up the phone emphatically. “This is a phone. It makes calls. It sends and receives texts. It’s a phone. Those things that other people carry around are the embryo stage of the robots that will lead the uprising.”
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling out my own phone, which I had just purchased a couple of weeks before and was still discovering features and functions that I didn’t know about when I chose it. “I think this one is at least on to toddlerhood. It does everything. It does things sometimes that I don’t particularly want it to. It beeped at me a couple of hours ago and there was a message on the screen that told me I needed to get up and walk because I didn’t get enough steps today. I don’t know who it was from. I don’t know why they sent it. But it offended me.”
Cristina gaped at me and snatched the device from my hand.
“Are you kidding me?” She said, staring down at it before snapping her eyes back to my face. “Now tell me. What could you possibly need with something like
this? Are you part of a network who must be readily available to each other at any second through at least five different channels because the very survival of the world depends on it?”
I laughed.
“Not that I know of.”
She held up her flip phone again.
“Phone,” she said. She held up mine. “Ridiculous.”
I laughed again and nodded. I knew that she wasn’t wrong, though I did feel the need for technology that was a touch more advanced than her idea of a phone. Being able to check email and connect with people when I was out of the office was crucial for me to be able to do my work. I wasn’t convinced that the anonymous judgments about my activity were all that necessary. My phone suddenly let out a high-pitched ring and Cristina glanced down at it. I saw her face fall slightly and the humor drain from it as she held it out to me.
I took the phone from her and looked down at the screen. A picture of Willa and me from early in our relationship, kissing at the most boring New Year’s Eve party that has ever been thrown, stared up at me and I felt my levity disappear. I kept that picture on the phone as a reminder every time she called me of what Willa was supposed to mean to me. Now it felt more like a warning.
“Hello?” I said into the phone.
“Where are you?” Willa snapped.
I looked up, wanting to gesture to Cristina to wait, but she had already taken her cart and was nearly out of the office.
“I’m still at work,” I said.
“You were supposed to be at Britney’s house three hours ago!”
“And you are just now noticing that I’m not there?” I asked, not bothering to cover the aggravation in my voice.
I heard the office door close and let out a sigh. Willa’s voice coming through the phone blended into just a continuous sound and I tuned it out as I turned my attention back to the plans in front of me. Cristina had looked like there was more that she wanted to say about the plans that she had overheard, and I wondered what it was that she had been thinking.
Chapter Four
Cristina
I tossed the paper and stones that I had peeled off of my cart onto the couch and dropped down into my favorite recliner, letting my head fall back against the cushion. I resisted the urge to pop the footrest up because I knew that if I did, I would be asleep within seconds.
That might not actually be the worst thing.
The picture of Willa and Josh on the screen of his absurd phone was still bothering me. It was ridiculous. There was no reason that seeing that picture should have had any impact on me at all, and yet, there I was, sitting in my living room, still dressed like a ghost and pissed off at a woman with whom I had exchanged less than 20 words in the entirety of the time that I had known of her existence and whose name I wasn’t totally convinced was her whole name.
Willa. Was that really it? Willa. Just…Willa. No ending to that at all? Not Willa—mina or Willa—fred. Just…Willa.
It didn’t make any sense for me to feel that way. I knew when I saw him with the others that there was something to his relationship with the family. He didn’t look anything like them, so unless Wilton had decided that he was completely disappointed in and tired of his children and that he was going to replace them by adopting a fully-grown man – which, honestly, I wouldn’t blame him for doing – he wasn’t one of the family. He had confirmed as much when he told me that he wasn’t a Sommers. It hadn't occurred to me, though, to consider that he might be involved with Willa to that extent. It bothered me, and I hated that it bothered me. He had caught my eye the first minute that I saw him, but I didn't want to admit to myself that I was actually attracted to him. Now that I had spent some time alone with him, as brief as it was, however, I knew that I couldn't deny it, and that made me feel almost sick to my stomach. It wasn't bad enough that I was attracted to my boss. I was attracted to the man romantically involved with my boss. Perfect.
I heard the front door slam and I glanced over the back of the recliner to see Matteo walking into the living room.
“Hi, honey,” I said. “Did you have a good night?”
He shrugged.
“It was alright. We listened to some music and handed out candy to the little kids that came to the door. Then we played some video games. James got that new system for his birthday. It's amazing.”
“That's nice,” I said.
I braced myself for the imploring look that I knew was coming, the hopeful eyes that told me that that video game was all that mattered to him, but it didn't come. Instead, he came over and leaned down to kiss me on my cheek.
“How was your night at work?”
I smiled and patted the corner of the recliner so that he could sit down beside me. Sometimes this boy really melted my heart. He made all of the long hours and hard work worth it, and reminded me even more of why the conversations about Black Friday meant so much to me this year. I had always used the sales to bulk up the Christmas tree, but this year it was more important than ever. He had definitely taken the turn toward caring about the more expensive gifts, but at the same time he was still such a child. The glimmer of Christmas magic was still in him and the thought of disappointing him after he had been disappointed so many times in his life broke my heart.
“It was good,” I told him. “I gave candy to my boss.”
Matteo laughed.
“Did he say trick-or-treat?”
I shook my head.
“He didn't even remember that it was Halloween. I think I might have scared him a little.”
He laughed.
“Great job, Mom.”
I patted him on the leg.
“I'm going to go take a shower and try to get this makeup off. You need to get ready for bed. School tomorrow.”
He groaned.
“They should let us have the day after a holiday off,” he said. “To recover.”
“Recover from what?” I asked.
“Candy hangover?”
I laughed, and he dragged himself reluctantly off of the recliner and toward his bedroom. The truth was he really did enjoy school, and he was good at it, but this year had been harder for him. I just hoped that the stress of all his hard work wasn’t getting to him. When he was safely tucked away into his room for the night, I went to mine and turned on the shower, filling the bathroom with steam to cut the chill before peeling myself out of my costume. I stood under the water for several minutes just letting it pound down on me, hoping it would wash away the thick paint and shimmer dust I had applied earlier. It had delighted the few trick-or-treaters I had encountered before leaving for work, and seemed to have amused Josh, but now it was becoming a slippery gray sludge beneath my feet. That seemed like the perfect analogy for Halloween in general. It was all shimmery and fun until you really looked at it at the end and realized that it was just a mess.
Halloween and relationships.
After my shower I stuffed myself into a terribly unflattering, but warm, sweat suit and tucked under the covers. I knew that when I woke up, the seasons would have magically changed. The Christmas creep had been happening for weeks already, but now it was serious. It was like a twisted version of Cinderella. When the clock struck midnight instead of the carriage turning into a pumpkin, pumpkins everywhere turned into ornaments and ghostly bare trees spontaneously transformed into evergreens. BAM. It was Christmas.
A week after Halloween I found the light in the office at the end of the hall on again, just as it had been. For the last week the table had been again filled with the Sommers crew, muttering and whispering over whatever dastardly plans they had for the coming sales season. I had purposely avoided talking to any of them, preferring to slip in and out with as little interaction as possible. The last thing I needed was to let myself spend any more time thinking about Josh.
That night I rapped on the nearly-closed door and heard his voice come toward me.
“Come on in, Cristina.”
My heart fluttered in spite of myself and I scolded my br
ain for allowing it to happen. I pushed through the door and found Josh sitting by himself at the table. A massive cup of coffee and a half-eaten container of Chinese food sat in front of him.
“Gearing up for a long night?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I'm not entirely sure that I left yesterday,” he said. “The final ad scans are due in just a few days and we can't seem to agree on some of the details.”
“Getting going a little late in the game,” I said. “Is that a strategy?”
What was I doing? I shouldn't even be standing here talking to this man, and now I'm criticizing his business moves?
“Not intentionally,” Josh said with a sigh. “I've been trying to get these finished, but Willa and Alvin have been arguing nonstop about pissy little details and it's delaying everything. Then they complain because they haven't seen any boost in customers in the last week.”
“What does Wilton have to say about all of this?”
He sighed again.
“That's another thing. It seems like he's totally checked out. He was really serious and determined this summer when he was telling us that we needed to get to work on these sales, but now it seems like has just removed himself from it all. He just kind of sits there and listens to the two of them argue and me try to stop them from arguing.”
“I haven't heard anything about the concept store,” I said, hoping to give him a boost talking about something that was going well.
He slid his eyes to me and I knew that that was not the topic that was going to give him any such boost.
“Also delayed. Willa just couldn't stand the idea of having just one store with all of the Black Friday sales concentrated on it. She wants all of the Sommers stores to have the big sales.”
“What about your stores?” I asked.
“They'll have their own sales, too. Just like last year.”
“So, what's the point of all of the work that all of you have been doing together?” I asked. “If you're just going to be doing separate sales, does what either of you do really matter?”