Dorothy Howell

by Haley Randolph 03 - Shoulder Bags; Shootings (v5)

  “Your house looks great,” I said. “So, who’s the friend who took you driving?”

  Evelyn sat back and sighed. “My goodness, it’s a beautiful day.”

  Okay, this was kind of annoying. Twice now, Evelyn had refused to answer my questions about the friend who’d taken her for a drive. For a while I’d wondered if she was involved with a banker I knew—long story—Bradley Olsen, V. P. of the prestigious Golden State Bank & Trust but, as always, Evelyn was tight-lipped on the subject.

  Jeez, I was taking her out, the least she could do was give me some good gossip to spread.

  “Anyplace special you’d like to go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Evelyn said. “Let me think about it.”

  “How about the mall?” I suggested.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “We could look at handbags,” I said. It came out sounding like the most fun thing in the world because, really, it was.

  “Maybe the beach,” Evelyn said. “I love looking at the ocean. Seeing that huge expanse of water makes me think my problems aren’t so big, helps me put them into perspective.”

  I took the 405 freeway and headed south, planning to catch the Pacific Coast Highway at Santa Monica and drive north through Malibu, up to Ventura. The road hugged the coastline there, rising and falling with the rugged hillside. It could be a little treacherous in spots, what with the rock slides, sheer cliffs, and few guardrails, but the views were spectacular.

  “Thank you for suggesting this,” Evelyn said, after a few minutes. “I realized that sometimes you have to do what’s best, not what’s easiest. I decided I couldn’t stay home any longer, pretending everything was all right when it wasn’t.”

  Evelyn kept talking but I drifted off, thinking about what she’d just said.

  I guess I’d been doing that same thing. Going to school, pretending it was all right when it really wasn’t. Working at Holt’s, struggling to get through a few hours there each day when it wasn’t at all what I wanted to do with my life.

  Yeah, okay, I didn’t know specifically what I wanted to do, but it sure as heck wasn’t slogging through my classes and my shift at Holt’s.

  I had to do something. Something drastic.

  Really, drastic was what I did best.

  I turned onto PCH, the golden sand and the beautiful blue water of the Pacific stretching out to our left, the canyons and hills of Malibu rising on our right. Definitely a postcard-worthy California day. And suddenly everything made sense, it all came clear.

  Evelyn was right. Seeing the ocean put things in proper perspective.

  I was tired of doing things I didn’t really want to do, tired of waiting for my life to start, tired of hanging on until things got good. I needed to make them good. My life was speeding by. I wanted to have the things I wanted. Important things—like more handbags sooner.

  The idea of getting a college degree from some institution that would convert my considerable life experience into academic credits sprang into my mind again.

  I knew some people thought it was kind of crappy, but jeez, what was the big deal? I mean, really, what could it hurt? It’s not like I wanted to be a doctor or an architect or something. Nobody was going to die or have a building collapse on them because of me.

  “I agree with you completely,” I said to Evelyn.

  “You do?” she asked, sounding surprised.

  “I think people should do what’s best for them, no matter what,” I said.

  My heart rate picked up a little. Should I really do it? Shortcut the whole college thing and get on with my life?

  Just the thought made me feel lighter, freer, like anything was possible.

  I wanted to celebrate.

  “Do you want to go to the mall?” I asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  Damn.

  When I finally dropped Evelyn off at her house and waved good-bye, after she was locked securely inside, I pulled out my cell phone. I had to talk to Ty. I hadn’t heard from him in a while—I knew he was working, but still—and I needed to hear his voice. I was totally stoked about the idea of getting my degree right away and I wanted to get his opinion on it. After all, he knew a lot about business. Maybe he could even recommend a place. He was my official boyfriend now. Wouldn’t he want to hear about the stunning new direction my life may be taking?

  With the time difference between L.A. and London, it was late over there and Ty would be sleeping. I knew this because when I was in Europe, a late night for him would have been 9:30. Really. But that was okay. Ty had a lot of important meetings to go to—I think he even paid attention in them—so he had to be rested.

  But so what if I woke him? Official boyfriends should be anxious to hear from their official girlfriends, especially at an all-important time like this. Right?

  I drove a couple of blocks and pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. I didn’t want to be driving while we talked. He would be groggy and maybe a little cranky. I wanted to devote my full attention to Ty so I could quickly tell him exactly what was on my mind, have him tell me what a fabulous idea he thought it was and give me a few recommendations, so he could get back to sleep.

  See what a considerate girlfriend I am?

  I punched in Ty’s number and he answered on the first ring. At least, I thought it was him. Loud music and louder voices blared in the background.

  “Ty?” I asked.

  “Hello? Hello? Who’s this?” he shouted.

  A woman’s shrill laughter pierced my eardrum through the phone.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Me! Haley!”

  “Haley, how—” The phone cut out, then I heard Ty’s voice again. “—you?”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Are you at a party?”

  Ty was at a party? He never went to a party. He didn’t have a single party gene in his entire DNA. He hadn’t even stayed up until ten at night when I was there with him.

  “Just a little celebration for the—”

  The crowd in the background roared again and I totally missed what he said.

  “I want to talk to you about something,” I said.

  “What?” he screamed. “I can’t hear you!”

  “I want to talk to you about something!”

  “What is it?” Ty shouted.

  Okay, yelling my startling, life-changing epiphany at the top of my lungs wasn’t exactly how I envisioned sharing this moment. But I didn’t exactly have a lot of choices here.

  “I’m thinking about—”

  The line went dead.

  “Damn…,” I muttered.

  I called back but it went straight to voicemail. I hung up.

  “Gather around, gather around,” Shannon called. “Let’s move it, people. We’ve got to get out there.”

  I moved along with the other retail zombies in the Holt’s breakroom and formed up in a semicircle in front of Shannon. She led us through our usual series of stretches, then gestured to the customer satisfaction chart hanging on the wall.

  “We’re pushing upward, going in the right direction, for a change,” she announced, and narrowed her eyes at me.

  I glanced at the chart. We’d climbed to 38 percent.

  Wow, how did that happen?

  “We’re out of beach towel range,” Shannon said. “Now we’re looking at winning a toaster. I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t want a toaster any more than I want a beach towel. I want a flat screen. So let’s make it happen, people.”

  Everyone left the breakroom and I followed along at the rear of the crowd, dragging my feet a little more than usual. I’d only gotten as far as the children’s department when Christy leaped in front of me.

  “Come on, Haley!” she said, smiling broadly. “Let’s be partners!”

  How did I keep getting scheduled to work when Christy worked? Who was doing the schedule these days?

  I needed to take them out.r />
  She took my elbow and jumped up and down.

  “Come on! It will be fun!” she declared. “We’ll be the best partners ever!”

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “I don’t want to be your partner,” I said, and started walking again.

  “But you have to have a partner! For the training!”

  A feeling of dread crept over me, sort of like when you showed up at a party with a satchel and everyone else was carrying a hobo.

  “What training?” I asked.

  “For the six-step program!” Christy said. “Didn’t you see the schedule in the breakroom?”

  There was a schedule in the breakroom?

  “Come on! It’ll be fun!” she said. “You’re going to love this!”

  I followed along behind Christy and a couple dozen more employees to the training room. The chairs were set up in rows. A screen for a PowerPoint presentation hung at the front of the room. An easel with a flip chart stood in the corner. Everything necessary to incite mass suicide.

  “Let’s sit here!” Christy grabbed my arm and pulled me to the front row.

  No way was I sitting up there. My customary spot in any Holt’s meeting was at the rear of the room, directly behind that big guy from men’s wear.

  But my reaction time was off and Christy had me in the chair before I knew what was happening. Jeanette came in. Today she had on a bright yellow dress that made her look like the rear end of a school bus. She started yammering on about the exciting Holt’s six-step program and its path to better something-or-other, and my eyes glazed over.

  A polite round of applause brought me back to consciousness sometime later, and a young woman in a fabulous Dior suit stepped in front of the room.

  My heart jumped. For a second, I thought it was Sarah Covington.

  I hate her.

  But then I realized it wasn’t Sarah and I breathed a little easier.

  “She’s new,” Christy whispered. “She didn’t give the training last time. Last time we had the marketing V.P. herself.”

  “Sarah?” I asked.

  “Ms. Covington.” Christy nodded. “She gave the most fabulous presentation ever.”

  The new training person—whose name I missed—jumped right in with the PowerPoint slides and I drifted off again.

  So if Sarah gave the last presentation, where was she now? I wondered.

  Then it hit me: what if she was in London with Ty?

  Oh my God. Oh my God. What if she was? What if she’d gone there after I left?

  She probably waited until she knew I was back in L.A., then flew there on the red-eye to be at his side. Sarah was all over Ty, all the time. Everything she did, everything she thought about doing, she had to discuss with Ty first. She couldn’t make a move without him. And he didn’t even seem to notice how she was hanging all over him, making up things to talk to him about, just to get face time with him.

  People standing up and chairs scraping the floor jarred me from my mental tirade. Thank God, the meeting had ended quickly. I headed for the door.

  “No, this way,” Christy said, and pulled me in the opposite direction. “Now comes the best part.”

  There was another part? The meeting wasn’t over?

  I hate my life.

  Everybody broke off in pairs and scooted chairs together. Christy pushed two chairs together and pulled me down beside her.

  “Remember what the object is here,” the trainer said.

  She cut her gaze to me like I hadn’t been paying attention earlier. I hadn’t, but still.

  “In this exercise, you’re going to learn about your partners. Learn about their lives, their backgrounds,” she said. “This will make us more aware of who we’re working with. This will make us aware that our customers—just like each of you—are sometimes like us, but sometimes—just like each of you—they’re different than us. And this will enable each of you to better understand our Holt’s customers, and provide the highest quality of customer service possible.”

  Now I really hate my life.

  The trainer passed out pencils and pads of paper to everyone. Around us, people put their heads together and started talking.

  “I’ll go first,” Christy said, jiggling with excitement in her seat. “Is it okay if I go first?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Okay, first, I had the best life ever,” Christy said. “My mom was the best mom ever, and my dad—you’re supposed to be writing this down.”

  I picked up the pencil and started making a grocery list while Christy yammered on about how great her parents were, how close she was to her sister, blah, blah, blah. It sounded as if she’d had a wonderful life, so far. Nothing explained why she loved working retail so much, but maybe I’d drifted off during that part.

  Christy scooted to the edge of her chair and positioned her pencil over her pad of paper.

  “Okay, now tell me all about you,” she said.

  Thinking that if I hurried I could leave the meeting sooner, I blasted through my life pretty quickly. My beauty queen mom, my gorgeous sister, my engineer dad, my air force pilot brother, the two classes I was struggling with, the purse party business I’d put on hold, my impending financial woes, my boyfriend who’d broken up with me at a big party—no mention of Ty, of course, since he owned the store—the really great job with the law firm I’d lost last fall.

  Christy jotted copious notes, for some reason, and continued writing even after everyone else in the room had finished. Just when I thought we could leave, the trainer stepped to the front of the group.

  “Now I want each of you to review what you’ve written about your partner,” she said. “Then close your eyes and envision their life. Think about it. Try to feel what it’s like to lead your partner’s life.”

  I closed my eyes—if I could only learn to sleep sitting up, meetings would be so much easier to get through—and thought about what Christy had told me about herself. That lasted about a minute, then the Sinful handbag floated into my mind.

  I’d been to almost every store I could think of looking for one. I’d asked and all the clerks had reported that the bag was on back order, not expected in for weeks.

  I couldn’t wait weeks. The record label’s to-die-for party was coming up soon and I absolutely had to walk in with the hottest bag of the season—maybe in the history of handbags—on my arm.

  I’d have to expand my search. Yeah, that’s what I’d do. I could fly up to San Francisco for a few days and—

  Christy sniffed, interrupting my mental search grid of upscale department stores in the Bay Area. That was weird. I didn’t remember that she had a cold.

  Anyway, back to the Sinful bag hunt. If I couldn’t find it in San Francisco, I’d try Vegas. There were tons of great shops there and—

  A gut-wrenching sob tore from Christy. My eyes popped open.

  Oh my God. She was crying.

  Was this part of the exercise? Did I miss something?

  My first instinct was to break for the door, but everyone in the room was staring—and nobody else was in tears.

  Jeez, what was I supposed to do now?

  Then I remembered the time I’d been so upset here at the store—long story—that I’d cried in the stock room, and Ty had comforted me. If he could figure out what to do, so could I.

  Of course, Ty had a really big shoulder for me to lean on, and a strong arm to put around me, and he smelled great. But I could do this.

  Gently I laid my arm around Christy’s shoulder and leaned in.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. It didn’t come out sounding as comforting as I’d hoped, but Christy didn’t seem to notice.

  She looked up at me, eyes puffy, cheeks red, tears streaming down her face, and said, “I just feel so sorry for you, Haley! Your life is so awful!”

  Okay, now I felt like a complete idiot. Here I’d been mapping out a North American search pattern for a Sinful handbag and Christy had actually been thinking abo
ut me and my life.

  “Really!” Christy wailed. “It’s just awful!”

  I pulled away, a little miffed now.

  “My life’s not awful,” I told her.

  “Yes, it is!” Christy said. “Everybody in your whole family is really successful, except for you.”

  “I just haven’t found my niche yet,” I said.

  “Your boyfriend dumped you at that big party in front of hundreds of people.”

  “I wanted to break up with him first,” I told her.

  “You got fired from a really great job.”

  “I was laid off, investigation pending,” I insisted.

  “And you’re so bad with money you have to sell fake purses—and even that’s not working anymore.”

  “We’re on hiatus.”

  “People probably think you’re a big loser!”

  “What?”

  “Everything about your life is just awful!” Christy sobbed into her hands.

  All the employees had broken off their own discussions and were staring. So was Jeanette, so was the trainer.

  Why didn’t that trainer come over here and do something? This whole thing was her big idea. Wasn’t there some action plan in her PowerPoint presentation manual on what to do if an employee went ape-shit during the exercise?

  Then I knew what was going on: Sarah Covington was behind this.

  That trainer was her friend. Sarah had sent her to this store on purpose. She’d probably engineered the whole exercise just to make me look stupid and pathetic in front of everybody at Holt’s. This trainer was probably streaming a live feed through her laptop straight to Sarah so she could see every detail of my humiliation. Oh my God. She’d probably post it on YouTube.

  Well, I’d just show her.

  I stood up and faced the other employees.

  “Everybody stay in your seats. Don’t be alarmed. I’ve had medical training and I have this under control,” I announced. “Pay no attention to anything Christy said. This is just a delusional episode brought on by a chemical imbalance due to an overdose of over-the-counter medications.”

  I yanked Christy out of her chair, put my nose in the air—channeling my mom’s I’m-better-than-you attitude—and led her out of the room. She sobbed all the way to the breakroom and collapsed into a chair.