Love Sold Separately

by Ellen Meister

  “You can’t! You’ll be famous. You need a certain look.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “No,” Chelsea said, adamant. “I am not letting you walk around in torn jeans and concert T-shirts. What will people think?”

  “Who cares?” Dana said, though in truth she thought she looked pretty cool in her concert tees and jeans. A pair of killer boots and a retro choker could elevate an I don’t give a damn look to I’m a little bit biker, a little bit rock and roll.

  “Dana, please. You can afford new clothes. You don’t have to go around looking like an adolescent.”

  “Maybe I’ll get some new T-shirts.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  Next she called her mother in Boca Raton, who said, “Oh, sweetheart. I’m so pleased for you! Unlike some people, I always had faith in you. Always. I have to run, darling. We have court time. Love you!”

  The “some people,” of course, referred to her father. Dana was pretty sure her mother hadn’t called him by name since the divorce. But then, once Mom had moved down to Florida and started her new life, she’d barely said the names of her daughters, either.

  Dana stared at her phone, wanting and not wanting to call her father. This news would impress him. And though she didn’t like to admit it, she craved his approval like crack.

  He doesn’t deserve this good news, she thought. I should just freeze him out. But then, giving up her Sweat City group was such a huge sacrifice that she felt she had earned the tingle of pride her father’s blessing would bestow. And so she scrolled through her contacts to his number, which was listed under Dr. Barry. It had been her own private little protest, not that different from her mother’s. In Dana’s case, she had been simply too chafed by her father to alphabetize him under “Dad.”

  “I have great news,” she said after he answered the phone with his gruff hello.

  “Did they promote you to manager?”

  “No, Dad. Don’t you remember what I was telling you about the Shopping Channel? It’s official. I signed the contract. I start tomorrow.” Without waiting for his reaction, she launched into the part she knew would impress him most—the money. She explained her base salary and the bonus structure, which could put her above what he had made during his best years as a neurologist.

  “And really,” she added, “it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. I couldn’t be—”

  “I agree,” he said.

  “You do?” Despite herself, Dana felt a beautiful warmth breaking through the cloud of her relationship with her father, as if a white-pink sun were finally shining down on her, brilliant and full of joy. She knew she was being ridiculous. She was, after all, a grown woman. There was no reason for her to feel like a teenager filling a page with happy face emoticons. And yet...

  “I’m proud of you,” he said.

  Dana swallowed against a lifetime of disappointment balled up in her throat. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Now surprise me and don’t get fired.”

  Ice water. Pouring from the sky in buckets and ruining everything. The sad part was that she should have seen it coming, because it always did.

  After the briefest pause, she choked out, “Love you, too, Dad,” and then disconnected the call without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  Dana’s airtime was 1:00 to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. For her first day, though, she was told to come in at eight thirty for orientation, which started with an hour-long meeting with Bess Haskins from HR, who began by asking Dana if she wanted free counseling to help deal with the trauma of Kitty’s death.

  “I’m fine,” Dana said, despite how shaky she felt every time the image of Kitty’s blood on the window made an unexpected appearance in her mind. “But thank you.”

  When pressed, she insisted that yes, she was sure. Because Dana knew she could handle it on her own, the way she handled everything. And besides, she didn’t want to start a new job looking like the delicate little ingenue who couldn’t take a punch.

  Bess went on to explain the benefits package and the company’s policies on everything from sexual harassment to security. Next, Dana had an appointment to see Sherry Zidel up on the top floor, and thought it might be her best opportunity to take a quick detour up to the roof to check around for that joint.

  She was greeted by Brenda, the pretty receptionist, who welcomed her aboard. Dana thanked her and said she had an appointment with Sherry.

  Brenda picked up her phone. “I’ll buzz Emily and she’ll come get—”

  “You know what? I need to learn my way around the place. Is it okay if I head back on my own?” She showed Brenda the security badge Bess Haskins had given her. “I’m official now.”

  “Of course,” the receptionist said, and gave Dana directions on getting to the hallway that led to Sherry’s office.

  Dana thanked her and went through the door, intentionally taking a wrong turn to head toward the end of the building where Kitty’s office was located. As soon as she turned the corner she saw that the yellow police tape was still there, blocking access. There were people about, so she couldn’t simply duck under it. It would have to wait. Damn.

  She turned back and found her way to Sherry’s office, where she had to linger in the anteroom with Emily while Sherry finished a meeting with someone else. When the door finally opened, Sherry emerged with the towheaded young man who had been Kitty Todd’s assistant. Emily and Sherry shared a look, and Dana surmised that it had to do with the young man’s emotional problems. He looked as if he’d been crying, and Dana hoped he was one of the employees who had accepted the offer of free counseling.

  “Dana,” Sherry said, “I don’t know if you’ve met Ollie Sikanen, our wonderful intern who joined us on an exchange program from Finland. We’ve been so lucky to have him.”

  Sherry was being patronizing, and it didn’t come naturally to her. She had the tight smile of someone handing back a baby that had just spit up.

  “It’s lovely to meet you,” Dana said gently to Ollie as she shook his cold, narrow hand.

  “Oh!” he replied, as if startled by the news. “It is lovely to meet you! I am a fan already.”

  He spoke with a Finnish accent, enunciating his words carefully. He had a post-hipster style of dressing that said I’m so fashion-forward I can pull clothes from a Dumpster and make them look cool. Today he wore skinny red corduroy pants with a burgundy plaid shirt and a white bow tie. It was a ridiculous getup but he managed to make it work. Dana gave him a soft smile before Emily guided him away.

  Dana followed Sherry into her office and took a seat across from her wide desk. She glanced around at the decor, and imagined that the interior designer had been instructed to give it a “power-fem” ambiance. The walls and furniture were white, but the side chairs were upholstered in pale pink, and the large window was dressed in heavy, black-and-white striped curtains with a satiny finish. Four large-screen television monitors were mounted on the wall across from the desk, so that Sherry could keep a constant eye on the programming.

  “What did you think of Ollie?” Sherry asked, taking a seat in the white leather armchair behind her desk.

  It struck Dana as an odd question. “I don’t know. He seems fine.”

  Sherry raised an eyebrow, as if she weren’t buying it.

  “Okay,” Dana admitted. “He seems a little off. But I guess that’s to be expected.”

  “He’s a crackerjack assistant. Great attention to detail, utterly doting.”

  “Kitty seemed pretty attached to him,” Dana offered. She couldn’t quite figure out where Sherry was going with all this.

  “They were thick as thieves. She trusted him implicitly.”

  “That’s important, I suppose.”

  Sherry adjusted her glasses. “Would you like him?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

 
“As your assistant.”

  At that, it all made sense. Sherry was trying to figure out what to do with this fragile, damaged intern, and figured she’d palm him off on Dana, who was taken aback by the very idea of having an assistant, let alone a broken one. Her first instinct was to say, No, thanks, make him someone else’s problem. But she stopped herself. Ollie would know more about Kitty than anyone else at the Shopping Channel. If Dana wanted to clear Lorenzo’s name by digging for information, Ollie was the place to start.

  “Okay,” Dana said. “I’ll take him.”

  “You will?”

  “He seems like a good kid.”

  “Great,” Sherry said, relieved. “Just great. He’ll be thrilled.”

  “Anything in particular I should know about him?” Dana asked.

  “He’s very loyal,” Sherry said, avoiding eye contact.

  “Yeah, I got that. But please, be straight with me. Is he going to be okay?”

  Sherry nodded, as if accepting a deal. “Look, I won’t lie. He’s taking this very hard—seems to think it’s his fault—but he’ll get over it. And really, he was a terrific assistant to Kitty. I mean, she was pretty demanding, so he’d have to be. But just know that he imprints like a baby duckling. So once he’s yours, he’s yours.”

  Dana nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

  She expected a tiny bit of warmth after that—or at least a perfunctory welcome aboard. Maybe some clucking about the tragedy of losing Kitty. But Sherry launched into a frigid monologue about sales figures, and Dana kept waiting for the ice to break. After a while, it became clear that Sherry’s goal was to intimidate her. And she succeeded. Dana felt shrunken by Sherry’s descriptions of the mountains she would need to scale on a daily basis to reach her benchmarks.

  Sherry went on to explain that unlike their larger competitors, the Shopping Channel sold only beauty and fashion products. She detailed the product lines and how decisions were made regarding which products to market on which shows. The hosts had no input on any of it. They were told what to sell, when to sell it and how many items they were expected to move. Sherry pulled out a massive binder of Excel spreadsheets that made Dana dizzy. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she would be dealing with the kind of grown-up job pressures she had never faced before. Dana always thought of herself as a worker, but her entire career history had consisted of acting gigs, ushering jobs, waitressing stints and insulting teenagers at a mall store. There was a lot of crap to deal with—from terrible bosses to internal politics to utter disasters—but this was different.

  Sherry said that she would walk Dana through the spreadsheets, but she didn’t. She ran. Or rather, she sprinted. It was barely comprehensible, yet Dana kept nodding and hoped that someone else would be willing to review it at a human speed.

  The only part she caught was the bit about the column tracking display inventory, because Sherry’s tone turned hostile, as if she expected Dana to be a thief.

  “People around here have sticky fingers,” Sherry warned, “so we keep careful track of the inventory.” She pointed for emphasis, and Dana wanted to smack her hand away. Or clamp her teeth on it.

  “Are you getting all this?” Sherry asked when Dana didn’t respond.

  “I think so,” Dana said. “I’m pretty sure you’d prefer if I didn’t steal anything.”

  Sherry didn’t laugh. “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Of course,” Dana said. “I’m sure I’ll catch on.”

  “Tell you what,” Sherry said, handing the binder to Dana. “Take this for a few days and study it. We can meet again on Friday.”

  Dana felt like she was back in high school math class, with a teacher who had just dropped a massive calculus textbook on the desk and announced there was a test on it at the end of the week.

  But Dana was a trained actor, and so she smiled brightly as if she had it all under control and thanked Sherry for agreeing to part with the binder. She thought Sherry would dismiss her then, but the producer clasped her hands on her desk and asked if HR had gone over the finer points of her contract.

  “We went over quite a bit, but—”

  “I just want to make sure you’re aware of how important it is to meet your benchmarks.” She laid a hand on the binder as if the secret of life were contained within its columns of numbers.

  “I think I get it,” Dana said.

  “Just so you understand. We don’t have much wiggle room here. This is a profit center with a lot of overhead and hundreds of salaries to pay. We have to make our numbers or we’re out of business. So if you miss your benchmarks...”

  “Of course,” Dana said. “I’m here to sell. I get it.”

  “And you understand the noncompete clause in your contract?”

  Of course I do, Dana thought. It means you own me. “Yes,” she said.

  “And if you’re looking for clearance to do any other projects, I’m the one you come to. But I’m warning you right now, I almost never say yes. I’m not trying to be a bitch. I’m just looking out for the Shopping Channel. There are other people here whose job it is to keep the talent happy. Me? I’m here to keep the lights on.”

  Sherry stood, indicating that the meeting was over. But when they stepped out of the office, Sherry asked her to wait a moment.

  “Get Ollie down here,” she said to Emily. “He has a new boss.”

  When the young man arrived, his eyes wide with joy, he insisted on carrying the heavy binder as he led Dana to her new dressing room. Sherry had described him accurately, though Dana thought he was as much puppy dog as he was duckling, hungry for affection and eager to please.

  They took the elevator to the second floor. “I hope you like the dressing room, Miss Dana,” he said as they walked down the hall.

  Miss Dana? She tried not to laugh, and told him to please just call her Dana.

  He lit up. “Okay, Dana,” he said. “The dressing room has no windows, Dana, but good walls. Pretty. All new furniture, too.”

  Dana didn’t know what “good walls” were, but when she arrived she understood that Ollie was pleased with the color of the fresh paint. Previously, he explained, it was coral, but it had been repainted in a soft sage green. Like most dressing rooms, it had a bunker-like feel, complete with dropped ceiling, but the long lighted mirror on the wall almost made up for it. In front of that was a white vanity counter and a sink. The rest of the space was set up like a cozy living room, with a beige sofa long enough to nap on, and matching upholstered side chairs. There was also an alcove with a full-length mirror and a portable chrome clothing rack, looking conspicuously naked.

  Dana still had time before her scheduled daily briefing on the product lineup she’d be selling, so she asked Ollie if he knew anything about spreadsheets.

  “Yes, I do, Dana! I reviewed the paperwork for Miss Kitty every week.”

  “Could I trouble you to explain it to me? I’m a little confused by it all.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Dana.”

  She took a seat next to him on the sofa, and tried to resign herself to the idea that he’d be using her name as often as he could. And as he went over what the different columns meant, it began to click.

  “I think I’m starting to get it,” she said.

  “Dana, that’s good. But please, I will review for you every page. Once I found for Miss Kitty a big mistake on her spreadsheet, and oh! She was so glad I saw this.” His eyes went moist.

  Dana took a tissue from the box on the side table and handed it to him. Then she delicately tiptoed through the conversational doorway he had opened.

  “I understand that you really liked working for her, Ollie. I just want to say that I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “She was a wonderful lady, Dana. Wonderful boss.”

  “If you ever want to talk, please feel free.”
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br />   He wiped his nose with the tissue. “Excuse me, Dana,” he said. “I don’t mean to be sad in front of you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “The policemen asked me so many questions, Dana. Do I think anyone would want to hurt Miss Kitty? Do I think she had a boyfriend? Do I think she had a lover here at the company?”

  Dana tried to keep her voice even. She knew Kitty was sleeping around, but if she had an actual relationship with someone at work, he would be a more important suspect than Lorenzo. “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth, of course, Dana!”

  She sighed. “I’m glad you’re cooperating with the police. I’m sure you’re eager to help them find...the truth.” She had wanted to say “killer,” but thought better of it. He was so fragile.

  “Then they asked if her boyfriend was married.”

  Married, she thought, and wondered if her suspicions about Charles Honeycutt were right.

  “And were you...forthcoming?” she asked.

  “I had to tell them the truth, right, Dana? I hope I didn’t get him in trouble.”

  “You did the right thing,” she said.

  “I know he wouldn’t hurt Miss Kitty. He loved her, Dana, and she loved him.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Oh, Miss Kitty trusted me. I had a very important job to keep her secret. But now...” He blew his nose.

  There was a soft knock on the door. It was Adam Weintraub, the curly-haired segment producer she had pegged as a new dad, who came to go over the details of what she needed to know for that day’s program. Ollie stood, as if waiting for instructions from Dana on whether it was okay for him to stay for the meeting.

  “Thank you, Ollie,” Dana said, dismissing him. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.” It was, she decided, important to set boundaries. Otherwise, he would expect to be privy to the minutiae of her life, and she couldn’t have that. Not while she was covertly investigating Kitty’s murder. And sure, he seemed trustworthy, and willing to do anything for her. But she needed to keep Lorenzo’s past a secret, and that meant keeping her interest in the case as quiet as possible.