Not problems with Cecily 2, I prayed.
The prayers were answered. Sort of. It was Robert.
‘Hi, are you still in town?’
How did he know I was in town. Must have assumed I would be, given I’d agreed to complete the job in three bloody days.
‘Just leaving.’
‘Oh, how about a coffee and a debrief?’
I was shattered from the day from hell and I still had to get home and find food in the cupboards to turn into a half respectable dinner, but how could I say no?
He’d gotten me the position, hadn’t he?
I looked around, spied a Starbucks, and told Robert where I was. It was a tad rude, demanding he come to me, but under the circumstances, it was the best that I, and my poor, tired feet, could manage.
As I waited, I considered that when the airfare back to England was factored in, the leftover profit from these window jobs was going to have to last a long time.
But how long could about fifteen hundred dollars last?
Maybe Chocolato would employ me on a more regular basis? I could always ask, couldn’t I? Lolly said she’d pay me for her next windows – in fact, she said I could change them again in the new year.
I needed to charm the boss of Chocolato, if only I could discover who he was.
It was strange I hadn’t come across the owner at any of the stores.
Each of the respective managers indicated he was pretty ‘hands-on’.
At the second store, the female manager said he was out the back counting inventory and went to get him, but it transpired the man had inexplicably disappeared through a little-used rear exit.
‘Well, hello again.’
Robert was standing there, his sculptured features staring down at me, sporting a bemused grin.
‘So, Scarlet, how’s the job going?’
With his face bright from the cold, and his huge, lumberjack-style designer coat being at the very height of fashion, my old crush certainly made an impact on the ladies. At least four women, including the girl cashier, looked up as he pecked in the general direction of my cheek.
‘Good.’
Nice one. What a conversationalist. No wonder you are almost jobless!
He ordered our coffees, remembering my preference from last time, and I began to tell him of my observations.
Halfway through my soliloquy Robert grasped my still gloved hand.
‘Why are you still wearing these?’
He didn’t let go.
Uncomfortable under his querying stare, I eased my hand away.
‘Cold extremities. I don’t know why, coming from England you’d think I’d be used to the cold.’
‘Here, let me warm them for you.’
Robert took off the cheap woolen mittens with the disturbed-looking Santas on them and gently rubbed each hand, one by one.
I should have taken my hands back immediately, but I discovered it actually felt good to have someone touching me; to have someone caring about me.
‘Tall skinny cap, tall gingerbread latte with cream,’ the barista called.
Coming to my senses, I leaped up to get the drinks, and when I returned, Robert had the same bemused smile on his face.
‘I would have gotten the drinks.’
‘It warmed me up, moving about.’
I placed his creamy beverage in front of him.
Again, the blue eyes bore into my own. Some women might find it alluring, but I felt too exposed by his obvious interest and turned away.
‘Do I repulse you that much, or are you no longer used to intimacy?’
I looked back at him. The pale eyes were still locked onto my own brown ones so I quickly cast a glance elsewhere in the room.
It seemed that if I lied, he would know.
‘Well?’ he pressed.
A moment later I answered.
‘The latter.’ It was a whisper.
What the hell I was saying?
And why was I saying it?
‘That’s what I hoped,’ Robert replied, sitting back with satisfaction.
‘Now, tell me more about the chocolate.’
*
Hammertro was waiting for me as I entered the building. Looking like he was being auditioned for some magazine spread, he was
leaning against the stack of unclaimed mail (Yes, it was that tall a pile!) in his loose western shirt, vest and black trousers.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, panicked. Hammertro didn’t usually waste time hanging about foyers. Not unless he was on a ‘job’.
‘Are the kids okay?’
‘Nothin’ happin’, seeeexy momma, chillax.’
‘What?’
The fine features contorted as he sighed deeply and dramatically. ‘Imma just waitin’ for your hot sista-in-law.’
‘You shouldn’t go there,’ I said.
The white teeth glistened. ‘Too late.’
I winced. Too much information.
‘Look, Hammertro, I should warn you, Cecily 2 is more than slightly insane . . .’
‘Yeah, that’s what I love about her.’ He ran a tongue around his lips, as if showing me what else he liked about her.
I didn’t reply. What else was there to say?
Except, Cecily 2 is mad, so R.U.N.!
Then I remembered the Chocolato business.
‘Look, is your uncle up for some work?’
My neighbor’s ears pricked up. ‘What kinda work? It involve guns? ‘Cause that’s A.O.K.’
‘No guns. It’s a legitimate business arrangement. I am working on these shop windows–‘
‘You want someone to help you knock off some merchandise, eh?’ Hammertro came closer and nudged me, nodding knowingly.
‘No, of course not! Honestly, Hammertro, don’t you know me at all?’
‘What’s to know? You’re broke, I’m broke, Uncle Rabbit, he’s broke too. Why not get us some Christmas cheer, hah?’
‘Forget crime for a moment, will you? I want Uncle Rabbit to do some work on some old-fashioned fruit boxes. They need to look like Noah’s Arks. I’ll pay him. I need some windows built into them, and some hidden insulation.’
‘Why?’ Hammertro was marginally intrigued; he was still maintaining occasional eye contact with the front door.
‘To put chocolates in. So that they don’t melt. The insulation should protect them from the heat from the lighting.’
Now that there wasn’t any ‘action’ involved, he wasn’t interested.
‘Right, whatever, here comes seeeexy Ce-ce. I’ll speak to my uncle later, but I’m sure he won’t say no to cash. It is cash, right?’
‘Yes. In that case, I’ll bring the boxes around to yours tomorrow, okay?’ I had no idea where I would get retro fruit boxes from, but there had to be somewhere to find them, didn’t there?
‘Yeah, whatevs, heeeelllo seeeexy,’ he whistled, as my revolting sister-in-law sashayed through the broken security door in her leatherette mistress uniform.
‘Nice day at work?’ I asked.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Cecily 2 yelled.
There was not the slightest inflection of sarcasm in the question – Cecily 2 was truly a mad bitch. You couldn’t even ask her how her day was without getting pounded.
‘Forget it,’ I said, moving up the stairs in front of them, the sound of loud, smacking kisses making it difficult to resist the urge to throw myself down the centre of the stairwell.
*
Carson made an appearance just as I was dishing up a tomato and basil pasta an hour later. He was carrying yet another load of books, which he quickly shoved into his filing cabinet and locked up. Perhaps he was worried one of us would set them alight to save on fuel?
‘You’re late,’ I said yet again.
‘And you could have given me a lift home from Manhattan,’ Cecily 2 commented, sliding into the room in shorts and a vinyl looking vest top. ‘I know you saw me.’
Running his hand through his thinning hair – his newl
y developed nervous tick – Carson said he didn’t know what Cecily 2 was on about. ‘What were you doing in Manhattan?’ he shot back. ‘Your work’s in Brooklyn, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ I added. Wasn’t that job the reason she was staying with us, torturing me daily?
‘I was shopping. It is coming up to Christmas.’ Cecily 2 looked about the room, her red-rimmed eyes shifty.
‘But you don’t work in Manhattan either, Carson, do you? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?’ What was going on? Everyone related to me seemed to be becoming a compulsive liar. Or perhaps I was simply going mad?
‘I told you, I wasn’t in Manhattan,’ Carson told us, not very believably. Then he tried to deftly change the subject: ‘Now, what’s for dinner?’
I filed his pathetic excuse away in the back of my mind, alongside all the others.
‘Something that looks like it was scrapped off the street,’ Cecily 2 winked at the kids, who had come into the kitchen at the sound of the raised voice of their dad.
Cecily 2’s eye twitched radically, and Jessie backed away again, saying she wasn’t hungry.
Clearly the poor child preferred starvation to eating with her dysfunctional aunt.
J took one look at the supper on offer – pasta with dried basil, some beans of dubious origin in a sauce of ketchup, and followed his sister back down the hall.
‘Right, that’s me done.’ I dropped the pot on the table. ‘You two enjoy.’
Heading down the corridor, I found the kids in J’s room.
‘Anyone fancy some McDonald’s?’ The $1000 deposit from Robert was supposed to be for fittings, but I figured I could afford to spend a little on subsistence, couldn’t I?
‘Yes!’ J punched the air, and we quickly bundled up and raced out the door before Cecily 2 and Carson got wind of what we were up to.
Sod them both.
*
Just before bedtime, with Carson teed off at having to spend two long hours listening to his sister discuss the sex life of her cat again, the phone rang.
I let the machine pickup. The answer machine contained four new messages, all from Mum.
I couldn’t bear to call her back right then.
I knew I couldn’t tell Mum the truth about why I wasn’t already on a plane. She’d no doubt have already guessed Jessie wasn’t as ill as I’d made out, mostly because I kept refusing to elaborate on the exact cause of my daughter’s illness.
The whole thing was so unbelievably sad – it was too late to tell Dad I knew about his indiscretions; to tell him to make things good with Mum before . . . well, before it was all over.
My phone binged.
Robert.
Great.
Another problem.
Was it a problem? Or a delicious secret?
I was so tired that I didn’t really care, I told the evil voice in my head. I read the message:
Lunch tomorrow? Or the day after? Can’t wait to see you again. R. x.
Had he really signed that text with a kiss?
Wasn’t it too soon for that?
Wasn’t it a tad inappropriate?
‘Who was that?’ Carson asked, turning over in bed, absorbed in trying to mark some poor kid’s English assignment. There were lots of red crosses scattered over the page.
I didn’t answer. Why should I? How dare he question me? If he thought I’d bought his lie about being in Manhattan he was sorely mistaken. Cecily 2 might be insane but the insanity didn’t usually manifest in seeing things, or people, that weren’t there.
Why was Carson in Manhattan in the middle of the afternoon?
For the second time in a week.
Bastard.
Sod him.
I returned a text.
Sounds good.
As an afterthought, I added the ‘x’.
And then, looking at Carson, brow furrowed as his hand flew across the page, crossing and ticking, I deleted the ‘x’.
‘Did you listen to the messages from your Mom?’ Carson voice was snappy.
‘’Yes.’
‘What’s up?’
‘What do you care?’
He looked over, pretending to be bewildered.
I longed to tell him to drop the act, that I knew he was up to something, but I didn’t.
When he didn’t answer I gave up. I was far too exhausted to have to argue.
I’d call Mum tomorrow, I promised myself, as I put a pillow over my head to block out the light from Carson’s bedside lamp, and tried to fall asleep.
At least, with the window dressing job, I had something pleasant, and true, to tell Mum.
CHAPTER NINE
Tuesday, December 5
‘Life is fun. Get naked.’
Jocelyn Priestly
NO ONE HAD BETTER get naked today, I told my calendar, reading the latest rubbish Ms Priestly offered as inspiration for the day.
Since I’d taken the kids out for dinner, putting my foot in the sand in terms of our abject poverty, things actually seemed to be going my way.
For a start, both Carson and Cecily 2 were trying their best to appease me. I put this down to the fact that Cecily 2’s ‘assignment’ had been extended until Christmas, so they needed me to agree to her continued presence on my sofa.
When I didn’t agree straightaway, Cecily the First had called me up and the word ‘please’ had been used.
I was so shocked by my mother-in-law’s unnatural politeness that I stupidly agreed.
Meanwhile, Hammetro’s uncle had agreed to recreate my boxes, and Robert Simpson had no problem with extending the time taken to do the job. ‘As long as it is done a couple of weeks before Christmas,’ he’d said, relieving me of a mountain of worries.
I still had to find the boxes – that was proving difficult, but other than that, my plan for the Chocolato windows was coming together nicely.
If only the remaining part of my relationship with Robert was so easy to assess.
- Cue recent memory of awkward lunch with Robert Simpson:
‘Do you take sugar?’ He’d lashed out on a coffee and sandwich at some place in Greenwich Village that he insisted was trendy, but I felt looked more like the dying days of a salmonella diner.
The sugar had lumps of something unidentifiable in it. ‘Um, no, thanks.’
‘So, how’s the job going?’
I wanted to keep it a secret until the big reveal, mostly because if he said he hated the idea, and passed the information onto the ultimate client, it would scupper the whole project.
And there wasn’t a Plan B.
Robert seemed on the verge of wanting to say something the entire lunch but didn’t.
I figured he wanted to follow on from our conversation of the other day.
To follow on from that ‘x’.
And he did. In a way.
A horrible way.
‘I like those tight leather boots you’re wearing.’
I was wearing ten-year-old scuffed knee-lengths. I couldn’t date them exactly because they were from a charity shop. Thanks to the size of my calves, the boots were quite floppy around the ankles. I hated them, but they were good for walking in wet and icy conditions.
‘Really? These?’
A strange dark frown clouded his face for a moment, but quickly disappeared.
What was with him?
‘Just trying to compliment you. Women like compliments, don’t they?’
Depends on what they are.
‘Sure, thanks. I think.’
‘So, tell me about your kids . . .’
With that segue into a change of subject, Robert Simpson moved the conversation back to more acceptable territory, but I began to feel that any attraction I had originally felt might have been misplaced.
He really was more than a little odd.
While I worked in Manhattan on the shops, Robert Simpson managed to pop up at least every second day, usually at the front of whatever store I was working on. And he always offered to bu
y me a meal.
My penury meant I never refused, even if I couldn’t stop thinking about the weird boot comment of the other day.
Apart from that awkward early conversation during which we’d dodged around our feelings, he hadn’t mentioned the issue of us being more than friends again, and I was glad.
So, a few days a week we ate and talked and laughed. He seemed to know a lot about the chocolate business – but I figured that was because he was friends with the owner of Chocolato.
‘Have to know your market,’ he told me.
The initial allure I’d felt for Robert Simpson eventually faded completely. Yes, he was George Clooney-esque, but there was something about Robert that made me shy away; something not completely trustworthy.
And after all, I did love Carson.
Once.
I may not love him in the same way now, or love how he treated me or the kids, but if I tried hard, I could believe that things would get easier.
So I put any illicit romance with Robert out of my mind and concentrated on my work.
The shop windows were coming together. I was assembling the look in the rear of Store Three, which, being downtown, had the most space out back.
Hammertro’s uncle had done a marvelous job, not only cutting my boxes into arks but sourcing them, too.
I’d looked and looked and looked, but had no luck.
When Uncle Rabbit saw the modern light beech squares I’d finally found online, he told me to send them back and that he had the perfect thing.
‘Legal,’ I warned him, picturing some irate owner banging on the windows of the Chocolato in anger, claiming theft.
‘I swear,’ Uncle Rabbit said, giving me a semi-toothless grin.
And he’d come good, providing authentic, 1920s’ orange boxes, with satisfyingly faded labels.
‘Where on earth did he get them?’ I asked Hammertro, on sighting the tantalizing find. Well, tantalizing to me, anyway.
‘You don’t ask with Uncle,’ my neighbor told me, which made me so cautious that I had to ring Uncle Rabbit again to get confirmation that the boxes were in fact from his deceased mother’s storage shed and not knocked off from some antiques emporium.
The Great Christmas Breakup Page 10