The Ides of Matt 2015

by M. L. Buchman

  Kari’s nerves suddenly roared awake.

  She turned her attention to Perrin and saw the worry there.

  Kari couldn’t imagine that she was about to be fired. Perrin’s Glorious Garb needed to be adding more people, not cutting them. And she’d finally come to terms with not being Perrin…mostly.

  But Perrin’s worried look didn’t go away. Not a good thing; she and Perrin tended to buoy each other up. The CEO could always calm them down, but Melanie was in Paris on her honeymoon.

  “I—” they both started on the same breath.

  Kari nodded for Perrin to speak first, and then had to wait her out.

  “I,” Perrin finally began again, “need you to do me a favor.”

  “Sure,” Kari said in her most even voice. It didn’t sound like she was being fired.

  “Tammy’s getting overwhelmed. Would you be willing to take over as the head fabricator for her line?” Perrin spoke in a mad rush. “I know she’s just fifteen and you’d rather be a designer but I want her to have the best and she’s good on a machine but you’re way better and you can do fitting even better than I can and I can’t think of anyone that would be more fantastic or that we’d both trust more and—”

  “Oh god, yes!” Kari managed to cut in on the runaway freight train of Perrin’s words. Fifty percent relief and a hundred percent excitement.

  “—because it’s my daughter’s line and I want it to be perfect and you could do that and…really?”

  Kari nodded. Head seamstress on a new line? Oh yeah. And if it came out of Perrin’s Glorious Garb, there was no question any line would be major; especially when it was as good as Tammy’s. She’d been dying to get her hands on those designs.

  “I was afraid you were about to fire me.”

  Perrin’s shock shifted quickly to mock anger, “You try to leave here and you and I are going to have some harsh words. You belong here.”

  Kari could only smile back at her. She did. It was hard to believe, but Kari knew that she’d found exactly where she was supposed to be. It gave her a bit of a thrill that a woman of Perrin’s amazing skills agreed.

  “Really?” Tamara whispered from across the table, looking up shyly beneath the dark brows and hair she’d inherited from her mother who had passed on several years ago.

  Kari rose and circled the table to sit beside Tamara. They were the ones who looked like mother and daughter. Everyone remarked on it who saw them together. It had become a running joke between them by the second time they’d met. They’d rapidly settled on Auntie and Little Girl.

  “Are you kidding me? Your clothes rock. I’d love to help with them.” Instead of offering the hug they normally shared, she held out a hand. “Thanks for asking for me.”

  They shook on it like two serious adults.

  Then Tammy gave out a very fifteen-year-old squeal and threw herself into Kari’s arms. “Love you, Auntie Kari.”

  Kari hugged her tight. This is what she wanted. Not just the challenge of helping shape a whole line. She buried her face in Tamara’s hair for just a moment and wished she had a girl of her own.

  “Love you…Big Girl.”

  Tammy squeezed her even tighter and squealed again.

  2

  The moment he walked in the shop, Richard Nyberg knew he’d made a mistake. Always have an emergency book with you. His wife had told him that any number of times before she’d left him—left them—two years ago. It was the one piece of her unending streams of advice he should have listened to, but he was always forgetting.

  In seconds, his Lana and Tammy Cullen had hugged and were giggling together like he supposed a pair of fifteen-year-old girls were supposed to. Tammy dragged his daughter off for a whirlwind tour of the shop.

  He slowed down a minute to check out the place. The dress shop felt welcoming and successful. Part of it was the thoughtful designer who had staged the store as carefully as the colorful designs. The other part was the surprising number of customers in a relatively small shop. Women swirled in and out of changing rooms, sipped tea while inspecting skirts and blouses. There was a happy buzz of voices from people glad to be there.

  The stage manager at Emerald City Opera, Bill Cullen, had married the owner of the shop a year ago. Lana had hung out with their kids a lot during long rehearsals and shows, but he’d never thought to bring his daughter here. He could see that he should have. He supposed that a high-end women’s clothing store was one of those “girly rights” that no one told single dads about.

  Tammy was towing Lana from one display to the next. It was set up like a 1950s diner. Chrome and red leather booths were populated by mannequins in clothes hot enough to remind his libido that it had been a damned long dry spell. Single dads with young kids didn’t date. There was never enough time and it got way too complicated the few times he’d tried it.

  The girls slowed down at the wedding dresses and he heard their oohs and aahs despite the general noise level of customers chatting around the busy shop. Girls who were fifteen should not be admiring wedding dresses. Daughters who were twenty-five shouldn’t be doing that. Maybe at thirty-five he’d let Lana out on her first date…like he’d have any say in the matter.

  The shop manager, an elegant redhead, whisked past him in a dress that said, “I’m hot, powerful, and you couldn’t handle me.” She had a smile of welcome that invited and a ring that attested to the fact that some man thought he could, indeed, handle her.

  “You’re looking lost,” she eased to a stop close beside him on a return loop.

  “I’m with the blond one,” he hooked a thumb toward Lana sighing over evening gowns with low cuts that his daughter would never, ever, under any circumstances be allowed to even dream about wearing.

  “It was so nice of your daughter to agree to be Tammy’s model,” the redhead sounded delighted. “We truly do appreciate you helping her out. However, it looks like they’re going to be a while. If you want to wait, they’ll end up in the back room eventually. There are places to sit there out of the fray.”

  He took one last glance around the room. He was the only male present and was receiving the eye from several of the very well-tended women in the shop. That had been Lana’s mother’s trademark—he still did his best not to think her name—she was always well tended. And had finally found herself a sugar daddy who had offered to make sure she stayed that way—far beyond the capacity of the opera’s chief lighting designer who had merely loved her.

  “Yeah, that would be good.”

  The redhead guided him through the swinging doors to a diner’s cook line that was filled with women’s accessories. It was such a creative space that he had to slow down to admire it. Someone here knew what they were doing. Handbags dangled from pot hooks, pantries were filled with fine boots, and a walk-in freezer was lined in lush winter coats. The ceiling was hidden by dozens of inverted open umbrellas, splashes of color to delight the eye. It would be even better if they were backlit and the light shone through them—not his place to point that out. Still a very cheerful effort.

  Another set of swinging doors and he was in a space that would almost put the opera’s costume shop to shame. It was far smaller in scale, but there wasn’t a wasted inch; it was a dressmaker’s dream.

  The redhead pointed him to a chair at a sewing machine, then whisked back to the shop while he admired the departing view. She might be too high-end and too married for his taste, but that didn’t mean he was dead.

  At the same instant a tall woman swooped in from the next room with her arms full of a gaudy mish-mash of fabric. Some of it looked like it had been graffitied all over, like girls used to do to their notebooks when he’d gone to high school. Now Lana stored all her school stuff in her tablet computer and he couldn’t even check the outsides of her notebooks for doodles of boys’ names.

  She’d gone on dates; group dates, but even she calle
d them dates. It had taken him a lot of careful prodding to discover that “hanging out” was a bunch of people and that a “date” meant little more than that the bunch of people had an even number of boys and girls, not necessarily paired off thank god. If there was a boy in the next-level “going out” category, she hadn’t let him know about it yet.

  The woman dropped into the chair in front of the machine beside him.

  “You applying for a job?” she nodded toward the machine he was seated at. Like the ones at the opera, it looked oversized and immensely complex.

  “Not likely.”

  Then he looked at the woman. She was a knock-out in a different way than the store’s manager. Long dark hair curled past golden skin. She was as shapely as the redhead, but because she was so tall it looked right on her. The redhead was more in a powerfully voluptuous category. This brunette was built…just right?

  “Then what are you doing other than checking me out?”

  He didn’t fight the grin at her teasing tone. “Not much, I have to admit.”

  3

  Lana stepped into the back room and froze. There was her dad and he was…she knew that posture. Enough boys had tried it on her on dates. That laid-back pose with the “I’m so cool” smile. They always thought they were so charming and handsome, and most of them were just jerks.

  Her dad was like the handsomest guy on the planet, except maybe Francis the track team captain. But what was he doing?

  She grabbed Tammy’s arm. “Who’s that? She your aunt or something?”

  “Kinda. We’re not related. Kari just looks like me or maybe I look like her. Seriously though, she’s amazing.”

  Lana couldn’t believe that Tammy had asked her to come be a model, because Tammy always had the most incredible wardrobe. Every guy watched her walk by, not that she was so beautiful—though she was awfully pretty. They watched because she dressed like she was gorgeous. A lot of girls hated her for it; others envied her. If Lana got Tammy’s help, maybe Francis would look at her that way.

  Lana had known Tammy since right after her mom died and they moved to Seattle four years ago. As friends, they now had Dad’s divorce behind them and Tammy’s new mom. Friends didn’t get better than Tammy, but Lana still didn’t like the way that Dad was looking at Kari.

  “C’mon. You’re like forever tall. I need to see how my clothes look on you.”

  Lana submitted, moving behind the screen to try on whatever Tammy had in mind. It felt weird changing with Dad in the room, but Tammy made it seem normal, so Lana did her best to calm her nerves. And peeked around the edge.

  But her dad wasn’t watching her.

  4

  Kari only had a distant look at the girl before she ducked behind the screen, but it was enough. The measurements that Tammy had given her had been good, these clothes should fit just fine. Rather than just leaving the fabric pinned, she dropped the dress she’d been working on under the sewing machine’s foot and began running the seam.

  “She’s beautiful, Richard. She looks so much like you.” His sleekly handsome and blond was transformed elegantly into her slender frame. She was a good choice for a model; a sharp contrast to Tammy’s short, curvier frame and darker complexion.

  “Scares the crap out of me every day,” he rubbed at his face. “When she grows up I’m in so much trouble.”

  “Hello. Already grown.”

  He grimaced at her before slouching even lower in the chair and groaning. “I really didn’t need to hear that.”

  “Oh,” Kari did her best to sound contrite, “I mean she’s such a cute toddler. Do the little boys follow her all over the pre-school grounds?”

  “With their tongues hanging out. Have since she was about three. That’s the problem,” his chuckle acknowledged he was being ridiculous, which she liked about him.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I’m a guy. I know what they’re thinking at their age and I can’t believe they’re thinking it about my daughter.”

  “Bad news first or good news?” Kari appreciated the way he talked about his daughter, as if she was precious and worth protecting. Her own father, well, he hadn’t made her feel the least bit safe. He’d never groped her, but his big-screen sports drinking buddies hadn’t been so hands off; she’d learned to be scarce come half-time or seventh inning stretches or even long commercial breaks.

  Richard looked at her through blue eyes shaded darker by an assessing scowl.

  “Good news?” he asked cautiously.

  “I’d say she loves you a lot.”

  “How can you tell? Did you even notice her?”

  “I know, because of how long she was glaring at you for talking to me.”

  At his “Huh?” she pointed up at the mirror leaning against the wall behind the sewing machine.

  “It wasn’t me she was glaring at or she’d have spotted me watching her in the mirror,” it had offered a clear view of Lana and Tammy talking.

  “Perfect. It’s not as if I have a love life for her to guard against anyway.”

  Kari had just assumed he was married, but saw there was no ring. She kept her thoughts about handsome single dads to herself. But it was hard. Perrin had married one just a year ago, had adopted his two children, and would soon add a third to the family. Yeah right. And she’d known Richard for about five minutes. Stupid fantasies never did a girl any good.

  “Okay, pretty lady. What’s the bad news?”

  “Sure you want to hear it?” Pretty lady? She rather liked that Richard was plain-spoken. Had he always done that, or learned it from his daughter? Teasing was fine, but she’d never liked games, and Richard didn’t appear to be one to play them.

  “No, but tell me anyway.”

  There was that straightforward thinking again. This time she waited until she finished her final seam and had clipped the thread.

  She turned to face him fully for the first time. He was slouched low in the chair, but he was watching her face rather than her body. More reason to think he was decent.

  “At her age…”

  “Oh no!” Richard moaned and closed his eyes, wincing as if she’d just poked him with a sharp stick.

  “…she’s thinking along pretty much the same lines as the boys.”

  “Shit! I didn’t need to know that either,” he moaned.

  5

  Lana had kept an eye out while Tammy went back and forth bringing her different clothes. The first couple had looked cool, especially the off-the-shoulder black-and-white zigzag top, but Tammy had rejected every one. A lot of them she didn’t even get to try on; Tammy would just hold a killer blouse up in front of Lana, sigh and take it away.

  Each time Lana peeked, Dad was looking less and less comfortable talking to the woman, which was good.

  Tammy held up another, then took it away.

  “Hey! That looked great!”

  “Wrong color,” Tammy insisted. “See?” She twisted Lana around to face the small mirror behind the screen. First she held it up to her own chest and it looked totally awesome. Then she held it up in front of Lana. It was good; it was hot. Francis would definitely look at her in it…but it didn’t snap the way it did on Tammy.

  “It’s just because you’re so different,” Lana often envied Tammy her gold-skinned beauty. Their high school was in Ballard, a Scandinavian neighborhood of Seattle, and a whole lot of people were colored like Lana. And Tammy had developed real curves, Lana’s body was so flat that she was barely female—at least it felt that way sometimes.

  “No,” Tammy shook her head. “You’ll see, once I find it.”

  “I want to knock Francis off his feet.”

  “Then try this.” It was the woman, Kari. Up close she looked as if she really could be Tammy’s mom. Way taller, but the same Italian gold skin and real shape, just way taller—almost as tall as her dad
.

  Lana started to turn for the mirror.

  “Don’t look,” Kari turned her away from it. “Instead, put it on and step out to show it to your dad. Watch his reaction. That will tell you more than your own.”

  Lana squinted at her, but Tammy stood behind her nodding.

  She took the clothes from over Kari’s arm. It was a dress. “I don’t wear dresses.”

  “Trust her,” Kari nodded at Tammy. “She’s an amazing designer.”

  “Then what’s your job?”

  “She,” Tammy slipped an arm around the woman’s waist, “is the most amazing seamstress on the planet. I can think it up; she can make it so that it hangs great and actually fits people.”

  Lana shrugged. She was half out of her clothes before she realized that Tammy and Kari weren’t going anywhere. She wanted to shoo them out, but already they were helping her. No one had helped her dress since her Mom had forced her into a stupid formal dress for a birthday party when she was six—the only one not wearing jeans, she hadn’t been able to play in a single game. She fought down against the bitter tears that apparently had no end. Stupid tears because Mom had only ever cared about how her daughter had made her look; they were so hard to stop.

  Finally, she just closed her eyes against the pain and let them dress her in…whatever.

  6

  Richard was so desperate for a distraction that he picked up a teen fashion magazine. Lots of young women wearing far too little. Ratted jeans, crop tops, wide brim hats. Some looked okay, but then he hit the brilliant red dress with too many cutouts and barely enough material to cover the model’s butt. On the next page a girl who looked like she was sixteen wore a black bit of cloth with cleavage practically down to her panty line.