Suede to Rest (17 page)

Polyester Monroe is the daughter of John and Helen Monroe, residents of Burbank. None of the family members could be reached for comment.

I read the article a second time, not believing the words in front of me. Who was this writer? It was attributed to
staff writer
. Where did they get their facts? And Ken's comments, though the most compassionate part of the whole thing, made it sound like I was five years old. The next time I saw him I was going to punch him in the nose.

I flipped through the call logs on my phone until I reached his number. It rang five times, and went to voice mail. I disconnected, then immediately dialed again. This time I left a message. “Ken, this is Poly Monroe.” I lowered the phone from my head, then re-raised it before hanging up. “We need to talk,” I added.

It was officially dark when I left the store's parking lot. I drove the truck past Charlie's, slowing as I passed to look for signs of her. I pulled around the back of Land of a Thousand Fabrics, unloaded my purchases, and carried them into the store. After reading the article, I wanted more than ever to clean the gate, to get rid of any evidence of the attack. But if the woman with the cleaning business was right, and I was guessing she was, I was looking at an early morning cleanup job, so it was just as well if I turned in early for the night.

I didn't want to leave Charlie's truck behind the store, but the idea of running into her face-to-face tomorrow was an even less desirable option. Had I bothered to get her cell phone number, I would have texted her, a nice generic form of communication. Instead, after putting the bags inside the door, I found a blank piece of paper in the drawer under the register and scribbled a thank-you, locked up, and drove the truck back to her business. I wrapped the keys in the piece of paper, pushed them through the mail slot on her front door, and left.

It was after nine when I reentered the store. The first thing I did was fill the battery chamber of the flashlight with fresh D-cells. Next I checked the bowl of cat food that had been left out by the partition; it was empty. Maybe, armed with the power of two thousand candle watts, I could find the lost kitten before the night was over.

With the flashlight in one hand and as many bags as I could carry in the other, I made my way to the stairs. There, three steps up from the bottom, I found him. He was hunched to the side in a ball, his fur poking up like spikes on a porcupine. He was more than a little dirty, his orange stripes now a shade of gray close to those of his brother. He cowered backward as I reached for him, but he didn't run.

“It's okay, baby, I'll carry you,” I said. I set the bag down and carried the flashlight and the kitten up the stairs to the apartment. The gray kitten sat right inside the apartment, staring at us as we entered. He peeped out a meow at the sight of his brother. I laid the flashlight on its side, pointing down the hall, and scooped up the other kitten, carrying them both to the bedroom and setting them on the center of the bed.

“You two, wait here. I have to bring stuff upstairs,” I said, wondering when I'd become one of those women who talked to her cats. Whether a future with Carson was in the cards or not, I knew that for him, behavior like this was a deal breaker.

But the reality was Carson's behavior over the past two days had become something of a deal breaker for me. He demonstrated pretty clearly what he thought of my interest in the store. He didn't understand. And it wasn't just that he wanted me to think about my job, because that I could have probably explained away. It was that he didn't care that the store had been left to me by someone in my family, or that I had the chance, the power, the knowledge, and the desire to carry on what my aunt and uncle had started so many years before. He hadn't, for one second, acknowledged that I could do it if I really wanted. I didn't need his business acumen right now. I needed his confidence in me.

The fourth time I returned downstairs with the flashlight, it wasn't to bring anything up with me. It was to collect the notebooks from under the register, to see what kind of sales information had been left behind, and to try to figure out if this was something I could do. Because all of a sudden, saving the store and proving that I could do this seemed like the most important goal of all.

I trained the flashlight beam on the concrete floor as I walked. When I reached the wrap stand, I set the light on its side and tugged on the drawer below the register. It was stuck on something in the back. I jostled it until I managed a narrow opening and fed my hand in to find the obstruction. A straight pin stabbed my thumb and I cried out. I pulled my hand toward me and squeezed my thumb. A drop of blood formed at the center of my fingerprint. I wiped my thumb on my pants and pulled the drawer open with my other hand. The notebooks sat inside. I opened the back cover of the one Vaughn had taken and flipped from the back cover forward, expecting to see evidence of the missing pages.

But the book was intact. I went through it again, this time from the front. The first half of the ledger was filled with logs of purchases, inventory, and sales tallies. On the third to last page were the notes I'd scribbled about Mr. Pickers and the sketch I'd made two nights ago.

I hadn't imagined the missing pages, I knew. I paged through other books from under the register, each time more for verification of my sanity than proof of the destruction of Aunt Millie's notebook. By the time I got through the final book, my sanity was seriously in question. Every book had every page.

I refilled the
drawer and set it on top of the wrap stand next to the stack of turquoise cloth notebooks. My eyesight was blurring, but I was too keyed up to relax. Up the stairs I went, into the apartment, to the bed. The kittens were curled up by the pillows, their heads tucked to the side on each of their paws. I didn't know if it was the benefit of blood relation that put them into the exact same pose as they slept or if all cats slept like that. Careful not to disturb them, I picked up the box of memorabilia I'd started flipping through earlier and sank onto the carpet.

With the flashlight on my lap, aimed diagonally toward the ceiling, I flipped through my aunt and uncle's memorabilia. As I reached the bottom of the box, I discovered a collection of envelopes that had been secured with a whisper-pink satin ribbon. Each letter was addressed to Marius Monroe. The return address was Burbank, California. I knew it well; it was the house my parents had moved to after they'd left Glendora. Before I pulled the first piece of paper from the envelope, I knew what they were. The letters my mother told me she'd sent to my uncle, telling him about my life.

The fact that he'd kept the letters brought tears to my eyes, until confusion distracted me. Uncle Marius didn't live here at that time. He'd moved into the furnished apartment my dad had arranged for him, and he'd left the store closed up. As far as I knew, he'd never come back.

But he must have!

These letters had been stashed at the bottom of the box of photos. That meant he had recently been through the box. Whether a trip down memory lane or a desire to leave a message, he'd taken care to put those letters where they were, and now I'd found them.

I checked the postmarks on the letters from my parents. The earliest one was from my graduation and included a photo of me in my cap and gown. The latest was from six months ago, a page from
Los Angeles Magazine
that listed To The Nines as “best bargain drag attire.” I had thought it was funny, but Giovanni had canceled his subscription after that issue ran.

Six months ago. That meant that Great-Uncle Marius had been in the apartment in the past six months. But why? What had brought him back? And was it a one-time trip, or had he come to the store often? How had he gotten in and out without anybody knowing?

My parents would know. I reached for my phone, surprised at the time. It was well past midnight. There was little more I could do tonight. I'd call my parents tomorrow, right after I tackled the fence.

I cleaned myself up as best I could with a washcloth and a bottle of purified water. There was a purplish bruise around my waist from the shower incident at Charlie's. It matched the tiny violets in the wallpaper and was tender to the touch. My shoulders had bruises, too, from falling on top of Vaughn. I was used to bruises on my knees and calves from tripping and falling down. I had small feet for my height, size seven on a five-foot-nine frame, which meant two things: I'd never walk a runway, and I wore a sample-size shoe. Carson had been fascinated by my small feet when we first started dating, giving me foot rubs every Friday night after work. I hadn't discovered his days-of-the-week activities at that point, so until he discovered Fantasy Football, my feet got his undivided attention for a half hour at the end of every workweek.

I patted myself dry with a faded rose-pink terry-cloth towel, changed into the black silk nightgown, and lay down on the bed. Aches and pains announced themselves in muscles I didn't even know I had. I fluffed a pillow and wedged it under my neck and stared at the dark mahogany wood trim that framed out the ceiling of the room. I thought about what it would be like, giving up the life I knew in Los Angeles and reopening the store in San Ladrón.

I had lots of contacts in the Los Angeles fabric district and could build up new inventory, too. And maybe I could even travel to fabric fairs in Paris, Milan, China, and Thailand. What would that cost me? I wondered. How much would I have to make to be able to afford trips like my aunt and uncle had taken, trips to India, Korea, Japan, Spain, France, Romania? Exotic places that in my life at To The Nines I never once dreamed I'd get to? Could it be done?

Most of the fabrics would have to go, but new ones could be brought in. And until I was able to build up the reputation of the store, I could have craft classes on the weekend and teach people how to make curtains, pillows, throw blankets, pot holders. There could be workshops for beginners and for people who already had sewing skills.

The tea shop would be a perfect place to start. Genevieve had told me she wanted her shop to look like a Parisian café. I could help her turn what she had into her dream by reupholstering the seat cushions in toile, replacing the faded curtains with checkered panels that tied onto whitewashed dowel rods. We could frame cuttings from some of the bolts that were damaged and hang them on the wall in whimsical groupings with her roosters and French noir movie posters. She could even throw a grand reopening party: Midnight in Paris. People could get dressed up, have a place to go. It would be the perfect advertisement for her store. I could help her change her life with fabric.

The idea energized me. I slipped my feet into the beaded Chinese slippers and went downstairs. The sewing machine was easy enough to set up. I trained the flashlight beam over the bolts of fabric in the store, occasionally digging through stacks of tubes to locate a particular color. I assembled four different patterns: a butter-yellow and royal-blue toile, two ginghams—one yellow, one blue—and a faded light blue chambray. I added grosgrain ribbon trim to the pile and set to work measuring, cutting, and sewing a set of French-country curtains for Genevieve's store.

Enthusiasm for the project kept me going well into the night. When my vision blurred to the point that repeated blinking did nothing to improve it, I turned off the sewing machine and looked at what I'd accomplished. A pile of curtains sat on the wrap stand. Placemats and napkins in complementing tones sat to the side. I wondered if Genevieve was going to think I was off my rocker when I showed up with a home makeover packed neatly in a red wagon.

Of course she would. Who was I kidding?

I folded up the finished projects and left them on top of the wrap stand. Seconds later I was upstairs between the sheets and the comforter on the bed, the kittens nestled together on my right-hand side. I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, for the first time forgetting the trouble that had followed me to San Ladrón.

*   *   *

The next morning
I awoke early, eager to get a head start on my day before nosy neighbors would infiltrate my business. The kittens had moved to my pillow during the night and were now pressed against my head. The gray one chewed on a piece of my hair. The orange one was still dirty from the previous night. “You need a bath more than I do,” I told him. He looked at me, stretched out a paw, and meowed, as if in agreement.

As I moved from the bed to the bathroom, regretfully aware that the wise thing to do was to put yesterday's outfit back on for the cleaning of the gate, I caught my reflection. My choppy hair stuck up at odd angles. The auburn color was vivid against my pale skin, which glowed next to the black silk nightgown. Even my lips, usually coated in a deep shade of red, had a hint of pink to them that I wasn't used to seeing. I checked the clock, surprised that it was only six thirty. I didn't look that bad for only four hours of sleep. I felt like I'd gone twelve rounds with Rocky Marciano, but I didn't look it. “Take that, San Ladrón,” I said to my reflection. “You can beat me up all you want.” As long as the bruises stayed hidden, nobody would know I was any worse for wear.

I poured the remaining water into my hands and raked them over my head. After a quick application of tinted moisturizer with a hefty SPF and a slick of strawberry-scented lip balm, I pulled on yesterday's grubby clothes and headed downstairs.

I had expected to be the only person on the street this early, but I wasn't. A group of women in bright yellow T-shirts and jeans were in front of my store, each next to a bucket of sudsy water. They were cleaning the gate. I recognized the woman I'd met at the store yesterday. When she saw me she broke away from her task and smiled a big, toothy grin.

“Good morning!” She called out. “Remember me from last night? Maria Lopez.”

“Of course I remember you. What's going on here?” I asked cautiously.

“I read the paper this morning and put two and two together. You're Polyester, aren't you?”

“Poly. I go by Poly.”

“It's so cute, you know? That your name is Polyester and you own the fabric store. I told my husband about you after I read the article and he said I should do something to help you. So I got the idea to bring my sisters over to see what we could do.”

I wanted to hug her. Instead, I looked at the storefront where the women were busy at work. They'd already cleaned most of the gate. Two women were working on the surrounding stucco surfaces with stiff brushes and another was pouring something on the sidewalk.

“Maria, what do I owe you for this?” In four hours my boss was going to discover that I wasn't showing up for work, and that might have a negative impact on my finances.

“You are a silly woman,” she said. “Have you never helped somebody just because you can?”

I thought about Genevieve's tea shop and the fabric makeover I'd imagined the previous night. Maybe she wouldn't think I was crazy. Maybe she'd appreciate the gesture. More than before, I wanted to pay this favor forward.

Maria smiled again, showing most of her teeth. “No cost. But if you have to do
something
, there's a donut shop on the corner.”

That time I did hug her.

Another lady came over to us. She was a taller version of Maria, with dark curly hair, olive skin, and bright red lips you wouldn't expect to see on a woman who had gotten up early to scrub the exterior of a building.

“Polyester, this is my sister Juanita,” said Maria.

I started to shake her hand, but overcome with their generosity as I was, I hugged her, too. She didn't act surprised, and I wondered how many of their clients hugged them on a regular basis.

“We're almost done with the gate, but the door needs work,” Juanita said.

“Can you leave it unlocked before you leave?” said Maria.

“Of course.”

The three of us walked to the front of the store together, where I met (and hugged) additional sisters Maricella and Anna respectively. “I don't know what to say, other than thank you.”

“You know what says thank you better than almost anything?” said Maria. “Donuts.”

I held my hands up. “I'm going, I'm going!”

It wasn't the first piece of goodwill I'd received since being in San Ladrón, but it was a powerful one. One that let me know that I couldn't pretend to categorize this small town quickly or easily. For every Vic McMichael, interested in buying me out, there was an Adelaide Brooks, welcoming me to the neighborhood. For every gossiping resident, there was a Genevieve, inviting me to join her club. For every opportunistic Ken Watts ready to make money from my ownership of the store, there was Maria Lopez's family-run business, helping me out without expecting to be paid.

I walked toward the hardware store at the end of the block, crossed the street, and kept walking. Like the toucan who follows his nose, I found the donut shop by following the scent trail of sugar and baked goods. A bell chimed over my head as I entered and was immediately enveloped in sweetness that probably added five pounds to my frame.

The shop was empty, except for a large black man behind the counter. He had a stained white apron loosely tied over a plaid shirt and jeans, and was in the process of removing an empty tray from the display case and replacing it with a full one. I would have expected a donut shop to be crazy busy on a Monday morning, but on either side of the shop, booths sat vacant.

I took several deep breaths and closed my eyes, then stepped up to the counter and ordered two dozen assorted donuts from the man.

“You want to pick them or you want me to pick them?” he asked. His voice boomed like a sports announcer's.

In Los Angeles, I had always picked the donuts, leaving nothing to chance. “Surprise me,” I said.

He puckered his lips and nodded, very seriously, then took a flat piece of pink cardboard and turned it into a box.

“Big responsibility, letting me choose your donuts. Most people like to choose their own. I think I'll call in some experts.”

“You keep the donut expert in the back?”

“I keep two. Carlos! Antonio!” he hollered over his shoulder.

“My mom's cleaning up your mess,” said one of the boys.

As soon as I heard the names, I understood why Maria had sent me to the donut shop. “You're Maria's husband?”

“Joe Lopez,” he said, and reached over the case of donuts to shake my hand. I almost felt cheated. “My friends call me Big Joe. Boys, this nice lady wants twenty-four of our best donuts. Can I count on you to pick out the best ones?”

Before answering, the boys reached for the donuts covered in chocolate jimmies and put four in the box. Big Joe stepped around from behind the counter and motioned for me to join him at the front of the store away from the boys' hearing.

“Maria told me about you. She said you don't seem like the type of person to bring vandalism to San Ladrón.”

“That article wasn't very fair,” I said tentatively.

“That article was a piece of crap!” he said. The two boys looked up at us. “Go back to work, you two,” he instructed them. “Maria is a good judge of character and she likes you. So I like you. And every one of those women in front of your store who are helping like you. Don't pay any attention to what the newspaper says. If you need anything while you're here, you call me.” He handed me a business card with phone numbers written on the back.