Satisfaction Guaranteed

by Karelia Stetz-Waters

  “So, we have a month to get over a hundred thousand dollars?” Cade asked. “That does make a person worry.”

  “Swing Set is a woman-owned company. They knew Ruth,” Delmar said. “They liked what she was trying to do. They said if you could prove the store was financially viable, they’d work on a payment plan.”

  “So, we work with one company and then what?” Cade said. “We owe the other two suppliers and mortgages on the house. You’re basically saying my aunt willed us bankruptcy.”

  “A challenge!” Roger Elgin smiled encouragingly at his daughter.

  “Why did she do this?” Cade leaned her forehead on the tips of her fingers.

  “The Spirit of the Universe moved her,” Roger Elgin said.

  “This is Ruth’s dream,” Pepper Elgin added, “and we honor that.”

  “Joyfully,” Roger Elgin added.

  “No. We don’t honor it joyfully.” Cade looked back and forth between her parents. “You move to Portland and run a boutique. I’m not moving to Portland to run Ruth’s gift shop. I run your gallery.”

  “Our gallery,” her parents said in unison.

  “Can we just do a short sale?” Cade asked.

  “Hell no.” Becket placed her palms on the table. “You can’t do that to Selena.”

  Selena loved that Becket knew what a short sale was and was defending her against it…whatever it was.

  “Is the store profitable?” Cade asked. “Could we get it out of debt fast?”

  “Not even close.” Delmar shook his head. “The store loses money every month, but Ruth believed in you. She said you have the know-how, and Selena had the passion.”

  Cade looked at Selena.

  “I didn’t expect this,” Selena said quickly. “I’m not one of those people who comes in and tries to change someone’s will right as they’re dying. I wanted her erotic coffee table books, maybe some teacups, or her snow globes. That’s all. But you probably want the snow globes. I didn’t scam her. I swear.”

  “Selena would never do that,” Becket said.

  Cade’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t think you scammed her. I think this is my family.” She glared at her parents. “This is what they do.”

  “This will be a wonderful adventure for you, honey,” Pepper Elgin said.

  “I have a life in New York,” Cade said.

  “Not much of a life.” Pepper Elgin reached across the table and patted her daughter’s arm.

  “Thanks, Mom. I’m not moving to Portland.” Cade said it with disgust.

  “What’s wrong with Portland?” Selena asked.

  How could Cade not want to move to Portland? Portland was lovely. It was February, but soon the city would bloom with roses and rhododendrons. And Cade had held Selena in the rain. And it was the sweetest, safest thing she’d felt in so long. How could Cade not want to…drop everything to move across the country to live with a stranger she’d hugged once? Okay. Yes. Selena could imagine why Cade didn’t want to do that.

  Cade leaned back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling and running a hand through her blond hair.

  “Everything,” Cade said. “It’s wet. It’s full of nature. I don’t live here!”

  “You love being on the river,” Roger Elgin said.

  “Rowing crew is not nature. And I am not going to drop everything because my aunt had a whim.”

  “Thou must embark,” Roger Elgin declared. “Forward, Odysseus.”

  “I am not embarking,” Cade protested. “Are those the accounts?” Cade gestured to a stack of papers on the table in front of Delmar.

  He passed them over. Cade examined them. She looked sexy reading them, like a CEO who’d been called away from her weekend at the lodge to handle a crisis at work. She also looked tired, although the shadows under her eyes only enhanced her good looks. Circles under Selena’s eyes said, I shouldn’t have done that last night. The circles under Cade’s eyes said, I could be a soulful Norwegian model.

  “This is bad.” Cade turned a page. “How do you even…” She looked up. “Did she pay taxes? This has to be a short sale.”

  What was a short sale? Selena didn’t know, but it meant selling. And that meant losing Ruth again. Selena had just started thinking about the possibilities: living in Ruth’s house, with Ruth’s memories, pruning the wisteria, watching the garden flower in the spring. She couldn’t lose it already.

  “It’s a wonderful shop!” Selena said. Cade had to understand. “You’ll love it.”

  “What kind of store is it?” Cade asked warily.

  “A feminist sex toy store.”

  That alone should make Cade want to work there. Who wouldn’t want to teach vulva owners about their bodies and empower everyone to enjoy healthy sexuality?

  Apparently, Cade.

  Cade closed her eyes and rubbed her face.

  “Of course it is,” she said.

  “We sell cookware too,” Selena coaxed. Come on. Smile. We’ll have fun. We can do this. “And candles. Christmas stuff.”

  “Why do you sell Christmas stuff at a sex toy store?” Cade asked. “No. I don’t care. Because it’s my aunt. Of course she sells sex toys and Christmas stuff.”

  “And cookware.”

  Obviously that didn’t make it better.

  Cade leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “And we teach classes,” Selena said.

  “On cooking?”

  “On sex.”

  “Right.”

  “Do you want to add cooking classes? We could teach cooking. Well, I can’t. I don’t cook, but someone does. We could even make it sexy cooking, maybe make a whole meal where everything is in the shape of a vulva. Although there’s no kitchen. It would have to be…plates of cheese or something.” Selena should stop talking now, but she didn’t. “Or fruit. We could do melon carving.” Please say yes. Please stay. “Or maybe we could—”

  “The store is a hundred thousand dollars in debt,” Cade said. “I don’t want to make a vagina cheese plate.”

  “Vulva,” Selena corrected.

  Cade ran her hands through her hair again.

  For a moment, Selena thought Cade was going to stand up and walk out.

  “Ruth said you were a genius at business,” Delmar offered.

  “I am,” Cade said.

  Cade looked like she’d been awake for days. Ruth had told Selena how much Cade did for her parents. She’d shown Selena pictures from Cade’s Instagram. She works too hard, Ruth always said. Cade probably needed to lie down. She needed someone to rub her shoulders and make her cereal and play ASMR videos for her until she fell asleep. Selena would do all of that if Cade would just agree to stay and save Ruth’s store and her beautiful house.

  “What happens if Selena wants to stay, and I go back to New York?” Cade looked at Selena, her blue eyes kind but determined. “I could give you some advice or find a good tax preparer.”

  “It has to be a joint effort,” Delmar said. “Honestly, I don’t think Ruth really considered that you’d say no. But if you do, it just goes into probate and then you collect whatever’s left over, which is probably nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Selena,” Cade said. “The debt load on the store…a second mortgage. There’s no way.”

  Chapter 7

  Suddenly, everyone was talking at once, all of them looking at Cade. Cade opened her mouth to speak, but there was no way she was getting a word in edgewise, even if she knew what to say.

  “We can watch ASMR videos,” Selena said. “There’s one where a woman brushes her cat.”

  What?

  “You really do need more friends,” Cade’s mother said. “Selena would make a nice friend.”

  “We switched you at birth so we could have an accountant in the family,” her father said.

  “You should get out more,” her mother went on. “You’re twenty-nine. Portland would be good for you. You’re so responsible. You could get old before your time. They say that’s happening to mille
nnials. They aren’t drinking or having sex.”

  “Pepper, she doesn’t want to get drunk and have sex,” her father said. “This is her raison d’être. To do business.” He waved his hands as though performing a magic trick.

  “There’s too much debt,” Cade said.

  “Something will work out. It always does,” her mother said.

  But it didn’t. People got run over by buses. People found terrible things in their fast food. Right now, a gallery was showing an installation of selfies people took right before stepping backward off cliffs or getting eaten by hippopotamuses.

  “I’ll help,” Selena added. “I know the store. Isn’t it at least worth a try? It’s an opportunity. It’s one month. You’re a businesswoman. Ruth said that’s what you were good at.”

  “It’s what you do,” Pepper Elgin agreed.

  “If you’ve kept your parents out of trouble all these years, you could give Ruth’s shop a chance,” Delmar said.

  “Please,” Selena said.

  “We all have one great calling, and this is yours,” her father added, “to do the books!”

  Cade did so much more for the gallery. She chose the shows. She coaxed shy artists out of attic studios. She tracked down graffiti artists no one knew by name. She had no social life because she was always at events and openings courting buyers. And all anyone saw was her parents, and all her parents saw was a free accountant.

  “You don’t get to have it both ways.” Cade stood up, pushing her chair back with a clatter. “Either I know how to do this and you trust me, or I don’t and you can do whatever you like with the property. But you can’t say I’m the goddess of accounting, and then say I’m accounting wrong. This business has tanked. The ship sailed. The train wrecked. I’m telling you because I know.”

  “Isn’t it worth at least trying?” Selena’s dark eyes pleaded. She leaned forward, hands clasped on the table. She was bowing before Cade. For a moment, Cade imagined Selena was begging her to stay: please stay, Cade, so we can embark on this adventure together. Cade almost relented.

  Then Cade’s mother said, “You’re so good at this stuff, honey. It’s who you are.”

  And Selena said, “I’ve fucked up half my life. This is my chance to get my shit together. I want to own a business.”

  And Cade swept the papers off the table and walked out.

  Cade didn’t wait for an Uber. The fastest Uber arrival would still give her family and Selena, Delmar, and Selena’s friend Becket, who’d spent the whole time glaring at her like a vicious elf, time to rush out of Delmar’s office and keep telling her how she was the patron saint of TurboTax.

  It’s who you are.

  What if I want to be someone else?

  Instead, she ducked down an alley (which might have been someone’s backyard) then turned left, then right, then left again, walking as quickly as she could without jogging. Rain seeped into her gray suede Cole Haans.

  No. No. No. I don’t want this.

  It didn’t take her long to emerge on a busy street lined entirely with brew pubs.

  Which one would Selena and her parents never go to?

  Rookies Beers and Balls fit the bill. A neon football and basketball flashed below the sign. She escaped inside. Televisions lined every wall. She ordered a grilled chicken breast salad and found the quietest corner, deep in the bar where she could probably escape to the bathroom if, by some miracle, the entourage found her. She called Amy.

  Amy picked up on the second ring. Cade could hear the sounds of Amy’s vegan food truck in the background.

  “Hi, baby doll. How’s it going?” Amy asked.

  There was a scrabble of sound as Amy put her earbuds in. The sound of sizzling told Cade Amy was at the grill. She could picture Amy’s round, rosy face smiling into the steam of frying bok choy.

  “You won’t believe this,” Cade said. “No. You totally will. It’s my family.”

  “Your mom didn’t buy that alpaca, did she?” Amy said cheerfully. “I love your mom.”

  Cade’s parents visited Amy’s food truck at least once a week. It was disturbing that they’d mentioned the alpaca to her. The alpaca could not go from passing-whim to plan-you-tell-friends.

  “My aunt willed me a sex toy store,” Cade said.

  “What?” Amy called over the noise of the grill.

  “A bankrupt sex toy store,” Cade projected over the sound of Guns N’ Roses.

  A bro at another table grinned at her.

  “Aw! Hell yeah!” Amy said. “Classic Elgin! God, I wish I had your family.”

  Amy had been raised by matching CFOs who worked until midnight and lived in a house entirely furnished in white linen. Maybe she and Cade had been switched at birth.

  “I’m supposed to stay here and run it for a month until it goes completely under,” Cade said. “I mean the idea is that I wrestle it back from death and then as punishment for that, I get half of it. And I have to run it with her friend. She gets the other half.”

  “I’m taking ten,” Amy said to someone in the truck. When she was away from the sound of frying, Amy said, “Okay, tell me again. Everything.”

  Cade described the meeting with Delmar. She left out the moment of panic she’d felt as she cut across someone’s side yard. Is this really who I am? For the rest of my life?

  “Are you sure it’s not worth staying in Portland to see if you can make it work?” Amy asked. “It’s just a month.”

  “Of course it’s worth staying in Portland for a month.” Cade took a napkin and rubbed at a sticky spot on the table. “I’d be crazy not to. If there’s a chance in hell…Portland real estate is hot. That house is worth half a million at least. I’ll have to talk Selena into selling. I think she’d want to keep the store and the house. We’ll figure something out if hell freezes over and we don’t lose everything.”

  “Selena?” Amy asked with interest.

  “Ruth’s friend.”

  “Is she nice?”

  Yes.

  “A little all over the place.”

  “Old?” Amy asked.

  “About our age.”

  Cade knew what was coming next.

  “Cute?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Which means yes.”

  “Okay. Yes.”

  “And you need a vacation,” Amy said.

  “I love working at the gallery, and this isn’t a vacation.”

  “‘Portland: where young people go to retire,’” Amy quoted from Portlandia. “A change of scene.”

  The bartender delivered Cade’s salad. At least, he delivered a pile of iceberg lettuce and a pale, thin chicken breast. Basically, the plate said, Fuck you for ordering healthy at a sports bar. Cade poked the chicken with her fork. It had the consistency of leather.

  “I’m not going to point out the obvious,” Amy said, which meant Amy was going to point out the obvious. “Maybe this is what you need. You know. To get there.”

  To have an orgasm.

  When Cade had told Amy, when they were nineteen, that she’d never had an orgasm, it wasn’t that big a deal. Nineteen. They were still kids. But at twenty-nine…Amy had been checking in to see if Cade had gotten there for ten years, and the answer was always the same. It really isn’t that big a deal to me.

  Of course it was.

  The blogs called it “pre-orgasmic” as though “post-orgasmic” was a guarantee. Cade didn’t think so.

  “You could try one of everything at the store,” Amy said. “Maybe it’ll help. Like those desensitization therapies they do if you’re afraid of flying.”

  “I’m not afraid of sex toys.”

  “Maybe you could date a little bit in Portland. Maybe this Selena woman.”

  Cade could have dated a little bit in New York if she thought anything good would come of it. The last woman she’d slept with had literally kicked her out of bed for poor performance, then called a week later to ask if Cade’s parents would look at some of her work. Most of th
e women Cade met wanted her parents to look at their work.

  It was part of why Cade hadn’t had a lot of sex. It was better to think of it that way—not a lot of sex—than to actually count. Six times. She’d been shy at nineteen and too busy with school and the gallery to meet someone. Then suddenly she was twenty-five, then twenty-nine. It was like being out of the job market for too long. Eventually you couldn’t get back in.

  “It’s not that it’s so bad to stay in Portland for a month. I’ll live. It’s just that they all expected me to do this,” Cade said. “This was my aunt’s crazy idea, and no one asked me, and I’m just supposed to say, Sure, Ruth. I’ll put my whole life on hold, so that you can not know that I did this because, obviously, you’re dead.”

  “Maybe your aunt picked you because she thought this would be good for you.”

  “Please don’t tell me that she secretly guessed about…” Cade ate a piece of sad lettuce.

  “Your sexual dysfunction?”

  Cade could see Amy’s brow furrowed with concern.

  “Ugh. Don’t say it like that. It sounds like I need Viagra.”

  “There is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Cade didn’t bother lying and saying she wasn’t ashamed. That would just prolong the conversation.

  “Selena gave the worst eulogy ever.”

  Cade described it. Amy laughed her big, full-bodied laugh.

  “I love her already,” Amy said. “She works at the sex toy store. She talked about your aunt’s clit. She could definitely help you. Give you advice. Like a mentor.”

  “No,” Cade said, loud enough to break through “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” “I am not going to tell her anything,” Cade said at a lower volume.

  She hadn’t thought about actually being at the sex toy store with Selena. They would have to talk to people about sex toys. Selena would have opinions. She’d ask Cade her opinions. Selena had probably had sex with dozens—hundreds?—of gorgeous people. She was probably the kind of person who had sex with someone once and ruined them forever. After Selena, no one else would be good enough.

  “Fuck me.” Cade leaned her head on her palm.