It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Chick Lit
Page 1
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Chick Lit
A Holiday Anthology
S.E. Babin
Geralyn Corcillo
Jax Abbey
Amy Gettinger
Holly Tierney-Bedord
Monique McDonell
Tracy Krimmer
Kate O’Keeffe
Vivian Brooks
Susan Murphy
Laurie Baxter
Contents
Amy Gettinger
Deck the Malls with Purple Peacocks
Geralyn Corcillo
It Doesn’t Show Signs of Stopping
Holly Tierney-Bedord
The Miraculous Power of Butter Cookies
Jax Abbey
Jingle Bells & Social Fails
Kate O’Keeffe
I’m Scheming of a White Christmas
Laurie Baxter
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Monique McDonell
All I Want For Christmas is…?
Vivian Brooks
Christmas Cookies
S.E. Babin
A Holly Jolly Heartache
Susan Murphy
Mistletoe & Mayhem
Tracy Krimmer
Candy Christmas
Copyright © 2016
All copyrights owned by their respective authors.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover Design by Viola Estrella
Proofreading by Amy Gettinger
Formatting by S.E. Babin
Deck the Malls with Purple Peacocks
A Short Sequel to Alice in Monologue Land
Amy Gettinger
1
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Orange County, CA
* * *
“Ai. What the heck?”
Araceli Martinez had just tripped on something solid and dropped the large box of Christmas ornaments she was holding with a resounding clatter.
“Mierda.” How many had broken this time? Ugh. Another pay cut.
She stood up casually in the Christmas tree-filled area of the department store where she was restocking merchandise at 5:30 a.m. and kicked the offending item away from her feet. Oh. Stupid wooden nutcracker, a smirking Hawaiian hula dancer with a hula skirt and a coconut bra. Araceli’s least favorite item in the department. And she’d tripped on it because her long, dark hair was in her eyes. She reached into her pocket for a band to tie it with. Only a linty candy in there. She slowly panned the giant children’s clothing department that the Christmas trees had been crammed into for the season. No one was around—no witnesses to her gigantic stumble.
Gracias a Dios. Maybe she was okay.
She searched inside the box of broken blown-glass ornaments, found a golden ribbon attached to a broken one, and whipped her hair into a pony tail in three seconds, using the ribbon to secure it. Then, with a tiny grin, she turned back to the dropped box to salvage what she could of the jumbled glass owls and pine cones. She hung the good ones neatly on the fake beige tree whose stale-smelling branches needed “refreshing.” The glittery golden owls with their huge eyes gave the tree a wise air, but the plain brown pine cones—why use perfectly good blown glass for a dumb old pine cone? Americans were strange.
Good grief. When Araceli had her own store, she would display only real green Christmas trees with that real, piney aroma, dressed in a rainbow of traditional ornaments—ceramic Santas in cloth sarapes and straw sombreros, real red chili peppers, and fat, painted, wooden mariachi singers. Visions of these things made her homesick for Christmas in Michoacan, Mexico, where she’d last spent Christmas in 2002, a month before she’d come to the U.S. Except now that Mama was gone, it wouldn’t be the same. Oh, Mama. She crossed herself and a fat tear rolled down her cheek. Her other relatives had gone to Mexico City for jobs now.
So Araceli could not go home again.
As she lifted the fourth broken owl out of the box, a male voice said at her elbow, “What have we here?”
“Aaah!” she whirled around to find Jacob Thinnes behind her, a smirk on his face. Jacob was the good-looking blond shift supervisor for the extra stock clerks Richandowe’s hired for the holidays. About her age, early thirties, he often disappeared into his office for long periods. Once, when she had entered that office to ask for an hour off for an appointment, he’d been talking online with a group of heavily accented male speakers. He’d ushered her out fast, with a stern warning to knock, right past the clanging, flashing video game on his computer screen.
“Why is that box still half full?” Jacob asked now. “Put it on the tree. There’s plenty of room.”
Araceli hung her head. “I tripped and dropped the box. Some ornaments broke.”
Jacob frowned. “Again? They’re ten dollars a pop.” He looked into the box. “Wow. A bunch of them broke.”
She nodded, and a yawn escaped her. It was nearing the end of her ten-hour Richandowe’s shift, which had followed an evening business class at Garden Beach College and a shorter shift at her day job.
He scowled. “Jeez, you’re clumsy.”
She winced, waiting for the axe to fall. He’d let her off once for merchandise breakage before. But now?
He glanced around him. “Okay. I’ll let it slide one last time. But I need a favor in return. Come clean my house. Say later today at 1:00.” He scrawled an address on a slip of paper and handed it to her. “Here. Come dressed to work. And don’t be late.” He winked. “Do it right and this never happened. There might even be a little bonus in it for you.”
Araceli balked. “But it’s my day off my other job.”
“So?”
Maybe she should just quit this job there and then. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Taking on a cleaning job on her day off would rob her of much-needed sleep. But she was so close. So close! This night job paid pretty well, and in the next month before Christmas, she planned to make the last few hundred dollars needed to start up her business in downtown Santa Ana. She had her eye on a particular storefront, which currently had a FOR RENT sign in the window, where she planned to open her own dress shop in January. Was she going to give up on her dream now—just because of a little stumble and some extra work?
“Yeah, fine,” she mumbled, and sliced open another box of ornaments.
“See ya later,” he said, and she felt a hand skim across her slim behind.
She turned around with fire in her eyes, and he backed off, palms up. “Okay, okay. See you at 1:00.”
As she sliced into the new box of ornaments, muttering to herself in Spanish, another person approached. Mad enough to bite the head off a tiger, Araceli kept her head down, examining the new box full of bright purple and pink blown-glass peacocks by a blue tree.
But the familiar scent of Paco Rabanne lingered. “Hey, Araceli. What the feck?”
Maybe if she ignored Quito, he’d go away.
Nope.
“Araceli. What’s he buggering you about?”
She knew Quito Barzaga from summer language classes at Garden Beach College. He was tall for a Cuban guy, maybe five-feet-nine—way taller than her—and built pretty solid. His dark eyes had a devilish sparkle and his slightly crooked grin could charm the socks off an old
lady. He’d just come to the U.S. a year before.
“Quito, it’s ‘bugging’, not ‘buggering’.”
“Let me talk to you in Spanish.” He flashed her a melting grin.
“No. We’ve been through this. You need to practice your English. It stinks.”
“But my slang is better than yours. You didn’t understand when I said, ‘I’m your number one Stan, Sis. I ship you, hundo P. And you don’t know LB, FB, or RT.’”
She threw her hands in the air. “Quito. You have a cell phone. I don’t. How can I learn English slang when I work and live with Spanish-speakers? And why would I want to? I hate slang.”
“You work too much.”
“And you not enough.” She hung a peacock on the blue tree. “What’s ‘hundo P’?”
His eyes glinted. “Not telling. Hey, those are lindos.” Quito grabbed two of the glass peacock ornaments, glittery confections with a spray of real fuchsia and purple feathers sprouting from their purple glass tail fans. “Like TD. To death.”
She snorted. “TD? What’s that? Just say ‘pretty’.”
He held the peacocks up to his earlobes like they were earrings and wiggled his long, wing-like eyebrows. “Am I pretty, wearing these turkeys?”
She giggled. “They’re peacocks.”
He batted his eyes, preened, and danced amid the Christmas trees, holding the sparkly ornaments to his ears. “Jingle bells, Santa smells, Happy Halloween … Am I pretty now?”
Araceli giggled. “No. You’re not pretty, you turkey. The word is handsome. You’re handso—”
Quickly, she caught herself and bent her head back to the box. “Don’t you have anything else to do, Quito?”
He checked his watch. “No. So you think I’m handsome, Señorita Awesome Socks?” He came near and held the peacocks up to her ears. She looked up, and he grinned. “Chica. They look great on you.”
She waved him away. “Go talk slang to Esme. I have work to do.”
He hung a peacock on the silver tree next to him. “Why are you so mean to me?”
“I’m not.” She was, and she knew it. “Hey, wrong tree, Turkey Man. Peacocks go over here on the blue tree.” As she grabbed the peacock off the silver branch, the hook and metal loop at the top pulled completely out of the blown glass part, which fell from her fingers—right to the floor with Araceli’s sinking heart and probably her job. Why had such a clumsy person ever thought she could do this delicate work?
Except Quito’s reflexes were fast. He scooped the bauble up before it hit the floor and took the loop from her fingers, inserting it back into the glass. Smooth as silk. The peacock looked like new. “Ta-da! Alabaster!”
“Uh, thanks,” she said, amazed. “I think you mean ‘Alakazam.’”
“Hey, I’m ESL, and you are, too! But you didn’t come to Binh’s citizenship party.” His voice sounded wounded.
“I had to work.” True, but she’d actually asked for a house-cleaning shift during their friend Binh’s party, to give her a valid excuse not to come. She couldn’t face all the joyful faces of Binh’s family, knowing she was so far from ever being a citizen like them. So far from ever being successful like them.
So far from even being legal.
He hung another peacock, this time on the right tree, and breathed very low in her ear, “I’m sorry you can’t get a green card. Dumb Congress.”
She smiled. “Dumb old Congress.”
His lips touched her ear as he murmured, slow and husky, “Dumb old, estúpido, turkey Congress.”
Oh boy. Was the room getting hot or what? Quito’s cheek grazed hers, and she liked it, Paco Rabanne cloud and all. She took a step back. “Shhh. Don’t talk about that here. I have enough trouble keeping this job.” She shooed him off. “Just … go away.”
He frowned, leaning over to snag a piece of paper off the floor. “What’s this? An address? You live here? 6642 Halbert Street, Huntington Beach?”
That was the paper with Jacob’s address on it. She snatched it from Quito’s hand. “How did that get on the floor? Quito, go away.”
“Whatever.” And he wandered off toward Esme, who was straightening boys’ jeans.
2
Araceli finished her shift at 8:00 a.m. and stopped at the church to light a candle for her mother. Then she drove home to her rented room in Santa Ana in the home of Señor and Señora Casabuena—Enrique and Dulce Maria. It was their old car that she drove daily, with a fake license.
She had no family in Orange County any more. Twelve years ago, her cousin, Veronica, had left town for parts unknown to escape her abusive husband, Jorge Lopez. Araceli had stayed behind with her boyfriend, Luis Furtado, in Fountain Valley. But that relationship had soon ended, and Araceli had come to live with her Uncle Rogelio and his son, Jose, in Santa Ana. For several long years, Rogelio and Jose had been her protectors.
Not.
Rather, they had demanded that she cook and clean for them daily, on top of her two jobs. They’d also demanded a huge chunk of her pay as “rent.” Since both the men worked little, drank like pigs, and hit her if she tried to speak up for herself, Araceli was only a little sad when they’d been casualties of a nasty auto accident in 2012.
Then she had moved in with sweet Enrique and Dulce Maria, a middle-aged couple who had no children. They only charged her a tiny rent and fed her three meals a day like a family should. And she’d finally started saving money for her long-held dream of owning her own dress store. She’d always loved dresses of all shapes and sizes, especially Mexican dresses. If she could design, sew and sell them, surrounded by patterns and fabric and the hum of sewing machines, she would be the happiest of women, no matter where she lived.
Which was an issue. Michoacan now had local drug cartels and organized crime that made life for a single woman much rougher. The constant threat of cartel violence kept many local women home from their jobs.
On the other hand, being illegal here in the U.S. meant she had to be very careful, but it was worth it to be in wonderful California. Except for that little legality technicality. She wanted to apply for a green card, but there was simply no good path from her illegal status to a legal status. An amnesty would have been wonderful, but with Congress against it, Araceli could only continue making her own way here, pretending to be legal.
She had gotten very good at pretending.
When Araceli entered the neat little Casabuena house, a wonderful aroma met her nose. Dulce Maria called from the kitchen, “Araceli! Come in here for huevos rancheros!”
Dulce Maria, a round, cheerful mamacita, handed the drooping Araceli a plate heaped with the classic Mexican breakfast of tortillas, rice, beans, and eggs smothered in a spicy red sauce. “Eat, chica. You’re so skinny you’ll dry up and blow away with the next Santa Ana wind.”
Araceli’s eyes crossed, she was so exhausted.
Dulce Maria sat her down, tucked a napkin in her shirt, and spooned a bite into Araceli’s mouth, as if she were a baby, and then ate a bite herself. “See? Yum, yum, yum!”
When Araceli started snoring sitting up, Dulce Maria said, “You’re skinny as a sunflower stem. Three more bites.”
Araceli obliged, then went straight to bed, fully clothed.
Her alarm rang early. Way too early. She shut it off, and woke again at 12:45.
“Oh, no! Dios mio!” She got up and flew out the door past poor, confused Dulce Maria, making the aged car do twice the speed that made it vibrate like a washing machine. She was ten minutes late, and she approached Jacob’s door with fear roiling in her stomach. But he was on the phone, so he just let her into the messy ranch house and pointed at the cleaning supplies. She worked for over three hours cleaning bathrooms and corners that hadn’t seen a mop for years. Finally, she finished the kitchen and stood up. Done. She needed dinner, a shower and a lot more sleep. But at this rate, she’d barely get a nap in before her next night shift at Richandowe’s.
Jacob entered the kitchen, smiling. “Nice work.”
He grinned wider, and moved in so close she could smell his minty breath. Then he clamped his arms around her and planted a big, sloppy kiss on her.
While she had once wondered if this guy was boyfriend material, that idea had vanished once she’d seen him playing video games at work. So this kiss was an affront to her, minty breath or not. However, Araceli had learned a thing or two in her time in the U.S. Like self-defense. Very quickly, she broke his hold, shoved him away, and raised her foot to kick him in the crotch. Then she thought better of it and lowered the foot.
Reluctantly.
He looked wounded. “What the hell, bitch.”
Her eyes narrowed and she grabbed her purse, ready to swing it at him if he approached her again. “I’m going.” She started toward the door.
“See you next week then. Same time, same channel.”
“Channel? Is the TV dirty? I cleaned it.”
His brow furrowed. “No, dumbbell. You’re coming back to clean here next week, and the week after, and the week after that. Every week. Get it?”
Her heart sank. “No. You told me to come once, today. I came. We’re done.”
He shook his head. “Oh, no, no. See, I heard from a little bird that you’re not what you seem.”
Uh-oh. No. Please, God, no.
He went on. “Yep, I know you’re in the U.S. illegally.”
She sucked in her breath audibly.
He finished, “So you’ll come back and clean my house whenever I want, or you’ll lose your Richandowe’s job.”
She squared her shoulders. “Fine. Then I quit my Richandowe’s job now.” She tossed her head and started out again, but he ran and blocked her way at the front door.