by Misty Simon
“And hello to you too.”
“I hope you’re ready for shopping today.”
“What?” I tucked my towel closer around my body. “What shopping?” I was not a shopper, and no way would I have agreed to go out with Caro even if I did. She was a barracuda with a credit card.
“You, me, and your mom. Remember? You promised last month that we’d have a girl’s day since life has been so hectic lately.”
“I—”
“Don’t you even try to back out now. Your mom is so excited, and so am I. Plus, I need something for tonight. I’m going out with Derek, and I have nothing to wear.”
Says the woman who has all the closets in her house filled with her clothes and still has some in storage.
“And you can’t disappoint your mom. She just finished a new painting and wants to celebrate.”
How was it that Caro was more connected with my family than I was? Anyway, I wasn’t going there. “She didn’t even invite me to dinner last night, and now I have to drop everything to go shopping with her?”
“Don’t start with me.”
“I’m not starting. I’m ending this conversation. I have enough to do without adding shopping to my list.”
“Danner Annaliese Tenley.”
Oh, man, she was pulling out the big guns.
“You know as well as I do that sometimes your mother can be a little preoccupied with her own life. But you also know that if you really needed something, she would be there in a heartbeat.” I was sure her hand was on her hip.
“Yeah, well, I have things to do today.”
“Your mom needs you, sweetie. She’s been looking forward to this for the last week. Please don’t disappoint her. I think it would mean the world to her. And if you don’t come, I’m going to tell her all about your paintings.”
I panicked; I wasn’t afraid to admit it. No way would I have my mother know I sucked at the arts. Must save face, but how? “Look, you guilted me into it, okay? I know my mom is there for me. I guess I can be there for her.” That was smooth enough. “But I have an appointment this morning, so I’ll have to meet you for lunch and we can go shopping from there.”
“Okay.” She laughed. “You are too easy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I hitched the towel higher. “I better go so I can get ready. I don’t think Maynard would be able to handle me in my designer towel.”
“Ha! I bet you’d make a better check if you did go into your meeting with almost nothing on.”
I hung up on her without deigning to respond. I had to rush now. I had fifteen minutes to get dressed and do something with this new hair. Thank God I wasn’t meeting with Mrs. Benner again. With any luck I wouldn’t see her again until I’d mastered the blow dryer and the Roll Brush from Hell.
Zipping through the rest of my routine, I headed down the stairs and out to the office, leaving Phoebe asleep in her cocoon of covers. I guess I pretty much had to invite her to go shopping too. Sigh. Ah, well, I’d do that when I came back upstairs.
Then again, with how long it could take her to primp and dress in the morning, I might not want to wait that long.
I ran back up the stairs, unlocked the door, and went straight to her door. I banged on it for a good five seconds, then yelled, “Hey, sleepyhead.”
There was some vague rustling and a few muffled words. I banged again.
“What!” She shrieked so loud I checked to make sure none of my glass had broken.
“I just wanted to see if you were interested in going shopping with Caro, Mom, and me today. We’re going to the mall in about three hours.” Invitation extended, as far as I was concerned.
She whipped the door open and glared at me. Her sleep mask sat on her eyebrows, and her hair stood up like an electric socket had come and gotten her last night while she slept.
I jumped back before I could check myself.
But she seemed not to notice. “How many hours?”
“About three,” I said, keeping my voice low as if talking to a strange, foaming-mouthed dog I didn’t want to take my leg off.
“I will be ready. I barely have enough time, but thanks for warning me as best you could.” And then she slammed the door in my face, and I swore I heard her cataloging her wardrobe and what would be important, along with breaking down the minutes of how long she could give to conditioning her eyelashes. Cripes.
Hoping I’d done the right thing, I trotted back downstairs. I started some coffee and prepared myself for more tax forms and endless strings of numbers.
A little Toby fantasy interfered. I imagined his hands wandering over my body, finding and learning all my valleys and hills. In my dream I had less hills than in reality, but that was the beauty of a fantasy.
He kissed me slowly as he plucked at my various parts and pieces, nearly making me weep with the joy of being touched and touching back.
I ran my hands over his rock-hard thighs, up onto his stomach, and around his belly button. I studiously avoided the one part of him that strained for my attention and laughed a wicked little chuckle to let him know that I knew he was needy and hurting for my special kind of attention.
“Something funny you want to share?” Maynard Black asked, taking his trucker hat off his thinning hair and grinning at me.
I still retained certain parts of Corporate Danner even if I no longer had the hair. I locked the fantasy into a little box named Later and got down to the boring reality of work.
Chapter Sixteen
“I just don’t understand why I have to be here.” That was me, sounding like a petulant child.
“It’s going to be fun,” my mom, Mary Tenley, said. See? She wasn’t named after some hokey maiden name like I was. Lucky woman. “And Phoebe needs to get out more. Plus, everyone needs new clothes every once in a while. You may work out of that little shop downstairs from your apartment, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t dress for the corporate world. By the way, I love your new hair. It looks so cute and perky.”
Yeah, that’s me—cute and perky. “You never dress for the corporate world.” I crossed my arms and tapped my foot. We were waiting for Caro to unlock her lips from her newest guy (Cam, Ham, Spam?) in the food court before we began our shopping odyssey.
Mom shot me “the look.”
“I’m just saying.”
“I do dress up for initial client meetings. But I am not going to wear heels and a skirt to paint. Imagine what would happen to the fabrics. It would be disgraceful.”
I knew all about disgraceful. I’d looked again at my last oil painting, and let me tell you, I underestimated myself when I said it looked like a grease fire. It looked more like the puddle of spilled grease on the dirty concrete behind the nasty bar in the next town over, all of it on fire. Not pretty despite all the adjectives.
“I think your mom always looks great, Danner,” Phoebe said, hooking her arm through my mom’s.
Caro finally came over, her lips rosy, her skin flushed. She linked her arm with my mom’s other arm, and they nearly trotted down the main corridor, leaving me to thump along behind.
“So what are we looking for today?” Caro was bubbly, always an annoying state with her. Her voice got higher, her steps faster, and I always felt like I had to tether her to the ground or she’d float away.
“I don’t want anything. I have no need for anything. And I have no money for anything.”
“Dan, you are such a party pooper. Every girl needs a little something.” Caro got jerked back by a piece of her hair for her comment.
“How cute,” Phoebe said, and looked back over her shoulder at me. “I haven’t called her Dan since we were seven and she knocked out my two front teeth.”
I harrumphed. “They were about to fall out anyway, and you got twenty bucks for those teeth.”
“And you got a smack on the fanny, if I recall,” said Mom.
“Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?” I dropped back a little farther, not wanting to be part of this conversation.
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“Maybe I should go back to calling you Dan. That would be fun.” Phoebe looked back at me again and smiled, showing all her perfect teeth.
“My name is not Dan.”
“Come on, girls, let’s not fight.” Mom turned to look directly at me across the flush on Caro’s face. “I just got another great commission to do a portrait in oils, from the Langs. I’m buying today.”
Crap. Now there was no escaping a new dress, probably something with frills.
What followed is too horrible for detailed description. But I will say it involved a blur of changing rooms and a flurry of clothes in styles that did nothing for my overly curvy figure. Mom, Phoebe, and Caro found about a hundred things to buy that fit just right.
Then I did actually end up finding a really cute dress that looked perfect on me, if I did say so myself. Now if I only had somewhere to go in it. But sometimes that didn’t matter as much as knowing it hung in the closet, waiting with anticipation.
Mom passed over the plastic, and I looked out the front of the store so I didn’t have to feel bad about how much money was being spent under my nose.
The subtle beep of the register rang in the back of my mind. The colors around me seemed to fade and coalesce into bizarre forms and designs.
The most bizarre form they took on, though, was the one standing across the corridor at the entrance to the Victoria’s Secret store, staring out at all the people wandering through the mall.
The woman was dressed in black-and-purple lightning-striped parachute pants and a white long-sleeved shirt with a black lace overlay. Jelly bracelets ran up along her arm. A huge black purse hung from the crook of her elbow. Big silver dangly crosses hung from her ears. A purple bandana tied her hair back from her round face.
A face that was tinged green. And if I wasn’t mistaken, I looked at it every day. In the mirror. She was my spitting image. Well, my image in eighties wear. Holy cow!
“Where are you going…”
I didn’t wait to hear what else Caro had to say. The ’80s girl had seen me staring at her and left in a hurry. I pursued, with my purse banging against my leg.
“Wait!” I yelled. But she turned a corner and disappeared around the edge of a cookie shop.
I could feel my lungs wanting to burst. Must get back to that gym, asap. But I chugged along, seeing the tattered sleeve of her white shirt disappear around another corner. Who knew the mall had so many twists and turns?
I ended up in the hall for the bathrooms. I considered ducking into the women’s bathroom and seeing if she was in there. But short of checking under every stall (and branding myself as a pervert in the process) I didn’t know how I would find her, unless I just stood out here and waited for her to come back out.
I took a second to heave and blow, trying to catch my breath. I leaned back against the smooth wall next to the water fountain. How could she have looked so much like me? I knew quite a few of the people in our small town. I’ll admit I didn’t know everyone, but surely I would have known if someone who bore a striking resemblance to me was wandering around town. Especially since she was worse dressed than me. I don’t think I had ever dressed that poorly, even when it was in style.
And the mysteries just kept piling up. Something clicked in my brain, though, as I stood there trying to sound less like a locomotive and more like a human being.
What if some strange person was able to change shapes and become other people? It was far out there. But was it really any farther out there than believing my postmistress suddenly found that she couldn’t go more than two minutes without feeling herself up? Or that Toby was not his usual self and kissed like a huge frog?
“Ms. Tenley.”
I whipped around at my name spoken in the dulcet tones of the town librarian. “Hello, Mrs. Trenton.”
She stared down the bridge of her glasses at me. “I expect to have those painting books back at the library today. I believe they are coming due.”
“Uh, yes, I’m sure they’re due tomorrow. I was planning on coming in to drop them off.” This was a weird conversation to be having in the hall in front of a bathroom. Since when does the local librarian have the names of all the many books checked out stored in her head and hunt down the borrowers? It wasn’t as if the books were even late.
“I seem to remember that you also checked out a leather-bound book that also needs to be returned to me.” Her eyes sparked green behind her glasses, but the flash was so brief I wasn’t sure if it might have been simply the stark lighting overhead.
“Ah, no, I don’t believe I checked anything leather-bound out.”
“My information is never wrong. I require that book—those books. Do you have them with you?” Her eyes bore into me as her hands fisted on her hips.
What did she think, I carried my library books with me? There wasn’t room in my little purse for more than my wallet and some tissues. I looked at her, looked at my bag, then looked back at her. “I don’t seem to have them on me.” Duh.
“Bring them to me first thing tomorrow. I will expect you at nine.” She stalked off in her sturdy shoes and sensible knee-length skirt.
Weird. And distracting. I had no idea if the mystery Danner-double had come out of the bathroom. I hadn’t been looking. Damn.
Instead of wasting more time in the hallway, I went back to find Caro, Phoebe, and Mom. Maybe they had seen something. Anything to reassure me I wasn’t crazy.
I found them seated in front of the cookie store enjoying cups of tea and big chocolate chip cookies. There was a place set for me.
I plunked down into the chair and leaned my head back.
“Danner, where did you go? I finished buying your dress and turned around to find you gone.” Mom checked my forehead, then folded her hands and placed them on the table before her.
“Yeah, Danny, where did you go in such hot pursuit?” Caro munched into a cookie and gave me a pointed look.
Phoebe simply sucked up her milk into a straw so loudly I was surprised she hadn’t drowned out the conversation.
“I thought I saw someone I know.” Lame!
Apparently none of them had seen anything out of the ordinary or they would have asked about the fake Danner in all her ’80s glory.
Maybe I was going crazy.
And yet something about the faker and the librarian sparked a thought in my poor throbbing head. “Whatever happened to the guy who called you Mort?” I turned to Caro and watched the cookie hover in front of her mouth.
“He’s history.”
“Someone called you Mort? As in Mortimer?” Mom said. Her raised eyebrows demanded an explanation.
“Was it awful?” Phoebe said. “I once had someone mispronounce my name, and I thought I was going to cry. Why is everyone so incredibly insensitive? I don’t understand why I have to be the recipient of so much turmoil in my life.”
I rolled my eyes at Phoebe, but waited breathlessly for the answer. At the same time a niggling little something thumped at the back of my brain. Had I forgotten to unplug the blow dryer this morning? Was there a form I hadn’t filled out for Maynard? What?!?
“Danner, what is going on?”
“So many weird things,” I said.
“Have you tried painting it out, dear?” Mom caressed my hand and gave me a penetrating look.
“I can’t even Crayola crayon my way out of this stone cave.”
And then it hit me. Oh. My. God. I had left Arrol outside last night when I’d gone down to eat with Toby. Then I’d completely forgotten about him when Phoebe came home and dumped on me.
I was so dead.
Chapter Seventeen
“I am so sorry. I am really sorry. No apology is enough to let you know the depth of my sorrow at leaving you outside for the entire night with no means to get in.” I hadn’t even left the door from the balcony slightly ajar. I hadn’t thought of him at all today. I hadn’t seen him in the house, but I hadn’t thought of him since last night when I’d hoped he had hidden to av
oid being seen by Toby. I was such a bad gnome parent!
It was still daylight out, and I was practicing what exactly I would say when the little faded stone guy awoke as dusk. I’d brought him in and cleaned him off as best I could.
Phoebe had taken one look at me scrabbling around to get a statue cleaned off and locked herself in her room with her laptop and a set of earphones. Apparently she was doing some work for her marketing job while she was staying here.
Fine by me. It would keep her out of my hair for a while, though I did have to figure out what we were doing for dinner. Maybe I could get the extra large pizza this time and share it between the three of us. I’d probably have to endure some ribbing about how much of the pizza seemed to be my share. Maybe I could just slide her portion to her and she’d never know.
And I was distracting myself from the fact I truly hoped Arrol would not notice that birds had used him for a toilet all day. And they had really good aim. Trouble, bad trouble.
Now all I had to do was dread the coming sunset and get ready for my secret rendezvous. Although I guess it wasn’t really a rendezvous when the person I was going to see didn’t know I was coming to meet him.
I’d decided to make my mom take Phoebe to a movie so I didn’t have to take her with me tonight. Mom was all too happy to comply. And once I’d gotten Phoebe to take the earphones off for a sec, she’d been happy too.
I’d never get away with being inconspicuous with Phoebe’s loud mouth along. Plus, it would be fun for both of them. I was sure it would be some French subtitled film I’d hate, so there weren’t any hard feelings this time when I wasn’t invited to come along.
But first I answered the knocking on the door, then opened the pizza box I received from the same pizza delivery guy. After delivering a plate to Phoebe in her room (strewn with way too many clothes and horrendously messy), I cracked open a beer. The sun was setting in my balcony doors, and I knew I was in for the tongue-lashing of my life. I ran into my room and turned up the stereo to cover the yelling I anticipated.
I wasn’t a moment too soon.
“How dare you leave me out there to freeze!”