Falling in Love
Falling in Love
Dusty Miller
Copyright 2014 Dusty Miller and Long Cool One Books
Design: J. Thornton
ISBN 978-1-927957-31-8
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The author’s moral right has been asserted.
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Table of Contents
Breakdown
Selena’s Escape
The Logic of Love
Time and Place
Poker Night
Throwing Chocolate
About Dusty Miller
Breakdown
Scene One
“Mom! My battery is dying.”
The high shriek of the air wrench cut off her mother’s response.
Voop-voop. Voop.
Mom had the baby, her voice shrill and judgmental.
“I’m sorry, I really am. I’ll make it up to you. I gotta go. Byeee!”
Mallory shut the phone off and stuck it securely back in the side pocket of her purse, black leather, very slim, and a good bargain.
It was a knock-off of a popular designer brand, of course, a bit of a contradiction in terms—it was a popular exclusive. Mom would just have to deal with Ember for a little longer.
A sense of humour might help at a time like this, but this was no laughing matter.
The van had blown a something or other. Mallory had the auto club come and tow the vehicle.
There was some discussion as to what they should do. The tow truck driver winched it on the end of a cable onto the tilted bed of the wrecking truck as Mallory examined her options.
She could have it towed to the parking lot of her apartment building.
She could have it towed to Mom and Stan’s place, where it would probably sit for a while, and where it would be the subject of much contention.
She could have it towed to the junkyard.
She could have it towed to the nearest junkyard.
She could have it towed to the nearest garage.
After that she had run out of ideas.
She couldn’t just leave it there, and she couldn’t just leave it here either.
The truth was the mother of one little girl, barely out of diapers and starting to ask questions now, needed that van.
Old Betsy, she called it.
She should have known better. The sounds of impact hammers, and the clink of wrenches on metal, a motor idling, the men’s voices on the other side of a glass partition brought that home.
The van was thirteen years old. And yet it seemed like such a good idea, on this fine spring Saturday morn, to go visit her friend Kate, who lived in a small village, just a few short miles down that road.
She bit her lip, leaning forward over crossed legs, quite good legs she thought, nicely shiny and shod in yet another set of popular knock-offs, spike-heeled shoes with sharp pointy toes and with her charcoal plaid dress slightly over the knee.
Kate and Mallory had enjoyed having tea together immensely. It really had been too long, but Kate’s boys were getting older now and Mallory had been so busy these last couple of years, what with Ed running off. Raising her daughter, Ember, kept her hopping. Her mother, and Stan, who was ailing pretty bad now, all conspired to keep her busy. It was easy enough, looking back, to sort of lose touch with old friends.
Looking around, a feeling of desolation settled over her.
Betsy was up on the lift, and two men were looking around under the engine as steaming green stuff dripped out.
Mallory sighed deeply and prayed.
Oh, God, let it be something simple. Something cheap.
She had never really thought of it before, but now, in her recently-acquired role as a supply-chain specialist for Murphy’s Inc., Mallory prayed that whatever it was, it was in stock and in the catalogue, and the warehouse, and who knows, hopefully they might even have one right here in the store.
She had thought she was settling in for a long wait. The answers came all too quickly.
***
“I’m sorry ma’am. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Oh—”
“Yeah.” Skip was what it said on the embroidered red and white patch on his shirt pocket.
Skip.
Skip, what kind of a name is Skip, she wondered wildly, trying to remain focused on what he was trying to tell her. Skip was humongous, like a young Jean Claude van Dammit or whatever that Belgian, the martial-arts actor was named.
“…anyways, that’s about three hundred dollars, including the labour and we can get them to deliver it right after lunch. I need to call that in right away. So, if that’s all right with you?”
“Ah…” She swallowed, unable to think what to do. “Ah.”
Three hundred dollars.
Did she have that? Certainly not in her purse, and probably not in her bank account. Her neighbour Sharon still owed her forty dollars, that was from three weeks ago and it looked like it might be a while yet.
She might still have that much left on her credit card. All the other cards were maxed out.
Skip stood there patiently waiting, in some state of compassion, as he could see the lady wasn’t having the best day so far. He was carefully trying to ignore what she looked like, and just to try and think of her as any other person. He wasn’t having much luck, but he tried.
“I…suppose. What kind of a name is Skip, anyway?” He towered over her, and a warm sense of confidence, the real kind, the quiet kind, just sort of radiated from him.
Those big brown eyes were really something and he had a nice chin too.
He grinned.
“Well. I don’t know.” He looked down at the clipboard. “What’s your name, again?”
“Mallory.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Yeah—yeah, that’s right. You sure got me beat. Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the name my mother gave me. So, what we’ll do is order that part right away and we’ll get her back up on the lift. The vehicle will, hopefully, be ready by three or three-thirty. Okay?”
He proffered the clip board and a pen and showed her where to sign.
“Oh, God.” She exhaled strongly, shaking her head and giving him a look.
“It’s okay, ma’am, it happens to us all.”
Her eye slid along the row of symbols plastered on the glass of the door, the coats-of-arms of all the big credit cards emblazoned there for all to see.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.
The whine of the lift coming down and the thoughts of a three-hour ordeal, maybe worse, barely faded as she watched him walk over to the counter and go behind it.
She only knew one thing for sure about Skip, and that was that he had a remarkably fine ass. It really wasn’t much to go on, but the decision was made.
This was no time for such thoughts. Hopefully the phone charger was in the van. She thought it might be.
Skip fired it up and took it out of the building.
***
There was a trail of liquid over to where the vehicle was parked and a strong, sickly sweet smell still inside Betsy as she climbed in and began looking for the cord for the charger.
“Shit.”
No cha
rger.
It was all so predictable, after the perfect morning. Mallory thought about having a breakdown herself. What made Betsy so special?
***
Skip left the door up after bringing in the metallic green Lexus, which needed tires all around. They’d do the thirty-point check and see if they could find anything—it was good for sales after all, but he didn’t think they’d find much.
The blonde girl was inside her van. He could see her head down between the front seats through the dusty rear glass.
“Wow.”
Dave, his balding sidekick and a pretty good wrench in his own right, chuckled over by the bench rear work bench
“I admire its purity.”
Skip snorted. Then he turned and gave Dave a grin.
“Yeah!” That was exactly right.
“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it, if I were you.”
Skip seemed to sag a bit, still staring at the back of her head. Oh, yeah. The Lexus.
Back to work.
He had the thing up on the rack and the left front wheel off. Right about then Mallory got out of her van and came back.
Dave was head down inside the engine of another job, and didn’t see her coming. He might well have gotten there first.
“Yes?”
She gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Is there somewhere I could charge up my cell phone?”
His mouth opened. He wasn’t all that sure, really, but it wouldn’t hurt to look either.
It turned out they did.
He had her behind the counter, where there was a drawer, and a jumble of stuff that he sort of remembered putting in there for one reason or another, i.e., essentially handy but mostly useless, and when he took the phone from fingers that seemed a bit warm and damp, the jack slid right in.
One other waiting customer ignored them, a middle aged woman who seemed immersed in a three year-old copy of Chatelaine.
Their eyes met, and he smiled although she looked deadly serious. Of course, he was forgetting about her problems, whereas for him, it was just a pretty good day at work. So far. It might get better, it might get really slow or something. You never knew.
“There. I don’t know how long that will take…Mallory.”
A faint trace of pink began to blossom on her cheekbones, and she looked away—she looked down, and then away, and it seemed they were having an awkward moment.
As she backed away slightly, looking for the way out again, he glanced at his watch. He was trying to be helpful.
“Look, there’s a little lunch-bar just down the street, if that might help to kill some time.”
He looked up to see her chin lift. Her lips parted and her eyes were very clear and still.
“Okay.”
She had turned back to face him again, with her hands folded across her middle, holding the black hand-bag, very trim and chic in her vest and white blouse. The pleated skirt made her look very young and vibrant.
Wait a minute…? What did I just say there…? Skip froze up on those thoughts.
She had her hip up against the countertop and she was sort of waiting.
“Uh, yeah.” Skip made a motion and she turned, going through the gap with Skip stumbling on his first try and wondering what the hell had just happened.
That wasn’t what he meant at all.
He really wasn’t like that, and never with customers.
It was against store policy.
Scene Two
After sticking his head into the garage, and yelling to Dave that he was going to lunch, they walked down the street in silence.
Skip took a quick look at his hands, but they were no worse than usual. It was mostly road dust from the tires, and it would come off (mostly) in the diner’s rest room.
She was on his right, and he took a good look again.
Mallory would have to be at least five-ten, and very slender, very erect in her bearing. The hair was a glorious pile, and she was definitely dressed to kill. She looked to be about the right age.
She glanced up at him and smiled, then turned away.
Skip tried to watch where he was going.
“It’s right along here.” Two more store-fronts.
On the angled glass panels inside entryways, he was able to study her some more as they went.
Wow.
Just wow.
***
“I’ll have the, ah…” The waitress was harried but Skip was at a total loss.
“How about the cheeseburger deluxe?”
It was what Mallory was having too, so he nodded. Keep it simple, stupid. For whatever reason, Mallory wasn’t here to be impressed by ambience or to absorb the haute atmosphere. Which it wasn’t, in any case.
He could love a girl like that.
Shit.
There was precious little waiting time in which to talk. One nice thing about the Golden Knight was the old cook, who if nothing else was very quick, having made a million of them over the years.
She was easy enough to talk to. The burgers and fries didn’t take all that long to consume.
Whatever possessed him, he suggested hanging out in the park, saying it was his lunch hour, and she went right along with it.
They ended up sitting on a bench and exchanging life stories, something that hadn’t happened to either one of them in quite some time.
She was a single mom, having only recently gotten off welfare and Skip had just broken up with a right bitch, going by the sounds of things. There were two sides to every story, of course—Skip was careful enough to point that out.
When they got back to the shop, her phone was charged up. She thanked him sweetly. He got back to work, with Dave bursting at the seams and unwelcome questions brimming over.
She called some friend or other, who came and picked up her up ten minutes later in a dark blue Honda with smoked windows. Skip was pretty sure it was a woman, but the visibility through the glare on the windshield was bad. Right about then the parts delivery guy pulled into the lot and he had other things on his mind.
***
Mallory came back at ten to five. Her Betsy was sitting out front, looking pretty much the way it had looked before, but now it was in a different slot.
The bald-headed guy was out front, with the hood lifted on a big old Camaro, a black one.
The car was running wide open.
He was revving it up from inside the engine bay and it sounded very powerful.
He glanced up, and then straightened up as she walked past, and with a sorrowful look he watched her go into the front door on the office side of things.
“Hi.”
Skip had that befuddled look on his face again, somehow he just knew it.
“Oh, hi. You’re back just in time—” His glance took in the clock, her, her legs, her face, and then he went looking for the bill. “The whole thing comes out to three-hundred-forty-eight dollars and nineteen cents, including tax and disposal fees…”
“Ah. Yes. About that bill…”
There was something odd in her voice. There was something odd in her face—something bold, defiant, and yet there was a plea, of desperation, unwritten, something else in there too.
The door behind her popped open and Skip looked past her.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Ma’am.” Dave nodded politely as she turned and then he was off for the day.
Dave was a great friend, when Skip thought about it. He read that one just right, didn’t he?
She turned back to Skip.
“About that bill.”
***
The problem, as she explained to Skip, what that she only had about two hundred and forty dollars in her chequing account.
“Store policy. I’m sorry, it’s just that we don’t take cheques…” Skip began, just as he usually did, but she didn’t let him finish.
“…and my friend still owes me forty bucks, but she doesn’t have it, ‘cause I called her while I was waiting…”
�
�Ah…”
“And my daughter needs a few things, and then there’s the gas bill…” And the hydro bill, and the phone bill.
Skip slumped as she told him her story.
“…and so what I was thinking…”
“Oh, hey. Credit’s not a problem—you can make monthly payments. It doesn’t have to be much. We’ll work something out.”
She halted then. She looked at Skip’s face across the counter, and then at the long, blue fabric backed strips that this modern strip-mall operation boasted.
Abruptly, she turned and went over and found the chain. She fumbled with it and then the curtains began to retract, and to swivel, shutting out the bright light from the street. Then, with him staring, completely mystified, she went out and grabbed the chain beside the one open door and began cranking it down…
Skip came out of the office and stared, jaw open.
The door hit the ground and the side-latches snapped into place.
“What…?”
“I can’t afford to pay you, Skip. I’m desperate.”
A glimmer of what she might be talking about lit up in his head and he backed up hastily as she came towards him.
She pointed.
“Office.” It was all she said, and he scuttled to comply.
The look on her face was sheer determination.
“Miss, ma’am, I mean, really…”
“Mallory…my name is Mallory.”
“Yes—yes—of course it is. Mallory.” Poor Skip was speechless when she unbuttoned her vest and then threw it onto the corner of the flat leather settees along the front window.