Chapter Seven
Josh
The hours were ticking by and Black Friday was getting closer. Knowing that Willa and Wilton had set up the live updates so that the information for both stores would be reported directly to the Sommers office, I headed there. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of spending hours watching as sales reports came in, but there was really nothing else for me to do.
I turned out of the elevator down the hallway toward the office and was surprised to see the light was on in the office. I knew that I had turned it off the night before when I left and there shouldn't have been anyone else in the building since. I was so concerned about the light that I was nearly to the door before I noticed the savory smells wafting into the hall. Pushing the door open, I glanced inside and grinned when I saw Cristina inside, placing a bowl in the middle of the table. She had covered it with a tablecloth that wasn't quite big enough to cover the entire table and arranged a variety of vessels and plates across the surface.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
Cristina looked up at me and held a finger to her lips.
"Shhh," she said. "Don't tell my boss that I used my building key for non-work purposes."
"My lips are sealed," I told her. "I thought you were spending today with your family."
"Well," she said, looking at the food on the table. "I spent the morning and afternoon with them, but I had other plans for tonight."
"You did?"
She nodded.
"I couldn't let you spend Thanksgiving alone. And I definitely couldn't let you order takeout again. You've had enough of that. And even more than that, I couldn't let you keep thinking that Thanksgiving comes from a restaurant and is all full of fancy food. This," she said, holding out her arms, "is Thanksgiving."
I walked the rest of the way into the office and sat down at the table. The smells coming from the containers were rich and heady, and I felt my lips turning up in a smile that was filled with the memories of Thanksgivings from when I was a child.
"How did you know that I was going to be here?" I asked.
Cristina piled turkey onto a harvest-themed paper plate and added a scoop of macaroni and cheese.
"I didn't," she admitted. "I was just kind of hoping that you would."
"And if I hadn't?"
"Then I would have been sitting here being bitter and eating a lot of leftovers."
I laughed and watched as she added mashed potatoes and dressing before offering it to me. I took a roll from the basket beside me and slathered it with butter.
"Thank you for doing this for me," I said, trying to fight the emotion that was tightening in my throat.
She nodded and sat down across from me. Her thick, glossy hair was usually tightly wound in a bun on the back of her head, but now she wore it loose, so it tumbled around her shoulders. She wore only a touch of makeup, just enough to bring out her huge almond eyes and the soft pink of her full lips. I found myself staring at her, lost in her rather than the food in front of me. It was only when she looked up at me, her mouth full of a truly impressive forkful of turkey, potatoes, and dressing, that I remembered that I should be eating the feast that she brought me. I scooped up some of the turkey and took a bite, immediately groaning at the savory, herb-filled flavor that took over my mouth.
"That's amazing," I said.
Cristina nodded.
"And it's not even rolled up with stuff in it," she said. I looked at her with raised eyebrows. "That's right, I can Google. I know what your fancy roulade is now."
I smiled and dove into the macaroni and cheese that had been calling my name since I first saw it. It was thick and creamy, the cheese on top crispy and perfect. We ate in silence for a few minutes and then I reached for a bottle of sparkling grape juice she had brought with her. I poured some into a Styrofoam coffee cup and brought one over to her.
"Nothing but classy,"
"Well, it is the holidays."
"How was your holiday with your family?" I asked. "Did your mother get herself together?"
Cristina shrugged.
"As much as she ever does when it comes to the holidays. She only got the vapors and started screaming out prayers to the ancestors twice during the day, so I'm going to count that as a victory."
I had no idea what she could possibly be talking about, but she seemed completely confident about it, so I went with it.
"How much did your sisters eat?"
"All of it."
I laughed, thinking to myself that this was more than I had laughed in as long as I could remember. For the first time in recent memory, I wasn't thinking about work. I wasn't worrying about marketing or profit margins or phone calls. I was just enjoying being there with Cristina. We finished the towering piles of food that we had put on our plates, and then she turned her attention to the covered pie dish on the side of the table. She whipped off the cover and I saw half of a chocolate-crusted pie filled with a thick, rich filling and topped with swirls of chocolate.
"Is this your famous peanut butter pie?" I asked.
"Most famous pie this side of my living room. At least to me."
She cut a thick wedge and tipped it onto another plate. Before she handed it to me, she reached down and I heard her open something. She sat back up and I saw her holding a bowl filled with whipped cream. Scooping up a large spoonful, she dropped it onto the slice and handed it over to me. I watched her lift her hand and lick a bit of cream off of the side of her finger and my belly clenched. Trying to ignore the feeling and push it out of my mind, I looked down at the pie and picked up my fork. I dug it through the creamy filling and put the bite in my mouth. The flavor was rich and sweet, but a touch salty from the peanut butter. The chocolate finished the flavor, making it a perfect dessert bite.
"I can definitely understand why you would want to sit down and eat all of this," I said.
"Why do you think there's only half a pie?" she asked.
My phone gave a loud trill in my pocket and I fished it out.
"Is that thing going to explode?" she asked, pulling back slightly.
I chuckled and shook my head.
"It's an alarm," I told her. "I set it earlier today."
"For what?"
"The whole reason I'm here," I said mysteriously. I turned the phone around so that she could see the screen. "Black Friday shopping at my store starts in exactly four hours."
"You came here to be reminded of when your own sale starts?" she asked.
"No," I said. "There is a system set up to provide real-time updates on sales from the different store locations throughout the area. I came to monitor them."
"That sounds like a delightful way to pass an evening," she said, a slightly distasteful look on her face. "I'm sorry that I've come and ruined your solitude."
I flashed her a glare and looked back down at my phone. Just as we had requested, the managers from each of the stores were starting to send in their initial messages, confirming that they were ready and that they had followed our instructions to make sure that the sales went as smoothly as possible.
"It looks like things are gearing up nicely. I'm sure that everything's going to go well."
"Have you heard from Willa?" she asked.
I shook my head, wishing that she hadn't mentioned her.
"Not since yesterday. She's supposed to be back sometime tonight, but honestly, I have no idea. I'm sure I'll hear all about it whenever she does get back."
"How long have the two of you been together?"
"A long time," I said. "I don't really remember."
"Do you live together?"
I am not thankful for this conversation.
"No," I told her. "We don't."
Relief washed over me when I heard my phone trill again and looked down to see another message on the screen.
"What's going on?"
"The main store will be opening the parking lot in an hour and they want to confirm that they aren't to allow people to line up until an hour before the doors open."
"Is that new?" she asked.
I nodded.
"Last year the managers complained about the lines and people knocking on the doors for hours, or staring in and scouting things out while they were still getting ready. There were a couple of fender bender accidents in the parking lots and it was a bit messy, so I wanted to do something to try to ease that. So, I had gates installed at the entrances to the parking lots that won't open until three hours before the doors open, then people aren't going to be allowed to line up to get into the actual store until an hour before the doors open."
"I must have missed the announcements about that," she said.
I felt some of the happiness that I had been feeling drain away.
"There weren't any announcements," I said.
"There were commercials for your store every ten seconds for the last three weeks and you published a huge glossy ad in the newspaper announcing all of your deals, and you didn't think that you needed to mention to the people who were going to swarm to the store that the way that you were going to handle the crowds had completely changed since last year?"
"Is that a problem?"
"Hundreds of cars bottlenecking at an inexplicably locked parking lot and then allowed into the parking lot only to be trapped in their cars for two more hours? No. Not at all. I can't see anything that might go wrong with that."
"Do you really think that there is going to be that much trouble?"
Cristina stared at me for several seconds as if waiting for me to laugh or reveal that this was all some elaborate hoax that had a punchline I hadn't quite caught up with yet. Finally, she tilted her head at me and narrowed her eyes until I felt like I was under some kind of intense scrutiny.
"Have you ever been Black Friday shopping?"
Oh, shit.
"No."
"Never?"
"Never had the opportunity."
"Yeah, I can see where privately owning a chain of wildly successful retail stores would limit your chances to go shopping."
"You'd be surprised."
"How can you possibly think that you are able to understand what people going Black Friday shopping need or want when you've never even done it?"
I opened my mouth, hoping that brilliant words would miraculously form, but I only heard silence, so I closed it. After a few seconds, I opened it again.
"I don't know."
Cristina wiped her mouth and stood up, starting to gather up all of the containers from the table.
"Do you really need to sit here and watch the updates?" she asked.
"Not really," I said. "I'll get the full reports after the weekend. I was mainly doing it to fill time."
"OK, good. Come on," she said when she was finished packing.
"What are we doing?"
"We're going Black Friday shopping."
Oh, serious shit.
I turned off the lamp and followed Cristina out of the office.
"What do you mean we're going Black Friday shopping?" I asked.
"What do you think I mean? You want to learn more about how this season works and what you can do to make the most of the holiday shopping season? You aren't going to learn any of that from some texts from terrified store managers and sales reports. All that's going to tell you is what happened before it all started and then what made it to the cash register. If you really want to know what's happening and make a difference, you need to get down into the thick of it all and know what your shoppers are really experiencing."
I followed her into the elevator and pressed the button for the parking garage.
"Alright. Which store do you want to go to? I can call ahead and let them know that we're coming so they'll let us into the back."
"I want to go to the main store, but you're not calling ahead."
"I'm not? Why?"
"I said that you're going Black Friday shopping, not that you're going on another of your corporate tours. Getting let in the back and ushered through the lines isn't going to teach you anything. You need to know what it's really like. You're going to do this right, and that means getting out with the crowds and doing what they do. It also means some preparation."
"Preparation?"
Cristina nodded as the doors to the elevator opened and we stepped out into the nearly empty deck. I could see my car ahead of us, but I had to look around to see a tiny compact I assumed was hers tucked into a far corner like she had purposely hidden it in the shadows, so I wouldn't see it when I got there.
"That look isn't going to work. Do you have anything more casual?"
I glanced down at my khakis and sweater.
"How casual?"
"I wouldn't choose now to whip out your flannel old man pajamas or anything, but perhaps an outfit that doesn't look like you should be patting the head of an Irish setter and staring into a golden sunset."
I stared at her for a few seconds.
"I'm not sure what that means."
We walked toward her car and Cristina scrambled around in her purse for her keys.
"I would look for something maybe in a nice denim." She looked at me and sighed. "Alright, we'll add that to the shopping list. Just try to look as little like you own the store as possible. Meet me back here in half an hour. Bring $200 in cash."
I felt like I was getting myself involved in some kind of weird drug deal, but before I had a chance to say anything else to her, she tucked her bags into the back of the car, slid behind the wheel, and backed out of the parking spot. Still processing the instructions that she gave me, I walked over to my car and headed out of the deck toward my house. Only having half an hour didn't give me much time to get ready, but that was probably for the best. This was a situation that I didn't think would be benefitted by thinking too much.