Part 20 (1/2)
”I'm sorry, Em. I do appreciate what you do for me. Maybe I just need a little less of it. I'll be in the car in five minutes,” I said, squeezing his hand.
”Take seven,” he said, patting my leg as he pushed up from the bed.
”I'm wearing the sweats!” I called, flopping back on the bed. ”I do not know who won that argument.”
A cold strawberry Pop-Tart and a colder c.o.ke later, I was sitting at the computer at Emmett's desk, cataloging a set of milk gla.s.s pitchers.
”I do not know how you drink that stuff so early.” Emmett shuddered as I took a long pull from the frosty red can. ”It can't be good for you.”
”Says the man drinking three hits of espresso mixed with overheated milk and four sugars,” I said, searching through the tangle of spreadsheets on his hard drive for the appropriate tracking number.
”It's low-fat milk,” he said.
I shook my head and ignored him. Emmett's office! storeroom was a sort of cross between Au Baba's cave and Grandma's creepy attic, filled with old bicycles, old framed movie posters, kitschy cookie jars, and the odd antique wooden dressmaker's form. Emmett had a special case to protect the books, magazines, and comic books from humidity and dust. There were dozens of china dolls lined up on Lucite cases on the shelves, like an imprisoned evil doll army. I had a hard time turning my back on them.
Emmett had remodeled the former Faber's Hardware Store so that the storeroom took up the majority of the real estate. He'd walled off the reception area to create a cozy s.p.a.ce where he could greet clients at a refurbished Queen Anne table, appraise their valuables for a reserve bid, determine a commission, and sign their paperwork.
While Emmett was willing to sell online for anyone, there was also a small showroom for the items Emmett had gleaned from estate sales and auctions. Emmett sold direct to select, discerning clients who drove hundreds of miles for the privilege of picking through his private collection of antique gla.s.s and furniture.
It was that special collection that was giving me fits at the moment. My brother might have been obsessively protective of the condition of the items entrusted to his care, but he sucked at tracking where they ended up. It was some sort of miracle that he managed to s.h.i.+p the items to the buyers. I guessed the ”in the now” quality of eBay sales helped him stay on top of those items, but anything that stayed in the store long-term was in danger of being lost in the shuffle. There were half-finished address spreadsheets, spreadsheets that used abbreviations that might have been Sanskrit, and a list of names Emmett had just t.i.tled ”Nuh-uh.”
”Hey, Em, what does 'dep. R. dais. 4-set,' mean?” I asked, thumbing the so-called inventory book while I walked into the reception area. Tansy Moffitt, our pastor's first cousin, was sitting at Emmett's desk while he looked over a collection of old National Geographic magazines.
”Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you had a customer,” I said, backing away.
Suddenly I wished that I'd shut the h.e.l.l up and put on Emmett's stylish sweater and jeans ensemble.
”We're just finished,” Emmett said, smirking. Tansy Moffitt had the biggest mouth in four counties. The minute she left the store, she would activate a phone tree that would bring every busybody reachable by Ma Bell to Emmett's door.
”Lacey!” Tansy cried, springing up from the chair. ”I didn't realize you were here! How have you been? We haven't seen you in such a long time. Let me get a look at you. Oh, I just love that new haircut. It's so ... interesting! Now, I know that things are hard for you right now, but I'd really like to see you in church this Sunday. Your church family misses you, shug!”
”I think that would be sort of awkward, with Mike's whole family being there,” I told her. ”But thank you.”
”Oh, honey, I think you all just need to put this whole thing behind you. You know, the reverend is preaching a whole series on forgiveness this month and I couldn't help but think last Sunday how much it would help you and Mike to just let the past be the past. You just set it before the Lord and forget it.”
”You set it, and forget it,” Emmett said, grinning at me, daring me to laugh at his inappropriately Jesus-based Ron Popeil-Rotisserie joke.
”I appreciate the thought, Tansy,” I told her, trying to tug my hand out of hers, but she just wouldn't let go. The woman had a grip like a teamster. ”I just need some time.”
”Oh, sure, shug,” she said. ”You give me a call if you need anything at all. And I'll see you this Sunday, right?”
”Still too soon, Tansy.”
”Well, I'm not going to give up, I'll be stopping by every week until we see you there,” she said cheerfully, waving to Emmett as she walked out the door.
Through tight, smiling lips, I said, ”I believe you.”
”I think I know someone who's going home at lunch to ch-a-ange,” Emmett sang.
”Yes, okay?” I cried, burying my face in my hands. ”I will submit to your Machiavellian fas.h.i.+on machinations. Clearly, I was wrong to choose this particular area to make my stand.”
He snickered. ”Come on, you have to face your public at some point; consider this a safe s.p.a.ce.”
”Hmmph,” I snorted. ”My public face aside, could you please explain your organization system, which I suspect isn't so much a system as a series of brain games designed to drive me insane a la Jigaw the serial killer?”
He frowned and I showed him the entry marked ”dep. R. dais. 4-set.”
”That means depression-era daisy gla.s.s, four-piece set. It's in a red box on the third shelf from the bottom in the special collection.”
”Well, it's supposed to be on a FedEx truck on its way to Augusta, Georgia. You promised delivery by Friday, which is in two days. You put a reminder on a Post-it note that somehow ended up on the bottom of my shoe. How has eBay not put some sort of skull-and-crossbones disclaimer on your sales profile?”
He sniffed. ”There have been a few missteps along the way, but I always manage to keep the customers happy.”
”Well, those missteps are costing you a fortune in overhead, like the overnight s.h.i.+pping fees you're going to have to cough up to get the daisy gla.s.s to Augusta,” I said.
”Since when did you become little miss office manager?”
”If there's anything I learned from serving as an unappreciated part-time serf at Mike's office, it was compulsive, a.n.a.l-retentive control over paperwork flow. Your books are a mess. Just this morning I found a dozen payments missing on items you s.h.i.+pped months ago. You're charging just enough to make an itty-bitty profit after s.h.i.+pping, the mortgage on the store, and overhead. And from what I could see, most of that comes from your direct antique sales to special clients.”
”You couldn't have seen all that in one morning - okay, fine, it's a mess. So, you think I should start charging more?”
”No, I think you should start keeping your books in order and cut some of your waste. Like the overnight fees, which I should mention, you probably want to run over to FedEx now if you want to make the afternoon delivery run.”
”Be my unappreciated part-time serf and run it over for me?” he implored. ”There's a s.h.i.+ny nickel in it for you.”
”No, you procrastinated your way into this bed, buck-o, you handle the s.h.i.+pping,” I told him. ”But I will go through the rest of your quote - unquote files to make sure you don't have any customer approval rating bombs waiting to go off.”
”You're going to reorganize the whole thing, aren't you?” he said, his voice fearful and small.
I thought about it and found that I sort of liked the idea of having somewhere to go every day, at least for a while, somewhere I could forget about Mike and Monroe and just devote myself to someone else's mess. ”Yes, I am.”
”But I won't be able to find anything,” he whined.
”Do you know the alphabet?” I asked. He nodded. ”Can you use basic reasoning skills?” He nodded again. ”I think you'll be okay”
”Lacey!” Vanessa Whitlock, a friend of our mother's, came through the door, lugging what looked like a standard Black and Decker bread machine. She must have whipped it off the counter in her rush to get out of her house and to the source of fresh gossip. ”It's so good to see you!”
”Maybe I will go to the FedEx office for you,” I said quietly, peering down.
”Oh, no,” Emmett said. ”I have to learn my lesson. You can mind the store for a while. Oh, look, more ladies coming into the store. It looks like they're forming a line.”
”I hate you,” I muttered.
”You love me,” he said, turning on his heel to the storeroom. ”New client paperwork is in the top drawer on the left. It's called tough love, Lace. I'm ditching you because I care.”
”Emmett!”
But he'd left me, with a pack of gossipmongers gathering in the waiting room. And I was still wearing the d.a.m.n yoga pants.