After she awoke from an afternoon nap, she lay on her sofa, frowning as she tried to recall the details of her dream. She’d been wearing her favorite red Ellen Tracy power suit and was surrounded by living Dollys. One Dolly was vowing that she’d get rid of invading varmints, while another insisted they should be cooked up and served with Horsey Sauce.
The dream’s meaning was perfectly clear. The varmints included those weasels, Derek and Erik. And the sauce, found in packets at any Arby’s, symbolized that tiresome ferret, RB.
She made herself a martini and returned to the sofa, tapping her glass with a manicured fingernail. She’d had just about enough of this whole ordeal. She was meant for bigger things, and she knew it. It was high time that everyone else understood it, too.
She’d started wadding up RB’s messages at work and erasing them from her home phone without bothering to listen. He thought he was clever not giving her a callback number, merely telling her what time to expect his next call. Idiot. Even if she’d had his number, she was no longer interested in tracking him down. She’d confirmed that no police record existed that could be used against her at Drayden’s. The store would never risk a lawsuit by firing her without evidence that she’d falsified her application. If petty gossip was enough to cost someone a job, even more of the country’s sluggards would be on welfare.
Her options regarding Derek and Erik were a bit murkier. Erik’s fate was the easier of the two. Since she knew that his father was an old classmate of Hershel’s, all she had to do was shepherd his promotion out of her store, no matter how much it rankled her. He could become someone else’s problem. She’d have to do a little research about what was available, but Hershel wouldn’t be able to find fault with her suggestion that Erik move to a better position at another location. She’d just have to select a store in which she herself had no interest. The last thing she wanted was to run into Erik again on her career path. Unless she was driving a Humvee.
The image made her smile with grim satisfaction, and she walked into the kitchen to get an olive for her second martini. She stared into her glass as if it might provide an equally appealing vision of what to do about Derek. She hadn’t dreamed he would be clever enough to evade her attempts to find out who’d handpicked his Drayden’s job for him. She’d started watching every person he spoke to in the store, but the only friend he seemed to have at work was that sloth, Vienna. They were both nobodies who’d started at the same time.
Think, she commanded herself. She gripped her glass so hard that the stem snapped. She poured the rest of her drink down the sink and tossed the broken glass into the trash with frustration. If only there weren’t so many stupid laws about confidentiality and privacy. Sure, they protected someone like her, who’d been guilty of nothing more than a little youthful folly. But they also thwarted her from getting access to Derek’s personnel file and finding out if she had any real reason to fear his Drayden’s connection.
What would Dolly do, she wondered.
She smiled again. Of course. She had to smoke the skunk out of the outhouse, which meant making Derek’s time at work even more miserable. In spite of his abysmal skills, Derek had been meeting his sales goals. That was thanks not only to that glorified gofer, Christian Mercer, but to the other shoe sellers, who were apparently protecting Derek from Natasha’s ire by directing customers his way.
She would put a stop to that by assigning Derek more tasks off the sales floor. If he thought he was unhappy now, he’d have greater reason to whine when his paychecks began to shrink. Money talked. If Derek did likewise, sooner or later his benefactor would confront Natasha, and her enemy would finally have a face and a name. Once she knew, she could plan her next step for eliminating Derek without risking her own career.
In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to be a little proactive in that regard. The upcoming Planter’s Day Sale would provide the perfect opportunity to shift her focus from Erik, Derek, and every other unpleasant part of her job and renew her acquaintance with the Lvandssons. Rumor had it that all three siblings would be present. Sven had the flaccid personality of an overcooked noodle, and Henrietta was essentially a boorish, overpaid stockroom clerk. But Drayden had always been pleasant to her.
She’d have to make sure everything was just right at the sale. She’d have a mental list of her accomplishments ready to share with Drayden, as well as visible signs that Women’s Shoes was one of the best-managed departments in the store.
She allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming about what she wanted next at Drayden’s: Hershel Wicks’s job. She was dazzled by the brilliant prospects available to her as the store’s manager. She could get rid of the slugs, slackers, and sluts who kept Drayden’s from realizing its full potential. Once she’d fixed things, she would rapidly progress up the ladder that she’d been climbing for years and escape this hellhole.
She looked around her dreary apartment and came back to reality with a dull thud. How had she ever ended up in this backwoods, at the mercy of sexist pigs and rodents like RB? It was the opposite path Dolly had taken when she escaped the Appalachians for Nashville and then Hollywood.
In her bedroom, Natasha retrieved her hidden key, then she let herself into the Doll House, as she liked to call it. After locking herself in, she sat down and picked up one of the Dollys. She absentmindedly began to run a tiny comb through the doll’s hair and thought about growing up in Beverly Hills.
She’d been ten years old the day she came home from school to find that in eight hours, her bedroom had been transformed into an environment as sterile and uncluttered as the rest of the Deere house. “Toys are for children,” she’d been told. “Dolls are for little girls. You don’t want people to think you’re a baby, do you?”
No one had thought to consider that she actually was a child. She was advised to begin focusing on her schoolwork. Her parents had high expectations that didn’t allow the time or space for playing or daydreaming.
She became more reclusive at home and at school. She knew well what was demanded of her in either setting, and she learned to stifle her desire to run and play, to giggle and have friends over, to jump rope and twirl in endless circles that would make the skirts she wore flare outward in broad umbrellas of fabric.
Those things didn’t fit in with the image of who Natasha was supposed to be. She was to be seen and not heard, or heard only after being spoken to. She should be perfectly manicured and dressed in case Daddy had a client over. She was to keep her room spotless, her grades high, and her manners in check. She was supposed to be the Perfect Daughter. And she always did what she was supposed to.
She turned the doll over in her hands, barely seeing it as she continued to brush its hair, her lips pursed together.
When she was twelve years old, she’d awakened in the middle of the night with a stomachache. She endured it for as long as she could before going downstairs. Her parents were watching The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Natasha paused in the doorway, listening to the woman who sat on the guest couch talking to Johnny. She was entranced by the way her clothes sparkled, and by the pile of blond hair on her head. The woman laughingly recounted tales of growing up in a poor family of twelve children. But Johnny told the audience that determination and hard work had been her means of escape and made her one of the most successful performers in the world.
Something simple and honest about the woman had clutched Natasha’s heart. In spite of all the makeup and the wig, the long fake fingernails, and what had to be surgically enhanced breasts, she seemed like the most real person Natasha had ever seen. When Johnny introduced her song and called her Dolly Parton, Natasha’s stomachache went away. She felt like she’d been given a new doll, one that was her own special secret.
That night had steeled her resolve. If Dolly could flee the mountains of Tennessee, then Natasha could also escape. She had demanded to be sent away to school, and her parents, sensing something new and frightening about her, had gladly acquiesced. It was a concession
that would be repeated many times. They were always willing to spend money to keep her from becoming a problem, including the bribe her father had paid to get her out of that little shoplifting indiscretion.
Ultimately, she’d severed all her ties with them, always moving farther away from Beverly Hills, with only one constant in her life: her secret Dolly collection. She didn’t need a family or friends. She didn’t need the esteem of her employees or the respect of her bosses. Any rare moment of weakness, when she felt sad or lonely, would vanish in an instant, just like her childhood stomachache, in the reassuring company of her dolls.
DeWitt and RB had violated that sacred, solitary world, but just like Dolly, she would not be kept down by anyone. All she needed was a chance to impress Drayden Lvandsson at the sale, and she could set in motion her eventual escape from Mall of the Universe.
Then one day, when she had all the professional security she craved, she could be more like Dolly. She could charm people with a bright smile and nurture deserving employees with patience and understanding, so that they, too, would become successes.
She combed the doll’s long blond tresses with increasingly rapid strokes until she looked down to see a wad of hair on her skirt next to the bald doll head.
23
Close Encounters of the
Spurred Kind
Vienna pulled back the long braids of her wig and felt annoyed all over again by the edict from management to dress in overalls for the night. Drayden’s had two huge sale events every year: the Planter’s Day Sale in the spring and the Harvest Day Sale in autumn. Employees were strongly encouraged to dress as if they were about to plow the north forty. It all smacked of conformism to Vienna. She loved wearing denim, but the overalls looked peculiar with her Lillith Allure smock, which she was still required to wear.
According to Drayden’s lore, the Lvandsson family threw a party in the original Drayden’s store the night before their first Planter’s Day Sale. Everybody in town attended to polka till dawn, then returned a few hours later to snatch up half-price Cattle Cozies, manure spreaders, and farm wear.
Sven Lvandsson saw the marketing genius of keeping the store open the night before the big sale, but he had long since discontinued the polka party aspect. Now the event was referred to as Planter’s Day Preview Night. Drayden’s best customers, especially those with the best credit ratings, were invited to grab discounted items the night before the big sale began.
The Planter’s Day Sale was when Drayden’s made the lion’s share of its profits, so it was considered a big deal. The actual sale lasted two weeks. Shifts were extended to twelve-hour days, since business would nearly triple during that time frame. Drayden’s employees had already run themselves ragged for over a week, marking down merchandise, reorganizing stockrooms, and preparing for the general mayhem that lay ahead.
Vienna had been scheduled for the evening shift of Preview Night, which meant she had to work six hours, help close the department at the end of the day, clean and restock her entire counter, then change at the last minute to work for the rest of the night. At least the people on the morning shift got four hours off before returning to work the sale. Nobody could tell the employees exactly how long Planter’s Day Preview Night would last. By the time customers began trickling into the store, Vienna was already exhausted.
Her counter became swamped within minutes, and she delegated Bianca to stay on the cash register while she and Meg assisted as many customers as they could. Luckily, the first hour flew by, and when the crowd around their counter thinned, Vienna said, “I need a break. I’ll see if I can manage to bring back bottles of water.”
“Oh, man,” Meg said, adjusting the straps of her overalls. “This better not be one of your infamous half-hour breaks, Vienna. I’m all for slacking, as you know, but not tonight. Okay?”
“Okay. I promise I’ll be right back,” Vienna insisted. “I still can’t believe you actually wore overalls.”
“Like we had a choice. I’m sure if we didn’t follow the dress code, we’d be sold and shipped off to work in some Drayden’s factory in Idaho. I may have conformed, but don’t worry. I’m still me,” Meg said, lifting a foot to show off her combat boot. “You never know when the enemy will strike. If one of these bitches gets out of line, I’ll dropkick her to the other end of the mall.” An elegantly dressed woman had walked up to the counter and apparently overheard Meg’s comment, since she looked taken aback. Meg smiled broadly, waved Vienna away, and said, “Hi, may I help you?”
Bianca suddenly gasped and ducked beneath the counter. When Vienna turned around, she found herself face-to-face with the store manager, Hershel Wicks. He was flanked on one side by a hatchet-faced woman in a red denim suit with a walkie-talkie clipped to the pocket of her blazer, and on the other side by a grinning man in a royal blue Versace suit. Hershel’s friends looked like backup singers for Elton John being escorted to the stage by a Jewish farmer.
“Good evening, Vienna,” Hershel said pleasantly. “I’d like to introduce to you Henrietta and Drayden Lvandsson.”
“It’s lovely to meet—” Vienna was drowned out when Henrietta’s walkie-talkie suddenly screeched with feedback.
“The pleasure’s all—” Drayden stopped and frowned at Henrietta when her walkie-talkie squawked again. “Turn the damn thing off, Henri!”
Henrietta grabbed the walkie-talkie and bellowed, “What? Over.”
“Shipment number twelve out of Bologna to Detroit was accidentally diverted to Dayton,” a voice reported through a crackle of static. “Do we reship to Detroit? Over.”
“Yes! And call me on my cell phone! Over!” Henrietta said.
“Security breach in sector seven,” a different voice said. “Customers copulating in copy room on four. Over.”
“I’m on it. Over,” Henrietta said. She slapped Hershel on the back and said, “These sale events get crazier every year. I’ll catch up to you guys later.”
As she strode away, Drayden said, “You’ll have to excuse my sister’s impropriety. All those years working with pit crews has sullied her femininity. What little there was to begin with.” Drayden laughed at his own joke, and Hershel joined in nervously. Vienna’s polite smile clashed with her scrutinizing stare as she studied Drayden. He remained in close proximity to Hershel, even putting his arm around the store manager’s shoulders as he continued speaking. “Hershel told me about your heroic efforts with the Lillith Allure people. I had to meet the woman who practically brought a bull to its knees.”
“With all due respect, sir, I had nothing to do with stopping the bull,” Vienna said. “What have you been telling him, Hershel?”
Drayden tightened his grip on Hershel’s shoulder and shook him playfully as he said, “Have you been pulling my leg, old man? You could at least be a gentleman and pull the other one, too, while you’re at it.”
Hershel reddened and said, “Vienna was instrumental in making Sheila Meyers feel at home during her visit to Drayden’s.”
“Yes. I received a call from Lillith Parker and Frank Allen,” Drayden said. “Despite the incident, they reported that Sheila had nothing but wonderful words for our Miss Vienna.”
Vienna felt like a child who’d eaten all of her vegetables; both men gazed at her with dopey smiles. She looked around uneasily, as if searching for an escape route. Instead, she saw Derek standing on the edge of the carpet in Women’s Shoes, greeting people as they entered his department. He looked cute in his overalls and floppy straw hat.
“Actually, I can’t take all the credit for Sheila’s happy times in Indiana,” she said, stepping between Hershel and Drayden. She linked arms with Drayden and led him toward Derek, deciding to gloss over the fact that she’d called in sick the day of Sheila’s appearance. “It’s true; I did everything I could to welcome Sheila and make her in-store appearance run smoothly. But anyone could’ve done that. It was my friend Derek who went above and beyond the call of duty outside the store.”
“How so?�
�� Drayden asked.
“I’ll let Derek tell you,” Vienna said. She introduced Derek to Drayden and said, “I was telling Mr. Lvandsson about your stellar encounter with Sheila Meyers.”
“My what?” Derek asked.
“He’s so modest,” Vienna stated. “You know, Derek. The way you comforted Sheila after that horrible incident with the bull, then called your friend Davii onto the scene when her hairdresser was incapacitated.” She turned to Drayden and added, “It was a brilliant idea. She took Davii with her for the rest of her tour.”
“Quick thinking, Derek,” Drayden praised, wrapping his arm around Derek’s shoulders and knocking the straw hat from his head. “Obviously Hershel was brilliant to hire you.”
Vienna noticed that Natasha, who’d been conversing with a customer, was now slowly moving closer to them with a menacing expression. She, too, was wearing the requisite overalls, but hers were pressed, bore a DKNY logo, and were dressed up with a fitted blazer and dangerously pointed high heels.
“I completely agree,” Vienna said. “In fact, Derek was in a few of my training classes. I hate to admit this, but at the time I wasn’t sure that Drayden’s was the right place for me. Derek convinced me to stick it out and not give up. He knew the job was made for me. He’s so good at reading people.”
“Vienna’s manager recently recommended her for the management program,” Hershel added.
“See? Derek knew I was management material,” Vienna said. Natasha was now standing almost directly behind Derek. Vienna knew she had to throw all her eggs in one basket and do it quickly, before they boiled under Natasha’s wrath. “Anyway, it was Derek who realized that the situation with the bull might mar Drayden’s relationship with Lillith Allure. He did everything he could to smooth things over with Sheila. He even took her out that evening for a tour of the mall. She left with a good impression of Drayden’s, instead of memories of a raging, snorting beast.”
Someone Like You Page 24