Poison Ivy Read online

  Definitely just the trim.

  The saloon-style doors swung open from the back and my vision collapsed and died a grateful death. The voice may have been brassy, but the woman who came through the white doors was as far from the big-hair, tight-sweater group as I could imagine. Flare-legged jeans hugged slender thighs, and narrow feet were encased in those four-inch heels I’d never been able to even think about wearing. Not unless I wanted to walk around with a neck brace for a dozen weeks. She wore a deep blue cowl-necked sweater over the pre-faded jeans and had a beautiful head of mahogany hair with subtle highlights. This woman I could trust with my hair. I felt it in my bones, like when you find a deli or a new flavor of ice cream you can’t live without.

  “Hi, hon,” she said in a drawl that wasn’t nearly as thick as I had originally thought. “What can I do for you?”

  Suddenly I was a little nervous. Was I ready to let go of the long hair I’d always hidden behind? Would this beautiful woman understand what to do with me—an overweight woman who was seriously hair impaired?

  Maybe she sensed my hesitation, because she came over and stood right in front of me. “I’m Bella,” she said, and tipped her scissors toward a plaque above the one station in the small shop. “And you’re the new girl who’s going to run Gertie’s shop.” It wasn’t a question, more like a declaration, so I merely nodded.

  “Well then, city girl, we’d better fix you up before your first day tomorrow. You want to impress those old gals who come in and shop for the belly dancer costumes, don’t you?”

  I pulled my jaw off the floor. “Belly dancing? Seriously?”

  She laughed, a musical tinkle, and led me to a chair. “Sure, hon. Didn’t anyone tell you the costume shop also doubles as a lingerie store, since we don’t have anything else around here? We’re not catalog shoppers, either. People don’t want those kinds of packages going past nosey old Thelma Boden down at the post office.”

  “Uh, no. No one mentioned the lingerie part. What kinds of things do people buy over there?” My new friend, Bella, proceeded to tell me exactly what I could expect to supply and how lucky I was to catch her in the shop today since it was usually closed on Sundays. During the entire haircut I kept thinking the Bouquet would laugh their collective asses off if they found out. Dominatrix was mild.

  The next day, bright sunlight stabbed through to the backs of my eyelids, and it took me a moment to orient myself. I couldn’t be in the pink room because I’d always purposely kept it dark for morning so as not to be blinded by the brilliance of the sun bouncing off the lacquered walls. And I didn’t have a boyfriend, so no way was this some dreamy, post-coital wake-up moment.

  After a second, the previous week came back in a flash, and I jumped out of bed to greet my first morning as a proprietress. Stumbling, because I was on fast forward, I ran into the bathroom and brushed out my bed head, hoping it would glisten like the hair in the Herbal Essences commercials. I had used a leave-in conditioner, trying to get it all to lie down the way Bella had shown me. The chunky highlights fell nicely around my face and actually made me look thinner. Bonus.

  I skipped to the makeup portion of the morning ritual and used the liner pencil without sticking myself in the eye, which was my custom. I also managed to get blush evenly distributed on my cheeks.

  Bella had promised to be at the store this morning to give me a support system on my first day. We’d really hit it off and found we had several things in common. She was an avid reader and we both loved John Cusack movies, so we were well on our way down friendship lane.

  My next sprint was to the huge wardrobe my dearly beloved Great-Aunt Gertie had left behind, where I ran a hand over the many outfits hanging in a straight, precise row. Glancing at the black skirt and purple top still lying on the divan in the corner, I decided the highlights were daring enough for now and tugged a tan pantsuit from a hanger. As a concession to the Bouquet, I also pulled a thin purple leather belt from the closet to circle around my waist under the suit jacket.

  I dressed in a hurry, threw on a pair of matching flats, and jogged through the entryway. In a heartbeat, I was out the door, with its oval of beveled glass, and on to my future, which, fortunately, was a short walk down the street to the left.

  Bless Mr. Winnet’s heart, the key to my store waited in my mailbox as promised. For a key that had seen twenty years of use, it was shinier than I’d expected. But my enthusiasm for actually having it in my hot little hand overrode any concern lurking in my brain.

  I took a moment to enjoy the other small, privately owned shops and round, wooden tubs of flowers on the old sidewalk as I made my way along Main Street. Each store had a very individual look to it. Besides Bella’s shop, there was a grocer and a dentist, a vintage clothing store, a used bookstore, and one video store. I might have to get that Netflix thing, because Bella said the video store had only recently started carrying a limited selection of DVDs, and I lived for movies on DVD.

  Some stores were renovated old houses and some were remodeled old buildings. The overall feeling was homey and appealing. I always knew I wasn’t a big city girl, and this confirmed it.

  A wooden sign painted bright white and deep green announced The Masked Shoppe. I’ll admit the name wasn’t exactly original. In fact, I’d been giving some thought to changing it to something different, something more, something snappier. But for now, regardless of the lifeless name, it was mine. Really, that was all that mattered. Although, on second thought, the name did have a certain flair, considering I now knew the shop had a dual purpose. Maybe I would keep it.

  I felt like a bottle of champagne should be smashed or some other celebratory thing done to commemorate my first time in the store. It had been locked up during the will probate, and the lawyer had asked me not to come into the shop until today. To say it nearly killed me was an understatement. I would have hunted him down like a rabid squirrel if the key hadn’t been in the mailbox this morning.

  The key slid into the lock with a satisfactory click and turned without hesitation. With a soft drum roll under my breath, I opened the door, ceremoniously taking a bold first step into my new life. And found myself smack in the middle of utter chaos.

  Chapter Two

  “Holy crap!” I’d been trying to work on the amount of cussing I did. I was now a proprietress and needed to watch my language, unlike when I was a lowly administrative assistant shut in my office all day with no one but my computer screen to hear me snarl dirty words.

  I stood for a moment, rooted to the spot. My eyes couldn’t figure out where to begin looking. Women and men scurried back and forth between the racks of costumes and what I assumed was the dressing room. I had never been inside the shop before and had been sure I would be alone this morning, the first one to come in. Apparently not.

  Mrs. Drake, she of the nice offer to help, spotted me when the doorbell tinkled announcing my entrance. Maybe she’d been blessed with super-bat hearing, because I was standing under the bell and barely heard it. The cacophony of what had to be twenty people, all vying for space in the small store, was nearly deafening.

  A smile and a wave of the elderly woman’s hand were thrown in my direction. I started to make my way toward the back of the store where the six-foot polished oak service counter was covered with oversized pumpkins and black candles sitting in pools of black silk. Mrs. Drake clapped her hands twice briskly as if she owned the store, and called for everyone’s attention. Every head in the store, covered by masks or not, turned her way and silence fell across the room.

  “I’d like you all to meet Gertie’s great-niece, Ivy, who will be running The Masked Shoppe since our dear Gertie has passed. Now, folks, don’t go giving the girl a hard time because she’s new.” Mrs. Drake cackled, her tiny body vibrating with the sound, though her bubble-like helmet of gray hair did not move an inch.

  I felt a little uncomfortable. I mean, this was my store, after all. What was she doing making announcements and opening the store before I had a
chance to get settled in? I had planned on setting up, getting comfortable, and then opening a few hours late. I’d wanted to go over the books one more time, since I’d only had an hour with them at the attorney’s office—pre-ferocious library book studying. Then I thought I’d check out the merchandise to both prepare myself in case I really did have to sell dominatrix outfits and to get myself ready for the position as owner, but this woman took it all from me.

  Sadly, though, I had never been able to stomach confrontation. So I smiled at all the people who would hopefully put a ton of money in my register, and everyone went back to their decisions on what would be appropriate for this party or that. Mrs. Drake pulled me behind the counter and we talked between customers.

  “Dear, I hope you don’t mind I opened this morning. With only two weeks before Halloween, I knew we’d be hopping today and wanted to get an early start.”

  The smile was sweet and the words tumbling from her coral lips were not rude, but there was something about her tone and the “we” thing that made my back go up. Again, I suppressed the snarky words I wanted to throw at her and told myself to be thankful for the assistance. I couldn’t have handled this crowd all by myself, but I might have liked the option to try first.

  Mrs. Drake—who finally allowed me to call her Kitty after two hours of Mrs. Drake this and Mrs. Drake that—went on to show me how to use the huge, antique register and place special orders. Today was the last day to order anything out of a catalog, because of delivery time. “We like happy customers,” she said during a brief lull at the counter. I wasn’t stupid—I’ll admit to new, but not stupid. Of course we, or rather I, wanted happy customers. That was a given.

  But I kept the snide comment, begging to be let out, to myself. This inner nasty voice has been popping up more and more as I get older. I don’t let it out because of the possible consequences, but lately I’ve been dreaming of telling just one person to “stuff it.” Perhaps I needed to come up with something a little snappier if I ever got the courage to try it.

  And I still hadn’t revved up the courage to ask Kitty how she opened the store when I was supposed to be the only one with a key, according to the lawyer. I wanted to shake the shit out of my cowardly self and say, “Do it, do it. Ask her.” But years of avoiding conflict, added to the fact that the two times in my life I had tried wading into an argument it completely backfired on me, now kept me quiet. And mighty disappointed in myself.

  After Bella dropped in with muffins and good wishes, I wandered around the shop to acquaint myself with the layout. It wasn’t as small as I’d previously thought. Three stalls painted midnight blue, with burgundy velvet curtains, served as the dressing rooms. I followed one of the people I saw go through the only other door in the room and found another surprise.

  A closet-sized room sat behind the front room. Two doorways led to and from the claustrophobic space: the one I’d come through and one to another part of the converted house. The small room was decorated with royal purple silk fabric panels hanging from the ceiling and a brocade sofa in complementary colors. Lovely really, but a tad bit big for the space. I opened the other door and entered into a wonderland of silk and lace and ribbons.

  Two women, both plump, sat on a chaise lounge, going through little, slinky, see-through black dresses. I knew there was another name for the scrap of material, but other than shameless, I couldn’t think of it. Another woman pulled handfuls of crotchless panties from a wicker bin. Okay. This part of the business was not something I’d really thought about since my hair appointment with Bella. It appeared I would have to deal with it now.

  “Good afternoon, ladies,” I said in my best professional voice, the one I’d been working on all weekend at the recommendation of one of my borrowed books.

  There was a twitter that filled the perfumed air. One of the women from the chaise stood up, and I got a really good look at her, along with her big, blond, lacquered hair. She was pear-shaped, with a bit of a stomach, but she had that round, protruding rear end everyone seems to envy these days. She wasn’t much older than my twenty-four years, and I hoped maybe I could make another friend in my new town. Two in one week would be great. We could shop and have Girls’ Nights. Sip wine at a café—if there was one here, I hadn’t checked yet—and tell each other our men troubles. That is, once I had some man trouble to tell about.

  I kept that image in my head for the first two minutes as I met Jackie Sturder. I introduced myself and, after finding out her name, offered to help her find the perfect thing out of one of the baskets or the antique armoire.

  “I saw this really cute teddy in midnight blue,” I said, rummaging around in a white wicker basket hanging from an iron coat rack. I was unfamiliar with the merchandise, but I’d wing it.

  I pulled out the teddy in a size I thought was appropriate for her rounded figure and, when I turned around, found she already had another piece draped over her finger. But there was so little material involved in the lace and silk teddy she held, I knew it couldn’t be more than a size two.

  Jackie, in all her round, curvy glory, was a size two if I could still wear clothes from a children’s section. She was closer to a size sixteen, which is still beautiful, but there was no way a two was ever going to fit her.

  While I tried to come up with some way to diplomatically get her to buy a size closer to her own, she pulled another small teddy from a drawer in a tall, skinny lingerie chest. Another size two, if I wasn’t mistaken, and this one a satin baby doll dress.

  Okay, tact was the word of the day. “Perhaps you’d like to look over in this section,” I said, still trying to keep customer relations on good terms. I’m all for buying a size smaller to give yourself some incentive, but I’m also honest enough with myself to buy something I had a hope of fitting into on a good day.

  “No, thanks,” she said. Panties were picked up and discarded or set aside on the top of a short cabinet to her left as she continued to pull from the tall cabinet. I was getting an idea of the way things were set up in this little back room side shop, and she was in the tiny women’s section. She wouldn’t find anything there that would fit her unless she was looking for underwear to put on her head.

  I decided to try again, against my gut instinct, which told me I was not going to get her over in the right area. I wanted happy customers, and I couldn’t see Jackie being happy with panties she couldn’t wear, especially considering the prices were nothing to sniff at. One of the lines from my very valuable book lessons ran through my head: ‘Happy customers are returning customers.’ Picking up a pink thong in a sixteen, I walked over to the chest of drawers where she stood. “Maybe these are what you’re looking for. They’re really pretty and soft to the touch. And, um, sexy.” Not my best first pitch as a saleswoman, but I’d tried.

  Jackie turned, and her hazel eyes softened as they looked at the frilly pink-and-white lace garment. It was definitely as cute as some of the things manufacturers put out for the slimmer of our species. Her eyes lit up and she rubbed her hands together. I had a sale. Crisis averted and a happy customer all rolled into one. I definitely could do this every day.

  I was so proud of myself. I let her take the panties out of my hand and waited to see the expression of joy on her face when she noticed how I worked to please the customer.

  Unfortunately it did not go as planned. She unfolded the panties, looked at the size on the distinctive tag, and her eyes went red. I swear fire brimmed in her gaze. She shrieked something in this banshee voice that made it almost impossible for me to distinguish most of her words. I did, however, make out the word “bitch” a couple of times before she stalked out of the lingerie room. She slammed the door with enough force to shake the bells on the revealing belly dancer outfits.

  Let me say something here. I had a lot of experience guessing women’s sizes from my last job. My boss was a slime ball with a different flavor girl for every month. He frequently asked me to pick something up for whomever he was screwing at the time, a
nd it had to be the right size, as it was always a blouse or some other piece of clothing (to show his sensitive side, and it worked every time, the bastard). So I became adept at knowing the size fours from the size tens, not that there were a lot of size tens. (Hey, I just realized I already had at least one skill honed for this new venture. Yay for me!) Not to mention the fact that I myself was a big, beautiful woman and shopped frequently.

  And Jackie was certainly not a two, not even a ten. She was a plus-sized woman, and I found I had plenty of really cute things for the fuller bodied, which surprised and pleased me. I loved lingerie and had had a hard time finding pretty things, not that I’d needed them recently, but that’s a different subject.

  Jackie, however, was not to be put off from buying a size two. I would have let her, just to have a happy customer, but she had already stomped out.

  I raced after her to see if I could salvage the sale. We weren’t a large town in any sense of the word, and the grapevine could do horrible things to a small, independent store, according to my Making a Profit for Dummies book.

  But as I came out from the curtained vestibule, Kitty stopped me in mid-stride by grabbing my arm.

  “Leave her be,” she said. “She’s always in some kind of snit.”

  Which made me feel better, until she tacked on, “But you may want to watch who you tell what they can buy. It’s bad for business to tell the customer they are wrong.”

  Well, duh. I knew that, and my inner voice shouted in my ears to say something to this woman who really had no right to be in my store, much less tell me how to run it. But the coward in me squashed the voice, and I nodded. It was my first day. Maybe I’d say something tomorrow. Or better yet, maybe Kitty wouldn’t show up to try and run the store again. At this point I couldn’t waste any more time thinking about tomorrow. It was already eleven in the morning, and I’d accomplished very little, other than pissing off a customer and tripping around in a store that was supposed to be mine. Unfortunately, I was feeling more like the employee than the employer.