by Karen Renee
The other issue I had with Daddy’s insistence that sexism would hold me back from making the most money possible in my job was that the job he really wanted me to take was manning the bar at my grandparent’s local watering hole. Yeah, MeMaw and PawPa had been running the RoadWay bar in Orange Park since the sixties. All of their female bartenders were required to wear black short-shorts with tight red tank-tops. This meant that my dad was perfectly ok with me using my sexual appeal to get a bunch of poor men to spend more money than they should on drinks they shouldn’t drink. That occupation was more appropriate, in his eyes, than the job I was currently doing. Ridiculous.
It was a slow day at the auto-mall, and that was to be expected. Most people needing a reliable new car worked nine-to-five gigs. I was freezing in the sales office, so I decided to stretch my legs and walk outside. The shock of the muggy Florida heat almost knocked me over. I took a deep breath and strolled over to a shiny red Ford Explorer displayed out front. I watched the traffic whizzing by on Highway 17. A cherry-red new-model Camaro pulled into the drive to the dealership. The windshield had white-cursive lettering on it which read “Venom Vixen.”
“Who does that to a beautiful Camaro?” I muttered quietly to myself.
The car parked in an empty space for customers, and the driver’s-side door flew open. The woman driving the car could be heard saying, “This is a damn fool’s errand. I’m telling you. You and Frankie are nuts, I say.”
When she stood and closed her car door, I had to do a double take. She, however, did not. Her face lit up and she squealed, “NeNe!”
Oh God! I had forgotten about the many ways my name could torture my psyche. It was like a gag-gift that kept on giving. But only one person had ever called me NeNe, and it was Patricka ‘Patti’ Baker. We went to high school together. She was a bad-girl who hung in the bathroom smoking, was assumed by boys to be loose, and barely scraped by to get her diploma. She and I struck a friendship in the tenth grade when she made it onto the Flag Corps in the marching band. Twirling a flag was apparently second choice for her, since she only tried out after she was denied a spot on the cheerleading squad. How she managed to make it onto the flag corps, I had no idea. Sadly, Patti was one of those few people who legitimately had no sense of rhythm.
Our faculty advisor made it my job to teach Patricka some semblance of rhythm. It was, hands-down, one of the most difficult things I had ever dealt with during high school. 'No sense of rhythm' might well have even been more foreign to me than the notion of cosigns and tangents in trigonometry. However, I had a determined streak a mile long, and when I was tasked with getting Patti to twirl in time and march in step with the beat, I took that shit very seriously. Or as seriously as any fifteen-year-old girl could take anything seriously that didn’t have to do with boys. I didn’t break out a metronome or anything, but I used nearly any song I could think of – be it the marching band songs we were actually working with to classic rock songs to pop songs and possibly even a few techno songs – to try and get Patti to feel the rhythm and beat. A third of the way into the season, Patti finally seemed to catch onto some sense of rhythm and she helped to make our Flag Corps a success at our second contest.
Enough of memory lane, though, that was a good eleven or twelve years ago, and this woman was a sight to see. Patti rushed at me with her arms flung wide-open, “Don’t just stand there, girl! Give me a hug!”
I was shocked, but still excited to see her, so I did as ordered. I was nearly bowled over, not by her embrace, but by her overwhelming perfume. It made me think of the pretty-boy at Ethel’s who came onto me. The two of them together would be something.
Pulling back from her, I asked, “Patti, how have you been? I didn’t know you were still in the area!”
Her chocolate-brown eyes squinted at me slightly. “It’s Trixie now, hear?”
Two other women got out of her car, and walked over to us. Both women had gleaming brown hair and dark eyes. However, one had olive-toned skin and the other was fair-complexioned. The olive-skinned brunette asked, “You go by 'Nene'? Like the Real Housewives of Atlanta chick?”
And the gift kept on giving! The three of us looked at her, and I said, “Kind of, but not really. Only, Pa—uh, Trixie, here ever called me that. Most people call me 'Neil'.”
The fair-skinned brunette gave me a quizzical look. “That’s an odd name. For a woman, I mean.”
“It’s far better than my full name, 'Tennille'. So, what’s this ‘fool’s errand’ y’all are on?”
Trixie folded her arms across her chest, “Well, Frankie, here,” she pointed to the olive-skinned brunette, “has a man who wants her to drive a sedan instead of an SUV. I think she needs to put her foot down and drive whatever the hell she damn well wants.”
That was the girl I remembered from high school, opinionated to the hilt.
The fair-skinned brunette said, “I think she should let Vamp buy her whatever it is he wants her to drive, if he’s going to be so picky.”
Trixie shot an incredulous look at this woman and exclaimed, “Mallory! Just because you got Cal wrapped around your finger does not mean the rest of us can be so damn lucky. Frankie doesn’t need a car. Vamp’s just fuckin’ paranoid.”
“Cal is not wrapped around my finger,” Mallory said.
Trixie’s eyebrows shot up and her eyes went up and down Mallory’s face, “Un-hunh. You got more damn bling hangin’ around your neck than the other old ladies combined.”
My gaze darted to Mallory’s neck, and I suspected Trixie might be right. A huge tear-drop-shaped pendant hung from a thick gold chain, and there was a herringbone pattern in the pendant. The pattern was made from stones that looked like those colored diamonds that were all the rage.
Frankie twisted her lip to the side and looked at Mallory to say, “She’s kinda right, Mal. Le Vian doesn’t come cheap, and I should know since my cousin Di works there. But back to me, not to be self-centered or something, I’m not going to let Vamp buy me a car. No way, no how. I work for a credit union, and I got my ducks in a row. And I kinda like the idea of a car.”
If that wasn’t music to my ears, I didn’t know what was. I smiled at Frankie, “Well, I definitely like the idea of a new car for you. What did you have in mind?”
Before Frankie could respond, Trixie asked me, “You sell cars, huh?”
“Yep,” I said with a smile.
“Money any good?”
I tilted my head slightly and said, “Money’s unstable. Can be good, and it can be bad.”
Trixie groaned, clearly unhappy with my answer. “I need a fuckin’ old man.”
This seemed an odd statement, but the gist was clear, so I asked, “You need a date? I met someone this week that’d be perfect for you.”
“Why’d you cut him loose then?” Trixie asked, with a supremely skeptical look at me.
“Too pretty. But he has excellent taste in cologne, except it’s too strong.”
I noticed Mallory giving me a strange look.
“Not sure about pretty. I like ’em rough, and they gotta have a bike.”
“He’s got a bike,” I chirped.
I heard someone whisper, “Razor.” I looked at Trixie, but she was staring at Mallory.
I looked at Mallory, and said, “Yeah. How’d you know?”
She gave a shrug, pulled out her phone, and then walked away. That was weird. I felt Trixie’s gaze settle on me.
“Razor damn sure ain’t my type.”
Before I could say anything else, Mallory came back and thrust her phone at me. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
A sense of dread started creeping up my neck, “Hello?”
“Never would’ve guessed I’d find you again through a mutual acquaintance,” Razor said into my ear.
“Wouldn’t say you’ve found me.”
“Whether you say it or not, it’s true, Tennille.”
“Neil,” I growled at him.
With a chuckle Razor said, “I’m feelin
’ a need to buy a cage. Think you can help me with that?”
A cage?
“Um, nope. I don’t sell cages. You might try a pet store, or someplace off Emerson Street in Jacksonville, if you’re into kink.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Cages are cars, darlin’. But, it’s good to know you have a dirty mind. Very dirty.”
“Whatever. I’m at work and I need to go. Bye-bye now.”
I handed Mallory her phone to see her beaming at me.
I tried to pull off a not-surly tone when I asked, “What are you so happy about?”
“I told him he’d find someone, and when he did she was gonna be way feistier than me. I just love it when I find out I was right all along.”
*** ***
Forty-five minutes later, the four of us were piled into a gleaming-white Ford Fusion four-door sedan. Frankie was taking it for a test drive. Test drives were a necessary evil in my line of work. The necessity was obvious, nobody smart bought a car without driving it first, but the evil lay in the crapshoot of what kind of driver my customer would be. Test drives naturally drove most people a little crazy. They were antsy about not letting anything happen to a car they didn’t own (yet), they weren’t accustomed to where everything was, and in some cases they weren’t ready for the power or lack of power in the vehicle they were driving. It was when dealing with people stepping down in engines that I was most nervous. Someone expecting a V4 or a V6 to be even half as responsive as a souped-up V8 inevitably touched on the gas and when the car didn’t spring into action, would then stomp on the gas. I’ve often wondered if whiplash would be a valid worker’s comp claim. People didn’t always take direction well from a salesperson on a test drive, either.
Luckily, Frankie was being cautious, but not overly so. She was taking my backseat-driver directions well. I was also giving her my abbreviated sales schpiel. She had financing lined up, and I figured a soft-touch might work best. I was telling her about warranties for the transmission and the like, when from the front seat Trixie completely interrupted me, “What’re your hours like, NeNe?”
“Long and hard,” I said without thinking.
Mallory and Trixie giggled, but Mallory said, “Just what you’re after, eh, Trixie?” then burst into a fit of laughter.
Trixie turned her head toward the back-seat and muttered, “Bitch.”
“And you said this was ‘a fool’s errand.’ I haven’t had this much fun since early July,” Mallory declared, when her laughter subsided.
Trixie said, “You know, you’re right. NeNe, what’re you doin’ tomorrow?”
“Depends. If it rains, I’ll probably get off at five. If not, it’ll depend on how busy the floor is, but I’ll be off 'round seven-ish.”
Trixie craned her neck further around the passenger seat to tell me, “You’re comin’ to our pig-roast. Tomorrow, six-thirty until probably two A.M. Gimme your phone.”
Her demand for my phone had a tone to it that said she would not take 'No' for an answer. I handed over my iPhone and Trixie promptly tapped in numbers. I heard another phone start ringing, and then it abruptly stopped.
“Here. Save that number, it’s mine, and I’ll text you the address. You show up no matter how late.”
“On one condition,” I said.
“What?” Trixie almost barked at me.
“No more calling me, 'NeNe'. Stick with 'Neil', please.”
“Whatever,” Trixie groaned from the front seat.
About the Author
Karen Renee is the author of Unforeseen Riot and Inciting a Riot. She has wanted to be a writer since she was eight years old, but it’s taken the last twenty plus years for her to amass enough courage and overall life experience to bring that dream to life. Some of those life experiences came from the wonderful world of advertising, banking, and local television media research. She is a proud wife and mother, and a Jacksonville native. When she’s not at the soccer field or cooking, you can find her at her local library, the grocery store, in her car jamming out to some tunes, or hibernating while she writers and/or reads books.
Other books by Karen Renee
Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by Karen Renee:
The Riot MC Series
Unforeseen Riot
Inciting a Riot
Into the Riot Coming December 2018
Calming the Riot Coming in 2019
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