The work she had in mind was unpacking boxes of clothes, pressing them and hanging them on racks. The kind of thing you would ask the new girl to do, I thought. But no, Dolce, ever tactful, said she trusted only me to handle the new merchandise. Which made me feel good for about ten minutes. Then I missed my old job of being out front. The question was, didn’t the customers miss me too?
As I worked by myself in the back room sorting endless boxes of new clothes and accessories, I could hear the sound of voices out in front. There was laughter and gossip, but I wasn’t part of it anymore. That hurt. How long was I going to have to play the role of the backstage understudy? Once I overheard a customer saying, “Where’s Rita?” I stopped and straightened my shoulders, ready to pop out and say, “Here I am,” but then I heard Vienna say I was busy today and ask if she could help her.
Of course, it was her first day, and she was excited and eager to prove herself without me around to show her up. I could understand that. Tomorrow would be different. How, I wasn’t sure. Would Vienna be willing to do this kind of work when the fun of the job was finding the right outfit for the right customer for the right occasion? I suspected the answer was no, she wouldn’t.
After we’d closed that evening and Vienna had left with her boyfriend, Geoffrey, a tall, lanky guy she pointed out to us when he stopped in the street to pick her up on his BMW motorcycle, Dolce explained that Vienna was working on commission only.
“It’s the only way I could afford to hire her,” Dolce told me. “And why she has to work up front with the customers she promised to bring in. If she isn’t selling anything, she isn’t earning any money. Whereas you . . .”
She didn’t have to say more. I had a salary. It wasn’t very much, but it was enough to live on as long as I got a big discount on my designer clothes and didn’t go out to eat unless someone took me. Which hadn’t happened lately. And which used to happen more frequently when I was the new girl in town. There was no guy on an expensive motorcycle outside waiting for me today. No guy at all.
Only a few months ago I was juggling dates with Nick, an athletic Romanian gymnastics instructor, Jonathan, a gorgeous ER doctor, and Detective Jack Wall of the San Francisco Police Department, but my phone had stopped ringing after I helped Jack solve a murder. It seemed to be a case of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
Maybe Dr. Jonathan Rhodes was dating one of those attractive nurses I’d seen the last time I was at the hospital to have my sprained ankle examined. They’d have more in common with him than I ever would. I couldn’t discuss sprains or infections in a meaningful way, if that’s what he was looking for in a date.
Maybe Nick the gymnast was busy giving classes in competitive trampoline, introduction to the beam bar and so forth. He’d wanted me to sign up for one of his classes, but instead I’d joined Alto Aquatics, a swim club where I got my exercise swimming laps and learning floatation and water safety techniques from the swim coach. Maybe it’s because I was born under the sign of Aquarius, the water bearer, that I’m more at home in the water than at a gym. What I do know is that I’m a typical Aquarius in that I look good in turquoise and I’m tolerant of others’ viewpoints. To a certain degree.
It might be time to check up on my favorite police detective, I thought, though I knew my aunt Grace strongly disapproved of women chasing men. At age eighty, she’s so with-it, she even has a Facebook page. At the same time, she has such strict rules she doesn’t approve of calling or texting men unless they contact her first. She definitely wouldn’t approve of going to the neighborhood where a certain man worked and having dinner at his favorite Vietnamese restaurant just in case he dropped in. I could just see her shaking her head, the curls in her bold blond updo quivering at the very idea.
It was possible the sexiest cop in the city had been transferred out of town, or he’d gotten disillusioned with law enforcement and quit, or he was wounded in the line of duty, or . . . It was only common courtesy for me to find out if he was okay.
“Date night?” Dolce asked me hopefully before I left. She’d probably noticed there’d been a drop in the number of men in my life from three to zero, and maybe she guessed I was eager to leave the shop, where I didn’t exactly feel important today.
“Not tonight,” I said brightly, as if every other night was booked. She knew better. She knew I’d tell her if I was going somewhere, and she’d get a kick out of dressing me up for whatever the occasion.
“You know there’s the Annual Bay to Breakers Bachelor Auction coming up,” she said. “I bought tickets today from Patti for you and me and Vienna. All the money goes to support the San Francisco Art Museum. It’s a black-tie gala at the Palace Hotel. Every eligible bachelor in town will be on stage. We’ll all get dressed up and go ogle the beefsteak,” she said with a youthful gleam in her eye though she always said she was too old to lust after men.
I wasn’t too old to lust, but I was too poor to have fun bidding on men I didn’t know. It would be no fun losing out on the good ones because I’d be outbid by women with more money than I had. But it was kind of Dolce to get me a ticket and help me dress up for it.
I thanked her, said good night and walked outside. Now what? I couldn’t stand the thought of facing an empty flat, even though it had a deck and a sliver of a view of the Bay Bridge. After a day of unpacking boxes at work, I wasn’t in the mood to unpack my own belongings. I also didn’t feel like facing an empty refrigerator in my empty flat. The police district where Jack Wall worked was only a bus ride away. Or I could hop a different bus and drop into the gym where Nick taught classes. But what would be my excuse this time? I’d already observed his class, signed up for lessons, which I never took, and stopped in for a smoothie at the snack bar. It was his turn to call me.
There was that voice inside my head that kept repeating, “Don’t pursue men. If they want to see you, they know where to find you.” So I took the bus straight home and called Azerbijohnnie’s, a gourmet pizzeria recommended by one of our customers.
The woman who took my phone order had a distinct foreign accent, one that was vaguely familiar. When I gave my name she said, “How are you, Miss Rita? I haven’t seen you since the funeral of that woman who was murdered.”
“Meera?” I said, recognizing the voice of Nick’s Romanian aunt, who I hadn’t seen since she crashed a “celebration of life” party at a tavern across from the cemetery. Shy, she was not. “What are you doing there?”
“Filling out for a Romanian friend,” she said in her distinctive Eastern European accent. “Who had to return to our country on family business. I didn’t want him to lose his job here. I help out and I get free pizza. And some vodka he promised to bring when he returns.”
I was surprised that mattered to Meera, a self-proclaimed vampire. Romanian vodka was not a delicacy according to my Romanian professor at college. He called it rotgut. As for pizza, I thought Meera only ate traditional Romanian specialties like sarmale, salata boeuf, and papanasi. “What about your job leading tours?” I’d taken her vampire tour of San Francisco with Nick a few months back, which was interesting as long as you didn’t take seriously Meera’s claims that she was a hundred-twenty-seven-year-old vampire herself.
“Friday and Saturdays only. You must come again. I have some new sites and information to share with you. Bring a friend. Half-price because I like you,” she said. I noticed she said nothing at all about her nephew Nick. Did that mean he, like Dr. Rhodes, had another girlfriend? Someone who was in his adult gymnastics class who was more flexible than I was? If he did, I didn’t want to hear about it, and I was glad I hadn’t pursued him. But a minute later I heard myself say, “How is your nephew Nick?”