Clutches and Curses

by Dorothy Howell

  She pointed to a rack of bathrobes. There was a creepy looking bump on the end of her finger.

  “You help me. I need robe,” she told me.

  “I’m just here to serve the drink,” I said and gestured to my tray.

  “Drink? You serve drink in store?” she demanded.

  She looked kind of squirrelly—not fun-at-a-party squirrelly, more like kill-you-in-your-sleep squirrelly.

  I took a step back.

  “I’ll get you a drink,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “No!” The woman waved her gnarled hand. “You American girls, you have everything. You give nothing! You’re selfish, selfish, selfish!”

  I had no idea what the heck she was talking about, but I wasn’t going to hang around and find out—not for seven lousy dollars an hour.

  “Look, I’ll get someone to help you with the bathrobes,” I said. “I’ll be back in a—”

  She leaned in, bared her teeth, and snarled at me. I froze, too stunned to move.

  “I curse you,” she hissed, waving her finger in front of my face. “I call on the power of the universe and curse you!”

  She poked her fingers at me, snapped her teeth together, and left.

  Sandy appeared out of nowhere, eyes wide, mouth open.

  “Oh my God. That old woman just put a curse on you,” she said. “I can’t believe she did that. Are you okay?”

  I did feel kind of weird—but maybe it was all the Bolt I drank.

  “It was just some cranky old lady,” I told her. “I don’t believe in curses.”

  “You should,” Sandy told me. “You’d better watch out. Anything could happen.”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered.

  I headed for the front of the store to refill my Bolt tray. A panel fell out of the ceiling and crashed to the floor right in front of me.

  Sandy rushed to my side. “Oh my God. It’s happening already!”

  Oh, crap.

  CHAPTER 2

  “She put a curse on you?” Marcie asked, then pulled a yellow blouse from my closet. “How about this?”

  We were in my apartment in Santa Clarita, a great upscale area about thirty minutes—depending on traffic—from Los Angeles. Thanks to my diligent and consistent use of a number of credit cards, I’d gotten it fixed up just the way I liked it. I love my apartment.

  “He’s seen me in that,” I said.

  She shoved the blouse back onto the rack and started flipping through the clothes again, while I sat on my bed watching her and surfing the net on my laptop. We’d been at this for a while now, sorting through my clothes to find exactly the right look for my are-we-going-to-move-in-together date with Ty tonight.

  Wearing the perfect outfit takes hours of prep time. Yet it must look effortless, like you breezed past your closet, selected items while texting your best friend with the news that the girl who stole your ex had a drug-resistant STD, or something cool like that, then threw them on and dashed out the door without even looking at yourself in the mirror.

  It’s a science, an art—no, it’s a gift. Really. It’s one of the things I inherited from my former pageant queen mom that my younger sister—Mom’s Mini-Me—did not.

  You can always tell when someone is trying too hard with an outfit. Like those girls who show up at a Dodger’s game in a skirt and pumps. You wonder if they knew where they were going when they got dressed.

  The perfect outfit—something that made my butt and boobs look round and the rest of me look flat—lurked inside my closet. All Marcie and I had to do was find it. And we would. We’re fearless at this.

  While she dug deeper into my closet, I clicked on another Web site, and there before my eyes appeared the most gorgeous handbag I’d ever seen in my life—really, I swear, my entire life.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed, hopping up and down on my bed.

  Marcie rushed over, as a best friend would, and looked over my shoulder. She gasped, too. Instantly, she knew what I’d found.

  “The Delicious,” she whispered.

  Yes, there it was, pictured on the screen before us in all its buttery leather and beaded glory. We observed a moment of silence befitting the hottest handbag of the season before I spoke.

  “I’m getting one,” I declared.

  Marcie had heard me say that before about other bags, so she didn’t remind me of how hard the Delicious would be to find, how few stores would carry it, or how fewer still could keep it in stock—she didn’t even point out how expensive it was. Marcie just nodded her acceptance of my vow and went back to my closet.

  That’s why we’re best friends.

  “This would be fabulous,” she said

  I dragged my gaze from the Delicious purse and saw that Marcie had pulled a little black dress from my closet that I’d bought at Banana Republic.

  “I can’t wear that on a night like tonight,” I said. “I got it on clearance.”

  She understood completely and dove into the closet again.

  We both knew how important this date was. Honestly, Ty hadn’t been the most attentive boyfriend sometimes. Well, okay, most of the time. He broke our dates or showed up late. He took calls and checked messages when we were together. He was gone a lot.

  But he had five generations of the Holt’s family riding on his shoulders. Lots of responsibility, pressure, stress. I tried to be understanding—even after our first really hot date when we’d come close to hopping into the sack but hadn’t—when he’d told me flat out that his job wasn’t something he could ignore.

  Apparently, I was.

  Still, he wanted us to move in together. That meant something. He wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t committed to our relationship. Right?

  “So who was she? Just some crazy old lady?” Marcie asked, picking up where we’d left off in our conversation as she continued to search my closet.

  I took one long last loving look at the Delicious and closed my laptop.

  I’d already heard about how Marcie’s day had gone—who’d said what, when, how they said it, and what they had on at the time. And I’d caught her up on what had happened with me—which wasn’t nearly as interesting, since Marcie worked in a huge office building with lots of people—who had bad hair and didn’t know a Fendi from a Gucci, if you can believe it—that we could talk about.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, and added, “Then a panel fell out of the ceiling and nearly knocked me in the head.”

  Marcie swung around. “Oh my God. It fell? Just like that?”

  I waved away her concern. “It was probably already loose or something.”

  “And it just happened to fall right after that woman put a curse on you?”

  “I don’t believe in curses.”

  I’d said those same words about a dozen times to Sandy, Bella, Grace, and everybody else in Holt’s who’d seen what had happened, and saying them now to Marcie just made me more sure I was right.

  “It was a coincidence,” I said.

  “Was it a coincidence that your car got hit in the parking lot?” she asked.

  Yeah, okay, that was kind of weird. But mostly I was ticked off that, when I came out of the store tonight, I saw that somebody had dinged my fender and hadn’t left their name or number or anything.

  “And that ticket you got for running a red light on the way home?” Marcie asked.

  “That could have happened to anybody,” I told her.

  “That’s a lot of coincidences for one evening,” she said, shaking her head. “You’d better take this seriously.”

  Marcie was almost always right about things, but I couldn’t go along with this one. Some wacky old woman waving her finger at me and mumbling a few words couldn’t really have an effect on my life. Besides, I refused to believe that someone who dressed as badly as she did had the ability to actually call on the power of the universe to curse me.

  That’s how I roll.

  “Look,” I said, “tonight I’m going on a hot date, with a really hot g
uy, and we’re going to talk about moving in together. Could that happen to someone who’d been cursed?”

  “Well, maybe not,” Marcie said. “But still . . .”

  “A few bad things happened to me, but so what? They weren’t serious. Just annoying. And they certainly didn’t have any real impact on my life. If they did, then maybe—”

  My cell phone rang.

  Marcie and I both froze and looked at it lying on the bed beside me. We turned to each other again and I knew we were both thinking the same thing—that’s what best friends do.

  “Is that Ty?” she asked. “Cancelling?”

  “No way,” I told her, and picked up the phone. I looked at the caller I.D. screen and gasped. Oh my God. It was Ty.

  “Sorry, Haley,” Ty said when I answered. “I can’t make it tonight.”

  I waited for the usual wave of disappointment to hit me.

  It didn’t hit me.

  I heard muffled voices in the background, and Ty said, “I’ll call you later.”

  I waited for the usual anger to hit me.

  That didn’t hit me, either. Nothing hit me.

  “I don’t think you should call me,” I said. “You’re not ready for us to move in together. So I’m giving the offer back to you. Keep it. And if you’re ready to extend it again, call me.”

  I hung up the phone, calm, collected, and stunned.

  Marcie looked at me, equally stunned.

  Why wasn’t I hurt, angry, screaming, crying—something? Why wasn’t I rushing to the kitchen for a Snickers bar, or clawing into my emergency package of Oreos?

  This wasn’t like me, to be completely emotionless. I wasn’t acting like myself at all. It was like some weird cosmic force had taken control of me and—

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Had I really been cursed?

  Everybody in the Holt’s breakroom was staring at me—which was understandable since I’d walked in a moment ago with a gorgeous Fendi shoulder bag, which I’d stowed in my locker—except, they were all looking at me weird. I was in line at the time clock, waiting for another few hours of my life to chug past in a forgettable blur, and, not only was everyone staring, they were leaning their heads together, whispering and pointing.

  Had I missed a meeting?

  “Everybody heard about the curse,” Sandy, behind me in line, said quietly.

  “I’m not cursed,” I told her, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Nothing bad has happened to you—other than that panel falling out of the ceiling, nearly killing you?” Sandy asked.

  Everyone in the room stared harder.

  Yeah, okay, my car had been hit in the parking lot and I’d gotten a traffic ticket—not to mention that thing with Ty and my weird reaction to it—but none of that meant I was cursed.

  I saw no need to mention them.

  “Well, you know, things happened—but things always happen,” I said.

  Everybody glared harder at me now.

  The line moved forward. The time clock thunked as the employees ahead of me fed their time cards into the slot.

  “You have to see a psychic,” Sandy said. “It’s the only way to find out how to break the curse.”

  “I’m not cursed,” I insisted, as I stuck my time card into the machine. “I don’t believe in—”

  The lights in the room went off, leaving us in pitch black. Gasps and moans rose from the employees. The time clock made a loud grinding noise. Sparks flew out of the top.

  The lights flashed on again. Somebody screamed and pointed at the floor. My time card lay in black, smoldering pieces at my feet.

  “Great,” somebody in line behind me complained. “The time clock is toast.”

  “How are we going to get paid?” somebody else asked.

  Everybody groaned, then turned and again glared at me.

  “Thanks a lot, Haley,” someone snapped.

  “Yeah. Now all of our paychecks will be late,” another person added.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I told them.

  “See a psychic, Haley,” Sandy insisted. “Please, for all our sakes.”

  I left the breakroom feeling a little shaken. Yeah, okay, a few weird things had happened, but I was just having a run of bad luck. I mean, those things could happen to people all the time. Right? I wasn’t really cursed, was I?

  Grace stood in the customer service booth as I approached. Six customers waited in line

  “You’re supposed to be in the meeting,” she said.

  A meeting? Again?

  Maybe I was cursed, after all.

  “Nothing you can do here, anyway,” Grace said, waving her hands around the booth. “When the electricity blinked, all the registers went wacko. The inventory computer is jacked up, too. Even the phones aren’t working.”

  Since, apparently, it was impossible to perform any task whatsoever, it sounded to me like a perfect time to work the customer service booth. But, instead, I had to go to a meeting. Damn.

  I headed down the hall past the store managers’ offices and into the training room. About a dozen employees were already seated in the rows of chairs that faced the front of the room. The screen wasn’t pulled down, which meant no PowerPoint presentation to suffer through—always a good sign.

  I took my usual spot at the rear of any gathering and found a seat behind the big guy from men’s wear so I could nod off, if necessary, without being noticed. The two employees I’d sat between gave me stink-eye, then got up and moved.

  Jeanette, the store manager, came into the room a few minutes later. She was in her mid-fifties and, for some reason unknown to even the greatest minds of the universe, always dressed in Holt’s hideous clothing. She wasn’t doing the line any favors. Jeanette had a cylindrical shape, which wasn’t attractive under the best of circumstances, but lately she’d put on, to be generous, I’ll say a few pounds, which had widened her midsection considerably.

  Tonight she wore a neon white pencil skirt and button-up jacket. The designer, in what I can only think was a moment of supreme optimism rather than a career death wish, had given the jacket a ruffle at the bottom.

  She looked like Saturn.

  I wondered why she was in here conducting a meeting when everything electronic in the store had gone haywire. But she’d probably made phone calls on her cell to whomever at Corporate handled this sort of problem, and was waiting for someone to show up and fix things.

  Jeanette started the meeting and her words quickly turned into blah, blah blah, and I drifted off.

  Why hadn’t Ty called me? I mean, I’d told him last night not to call me until he’d rethought this whole moving-in-together thing and was ready to actually discuss it, but still.

  What did it mean? Was he just busy? Ticked off at me? Did he really not want to move in together? Was he glad I’d given back his offer so he wouldn’t have to tell me he’d changed his mind? Had he found somebody new? Did he have another girlfriend, someone he really wanted to move in with?

  I threw out my mental stop sign, bringing my runaway thoughts to a screeching halt. No sense in making things up. I re-centered my thoughts and imagined a different—that’s code for better for me—scenario.

  I’ll be somewhere way cool—the handbag department at Nordstrom maybe. I’ll turn and see Ty standing next to me—I’ll be wearing a V-neck sweater and a demi-cup bra—holding two dozen roses and a fabulous piece of jewelry that’s just short of gaudy—no wait, better still that Delicious handbag plus the jewelry. Then he’ll turn toward me with that smoking-hot smile of his, confess his eternal love, then take me outside and point to the heavens where a skywriter has written Please move in with me in big puffy letters. Then he’ll take me in his arms and—

  My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, bringing me back to reality. Jeanette’s words reverberated through the room, something about needing experienced employees in the new Holt’s store opening near Vegas. I checked the caller I.D. screen and nearly gasped aloud.

  My mom. She’d sent me
a text message.

  Since when was she willing to risk breaking a nail to send me a message?

  I read her message: Mother–daughter week at spa. Your sister cancelled. You’re coming with me. Leaving tomorrow.

  A knot the size of a Prada satchel formed in my stomach. No, no, this couldn’t be happening. I read the message again, hoping, praying that I’d somehow misread it. But no, it was true.

  My mom wanted me to go on her annual spa-week trip with her coven of former beauty queens and their beauty queen daughters. A week of talking tiara placement, runway strategy, double-sided tape, and Vaseline tricks. The mothers would recall every step they’d taken down every runway, what they’d worn, what they’d said, what everyone had said about what they’d worn and said. The daughters would brag about the pageants they’d been in, which ones they’d won, which ones they planned to enter next. All of them would go on and on about their “talent,” who made their costumes, how they’d rehearse, where they’d rehearse, and who would surely comment about how and where they rehearsed.

  And I wouldn’t be able to say anything. Not one word. For an entire week, I’d sit there like a dork, nodding and pretending to smile, because I’d never been in a pageant in my life.

  Not that my mother hadn’t attempted to force me into her footsteps down the runway. From a very early age, I’d taken tap, ballet, modeling, piano, voice, absolutely every kind of lesson imaginable. She hadn’t let me quit until I set fire to the den curtains—it was an accident, I swear—twirling fire batons.

  But the truth was I couldn’t sing, dance, or play a musical instrument—I wasn’t even all that interested in world peace—so no way would I fit in with this group.

  My mom knew this, of course. She was only asking me to go because my sister—who loved this crap, thankfully—had cancelled on her, and she couldn’t show up at the mother–daughter spa week without a daughter.

  Okay, this was awful. No, it was beyond awful. It was terrible and horrible and—

  I gasped aloud and sat up straighter in my chair.

  Oh my God. Was it true? Did this confirm it? Was I really cursed?

  If so, I wasn’t going down easy.