Holden Bennington III looked genuinely surprised, then hurt, by this accusation. “I’m trying to help you.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, and meant it even though it sounded completely sarcastic, even to her own ear. “No, really. I do.”
“Can you just promise me that you’ll make sure you have the funds in your account before writing checks from now on?” he asked. All at once he looked like a tenth-grader playing a weary dad in a high school play.
But it touched her anyway. He cared. He actually was trying to help her. And she’d just been a snarky bitch to him.
“I will,” she vowed. “I promise.” It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about Phil Carson, but that would have been going too far. She didn’t need to trot her problems out like dolls at show and tell, especially since she hadn’t had enough time to prove she could stick to the program. No, it was better just to let it go at this and be grateful he was going to waive the bounced check fees this time.
“Good,” he said, and did another couple of clicks on the keyboard. “I was able to override two of those nonsufficient funds fees,” he added triumphantly.
His triumph, at least with Lorna, was premature. “Two of them? Does that mean two are still being charged to me?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Seventy bucks?”
He nodded. “I can’t reverse them all.”
She wanted to whine Why not? but it didn’t matter if it was because he literally couldn’t or he wouldn’t-couldn’t; he obviously wasn’t going to change his mind.
And he obviously felt she didn’t deserve a totally free ride on this.
She had to be gracious. Anything less would have been childish. “Thank you very much for your assistance,” she said, standing up and holding her hand out to him.
He looked at it for a moment, then shook it awkwardly. “You’re welcome, Ms. Rafferty. I’m glad I could help at least some.”
If you want to help, you could transfer a million or two to my account and stop charging me seven bucks a month for the privilege of having a no-interest account here, she thought. What she said was, “Well, working double and triple shifts like I am, it’s hard to keep up with these things. Every once in a while I even come across a paycheck I forgot to deposit.” It was a stupid lie. He could probably look and see that the one thing that she did like clockwork was deposit her check from Jico every other Friday.
“I see.”
She was sure he did. “But I’ll try to do a lot better with that now.”
She struggled through a narrow pathway carved out by his desk, her chair, and the now-open door. “Thanks again, Mr. Bennington,” she said, lowering her voice halfway through his name because they were in the main bank vestibule and she didn’t want anyone there to figure out she had banking problems as opposed to, say, so much money she had to open a new account in order to be fully FDIC-insured.
He nodded stiffly. “Ms. Rafferty. I hope to see you again soon. Or, actually, I guess I hope not to see you again soon.” The joke had the dual disadvantages of being both awkward and obvious.
Lorna could have strangled him for it. But, let’s face it, she wasn’t in a position to strangle anyone for pointing out her debt issues.
The sooner she took responsibility for them, the sooner she could leave them behind.
The world according to Phil Carson.
Lots of laundry detergent commercials talked about removing blood, chocolate, and wine stains, but they never mentioned vomit.
Joss pulled her vomit-soaked shirt carefully over her head and balled it up so all the wet was on the inside. Then she threw on a T-shirt, grabbed a trash can, and hurried back to Bart’s room, where he was lying in bed with a stomach flu.
“How are you doing, buddy?” she asked gently, setting the T-shirt inside the trash can for the moment and sitting on the side of the bed. “Any better?”
“No,” he whimpered miserably. “But can I have some Coke?”
He seemed so small now. So innocent and vulnerable. It reminded Joss what she had gotten into this business for—she loved kids. She wasn’t so crazy about hellions, and she certainly had her doubts about whether or not it was too late for Colin, but Bart managed to touch her heartstrings.
“Sure,” Joss said, recalling the thick Coke syrup her mom used to pour over ice and give to her when she was nauseated. “I’m going to pop down and start a load of laundry and then I’ll bring it right up.”
“And some Count Chocula,” Bart added.
It wasn’t the flavorless shredded cardboard cereal Deena usually tried to get Joss to feed the kids, but Deena wasn’t here, and Joss was ready to do anything to make this poor kid feel better. “Okay, but just a little.”
She took the T-shirt out of the trash can and took it down to the laundry room, ready to do one small load.
So she was surprised to find two large laundry hampers in front of the washer with a piece of paper on top of them that had Joss’s name in big, black Magic Marker.
Dreading what she knew was coming, Joss picked up the paper.
Joss: Separate the whites and colors and do all loads in cold water only.
No please, Joss noted. Not that it would have made her feel very much better about the demand. For a moment, she considered the possibility of turning around and leaving the room as if she’d never been there and never seen the note, but for all she knew, Deena Oliver had cameras set up and was tracking her moves.
She was better off just doing what she was asked when she was on duty, and getting the heck out of the house whenever she wasn’t.
With a heavy sigh, she took both hampers and dumped the contents on the floor, making piles for colored clothing and whites. Or things that should be white, she amended mentally, coming across a pair of Mr. Oliver’s briefs that bore unfortunate evidence that Bart wasn’t the only one in the house with stomach issues.
Nanny was one job description. Maid was something else entirely. Joss had not signed on to be a maid. So why was she here, in a basement in Maryland, cleaning someone else’s biological stains up for what amounted to something like two fifty an hour?
Times like this, Robbie Blair’s offer seemed more and more attractive.
Then again, times like this even a convent seemed more and more attractive.
Later that night, when Joss was relishing a moment of quiet between the end of Bart’s flu and the return of Colin from martial arts class, Deena Oliver called her into what she called “the parlor” but which, in Joss’s house, would have been called “the fancy living room with furniture you can’t use.”
“Joss,” Deena said without preamble. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Oh, there were a lot of things Joss wanted to tell her, but she seriously doubted Deena was referring to the same things. “I’m not sure what you mean,” Joss said.
“No?” Deena arched an eyebrow and waited, in silence.
A guilt she had no business feeling crept over Joss. It was the same feeling she got when she walked through those security sensors at the library—hoping she didn’t get “caught” even though she’d done nothing to be “caught” at. “I don’t think so,” she said, her voice twisting into a question.
“What if I said to you the word underwear?”
If Deena’s expression, on that leathery tanned face under a brittle cloud of bleached hair, hadn’t been so menacing, Joss would have laughed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Oliver,” she said, her stomach clenching. “I still don’t know what you mean.” Unless Deena somehow had the psychic power to have picked up on Joss’s distaste earlier when she’d encountered Mr. Oliver’s underwear, but who wouldn’t have felt distaste at that?
Deena eyed her coldly for a moment, then leaned forward and produced a wad of tiger-striped fabric from behind her back. She hurled it at Joss, and even though it had the velocity of a Kleenex, Joss jumped.
“That,” Deena said. “Is what I’m talking about. Care to explain it?”
Explain it? Joss didn’t even want to pick it up and find out what, exactly, it was. “What is it?” she asked.
Deena stood up and began the kind of dramatic pacing Bette Davis would have used in one of those movies where she was a horrible bitch. All Deena lacked was the cigarette trailing smoke punctuation. “You know damn well it’s a man’s thong.”
Joss was at a loss. “I didn’t even know men wore thongs!”
For a fraction of a moment, Deena looked surprised. Then perplexed. Then anger returned and settled on her face. “I found that under my bed, Joss. Under my bed.”
“I—I can’t explain—,” Joss stammered. “I’m not even sure what you’re asking me.”
“I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you that this stops now. And if I get so much as a suspicion that you are bringing men into my home again and taking them into my bed, I will not only fire you on the spot, but I will sue you for every penny I’ve paid you, do you understand?”
Joss was horrified. She felt the blood drain into her toes, leaving a cold path behind in her chest and stomach. “Mrs. Oliver, I swear I have never seen this—this thing before and that I haven’t had anyone over.”
There it was again, that expression that said Deena was less comfortable with Joss’s denial than she would have been with a confession. “Have I made myself clear?” she demanded.
“Yes, but—”
“Have I made myself clear?” It was as if she’d gathered all her energy into her voice and was erupting with the fury of a Disney villain.
Joss was no fool. It was better just to concur and get out than to argue. “Yes, ma’am.”
Deena gave a satisfied nod. “That’s all.”
Joss left, wishing Deena hadn’t mentioned the part about suing her for back pay, because that firing wasn’t sounding too bad right now.
“Are those Max Azrias?” Thank God for these Tuesday-night meetings. It was the only way Lorna was able to get any material satisfaction at all these days.
Sure, there was satisfaction in beating her debt down, but could you slip a shrinking debt onto your feet and totally change your mood? Nope.
Lorna needed shoes for that.
Helene nodded and handed the Max Azrias to Lorna. “You know, they’re gorgeous, but they just never fit me quite right. Try them on.”
Lorna slipped into the shoe, and it was like the proverbial glove. “Oh, my God. What are these, massage shoes?” She took a few steps. “They feel amazing.” It occurred to her that might be rude since Helene had just said they weren’t comfortable to her. “On me,” she clarified. “It could be my weirdly shaped feet.”
“More likely it’s mine.” Helene smiled. “Now pass me those Miu Mius.” She took the box. “By the way, where’s Sandra?”
“She called about an hour ago and said she couldn’t make it tonight,” Lorna said. “It was kind of odd. At first she said she had an appointment, but at the end of the conversation she said she was sick. So I’m not sure which it is. Hopefully it’s not something I did to keep her away.”
“I’m sure it’s not.” Helene reached across the coffee table and refilled her wineglass. “She’s probably just overbooked.”
Lorna nodded, though she wasn’t so sure.
“Is anyone else coming?” Helene asked.
Given that it was twenty past, Lorna doubted it, but there was the one person who had called. “There’s a Paula something,” she said, trying to remember the last name. It had been unusual. Like a holiday. Not Paula Christmas. “Valentine,” she remembered after a moment. “Paula Valentine.”
“It’s funny, at first I thought there would be a lot more of us coming to these meetings, but I think a lot of women keep their shoe addiction in the closet.” She laughed. “So to speak.”
“Then there are the women whose addiction spills out of the closet and into the surrounding rooms. Literally.”
There was a pounding at the door, so hard that it rattled the pictures hanging on that wall.
Helene and Lorna looked at each other.
“Expecting a Valentine?” Helene said, barely cracking a smile.
Lorna laughed, and hesitantly walked to the door to peer through the tiny peephole.
The stupid thing had always been insufficient, and never had it felt like it mattered as much as it did now. All she could see was a tall buxom figure in the hallway, silhouetted by the dinky overhead light.
“I guess it’s her,” Lorna whispered.
“Are you going to let her in?” Helene responded in a stage whisper, then cracked up laughing.
Lorna joined her. “I’m getting paranoid,” she said, then took a steadying breath and opened the door.
The person before her was tall, at least six foot three. The wig couldn’t have been more obvious if it had been made out of cotton candy. The makeup was likewise pronounced, as was the man’s Adam’s apple. His dress, on the other hand, was superb—it looked like vintage Chanel, though in that size it couldn’t have been. But the earrings and Chanel pearls were the real thing, and they served to illustrate the word irony better than anything Lorna had ever seen.
She wondered, for one panicked moment, what to do. She didn’t have an anti-transvestite policy at all, but this guy’s feet were clearly twice the size of hers. Whatever he’d brought in that large silk Chanel bag, it wasn’t size 7½.
“Hi,” Lorna said, in a voice much stronger than the uncertainty she felt. “Paula Valentine?”
The guy—come on, there was no question!—opened his eyes wide, looked at her in stunned silence for a moment, then glanced behind her, where Helene sat on the sofa. It was as if he were assessing the group and it didn’t measure up.
The silence grew uncomfortable.
“Paula?” Lorna repeated. His weren’t the eyes of a deer in the headlights. They were the eyes of the guy behind the wheel suddenly seeing the deer in the headlights. “Paula Valentine?”
The man’s eyes grew even wider, and he nodded rapidly.
It took only one or two extra seconds for this to feel insanely bizarre, and Lorna glanced uncertainly back at Helene, who had pulled her cell phone out like a gun. It was open, and she had her thumb poised over the call buttons.
Which was a good thing, since Lorna was afraid she might have to signal Helene to call 911.
Before she reached that point, though, Paula Valentine turned tail and ran, his shoes clapping thunderously down the hall to the stairwell.
Lorna watched in stunned silence until she heard the stairwell door slam shut.
She turned back to Helene. “I don’t think she likes our style,” she said.
They both dissolved into laughter.
Helene and Lorna spent a long evening talking and laughing, and burning through two bottles of wine and an entire twelve-cup pot of coffee. It wasn’t until almost 1 A.M. that Helene finally left.
Judging from her own state of inebriation, Lorna guessed that she herself had probably consumed the lion’s share of the wine, since for at least the past hour Helene had been drinking water.
So when Lorna went to the kitchen and noticed a car sliding out of the parking lot after Helene’s BMW, at first she didn’t think anything of it.
Then, when it occurred to her that it might be the same car that was in the parking lot last week, she thought she had to be imagining things.
But the thought nagged her for hours, even keeping her from sleeping. Finally, just after 2 A.M., when her conscience told her it was better to make an ass of herself warning Helene of a threat that didn’t exist than to ignore what might be a real risk, she called Helene to tell her she thought she might be being followed.
Chapter
11
Helene woke with a start to the theme song from Bewitched.
It was her cell phone, the ring she had designated for social calls. Fun stuff. Political calls came in with the ominous opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
She opened the phone quickly to stop
the noise, then looked at Jim, sleeping heavily next to her. His snores could have rattled the windowpanes. Thank goodness he normally slept in his own room. Tonight had just been a conjugal visit, the price she paid for her material comfort regardless of whether she and Jim were actually getting along.
When he’d confirmed, while undressing her, that she’d stopped taking the pill, she said of course she had. It was a lie. But she had, at least, remembered to remove them from the drawer and hide them in the lid of a shoe box in her closet instead. She was surprised Jim hadn’t gotten to them first, actually. Two entire days had passed between her arrest and her remembering what had instigated the whole thing in the first place.
She crept away from him now, feeling a mixture of emotional detachment from him and a lingering tingle from his sexual skills. It was at least one reward for fulfilling her duty.
“Hello?”
“Helene?” It was a woman. With just the one word, it was hard to figure out who it was, though the voice sounded familiar.
Of course, familiar wasn’t always good.
“Who is this?” Helene spoke in an urgent whisper, padding silently across the room in bare feet so as not to wake Jim.
God only knew what he would conclude about her getting middle-of-the-night calls.
Actually, she didn’t know what to make of this either. “Who’s calling?” she asked before the caller had the chance to respond to her the first time.
“It’s Lorna Rafferty,” the woman said quickly, and the mystery of whose voice it was fell into place. “I’m really sorry to be calling so late,” she went on.
Helene’s shoulders sank with relief. But what had she been afraid of? Who had she feared the call was from? Mom and Dad? Ormond’s? Maybe…
Gerald Parks?
Bingo!
She had tried not to obsess over him, but even the thought of his name sent a shiver of nausea through her.
“Lorna,” she said, relieved but unsettled by the thought of Gerald Parks. “Is everything okay?”
“I hope so. That is, I think so. God, you’ll probably think I’m the biggest idiot for calling.” She sounded flustered, stumbling over herv words. “I probably should have waited until morning. Or until next week—”
Shoe Addicts Anonymous Page 13
