2 Days 'Til Sundae (2 'Til Series Book 1)

by Heather Muzik

  “First of all, Mitch,” Catherine spat, prying the ring out of his grip, “this is not a piece of crap. You’re right that it isn’t worth shit in the real world, but it was my dead sister’s ring and it means a whole helluva lot to me. So, Mitch, keep your hands off of it and me, thank you.” Then she stomped out without a glance back at the table where their cosmos had just arrived.

  He could pay her tab.

  -8-

  “Why aren’t you here? Lillian’s pissed!” Tara whispered viciously into the phone, trying to convey the pure weight of the wrong Catherine was committing at this very moment.

  As cubicle companions they’d been stuck in the close quarters of job purgatory together for five years now—long enough that they were also good friends who stuck up for each other, covered for each other, and bitched at each other. When it came down to it, they shared everything from the stapler at their conjoined desks to their monthly visitors, as their cycles were in complete sync—although Catherine was pretty sure she would be entering menopause any moment.

  “Something came up,” she said, eyeing the computer screen nervously.

  “It better have been vomited up or else you don’t have a leg to stand on. This is your boss’s party. I don’t care if it makes you want to gouge your eyes out with boredom—I’m half-blind as it is. Get your ass over here now,” Tara demanded.

  “I’ll be there—I will…. Just give me twenty minutes,” she pleaded, although she had every intention of taking longer than that. It was just a tiny white lie so she could babysit the auction down to the last second before entering her boo-ya bid.

  “You don’t have twenty minutes. You’ve already had an hour! It’s eight o’clock! Lillian made the rounds once, and if you aren’t here by the time she makes it around again I’m going to tell her you got a bad case of diarrhea on the subway.”

  “You wouldn’t!” Catherine gasped, suddenly fully focused on the voice in her ear.

  “Try me,” Tara said flatly. “I’m talking about saving your job here!”

  She could imagine Tara staring her down even through the phone. “All right. I’m leaving. I’ll grab a cab and be there as soon as I can,” she relented.

  “Sooner,” Tara warned before Catherine could close the phone on her.

  Her friend’s words rang in her ear. A bout of diarrhea in public could be damn near impossible to live down, especially damaging seeing as she was still single and looking…. If that story got out—are you the Catherine who shat herself on the subway?—she’d become a social pariah like Scott Ward who crapped his pants in second grade. He’d had to move to get free of the stigma of loose bowels, and even though he was no longer there to hear the taunts, none of her classmates had ever forgotten. Any noxious smell in class from then on out was always coupled with, “Gross, did someone Ward their pants in here?” She looked back at the monitor sadly, afraid to leave it unattended.

  She’d been on top for two whole days… and even though she was technically still on top, a bidder had come nipping at her heels in the last waning hour. The price had jumped so far as $31.00, her cushion thinning. Now she was in a game of cat and mouse with this other bidder, trying to hold off as long as possible before bidding any higher so as not to spook her competition into crazed pursuit. Who the hell are you tROVESoFsTUFF, she wondered spitefully. You’re on my turf, bitch. She didn’t know if it was a woman or a man or a little girl behind the name, but she knew that this auction was hers fair and square. She’d bid first. And it was her personal toy.

  Catherine watched the time ticking down. Another few minutes had dripped by slowly. This is ridiculous. I can’t be beholden to this toy. This is my job here! I can’t move back in with my parents—in Wyoming! Finally gaining a little sense and perspective, she stopped wavering, entered $58.01 into the field, and placed the bid. She felt the nervousness in her stomach that told her she was doing something she might regret. But what if Caramellie sold for $35.01 and she missed out because she was stubborn enough to insist her bid hold within her budget? Beyond that, what if it only took little more than President Jackson to make the difference between losing and winning? She could drink coffee from home for the next few days and make that up—although that would require that she buy herself a coffeemaker.

  *****

  After helping Tara up the stairs, Catherine leaned her against the wall while she took out her keys. She hadn’t planned on having an overnight guest, but the hell if she was going to take Tara back to her apartment on the other end of the city where she shared a loft with three roommates, each one stranger than the next—the prizewinner, a chick who was wearing assless chaps the first and only time Catherine ever met her.

  “You know,” Tara said, much louder than necessary, “if you had been there with me the whole time I wouldn’t have had to get all shitfaced.”

  “I know.”

  “It was just so painful to stand around like that all evening with a smile on my face. You know smiling makes me physically ill.”

  “I know, sweetie,” Catherine said, patronizing her.

  “And you! You come waltzing in at eight-skirty,” she said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand roughly. “Did I just say eight-skirty?” she giggled, sliding down the wall like her legs had suddenly turned to jelly.

  Catherine got the door open and grabbed her friend just in time, pulling her back to a standing position and taking most of her weight. She dragged her across the threshold into the apartment.

  “I don’t put out unless I’m carried across the threshold,” Tara pointed out seriously. “So don’t expect anything, missy.” She held out a warning finger.

  Catherine helped her over to the couch and commanded her to sit, pushing her down at the same time. “I’ll get you some water and a bottle of aspirin.”

  Before she could walk away, Tara grabbed her and looked deep into her eyes. “You aren’t planning to kill me with an overdose and make it look like suicide?” she asked innocently.

  “No, sweetie,” she patted her friend’s arm lightly and pulled free of her grip.

  “Good,” Tara said happily, completely reassured.

  In the minute it took Catherine to get back with the water and pills, Tara had fallen over face-first on the couch cushions. She put the glass and medicine bottle on the coffee table and gently took Tara’s head in her hands, turning it to the side so she would be able to breathe freely. Her massive earrings, branches of some sort, were tangled in her jet black hair that had an aura of purple to it tonight. Her micro-mini skirt had ridden up high enough to show the money shot, and Catherine yanked it down the best she could. Her halter top hardly constrained her breasts, like it had shrunk in the wash or was more likely purposely purchased too small in the first place. At least Tara’d had the sense to wear a jacket over the look, but it was definitely unprofessional and borderline streetwalker. “But my job was the one at risk,” Catherine muttered, patting her friend’s shoulder gently.

  She turned on the computer that had been calling to her for hours while she was out of reach in upper Manhattan in a much nicer apartment with a view of something better than a pizza joint—albeit a very good pizza joint. She hadn’t realized until tonight how much she needed an upgrade to her cell so she could have internet access anytime, anywhere—especially while she was standing around like a statue at the most boring party ever recorded by man. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the desk as the computer took its time booting up. Maybe she should consider a replacement for this turtle-slow ancient relic, too—what with all my excess funds.

  When the internet was finally up and running she immediately went to her email, scanning the inbox. There it was—what do you mean, I didn’t win? She was completely shocked and borderline sickened. She pulled up the auction for further proof of this unexpected turn of events. The sale price: $58.51. The winner: tROVESoFsTUFF.

  “That BITCH!” she screeched.

  “What happened? Where am I?” Tara called out blearily
.

  “God! I can’t believe this shit! All because of Lillian’s fucking snore-fest!”

  Tara answered in perfect agreement, snoring gutturally from the couch—out like a light all over again.

  Catherine stared down the bid amount. How high would tROVESoFsTUFF have been willing to go—higher than I was, obviously. She stewed, staring at the screen like she could wish time back to when the auction was still running so she could put three figures in the bid field—$500 and to hell with her rent… or eating. And as for unexpected medical expenses, anything short of cancer she could treat at home.

  Really, Catherine Marie, hundreds of dollars for some old toy? Her mother’s voice was in her head, berating her for even thinking it. She knew it was crazy. There was absolutely no reason for her to spend that kind of money on a plastic house and a doll; yet she wanted it. She really wanted to have it back. It was hers. It was Josephine’s. It was all that was left of that time in her life and now it belonged to someone else all over again.

  She could always keep looking. Antique shops and eBay—someone was bound to list one again. It wasn’t like there was only one in the world; yet now that she knew that hers was still out there, in the hands of some skank who went by the ridiculous name of tROVESoFsTUFF, she didn’t have the heart to get just any Caramellie.

  *****

  “Yo! Cat! Wake up, bitch!” Tara said, towering over her.

  “What is it?” She made a move to get up. Her head felt like lead, not from drinking but from falling asleep with it hanging over the back of her chair at the computer desk. She groaned, trying to roll rather than lift her head into a more normal position.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t wake yourself up with all that snoring.”

  “Oh, don’t talk to me about snoring,” Catherine warned.

  “And to think I felt bad about the puddle of drool I left on your cushion.”

  “Nasty!”

  “Well, you could have at least put me to bed.”

  “So you could drool all over my pillow instead? No thank you.” Catherine rubbed at her stiff neck. “Besides, I was afraid you would try to kiss me if I got any closer.”

  “As if. Even if I was into chicks, you wouldn’t be my type.” She was haughty and seemed incredibly bright and chipper for someone who should have a vicious hangover right now. But maybe that was because she was still in her twenties and her body bounced back with gusto no matter what she threw at it.

  Ah, those were the days….

  For a moment Catherine’s mind went to Georgia; someone who knew what it was like to be thirty-something and feeling every year of it; someone who had been alive in the seventies. Catherine was trapped between two stages of life and didn’t fit in either of them. Georgia was leaving her in the dust with the partying singles who actually belonged there while she was really just an old hag who belonged married or put out to pasture. That fact had become even more clear as she stood around at the boss’s soiree last night wondering if standing still for too long really led to varicose veins, and as she carefully avoided the circulating food of mini quiches and stuffed mushrooms and other things that caused her aging digestive system mild to serious angst, and as she carefully limited the alcohol not just because her boss was there but also because she had to work today and didn’t want to feel like her head was breaking open and birthing an alien while she was trying to earn the bucks to pay for Caramellie—dammit! She was a loser all around. And now, to add insult to injury, here she was sharing her small space with the epitome of youth who was standing before her after no less than a bottle of wine all to herself, while Catherine couldn’t even stand up because her old bag of bones had formed to the chair overnight.

  “What’s up with you?” Tara asked. “Did you turn into an eighty-year-old man overnight?”

  “I think I did,” she answered flatly, tossing her hands hopelessly and accidentally brushing the keyboard, waking the computer up.

  “What the hell is that?” Tara asked.

  “Oh, that… it’s just eBay. I—I couldn’t sleep and was searching around randomly—must have been just the right thing to knock me out.”

  “Is this what you were doing when you should have been at the party?”

  “What? No—no, of course not,” Catherine said briskly, feeling the momentary complaint from her neck muscles as she moved her head dismissively. She reached for the mouse to close the window but Tara beat her to it.

  “Oh my God, it is what you were up to, isn’t it?” she demanded, scrolling the screen. Like everybody else on the planet, she knew her way around an auction and quickly clicked on the list of bidders. “And who is that?” she challenged.

  Catherine stared guiltily at the screen, wondering why she hadn’t been more imaginative with her name all those years ago when she first signed up—HemmCat, real swift.

  “Well, I was just—”

  “You were just in some kind of bidding war.” Tara pointed at the screen judgmentally.

  The list alternated between HemmCat and tROVESoFsTUFF, showing successive dollar values. It seemed that tROVESoFsTUFF had bid over and over, bit by bit, until she reached fifty, and then must have thrown all caution to the wind to get over the top with just seconds left.

  Missed it by that much, Catherine thought dejectedly.

  “So what’s the deal?” Tara asked.

  “It’s nothing. Seriously.”

  “It was important enough that you put your job at stake.”

  “Lillian wasn’t going to fire me for missing the party.”

  “She very well might have and you know it.”

  “But I got there. And she didn’t.”

  “And you slept in front of the sorry auction you lost because of it, but you’re going to tell me that it’s nothing important?”

  “Exactly.”

  “You are a piece of work, Cat.”

  “Like you’ve never chased an auction before… on a CD perhaps?” she prodded, knowing full well that Tara had her own account on eBay and a borderline addiction to bizarre and rare music.

  “Of course I have. But—”

  “But what?”

  “But I actually won it,” Tara said wickedly.

  “Very funny.”

  “Seriously, it isn’t healthy to be so freaked over an auction that you almost skipped work.”

  “A work event,” Catherine clarified.

  Tara smirked distastefully. “And then you fell asleep in front of the screen that was denouncing you a loser.”

  “I know,” she admitted lowly, unable to fight back against the truth.

  “Then what gives? It’s not like you almost had your hands on a designer dress or purse for chump change. It’s a toy.”

  “You really want to know?” she challenged.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “I’ll tell you. It was my favorite toy. Not just one like it, but the one!”

  Tara shut up for a moment, weighing the intensity of her reaction. “Well, thank God you didn’t win it for sixty bucks. Chasing your past for that much? Buy yourself a purse, I say.” With that she walked off toward the bathroom.

  It was only $58.51, bitch.

  “By the way,” Tara called out from behind the closed door, “I need to borrow some clothes, straight down to the underwear, or else we need to go over to my apartment on the way to work.”

  -9-

  It was Saturday night. For all intents and purposes people like her should be out partying and hooking up, but Catherine couldn’t get her head on anything but how Caramellie had slipped out of her hands. This fixation was unhealthy. She could see her life wasting away, not that she personally was going to waste away—the almost decimated calzone in front of her was proof of that. No, appetite loss was definitely not a side effect of this condition, but withdrawal seemed a real risk. The weekend was supposed to be made for singles, but this weekend it felt like her couch was made for her ass.

  At least she had gone out. It wasn’t like she mop
ed the day away, pining for her lost treasure. She’d been up and at ‘em and productive; went garage saling with Georgia first thing—well, in the a.m. at least. Catherine had even initiated it, calling Georgia up in spite of her vow not to speak to her again after being ditched with Mr. Wednesday night, Mitchell Anderson III. She had been completely charitable and totally forgiving, and Georgia, for her part, had avoided making any comments about how she had left Mitch with the bar tab. In fact, when she offered to come for a visit and do something fun like hit some garage sales the way they used to back in college when they needed to furnish their dorm room, Georgia had been genuinely touched by the offer and probably considered it amends for all the bad things she had been doing lately. Now they were even again. They both knew that Catherine never asked to come to Jersey—had to be begged and cajoled and bribed to cross the bridge. What Georgia didn’t know was that this time she had an ulterior motive; she was on a mission to find Caramellie. It wouldn’t be her Caramellie, but she was working on that part….

  Georgia had unceremoniously dumped her after lunch for bigger and better plans with her new friends. A party with people who would become the ones she turned to first: for advice about parenting, setting up playdates, joining mommy clubs, and all the other sickening sweet things that parents did these days. She couldn’t be that person for Georgia even if she wanted to. Catherine’s nose was definitely a little out of joint, but it wasn’t like she could hold her friend back. And there was still Tara to hang out with after Georgia’s Stepford conversion was complete. Tara wasn’t planning on getting hitched—probably ever. And so help me, if Tara does get married before I do then I’ll know it’s time to kill myself.

  On the bright side, Catherine had hit every antique store on the way home, scoping out their goods. She had never even realized that there were six of them along the route between her and Georgia. Unfortunately though, the closest she’d come to finding Caramellie was a Sweet Treats cookie house that was actually more like an efficiency, housing Vanilly Lily who was so not Caramellie. Plus, it was still in its package and the storeowner was asking fifty bucks for it. Ludicrous. But at least looking was free.