The Fashion Police (25 page)

‘Mmm,’ I said, not quite believing her as I looked around the kitchen, which was now completely covered with a layer of ash, not to mention the chunks and splinters of glass. ‘Maybe I should be going now.’

‘Here.’ She smiled as she handed me the plastic bowl. There was just a tiny pinch of blackish-grey powder inside. ‘Do you want to take the rest of the cake too?’

Tempting. ‘No, thanks. I think you’re more in need of comfort food than I am.’

‘Can I come with you? I really don’t want to sit around here thinking about things anymore.’ She did the puppy dog eyes again and I sighed. 

‘Sure. Why not?’

22

Was this day ever going to end? It felt like it had been going on forever in some weird kind of eternal Groundhog Day loop. I felt the beginnings of a dull ache forming behind my right eye. Had I really been shot and killed this morning, and I’d been transported to some kind of afterlife where I had to finish things off before my spirit could move onto the after-afterlife world? Or maybe I’d been sent to hell. No, hell was probably a lot warmer than this. Either way, I was quickly losing the will to live.

‘Where exactly are we going?’ Tia’s voice broke into my surreal thoughts.

‘I have to try and get a picture of one of our clients doing back flips and somersaults.’

‘Huh?’

I waved a hand. ‘I need to get a picture of him doing something that proves he hasn’t damaged his back.’

‘Oh, no.  We’re not going back to the washing machine lady’s house, are we?’

‘Yep. But we’re not going to touch anything. We’re just going to sit outside in the car, nice and quiet, until I get my photos.’

And that’s exactly what we did.  We sat in silence, listening to the cooling ticks of the engine, until I heard a whimpering male voice coming from inside Clark’s house. The sound carried through an open window.

‘Can you hear that?’ I asked Tia.

‘Hear what?’

‘I hear someone crying out.’ I poked my head out of the car window. ‘I think they’re calling for help.’

‘I can’t hear–’

‘Shh!’ I said, trying to listen. ‘I heard it again.’ I pushed open the car door. ‘You wait here. I’ll go and see what’s going on. Maybe Clark really has got a bad back, and he’s lying on the floor somewhere in need of help.’ I approached Clark’s front door and noticed it was slightly ajar. I paused, wondering if my ears were playing tricks on me. But no, I heard the voice calling for help again, so I pushed the door open. I seriously hoped it wasn’t going to be a repeat of the Bates-Crumpleton scene.

‘Hello?’ I said, entering the house.

‘Help!’ I heard the voice call out from the kitchen.

‘Shut up!’ Mrs. Clark told the voice.

I pushed open the kitchen door and stood aghast, taking in the scene. A red-faced washing machine repair man cowered in the corner of the room while Mrs. Clark pointed an antique looking pistol at him.

‘Oh, good, two repair people.’ Mrs. Clark swung the gun between the repair man and me. ‘Shut the door,’ she said to me.

Oh, boy. No doubt about it, I’m jinxed. I felt a ginormous lump rise in my throat. ‘Er…what seems to be the problem?’ I asked as I pushed the door closed.

‘She’s mad.’ The repair man pointed a shaky finger at Mrs. Clark.  He looked like he was about to burst into tears. ‘She won’t let me go until I fix her washing machine.’

Mrs. Clark waddled over to the kitchen table and sank down onto a chair. It squeaked, straining under her weight. ‘Don’t you understand? I have to get it fixed today. I can’t cope any more,’ her voice cracked. She looked around the room at the piles of laundry.  They had grown into a mountain since the last time I was there. The gun in her hand drooped as she loosened her grasp on it and rubbed at her forehead.

‘Well, don’t just stand there. Fix it,’ I said to the repair man.

‘I don’t work well under pressure.’ He pulled the washing machine away from the wall and pulled off the casing at the back, keeping one eye on Mrs. Clark.

Mrs. Clark’s chair started squeaking again as she rocked her pudgy body back and forth, staring at the floor. ‘I haven’t left the house for weeks. I have to wait in for stupid repair people who never tell you when they’re going to turn up. Don’t they realize that people have lives? They expect you to wait in all day long, and then they don’t even turn up. And when you ring the customer service number, all you get is: press one for this, press two for that, press nine-hundred and ninety-nine for this. Blah, blah, blah. And after you’ve spent hours hanging on the phone, trying to talk to a real person, they cut you off. I can’t handle it anymore.’

‘Those fuckwits,’ I agreed. ‘Those customer service people should be shot.’ Oops, probably not quite the right thing to say.

‘I don’t want to be married any more. My husband doesn’t do anything to help with the kids. Everything was fine in the beginning when we first got married. Now it’s like he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. It’s just like having six kids to look after! Bloody men, why are they so selfish?’ she said.

I took baby steps toward her, hoping to get the gun out of her hand. Even though it looked too ancient to actually fire anything, I didn’t really fancy getting shot at for the second time that day. ‘Maybe he doesn’t realize that you’re a bit…um overwhelmed with everything. Have you tried talking to him about it?’

She noticed the gun had lowered and lifted it up again in our direction.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

The repair man gasped, dropping his voltage testing screwdriver.

I glared at him. ‘You’re not helping.’

‘Well, why don’t you fix it then?’ he said to me with a trembling lower lip.

‘Yes, you fix it.’ Mrs. Clark motioned me to get closer to the washing machine with the tip of the gun.

I shuffled toward it and whispered to the repair man, ‘What’s wrong with it?’

He gave a manic shake of his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He handed me the screwdriver and practically flew back to the corner of the room.

‘Why don’t you buy another one now, instead of waiting for your insurance money?’ I said, knowing that Paul Clark’s corned beef yoga workout in the supermarket meant they would probably never get the payout. ‘Your husband works, doesn’t he? Er…where does he work, by the way?’

‘We can’t afford a new one yet. My husband lost his job again. Lazy, good-for-nothing. He’s not working anywhere now,’ she wailed and went into rocking overdrive. ‘Anyway, this one’s got a guarantee.’

I stood there, staring at the stupid machine, frowning and scratching my head, while I prayed to the white goods repair fairies to perform a miracle. The chair squeaking got louder, turning into a grinding sound as Mrs. Clark rocked harder and harder.

‘Do something.’ The repair man said to me, wiping away the sweat pouring down his forehead.

I kicked the machine.

The repair man slapped a hand over his mouth.

‘This sometimes works when my dishwasher gets stuck,’ I said, and gave it another kick.

‘You’re going to get us killed.’ The repair man looked at me like I’d suddenly sprouted another head.

I shrugged and kicked it a third time for luck. ‘Best of three.’

That’s about the time when three things happened at once. Tia stumbled through the kitchen door, Mrs. Clark’s chair collapsed, and she fell in a heap onto the floor, and the washing machine sprang to life.

The gun skidded across the floor, landing at my feet. I snatched it up as Tia’s hands flew to her cheeks.

‘Holy Crap!’ Tia said.

The washing machine repair man fainted, landing on the floor with a loud whack, and Mrs. Clark sat in a stunned heap on the floor.

Half an hour later, after a couple of stiff brandies all around, Mrs. Clark frantically stuffed dirty laundry into the machine, the repair man sat at the kitchen table with an ice pack pressed to the side of his head, and Tia and I helped tidy up the kitchen.

‘You’re going to be blacklisted on the customer service list for this,’ the repair man said to Mrs. Clark.

I glared at him again. ‘Can’t you see the poor woman’s at the end of her tether?’

‘She held me hostage! I could’ve been shot.’

‘Don’t be such a wimp.’ I looked at the gun. ‘This thing is too old to be fired anyway.’ I pulled the trigger to prove my point and accidentally fired a bullet through the kitchen window.

‘Double holy crap!’ Tia gasped.

‘Fuck,’ the repair man screamed. Without further adieu, he scrambled to his feet and disappeared out the door.

‘Uh-oh,’ I said, grabbing hold of Tia’s arm and dragging her back to the Lemon just in time to see the repair man wheel spinning up the road in his van.

‘Wow! That was fun. Where are we going next?’ Tia said.

‘We’re not going anywhere. I’m taking you back to your apartment, and I’ve got a date with Mr. Merlot.’

****

I returned home on a mission to get absolutely plastered. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t say hi to Marmalade, I couldn’t even stomach food. I was numb to the core.

I dragged myself into the kitchen, poured a huge glass of Merlot, and gulped away on the fruity liquid. After the first glass, I leaned back on the worktop, staring dumbly at the terracotta walls. They stared back at me until the light faded completely. I blinked, realizing that I stood in the dark, and someone had mysteriously demolished the whole bottle of wine. I chucked it in the bin and opened another.

At some point, someone banged on the door, and I nearly knocked over the bottle in my surprise. I ignored whoever was at the door, opting to carry on with my alcohol spree instead. Releasing a deep sigh, I realized that I felt like a complete and utter failure – and a frizzy-haired failure, at that – as thoughts about my two near-death experiences flitted around in my head. Once in a day I could probably handle. But two? That just about tipped me over the edge. I knew I’d probably be fine about it in the morning. I’d probably even laugh about it in a few weeks, but for now, for just a few hours, I wanted to savor the experience of knowing that I’d survived two gun-wielding maniacs. Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly fair to tar Mrs. Clark with the same brush as the Goon Girls. Mrs. Clark wasn’t a maniac. She was more on the brink of a nervous midlife episode. However, in my euphoric survival daydream mode, she was still a gun-wielder. And even scarier was the fact that maybe Mrs. Clark and I weren’t all that different. We’d both aimed a gun at someone; the only difference was that I’d used mine.

The knocking stopped just before my mobile rang. I snuck a quick look at the caller ID and froze mid-glug. The last person I wanted to talk to while thinking euphoric thoughts was Brad. I’d heard that people who had near-death experiences did weird things to celebrate being alive. Things like taking risks that they knew they really shouldn’t take, things to tempt fate, things like sleeping with people they really shouldn’t sleep with.

In the end, the decision was taken out of my hands. Brad used his open sesame tool to pick my lock again, and the next thing I knew, I’d thrown my arms around his neck and buried my head in his shoulder, breathing in musky pheromones. Brad’s strong arms held on to me tightly as he pressed his lips to the top of my head, muttering my name over and over again.

‘Hey, who turned the lights out?’ I slurred in a drunken whisper and succumbed to a mushy-around-the-edges feeling as my eyelids drooped shut.

I’m not sure how long we stood like that because the next thing I knew, I was waking up the following morning in bed, completely naked.

‘Agh!’ I shrieked as Brad strolled into the room and placed a cup of coffee on my bedside table.

‘That’s a nice welcome.’

I sat up, clutching the duvet around me, gawking at him.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen it all before.’ He grinned.

‘How recently?’ I said when I managed to close my mouth again.

‘You don’t remember?’

Oh, hell. I stared at him. ‘Er…what exactly happened last night?’

‘You cried.’