“Oh, well, thank you. Yours are quite lovely too. I like the red and green coloring.” I batted my lashes right before being tugged across 5th Avenue like a naughty puppy. “We’d love your help!” I shouted over my shoulder. Chet and Ron hustled along behind us. We snuck them into our store and into the huge front window that was half decorated. Chet gave the area a long once over, arms folded over a wide chest. I rather liked the sweater he was wearing. It made him look like some hidebound academic. I wondered if he wore glasses. To bed.
Hey, whatever happened to Chet the Cheater? Is he not a dirty SOB idea filcher now?
“We’re recycling that idea,” I mumbled then flushed when Chet looked my way. “Pay no mind just thinking out loud.”
“Let’s just simplify. How about we play up the silver and white aspect that’s so prevalent already?” Chet offered as he scoped out the mess Mona had left behind when she’d run off to stop me from being, well, me. “This way even though it’s the same theme, a woodland party, as mine across the street the different colors will make it appear to be something totally different. Also, we have less than four hours now.”
“Brilliant!” I cried, swept in to buss Chet on the cheek, which took him aback slightly.
He didn’t move away from my lips gliding over his whiskery jaw though. After that blatant flirtation, we dusted off our hands, ran to the basement storage area, and began hauling out all the boxes marked XMAS SILVER AND WHITE. Mona appeared beside me, my tiny little leather bag in her hand.
“Take your meds before you incur some other catastrophe. Also, because I like you and you shouldn’t stop taking them. They keep you level,” she softly said, shoving my bag into my chest.
“Can I take it after we’re done?” I really did dislike the way they made my head feel foggy. I needed to get back to the doctor to tweak things again. Ever since I’d had that first diagnosis of “unspecified bipolar disorder” eight months ago the meds game had become never-ending. Get a new script, bounce around or crash, try something else for a month or two, bounce around then crash, try something new. These latest meds leveled me out alright. They made me feel like a sloth. And right now with the holiday rush about to hit I could not be a sloth. I had to be a hummingbird. Bright and flashy and darting from window dresser back to ladies sales, racking up commissions so I could afford to eat and buy my mother something for Christmas. What that something was I had no idea. She was so hard to buy for. How many jigsaw puzzles did one woman need? Would she like some perfume? Why was Chet looking so sexy setting up that snowy background? I’d like to pinch his tuchus then—
“Thanks, for being a friend. Sorry about the cops and all that.” I laid my bag by a stack of empty boxes then gave Mona a quick hug. She gave me a hard squeeze before we broke apart. “Okay, let’s do this!” I clapped and shouted then ran over to work side-by-side with Chet, who I was rather sure was far too handsome and kind to be a dirty St. Nicker.
I had to confess that I liked the touches that Chet had added. I mean, they did add a certain something. The silver and white sparkled like glittery jewels under the blue lighting that I’d chosen. Mona shouted from outside the curtain that we had twenty minutes to clean up before Hoberman showed up. Sadly, I had to give Chet and Ron the boot.
“Out, out, out before he finds you here and accuses me of high treason and seasonal misdemeanors!” I bounced around the window, slapping both men on the backside to get them moving. Ron scurried off, tossing the sheet facing the sales floor aside. That left me, Chet, and the snowmen—snow people I suppose would be politically correct—and reindeers. I gave him a shy smile then took the large silver glass ball he gingerly handed me.
“It’s been fun working with you,” he said, his hands slipping into his front pockets giving him a clumsy professor sort of vibe. If only he had glasses perched on his nose…
“Thank you, you too. And I am sorry about the incident earlier.” My cheeks grew hot.
“It’s fine. I heard Mona asking you about your meds and well, I assumed it was somehow related to that.”
“Somehow, yes. It’s a long story.” I glanced down at the puffy fake snow we were standing in. Now he’d say something kind and slip off to get away from the person with the mental illness. I’d seen it happen time and again since my diagnosis. Hell, even my own mother wasn’t sure how to handle it properly. I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle it properly yet.
“Why don’t you tell it to me over coffee?”
My gaze flew upward. Was he toying with me? “Coffee? Really?”
“Well, the cop did say we had to make up and have coffee.” He shrugged one lone shoulder, which really ramped up his dorky teacher thing.
“Oh, yes, well, he did.” Great. So he was only asking me to coffee to be respectful of the law. I heaved a grand dramatic internal sigh. Figures. “Sure. Let me get a final approval from the manager then we can meet at the corner deli?”
“Excellent. I have to go get my window signed off as well. See you in an hour at Edelman’s.”
I forced a smile. “See you then.”
He slipped away, the sheet falling back down to seal me into this winter wonderland of loneliness. I sat down next to the round snowwoman holding a round snowbaby and had me a good old-fashioned pout. Mona appeared then, pulling down the rear sheeting, singing along to the holiday jingles inside her head.
“You okay?” She folded the sheet haphazardly then draped it over her arm.
“Yeah, I’m fine just…tired. Really tired.” Which was the truth. I could feel myself gearing down a bit. That combined with being up all night plus the fiasco on 5th Avenue as I would now always call it, I was slipping into a downward lull. Generally they didn’t last long. Sometimes a day or two, but not usually more than that then I’d bounce back. Sometimes that bounce back was a little too high, and that was when I tended to do questionable things. Like get into snowball fights with other window dressers or fall for pickup lines from club Casanovas.
“Aw, baby.” She ruffled my curly red hair. “Come on, up you go. We got to have this all cleaned up before He Who Should Never Be Named arrives on his bony steed of immediate furlough.”
I pushed to my feet, the reminder of being canned for sneezing on the sales floor – it had happened – slicing through my woe-is-me moment. I could woe later at home. We hustled our asses, hauling boxes and bags into the elevator then riding to the basement to shove them back into storage. Four trips we made and were caught on the fifth and final one. Mr. Hoberman entered the building using the sub-basement that morning. He always came in a different way just to catch employees or the cleaning staff monkeying around. His words not mine. He was a bent-up old bean-licker of a human being. How Mrs. Hoberman had stayed married to him for over forty years was a motherfucking mystery.
“I do hope you didn’t lose any glitter or snowflakes on the ladies department floor,” the tall, skinny Scrooge grumbled as he entered the elevator with us and a flocked , full-sized reindeer who’d leg had been broken and was now going to be but out of its misery as soon as we could get to the dumpster out back. He sniffed some stuffy basement air up his long nose as the checked his watch. “If I have to call the cleaning staff in to tidy up it will go on your permanent record.”