To Inflict
Ellie
I had to go out of town to find new inventory, but with the glass back over the front of the store, the place doesn’t look half bad. I’m down to $500, or I’d have the floors replaced. I suppose we all have our scars.
Nick had a good story, I’m sure, if only I’d let him tell it. The second he started going off about all this stuff he knew about me, though, I knew I’d been right at the outset. Whether he got all that out of Naomi or he hired someone to look into my past, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t blame him. I knew what I was getting myself into when I changed my no to a yes. I didn’t know he’d turn out to be creepy stalker guy, but I figured a guy like him has to have some secrets.
The funny thing is, there’s still that part of me that kind of wanted to hear him out. I can’t imagine what he could have told me that would have set my mind at ease for longer than two seconds, but it seemed like he’d put a lot of work into whatever line he was going to sell me.
Call it respect for fiction. Maybe it was almost a comfortable life, but bad things follow Nick, and I don’t do secrets.
I’m winning the battle against asking myself what Nick would have to gain by outing himself like that when the door to the shop blows open again. I get up and walk around the counter to close it up once more.
Since the fine citizenry took it upon themselves to destroy my store, the door never quite latches without the deadbolt. With the deadbolt in place, what’s the point of having a store?
Something strange happens, though. I’m about halfway from the counter to the door when I see a hand and then and arm and then the whole body of Mrs. Taber. She smiles when she sees me.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello,” I reflect, monotone.
“Are you all right, dear?” she asks. “You look a little peaked.”
“I’m all right,” I answer, snapping myself out of it. I don’t know how to explain to her I didn’t expect anyone to come back into the shop in at least another week. Honestly, I was content enough to stop getting angry letters in the mail. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Go ahead and have a look around. Let me know if you have any questions or you need help with anything.”
“Actually,” she says, “I was wondering if you had any more of those King Louis armoires come in. I went to Wal-Mart, and you were right, yours was different.”
Having gone searching for hidden (and reasonably priced) treasures for the first time, I asked a few questions, and when I did, I learned quite a bit. For instance, I found out that the Louis XV-style double-mirrored armoire we had in the shop, while pretty, was a reproduction that was made and then almost immediately discontinued eight years ago.
The thing wasn’t an antique. Whoever owned it first just beat the hell out of it.
Going through the files on Troy’s computer, I also learned just how much his out-of-town buys—which were always our most expensive pieces—actually cost. He got his crap just as cheap as I bought my crap on the rare occasion someone in town wanted to get rid of something.
It was sad, because nobody ever bought the most expensive pieces anyway. Mostly what happened is someone would bring in a dresser and someone else in town would come and pick it up. The limited business we did have came from a few fifty dollar pieces a week, and a whole lot of ten dollar sales exchanged between neighbors. I never sold anything over a hundred dollars until that day the town decided to swallow my life.
“Ellie?” Mrs. Taber says.
“Yeah,” I say. “We do have a Louis XV armoire. It’s a reproduction, but I think you’ll find it much more to your liking.”
“Do you price match?” the old woman asks, reaching into her purse and pulling out an ad from the local paper.
“If the price isn’t already lower than what’s advertised, of course, I’ll match the price for you,” I answer.
She seems surprised. Part of it is that I feel guilty knowing how much people paid for all those castoffs. I didn’t know any better, but I never tried too hard to find out, either.
The way they made me the focus of their every emotion makes it so I don’t feel guilty enough to try to pay them back the difference over time, but the least I can do is come to terms with what and who I am. I am Eleanor (Ellie) Shaye Michaels. I am the queen of the town’s junk store, and I’m going to start selling things for what they’re worth, damn it.
To the locals, that is. People from out of town can pay a bit higher markup. Maybe it sounds underhanded, but it’s the only way I can ease my conscience with locals and still afford to feed and house my sister.
Mrs. Taber heads off to look at what I’ve managed to put together, and I sit back behind the counter. The old woman doesn’t buy anything, but as she’s on her way out of the shop, she stops in front of me, saying, “I’m glad to see everything’s much more affordable now. I know what people have been saying about you, but I want you to know I never believed it.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Out of curiosity, what have people been saying about me?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, dear,” she says.
“No, it’s fine,” I smile. “If nothing else, it’ll be good to know the specifics about why everyone hates me as much as they do.”
She purses her lips. “Please don’t be mad,” she says. “This isn’t how I feel. It’s just what I heard.”
“I won’t be mad at you,” I tell her. “I’m just curious to know what they’ve been saying about me.”
Ten bucks say none of it’s true.
“Well,” Mrs. Taber starts, “I suppose there have been a lot of things said. The most common things I’ve heard, though, have been about how when that wealthy gentleman came to town, he was planning on hiring the townspeople for the new building, but you convinced him not to do it.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I figured,” I say. “By the way, it’s not true. I never gave Nick business advice, and even if I did, it wouldn’t have been against Mulholland.”
If I had that kind of opportunity now, though, I’d probably do what they’ve been saying for spite.
“Oh, it can’t be right, dear,” she says. “Even when I heard it from your sister’s mouth, I knew it wasn’t true.”
“What?” I ask.
“Like I said, I wouldn’t worry about it, dear,” she says.
“You say my sister told you all this?” I ask.
Mrs. Taber shakes her head. “No,” she says. “I heard most of the rumors from my neighbor, Joyce. She and I trade gardening secrets. I did hear your sister telling a few people about it when I was out for my afternoon at Bert’s Café.”
I take a slow breath. “Well, thank you for coming in, Mrs. Taber,” I say, my cheeks already hurting from my forced smile.
“Of course, dear,” she says and exits the store. I don’t wait for the old woman to get past the front of my store before I’m grabbing the keys and locking up shop.
From the beginning, I blamed Nick for the way the townspeople have been treating me, glaring at me, leaving me dead pigeons on my doorstep …
After I lock up the store, I start walking. Pulling out my phone, I send Naomi a text, telling her there’s something I want to talk to her about and I need to know where I can meet her.
She doesn’t respond.
Whether she knows what I want to talk about and she’s taking the cowardly route, or she’s nowhere near her phone, I bet I know where I can find her.
Walking up to Bert’s Café, I spot Naomi around the same stupid group of friends she had in high school. They only ever meet at Bert’s, and only ever for lunch, but week in and week out, this is where Naomi goes for her social hour when she should be working.
As soon as she glances up, noticing me, I can see her mouthing the words, “Uh-oh.”
“Stand up,” I tell her as I get to the table.
She looks up at me with those doe eyes, saying, “What’s the matter? You seem upset.”
“Have you been spreading lies about me around town?” I ask.
“No,” she says. She glances at her friends and then back at me.
I ask, “Oh, so you never said I’m the reason Nick hasn’t hired anybody in town?”
“I knew you’d just freak out about this like you freak out about everything else,” she says.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” I ask. “I blamed Nick for the way people around here act toward me since he and I first started dating.”
“I don’t know what he ever saw in you anyway,” Naomi answers in a deceptively cheerful voice. “I was the homecoming queen. I was the one voted ‘most likely to be a fashion model if she ever leaves Mulholland.’ Still, a billionaire businessman comes to town for the first time in, I don’t know, ever, and you’re the one he spots through the window.”
“So that’s what it is then?” I ask. “It’s jealousy?”
“Oh please,” Naomi says. “Should I be jealous of the fact you sit behind a counter all day and never sell anything or should I be jealous that when you won the dating lottery, you couldn’t keep it together?”
“Really?” I ask. “You’re doing this?”
“Doing what?” she smirks.
That superior look goes away rather quickly when my fist crashes into her cheekbone.
“Ow,” I say, clutching my hand as Naomi staggers to keep her balance. “Ow.”
I don’t know what kind of response I was expecting, but I’m hardly prepared when Naomi punches back. Half a second later, everything around me is blurry, and I’m just trying to land more blows than Naomi.
It’s funny, I always had her pegged as a slapper, but when the dumb beast wants to, she can pack a wallop.
* * *
I’m standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom, grabbing the tube of antibiotic cream and squeezing a dab onto my index finger.
“When you’re done with that,” Naomi mutters, “I think I’m going to need some, too.”
It’s not that I’m any less mad at her. Every time she leans a bit too far in my direction, all I want to do is give her an elbow to the face.
This is just how it goes when you have a sister.
I take what I need and pass it over to her. “How could you do that to me?” I ask. “I’ve always been in your corner, even when you didn’t get into the college you wanted, and you said you needed to stay with me for a couple of weeks.”
“Why would you bring that up now?” she asks.
“That was nine years ago, Naomi,” I tell her.
She makes a sound at me, but with her fat lip, I can’t tell if it’s a stifled laugh or a stifled sob. “It’s taken me awhile to find myself,” she says.
“Honestly,” I say, “why’d you do it?”
“Do you know what it’s like to be the most popular girl in school and then graduate?” she asks. “People remember you, but that popularity turns into something else pretty quick if you’re not careful.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask.
She sighs and dabs under her black left eye with some foundation. “You think I live such a comfortable life, but it’s hell being me sometimes,” she says. “Do you know what it’s like to get stuff all the time and know you didn’t earn any of it?”
A certain Fifth Avenue shopping trip comes to mind, but I keep that to myself. I wonder what he’s going to do with all that stuff I left behind.
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” I say.
“Well, that’s been my whole life,” she says. “When I was a kid, everyone thought I was so cool because I knew all sorts of games they didn’t and I was willing to teach everyone.”
“I remember that,” I say. I might smile, but when I open my mouth too wide, my lip splits open again.
“Do you remember you taught me all of them?” she asks.
“I still don’t see how this has anything to do with you torpedoing my reputation with nearly everyone I know,” I tell her.
She lifts the front of her shirt to check her abdomen for bruises, but I focused most of my aggression on that stupid, perfect face of hers. I bet she regrets ever getting those piercings. They, or more accurately, the skin which held them didn’t fare so well. “I was tired of being that person,” she says. “Every time I’d come home after school upset, you’d comfort me and tell me what I needed to do to fix whatever the problem was.”
“I didn’t see it before, but you’re right. Man, I had it coming for being there for you all the time,” I snipe.
“We are the exact opposite, you and me,” she says. “When I have an opportunity, I latch onto it, usually tight enough that I kill it. At the end of the day, I come back here to my sister’s place that I can’t move out of because I’m a woman in her late twenties that can’t pay her bills. Do you know how humiliating that is?”
“Then move out,” I tell her. “I’ve never forced you to accept anything.”
“That’s just it, though,” she says. “You’re always the one with her head on straight. You’re always the reasonable one. Yeah, I’m the chick guys I went to school with still get all nervous around, but everything always works out for you. The problem is you never grab onto something until you can’t have it anymore.”
“So you spread all that about me because you thought I was squandering an opportunity?” I ask.
“It sounds pretty stupid when you say it out loud,” Naomi mutters. Now she’s holding her top lip up and pressing one finger of her other hand against one of her incisors, saying, “I think my tooth is loose.”
“Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid,” I echo.
Naomi closes her mouth and washes her hands. She looks at herself in the mirror and attempts a smile, though it quickly turns into a wince. “Well, after the cotton balls and the cream and the makeup, I’d say I look positively awful,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” I answer.
“You don’t look too hot yourself,” she says. “In fact, I think you got the worst of it.”
Looking at us both in the mirror, I tend to disagree. She landed a few good head shots, but her body game is pathetic the way it always was. I don’t have to check my chest or stomach to know I don’t have any bruises there.
“So you wanted to cause me to break up with Nick because I wasn’t doing a good enough job ‘accepting the opportunity’ to be with him?” I ask.
“How many times did you say you didn’t think it was going to work out?” she asks. “Even when I was staying with you two at the beach house, you were still holding back and looking for an excuse to call it quits.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “When I first went to New York, yeah, I thought it was just going to be a two-week thing that I’d tell my grandkids about—minus the naughty bits. After that first night in the beach house, though, I was all in for the long term. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I was willing to find out.”
“Uh huh,” she says. “When you got back here the last time, was there any part of you that thought you’d see Nick again?”
“It’s different,” I tell her. “I even went out to dinner with him after he got here to hear him out.”
“You didn’t, though, did you?” she asks. “Come on, El. It’s not like you don’t tell me this crap.”
“You weren’t there,” I tell her. “He started going off about—”
“—stuff he couldn’t have known unless he’d hired a private investigator or bribed someone or something,” she says, completing the thought. “I get it. The problem with that is he was about to tell you how he knew all that, and rather than trust him or even listen to what he had to say, you just left. You were never really in this relationship. At first, yeah, I maybe told a few people a few things because I just didn’t want you to have him.”
“How sweet,” I mock as I grab the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and unscrew the lid. Holding the bottle over my right hand, I pour slowly, the clear liquid foaming as it comes in contact with the tiny, bloodless cuts on my knuckles.
“After a while, though, you’ve got to admit I was doing you a favor,” she says. “You wanted a way out, and I gave you one.”
I protest, “I didn’t—”
“The first thing you said when we got home was you didn’t know how long you could stand being back home if you were still going to have to deal with the fallout of dating Nick,” she says.
“Yeah, that you caused,” I fire back.
“Maybe so,” she says, “but if you were all head-over-whatever for this guy, it wouldn’t matter. I mean, come on, sis,” she says. “The guy’s a billionaire. It’s not like you couldn’t just move somewhere else and never have to deal with it ever.”
“I’ve never asked him for money,” she says.
“Yeah,” she says, “I know. My sister the martyr. Even when you didn’t know I had anything to do with it, you were still blaming Nick. You even told me you knew it wasn’t his fault, the way people were acting, but that never seemed to matter.”
“It’s not Nick that’s the problem,” I tell her. “The problem is everyone who catches a glimpse of him in the distance. You started the whole thing here in town, but if you remember, you’re not the one that got me in the tabloids.”
“Again,” she says, “if you were invested in the relationship, why would that matter?”
“Because it does!” I shout but immediately wince. I’ve split my lip open again and over the next few minutes, I don’t say anything. I just hold a cotton ball against the cracked skin to stop the bleeding.
Naomi doesn’t say anything else, but she doesn’t have to. I don’t know how Nick found out all that stuff about me, but I can no longer ignore the fact that the relationship’s dead because I killed it.
The problem I have with relationships—the problem I’ve always had—is that even when I was dating guys in high school, I just assumed it was never going to last. I don’t know if it’s a problem of self-worth or if I’m used to being overshadowed, but Naomi’s right about that much.
Naomi leaves the bathroom before I do, even though my lip stopped bleeding a while ago and there’s nothing left for me to cover.
The night I walked out of the restaurant on Nick, I deleted his cell phone number. I’m still skeeved out by how much he knew about me, but maybe Naomi’s right. It’s possible he’s a sleazebag, but it’s also possible I overreacted because I was scared.
Okay, it’s more than a possibility.
I sidle over to the bathroom door and twist the lock. It takes a minute to wash everything off of my hands, but I still have Nick’s office number in New York. Pulling out my phone, I find the digits.
The phone rings.
“You’ve reached the office of Nikolai Scipio of Stingray Next-Gen Technologies,” a man’s voice answers.
“Hi,” I say and then follow it with a long pause.
“… hi,” the man says. “Is there something I can help you with, miss?”
“Michaels,” I say. “And now I just realized you probably weren’t asking for my name.”
The man sighs. “Ma’am, if this is a prank call—”
“No,” I say, “it’s not. I’m Ellie Michaels.” I say, “I was hoping I could speak with Nick, or at least leave a message.”
“Yeah, Mr. Scipio isn’t taking phone calls right now,” the man says.
“Okay,” I say. “I can leave a message for him. Just tell him that I—”
The line clicks. I look at my phone. That little punk hung up on me.
I call the number back and the same voice answers, “You’ve reached the office of Nikolai Scipio of Stingray Next-Gen Technologies.”
I say, “Yeah, I think we got disconnected. It’s Ellie—”
The line clicks again.
My first reaction is just to assume Nick told his assistant he didn’t want to speak with me, but even if that is the case, I can’t be too mad about it. Excuses aside, I know I ran out on him.
I still don’t know that I want to find out how Nick learned all that stuff about me, but the shock is gone. All that’s left is the space where our relationship should be.
It’s impulsive, and maybe even a little silly, but I take a quick look at my bank balance on my phone. I have about five hundred bucks left.
That should be more than enough for a plane ticket.