Wish List

by Fern Michaels

  “You already said that. Whatever possessed you to buy a trucking company? I don’t know the first thing about trucks and I don’t want to learn, Ken. Neither does Dolly. Truckers are always going on strike. They want more, more, more. Those big, burly men will never accept a woman boss, much less an ex-movie actress with a disfigured face. God, Ken, I can see it now—hear them is more like it. Men don’t like taking orders from a woman. No, get our money back. I’m not interested in the trucking business.”

  “It’s too late. It’s a done deal.”

  “Then you and Dory run it. This is your chance to hit the open road and take the little woman with you. Those eighteen-wheelers are nothing but penis extensions and you know it. NO!”

  “Will you at least sleep on it for a few days? It’s so totally unlike anything you’ve ever done. From the wide screen to the open road is a big change. Ariel, if this wasn’t one of those once-in-a-lifetime deals I wouldn’t have gone ahead with it. You love challenges. It’s the perfect new life for you, in my opinion. You can do it—that’s the beauty of it. A very wise investment. All right, I’m leaving now if Dolly will brown bag some of those sugar cookies. It was a delightful lunch, Ariel, and I hope I haven’t made you too unhappy. I’ll call you at the end of the week.”

  Dolly winked at Ken as she slid four plump sugar cookies into a plastic bag. “I think it’s kind of a neat idea,” she whispered. “What do you think about ‘Big Doll’ for a handle?”

  “I love it! When the smoke settles, head for Rodeo Drive and pick up some classy truck driving duds. Those yellow boots will do it. They have a name, but I can’t remember what it is. They never wear out, and if they do, the company replaces them. Well, I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Don’t bother, Ken. I’m not driving a truck!” Ariel snapped.

  Ken retraced his steps until he was towering over her. His usual smile and the twinkle in his eyes disappeared. “I forgot to tell you the most important thing. You have to get a dog and you need a shotgun and a revolver. The dog goes with you at all times, as do the weapons. I’d suggest a shepherd or a Doberman. I signed up both of you for lessons at a rifle range nearby. Consider it a refresher course. I know you were a crack shot in Lady Bandit, but this is real life and you probably forgot everything you learned. A retired police officer will teach you. I also signed you up for a refresher course in karate. You were a star pupil, as I recall, and I know that you kept up with it, but again, this is real life so a few lessons will be good.”

  “Give me back those cookies,” Ariel said, snatching the brown bag. “Go! Go! Out! You’ve finally lost it, Ken! Dogs, guns, martial arts, trucks! I’m an actress!”

  “You were an actress. Now it’s time to do other things. I wouldn’t take those cookies now if you begged me. Those tears aren’t going to faze me one damn bit, Ariel, so don’t start blubbering. Do you know where I’m going now? I’ll tell you where I’m going. Back to the office to buy you a goddamn, fucking tea room. You can serve herbal tea and cucumber sandwiches till you’re blue in the face. Now that’s a role I know you can play.” He snatched the bag of cookies and was out the door before Ariel could come up with a suitable retort.

  “Say something, Dolly.”

  “I hate herbal tea and I never made a cucumber sandwich in my life.”

  “What’s to know? You cut the crust off, spread some stuff on the bread, and layer the cucumbers. Tea makes itself.”

  “I don’t think I want to do that. In fact, I know I don’t want to do it. If I were you I’d call Ken before he buys you a tea room. I don’t think I ever said I wanted a tea room. If I did, I was temporarily insane. I said catering. Tea rooms have ruffled tablecloths and prissy white curtains. The waitresses wear frilly aprons and the patrons have white hair. My vote is no.”

  “Oh, shit!” Ariel said.

  “That pretty much sums it up,” Dolly said. “I’ll clean up here. You can start to pack up your room.”

  “I’m not driving a truck.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be so hasty, Ariel. Think about all the mileage you can get in the trades. They’ll probably want to make a movie of your life when this gets out. I think Ken’s wrong about Rodeo Drive, though. How about if I go to Sears and pick us up some duds, just for the fun of it. We can try them on and kind of get a feel for it. Then I can take them back. I’ll get the permit for the guns and pick up some toy ones so we can practice. The dog will have to wait, though. What do you think?”

  “I’m not driving a truck! And, you seem to forget I’m no longer a movie star. No one is going to want to make a movie of my life, and if they did, I’d say no.”

  Dolly turned her back so she wouldn’t burst into laughter as Ariel stomped from the room. She held her iced tea glass aloft. “Here’s to the trucking business!”

  The dishes were dumped willy-nilly in the sink. In seconds Dolly had her feet into scuffed moccasins and was out the door. “Sears, here I come! Bang! Bang! Freeze!”

  Thirty-one days later, Ariel Hart walked into the offices of Able Body Trucking and announced herself as the new owner. Her face was grim, her eyes defying any of the office staff to make a move. To the six women she said, “Stop whatever you’re doing and write me a paragraph, two if need be, describing what you do for this company. Attach samples, forms, whatever you use, to the paper. I want it within the hour. After you do that, you can go to lunch.”

  Voices came from everywhere.

  “Who will answer the phone?”

  “We never all go to lunch at the same time.”

  “We’re short on forms.”

  “Who’s in charge of the office?”

  “Is it still Margie?”

  “Duke and Chet are due in two hours and we have to have someone here to talk to Lex Sanders when he calls. He’s mad as a wet hornet right now.”

  Ariel’s answer was a blase “Don’t worry about it. Just do as I say and we’ll all get along just fine. Cross me and you’re out the door. Dolly and I will answer the phones until we can get a system worked out. Talking on the phone will be counterproductive.”

  “Does that mean me, too?” a frizzy redhead with a face full of freckles asked.

  “If you work here, it does. Do you have a problem with this?”

  “I don’t, ma’m, but Lex Sanders might. I take care of all his business. When he calls in, which is sometimes four or five times a day, he doesn’t want to be put on hold or anything like that. He wants answers the minute he calls. He’s our biggest customer. He gets nasty when he has to wait or if we have to call him back.”

  “Don’t worry about Mr. Sanders. I’ve just relieved you of that responsibility. You can, however, pull his file or whatever you keep for individual accounts, and bring it to me. Tell me exactly what you do for Mr. Sanders in your summary paragraph. I want to know why one person is on call for a single customer. Another thing, do any of you know who decorated this office?”

  The women laughed. The redhead said, “Mr. Able thinks . . . thought, that red shades and green carpet would make people think Christmas all the time and keep them in good spirits. I don’t know where he got the desks and chairs, maybe the Salvation Army. Wait till you see his office. Your office, I mean.”

  Ariel’s, “Oh, my God!” rang through the entire five-thousand-square-foot office building. She started to bellow. “Where’s the maintence man? Get him in here! Now!”

  “We don’t have one. Mr. Able took care of his office. We take care of the outer office,” someone responded.

  “It smells in here,” Ariel said, breathing through her mouth.

  “Cat urine,” Dolly said, taking a deep breath, “and there’s the offender.” She pointed to a mangy yellow cat sitting in a hole in the middle of a ratty leather sofa full of patches.

  “Obviously the cat goes with the deal. Make a list, Dolly: cat bed, litter box, and food. How old do you think this carpet is? I don’t think I ever saw a mustard yellow carpet before, even in the prop room back in L.A. T
hose stains defy description.” Ariel dropped to her knees as she held her nose. “Coffee, soda, tomato sauce, ground-in tobacco, cat urine, ink. Do you think I missed anything?”

  “A hundred years of dirt,” Dolly sniffed. “I say we rip it out right now. We have six able-bodied women out there. They might help us.”

  “And they might not. We can do it ourselves,” Ariel said. “Look at those chairs—they’re full of cat hair, stains, and fuzz balls. The couch is worse—you can see the springs sticking out. I don’t believe this,” she said, pulling a chunk of material out of one of the holes. “It’s the leg from a pair of jeans. I bet there are things living in this furniture and the cat eats the things and that’s why there’s no cat food. God!”

  Of the five windows in the office, one had a venetian blind that hung askew, one window had a brown plaid curtain, one had a pull-down shade that was tattered and ripped, and the fourth and fifth windows were bare and dirty, making it impossible to see outside. Ariel snapped the shade and was rewarded with a cloud of dust in her face.

  The desk was an old dining room table that had probably been beautiful at one time. Now it was littered, cigarette-scarred, and filthy dirty. Something that looked like green beans and corn had mildew and mold growing around it in the cracks and grooves. An ancient Underwood typewriter sat square in the middle of the desk. Ariel sat down in the burgundy swivel chair. “This is comfortable, but it has to go. I think the cat spent a lot of time here. He might have a home inside the safe, too,” Ariel said as she pointed to a large Wells Fargo safe whose door was hanging on one hinge. Aside from the stacks of boxes lined up against the walls, there was no other furniture. The walls, however, were a different story. They were the same mustard color and were peppered with pictures of Teddy Roosevelt: on his horse, in a chair, standing by a railing, at ease under a tree smoking a cigar, and shaking hands with Asa Able. All were signed, To my friend, Asa. The signature was simple . . . T.R.

  “Asa must be Mr. Able’s father. I wonder why he didn’t take them. They could be valuable. If he doesn’t want them, maybe we can donate them to a museum.”

  The phone rang—a froggy, low-pitched gurgle. Dolly giggled as Ariel reached across the dining room table to pick up the black plastic phone. “Able Body Trucking,” she said sweetly. She winked at Dolly, who rolled her eyes. Ariel listened a moment before she spoke. “Bernice is busy right now. Ethel is busy, too. No, Helen is occupied. Well, you could tell me what you want. To whom am I speaking? Lex Sanders. Yes, Mr. Sanders, what can I do for you?” She listened a moment and then said, “I’ll have to get back to you, Mr. Sanders. My name? My name is Ariel Hart. No, Mr. Able isn’t here. Mr. Able sold the company to me, Mr. Sanders. He told me he was sending out letters to all his clients. I’m sorry you didn’t get yours. I could make up a copy and Fax it to you as soon as I get a Fax. Actually, we’re in the process of cleaning up these offices and installing a computer system. Things will run so much more smoothly. No, Bernice is still busy.” Ariel held the phone away from her ear so Dolly could hear the sputtering and squawking on the other end of the phone. “Late this afternoon or first thing in the morning. It’s the best I can do at the moment. Yes, Mr. Sanders, I’ll get right on it. Oh, you bet. Uh-huh. No problem.”

  “Bernice!”

  The freckled redhead poked her head into the office. “Yes, ma’m?”

  “That was Mr. Sanders on the phone. He says our truck is ninety minutes late and he sounded rather hostile. Did the driver call in? Can’t Mr. Sanders call him on the CB or something?”

  “He wasn’t ninety minutes late, he was forty-five minutes late. One of his hoses broke and he hit three radar traps. He made his delivery. We’re ahead of the game if we make delivery within an hour’s time frame.”

  “Is Mr. Sanders insecure?” Ariel asked curiously.

  “Mr. Sanders calls his concern ‘taking care of business.’ He’s the biggest rancher in the area. About a year ago the ‘Lifetime’ section of the newspaper did a writeup on Mr. Sanders. They said he was a multimillionaire. He’s got hundreds of employees and he’s Able Body Trucking’s biggest customer. Mr. Able always . . . what he did was . . . cater to Mr. Sanders because he knew he could count on his money. That’s another way of saying Mr Sanders is our bread and butter. Our other accounts aren’t as steady as he is. Sometimes Mr. Able would send some of our customers to other, smaller truckers to accommodate Mr. Sanders and at the same time, create good will with the other companies.”

  “I see.” To Dolly she said, “I guess this isn’t any different from Hollywood. It isn’t what you know, it’s who you know. I had to play that game for too many years. No more. If this is a business, then we’re going to run it like a business. If we make mistakes we’ll learn from them. We have to establish the ground rules now at the outset. The first thing I want to find out is how much business Mr. Sanders gives us compared to our other customers. Since Mr. Sanders’s immediate problem has been taken care of, I suggest we get on with our demolition plans. C’mon, let’s start carrying this junk outside.”

  It was late in the day when a trash hauler pulled his truck up to the loading area and dumped all of Mr. Able’s furnishings into the back. Ariel gasped when he handed her a check for five hundred dollars. “For the safe—we can fix it—and for the antique dining room table,” the man said.

  The trash collector was no sooner out of the compound when the decorator swerved into the lot in a sunny yellow Ford Mustang convertible. A bespectacled man emerged, carrying samples and a heavy case. It took exactly ninety minutes to select the carpeting, tile for the entryway, and fabric for the vertical blinds. Chairs, desk, oak filing cabinets, and lamps were chosen from a catalog of furniture that was in stock. Delivery was promised in five days, time that would be spent having the offices cleaned and painted by a subcontractor on the decorator’s list. A florist promised delivery of live plants and agreed to maintain them on a ten-day basis. Another subcontractor was hired to replace the straggly flowers and shrubbery on the outside of the building. A third was to install awnings over the front windows and entrance. Still another agreed to have a new stove, dishwasher, and top-of-the-line refrigerator installed as soon as the new floor was down in the kitchen. A double stainless steel sink was a must, the decorator said, along with ready-made cabinets. He also said he had just the right oak table, inlaid with patterned tile. The kitchen, he said, could easily hold six chairs. A colorful valance was selected for the massive kitchen window.

  Ariel dusted her hands dramatically after she signed the contract and only winced slightly when she wrote out the check.

  “It’s done, Dolly. The telephone. and computer people will be here tomorrow while we have our first driving lesson. Do you have everything we need for our work session tonight?”

  “I got it right here. Insurance, payroll, the whole ball of wax. Didn’t you forget something, Ariel?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Weren’t you supposed to call Mr. Sanders?”

  “You’re right. Guess what—you packed up the Rolodex. We’ll do it when we go home. And if we don’t, what’s he going to do to us? I don’t have time for prima donnas. What do they call a male prima donna?”

  “Probably something like jerk.” Dolly grinned, then Ariel giggled. Dolly couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard Ariel laugh, much less giggle. This new plan was going to work out—she was sure of it.

  As Ariel and Dolly carried the boxes and bags into the house, Lex Sanders was bellowing at the top of his lungs to be admitted to the Able Body Trucking offices. When he realized no one was going to open the door, he gave it a vicious kick. Then he stormed over to the loading dock where Stan Petrie was checking in a load of paper products. “Where is everyone, Stan? It’s only four o’clock.”

  “They closed up and left around three. It’s been real busy here today. Something wrong, Lex?”

  “Hell, yes, something’s wrong. I must have called here a dozen times today and got nowhere. Th
is sellout happened rather quickly, don’t you think?”

  “Not for me to say, Lex. Mrs. Able, she wanted to go to Hawaii, is all I know. They left three days ago. The new lady owner said things would stay the same with a few changes for the betterment of the company. She was real busy today throwing away all of Mr. Able’s office stuff. A decorator come by. I hear computer and telephone people will be here tomorrow. A locksmith was here, security alarms are going in all over the place. And an electrified fence.

  “Okay, Zack, that does it. See you tomorrow,” Stan said. He waved the trucker off before he fired up an evil-smelling cigar.

  “Why?” The one word was like an explosion.

  A look of disgust washed over Stan’s face. “Like I know? The only reason I know this much is because Bernice wanted me to put some air in her tires and she talked to me while she waited. She said the new owner is a movie star. A looker, from what I could see,” the older man said slyly.

  “Jesus Christ! Does she know anything about the trucking business?”

  “Don’t know. Bernice says she knows how to decorate and is spending a fortune on that. Wouldn’t be surprised if she don’t go and hang curtains in the cabs of the trucks. Now wouldn’t that be somethin’?” He guffawed, slapping his knees at the same time.

  Lex Sanders pushed his Padres baseball cap back on his head. His gray eyes narrowed. “Yeah, that would be something, Stan. Maybe it’s time for me to look for another trucking company. You can pass the word along tomorrow.”

  “You best be doin’ that yourself, Lex. I only got five years to go for retirement. I don’t like sticking my nose where it don’t belong. Now if you want to leave a note or a letter, I can slide it under the door.”