Games We Play

by Cynthia Dane

  Jenny didn’t think these people were heartless enough to toss her out in the middle of the night during one of the coldest ice storms of the decade, but here she was, slipping across the sidewalk. The man slid her duffel bag holding every meager possession she had after her.

  “Bastards!” She struggled to keep her balance on the sidewalk as she launched after them. The shelter door closed in her face, locked and secure against riffraff like her. “You heartless pieces of shit! I’m gonna die out here!”

  Nobody responded. The only sound came from an old Volvo creaking down the dangerous street. Jenny looked after it with jealousy burning in her eyes. It was the only heat her body could muster.

  “God damnit.” Now that she wasn’t in the shelter, she could take the Lord’s name in vain. For all she knew, she would be off to meet him by dawn. The ice was already coating her fingers and touching her nose. If she didn’t find some kind of heated shelter soon, she’d be dead.

  Jenny hoisted her duffel bag over her shoulder and began the arduous trek to the nearest homeless camp. There should be fires there. Maybe some kerosene heaters. If she had to, she’d manipulate someone into letting her into their tent. She knew how to keep other people warm.

  At least at the shelter she had her own bunk and three meals a day. At least there she could access the internet to find more help and apply for jobs. But she didn’t have a cell phone or a permanent address. Her only income at the moment was what she managed to sell outside the public library.

  Why did Kelly have to go and do that? One more day of searching, and Jenny might have had a job lead! Wouldn’t have been much, but it could’ve paid her enough to room with someone and finally have a real home for the first time since she was kicked out of the foster system.

  By the time Jenny reached the camp, she was frozen to the core of her being. She was desperate enough to do anything for some heat. Her only hope was that God spared her fingers, because she needed them to make her wares.

  ***

  The wind upturned another one of Jenny’s displays. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her face and fixed the homemade barrettes, necklaces, and rings she made out of bottle caps and cans and painted with cheap dollar store nail polish. The reds and blues always sold the best.

  Didn’t help that the sign also knocked over her cardboard sign. She had to beat away some old guy looking for leftover food to grab that piece out of the Chinese restaurant dumpster, and she didn’t want to confess what she had to do to get the Sharpie. “Homemade Accessories: $2 each” took only ten seconds to write for a lifetime’s worth of shame. Some of those people at the camp really didn’t have any shame.

  So far she had managed to sell two barrettes and one necklace. Enough money to buy dinner from the McDonald’s near the camp.

  She finished fixing her display and looked up to see a woman coming out of the library. “Two dollars!” Jenny cried. “Fine accessories for a fine lady!”

  The woman, dressed in a body-hugging one-piece and a genuine leather jacket, stopped in her tracks. Jenny hadn’t actually expected her to come over and check out what she sold. But the red-headed woman did, and that look in the woman’s eyes suggested she was hungry for some fine jewelry.

  Too bad Jenny couldn’t remember the last time she saw a diamond.

  “What’s this?” The woman’s stiletto heels stopped. “You make these yourself?”

  She bent down to pick up one of Jenny’s necklaces. Gold glittered in the sunlight while a bottlecap charm painted to look like a bird taking flight dangled toward the blanket. “Yeah,” Jenny said. “I make them all myself using recycled materials.”

  “I can see that they’re recycled.” The woman picked up another necklace. “You’re not lying to me, though, are you? About you making these yourself.”

  “What good would it be for me to lie? I don’t have anything else to do with my time.”

  The woman studied Jenny’s dirty face. “You’re not using, are you?”

  “What the fuck is it to you?” Jenny scoffed. “Nah. You know how hard it is to manipulate this crap when you’re high?”

  “I can imagine it’s not easy.”

  “It’s not.”

  The woman snorted. “Tell you what. I’ll buy everything you have here for a hundred bucks. Cash.”

  “What?” Jenny wasn’t sure she had twenty things for sale. “You serious?”

  “I am. Consider the overflow a tip so you can afford the bath house and something from Good Will.” The woman pulled a card out of her wallet alongside the dollar bill. “This is my office. Stop by there tomorrow. We may have a place for you on our team with skills like these.”

  “What?”

  “But you’ll need to be bathed and dressed somewhat nicely before anyone will talk to you. That’s the game, you know.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  The woman made sure Jenny had the card and money before heading toward her car. “Consider me your fairy godmother, and you might go places, hon.”

  Jenny held the hundred dollar bill to the sunlight to make sure it was real. She didn’t think twice when the woman came back with a box to collect everything the artist had created in a homeless camp.

  Chapter 1

  Nicole Delaney had perfected her method for choosing the best outfits for class. Ever since she lost the computer programs, professional webcams, and automated closets that chose her outfits based on her own tastes and those of her (former) personal stylists, she had become quite proud with how she went about expressing her fashionable tastes.

  She flashed a grin to her camera phone mounted on a sturdy selfie stick. The phone cord was attached to her MacBook, which ran a program her friend created for her – then used her beta feedback to prepare it for world release. All Nicole had to do was take quality pictures of herself romping around her bedroom in select items from her wardrobe. The computer program automatically cut out the pieces, such as skirts and scarves, and allowed her to mix and match them using nothing but a few short commands and her computer mouse.

  Right now she was decked from head to toe in a snowbunny outfit that hid her body but showed off her deep dimples and the golden glow of her hair. The only thing missing was a good belt to cinch around her thick sweater. Too bad she couldn’t afford to go shopping anymore. The money from her summer internship had already dried up, and she found it uncouth to get a job on campus. That was for the students who needed work study. Nicole’s family was… hitting a rough patch and cutting some luxuries so they could weather the bumbling storm.

  Yeah. That was it.

  “What do you think, Daddy?” She showed off her outfit to the photograph of her father on her vanity. “Would you let me out of the house looking like this?” She peeled off the sweater and rummaged for another one.

  Her father couldn’t answer, anyway. Not only was Nicole a college student who could damn well decide what she wanted to wear outside of the house, but her father was dead. It would take an act of God to beam his spirit down to pay her praise or chastise her for poor fashion choices.

  Nicole didn’t like to dwell on her father’s death. It had only been two years, anyway. Was that enough time to grieve for a man who died a slow, agonizing death from cancer?

  “Well!” Nicole gave her arm an elaborate stretch before changing. She needed the flow of oxygen through her body, and she wasn’t getting it standing around her bedroom.

  Her tiny bedroom that barely held her belongings, let alone her wardrobe.

  When her mother told her they were selling their mansion in the countryside and taking up permanent residence in the city apartment, Nicole had been somewhat elated. She loved the city, and she knew her mother chose the city apartment over the country mansion because it was easier to care for and in the same city as Nicole’s university. They would save money if Nicole didn’t have to rent her own apartment to go to school. She had already compromised going to a public school over the private ones she had coveted. Apparently,
that extra twenty thousand a year really made a difference to the family’s bottom line.

  But the city apartment, located on the sixth floor of a mediocre “luxury” high-rise on the edge of downtown, lacked a little too much for the Delaneys’ tastes. It was meant to be a weekend or holiday destination, not a permanent residence for Nicole and her mother Linda. The three bedrooms were tiny compared to the suites in the countryside. The dining room couldn’t host the kinds of dinner parties Linda used to call her forte. And where were the gardens for strolling? There was a park across the street, but it was always crowded with children and homeless people. Nicole usually kept her bedroom window curtain closed out of paranoia.

  Nothing had been harder for the fashion student than cutting back her wardrobe for sale and donation. Nothing!

  “Nicole?” Her mother knocked on the closed door. “Please come out here when you have a chance. We need to talk.”

  Sighing, Nicole turned off the music playing on her phone and changed back into her loungewear. “Coming!”

  It was the two of them in the house. A far cry from her father and the live-in staff who joined them in the countryside. But the Delaneys couldn’t afford both the city taxes and a live-in maid, so they made due with a maid service who popped in three times a week to clean up after two women who were not used to living on their own. Linda attempted to keep the kitchen orderly, but the tea she currently made on the stove was smashed between a dirty casserole dish and a stack of plates.

  “What is it?”

  Linda brought her a mug of tea and sat down at the kitchen table. “I don’t know how else to put it, honey, but we’re dangerously close to running out of money.”

  “Huh?” Nicole folded her arms on the table. “What are you talking about? I thought you said the money from the house would last us at least five years.” Plenty of time for you to find a new husband, Mom! Nicole would never say it out loud, but she knew her mother had been seeing matchmakers and elite dating services for the past few months. Most of the dates and meetings fizzled out. Apparently, nobody wanted to date the poor widow of one of the best property lawyers in the state. “I’m supposed to be employed by then.” At a haute couture fashion house in Paris, preferably.

  Linda kept her eyes on the table. “I thought it would, sweetie, but things rarely work out like that.” She sighed, again. “More of your father’s debts popped up that I had to pay off. Plus, there was the trip to Milan you took this summer…”

  “That was for my internship!”

  “I know, I know, but… damnit, Nicole, I don’t think you understand what kind of position we’re in right now. We’re going to have to stop the maid service and clean things up ourselves around here.”

  They both shuddered. “I… wow.”

  “Yes, honey. I really need you to pitch in. It’s about time you learned how to use a vacuum and do your own laundry, anyway.”

  Did Linda realize how many clothes Nicole had? How was she supposed to wash all of them herself?

  “There’s more, honey.” Oh, God, what else were they getting rid of? Taxi and rideshare services? Was Nicole supposed to walk eight blocks to campus now? “I’ve been talking more and more to Mrs. Pendergrass at the agency.”

  Nicole’s ears perked up. “Did you land yourself a hot date, finally?” The agency could only mean Beyond Destiny, which had nothing to do with fortune telling and everything to do with creating “homes” in the upper class. Familial ones. Between people. Preferably rich ones. It had become Linda’s matchmaking service of choice once she saw the numbers from the accountant and decided she needed to marry again, and soon.

  “Mrs. Pendergrass has been frank with me. She doesn’t think she can get me a match due to my age and status as a widow of few means.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Nicole was in no hurry to have a stepfather so soon after her father’s death, but she understood why her mother was persistent. Money was the most important thing. “So what now?”

  Linda hesitated before continuing. “She suggested that I take another approach.” Her eyes finally made contact with her daughter’s. “So I’ve been having her look for matches… for you.”

  They both let that sink in for a few minutes. Linda folded the edges of her handkerchief while Nicole stared ahead, aghast.

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you until something came through. It’s been a few weeks of searching, after all.”

  “What?”

  Linda, with her effortless black curls and a penchant for drumming her fingers together, folded the monogramed handkerchief over her hands and said, “I know it’s not ideal, Nicole, but please hear me out. We really need the money. So if a good spousal match pops up for you, please consider it.”

  “You’re arranging a marriage for me?” Nicole continued to scoff as if the air was about to be pumped out of her lungs. “You fucking serious?”

  “Language!” The former debutante who spent half her adult life entertaining lawyers and their bigshot clients never stood for that sort of crass language coming from her daughter’s mouth. “I know that what I’m suggesting is unconventional, but…”

  “But nothing, Mom! Are you nuts? It’s 2017! Who the fuck is doing arranged marriages these days! Besides, I’m not some heifer for you to trade to the highest bidder!”

  Linda winced. “I don’t know what else to do. Where I come from, this is the solution if you have a daughter.” She slammed both hands against her forehead. “I don’t think you’re a piece of property, Nicole! Of course I don’t think that way! But you must understand… the money…”

  Nicole blanched. “So who has Mrs. Pendergrass picked out for me, huh? Some old rich fuck who wants me to spread my legs open for him every other night while he sucks his inhaler and blows his dusty sperm across the bed?”

  Linda gasped. “Where did you learn to talk like that?”

  Dad. That’s what he would have said. Nicole had been his princess. A princess so worthy of love and devotion that she wasn’t to be touched by anyone she didn’t already love.

  Nicole had never truly been in love before, so she was pretty sure any (old, they were destined to be old) man asking for her hand in marriage wasn’t anyone she could love.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t ladylike of me.” When her father was alive, the family had afforded sending Nicole to finishing schools, both in America and abroad. She imagined Madame Henriette would have stroked out to hear one of her star pupils talk like that to her own mother. “But I simply refuse to go along with this.”

  Linda looked away, embarrassed. “Anything I do, sweetheart, I do for us.”

  “Maybe you should get a job.”

  Nicole expected that to sting her mother, the well-bred daughter of a North Carolinian real estate developer. Linda hadn’t worked a day in her life. She had no reason to, thanks to her family’s generous coffers. Nicole often suspected that the family only stayed afloat because of donations coming from her grandparents. But Linda had seven siblings. There was only so much money to go around, let alone for one of the youngest daughters who had married a wealthy lawyer. She would have one of the smallest inheritances, and it wouldn’t come for a few more years yet.

  But Linda wasn’t fazed. “I already have.”

  “What?”

  Nicole’s mother shook her head. “The woman across the street offered me a position in her seamstress business. I’m finally putting my stitching skills to use. It’s… not a lot of money, but it will keep us fed for a little while.”

  “But your arthritis!” It wasn’t too bad during the warmer months, but Nicole knew that as soon as the cold settled in, her mother would be in trouble. “That’s not a long term plan at all.” She doubled-down on her refusal to entertain the notion of an arranged marriage. If her mother was looking for some pushed boundaries, Nicole could scrounge up a couple! “I’ll try to get a job too, Mother. I’m sure one of the downtown high-fashion boutiques will hire me for evenings and
weekends. I did that internship in Milan! I know everything about those designers!”

  Linda wanly smiled. “That’s a good idea. It would look good on your résumé, too.”

  Nicole may have heard what she wanted, but her mother’s demeanor remained tired and somewhat scorned. The sour mood hanging over the dining table had nothing to do with Linda having her first job in forty years and everything to do with talks of a matchmaker. “Let’s put that ridiculous idea about an arranged marriage out of our minds.”

  Linda agreed to no longer mention it. But as they went about their days, Nicole could only wonder what kind of man was interested in her.

  Then she became so nauseated by the notion that she turned up the music on her phone and buried herself in her favorite past time: perusing the fashion magazines and dreaming of the day when she would see her name in an editor’s column.

  This has been an excerpt from WITH THIS RING. Get it now on Amazon!

  Loved this? Check out other works from Cynthia Dane & Hildred Billings?

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