Chapter 5
I couldn’t help but compare how Ken wore a suit to how my neighbor did, and the comparison wasn’t kind to Ken.
First, his suit was definitely off the rack.
Second, it hung too loosely on his shoulders but strained over his waist. Third, it had a patina of gold glitter, and a tiny golden dong clung just behind the pocket square.
“Of all the lowdown things you could’ve done, ruining my wedding day has to be worst.”
“I didn’t—”
“Oh, but I know you did. You are the pettiest woman I have ever known—”
“Obviously, you don’t know a lot of women,” Salcedo muttered under her breath. “Or that men can be ten times as petty as any woman ever thought of being.”
I shot her a look that said, You’re not wrong, but you’re also not helping.
She held up her hands in surrender.
“—a regular Little Miss Petty. Always sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong because you think you can be the arbiter of justice. What do you have to say for yourself?” Ken asked, his face now dangerously red.
“Well—”
“There’s nothing you can say for yourself. Maybe behavior like this is why I was planning to break up with you.”
“Ken, really—”
“No, you listen. You’ve always asked too much of me. Maybe I should’ve ended things before I started seeing Eloise—that’s on me—but our relationship had been over for a while. Falling in love with Eloise . . . just happened. Maybe I want to have a wife to come home to, did you ever think of that?”
“You told me—”
“Just like you to pull one of your childish pranks. Eloise was in tears. She’d engaged a photographer to take pictures of us in the square after the ceremony. Did you know that?”
“No, I—”
“Sure it was a justice of the peace wedding, but she still had expectations, and it was very difficult to explain to her why I was covered in glitter. You ought to be ashamed. You—”
“Ken, so help me, if you say one more word without letting me answer—”
“No, I’m not done here! You—”
In a haze of anger, I walked up to Ken and performed a perfect leg sweep. He landed on the floor, the wind knocked out of him. The crash of the stools he knocked over as he went down silenced the pub.
“Now, you listen to me,” I said as he gasped for air.
“I did not send the glitter bomb. Honestly, I wish I had, because listening to you just now has shown me exactly how much of our personal history you have rewritten. Also, there is no excuse—none—for not breaking up with me before starting a relationship with Eloise. You can rationalize your actions any way you want, but that’s the truth. ”
“Stella—”
I put a foot on his chest. “Nope. I’m talking now.
You told me you didn’t want to get married.
That was fine with me. You told me you didn’t want to have children.
Also fine with me. You told me you were looking for someone to be your partner in all aspects of life and then convinced me to leave law school.
That is why I trained to be a private investigator.
So we could build a business together. That’s also why I took those courses on accounting, a subject I detest. So I’m sorry Eloise was in tears, but maybe that’s because you married a child.
After taking up with me when I was little more than a child.
Only having relationships with younger women won’t keep you from growing older, you sad little man. ”
At first I thought the noise in the bar was the pounding in my ears, but no. It was applause.
Stunned, I took my foot off Ken’s chest. He scrambled to his feet, but his face, now a dangerous shade of red, twisted into an expression of pure anger.
A chill washed over me, and it was all I could do not to take a step back.
As someone who’d done surveillance for a lot of divorce cases, I knew better than most the truth behind Margaret Atwood’s observation that men were afraid women would laugh at them while women were afraid men would kill them.
People in the pub, including women, had laughed at Ken. If looks could kill, his glare would’ve already ended me.
His lips upturned in a Grinchian grin, and I had to wonder if he’d thought of a punishment worse than death. “You’ll be apologizing to me for everything if you want the title to your car.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
The pounding in my ears was back. Apologize to him?
“No.”
“How about a thousand bucks, then. For handling your paperwork.”
“I don’t have a spare thousand, and you know it.”
“Fine. Good luck when they come to repossess my car.”
Satisfied that he’d found a way to get the last word, he turned on his heel to leave.
He might’ve won this skirmish, but he wasn’t going to win the war.
“He can’t do that, can he?” Salcedo’s voice held the outrage of youth.
I sighed deeply. “Unfortunately, he can. Know how we have to pay our car registration every year before our birthday?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we financed the car in his name, so I need to have that title changed to mine in less than a month so I can keep my tags current.”
“Stella, I’m so sorry,” Salcedo said.
“Don’t be,” I said as the crowd dispersed, ready to get back to their own diversions. “I’ll think of something.”
“You’re not going to pay him, are you?”
“Hell to the no.”
“Apologize?”
“Very unlikely.”
I took my seat at the corner of the bar, and she sat beside me. Havisham joined us to ask, “I only heard part of that. Why does he have the title to your car?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Long, long ago and far, far away, a man sired me and lived in the same house and answered to ‘Daddy.’”
“Was he Darth Vader?”
“No. His name is Willie Stark, and he used my Social Security number to open a bunch of credit cards that he had no intention of paying off.”
“Sounds like a winner,” Havisham said as she wiped at a sticky spot on the bar. “So, when you and the Douchecanoe were together, you financed the car in his name to get a better interest rate?”
“Correct.”
“Ah,” she said. “Is the car paid off?”
“As of two months ago, but my birthday is next month, so . . .”
“She needs the title to pay for her vehicle registration.” Salcedo took a sip of cider, looking for all the world as if she hadn’t just been asking me all the same questions.
“Bingo.” I picked up my wineglass, only to discover that it was empty.
Havisham instinctively turned around to get a new bottle.
When she returned, I confessed something I hadn’t even told my nana.
“Here’s the thing: I’m two months behind on my student loans due to moving into the apartment.
I can’t pay him any money to bribe him. I’m not going to apologize, either.
That hundred dollars earlier was welcome because, between student loans and moving expenses, I gotta come up with at least seven thousand dollars in the next month. ”
Salcedo almost choked on her drink, her eyes wide.
“And I’m only telling you this to say . .
. don’t defer your loans unless you absolutely can’t help it.
And don’t borrow more than you need. Seems like a good idea at the time, but the money’s gonna come due eventually.
Oh, and be careful who you finance things with.
I thought my relationship was rock solid, but it was a pile of gravel over a sinkhole. ”
She nodded. “What are you going to do?”
I sighed. “Maybe take a break from my paralegal classes and look for extra jobs? Maybe take in a roommate. Or sell feet pictures—how are you with lighting and photography? Do you think there’s a market for knobby toes?”
I didn’t last long after my heart-to-heart with Salcedo and Havisham.
My rage monster could deal in only brief bursts of energy, so the adrenaline crash left me both shaky and cranky.
I retreated to my apartment half expecting to cry, but the tears never came.
Instead, I felt numb, exhausted, no longer enthused about my paralegal courses.
Sadly, no ideas on how to get the title to my car materialized, either.
I was staring at my framed puzzle piece and trying to decide if it was level when Havisham texted me:
Meet Salcedo and me at the Waffle House at one.
“What? You can’t even add a ‘please’?” I asked myself as I plopped down on the love seat.
I had more coursework to do, but I dedicated quality time to moping instead. I couldn’t even muster the energy to watch television, which was just as well because Ken had changed all the passwords to our streaming services.
And to think he was calling me petty.
But of all the bullshit I might’ve expected from Ken, barging into Finnegan’s hadn’t been in my top five. If nothing else, his appearance had reminded me to stop sharing my location with him. Since we were no longer friends, he didn’t have any need to find me. There was one problem easily solved.
But his irrational anger over the glitter bomb?
Sure, Salcedo had sent it on his wedding day.
She was in college. Her frontal lobe hadn’t fully developed yet.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he and Eloise were having some expensive shindig at the Marietta Country Club.
He’d said himself they went to see the justice of the peace and then were taking pictures in the square.
Probably at the same fountain where Eloise had posed in a prom dress mere months before.
If I thought she’d listen to me, I’d have told her to steer clear of him. She wouldn’t, though. I wouldn’t have listened at her age.
Mom had tried to tell me not to drop out of law school, said I would need a law degree to pay back my student loans. Not that she knew exactly how predatory those loans were, thanks to the fact that my father’s credit card stunt had ruined my credit.
I’d handled that situation by getting whatever debt I could forgiven and then consolidating the rest. Slowly but surely, I’d paid off those bills, but that meant I was left with deferred student loans. My father’s debts: the gifts that kept on giving.
Or taking, as the case might be.
My rage monster wanted an encore performance at the mere thought of such injustice, but she was too tired from her earlier demonstration.
A thud and a cry of pain in the breezeway had me on my feet, with what little adrenaline I had left, to see if anyone was hurt.
Could it be my neighbor? Why did that thought have me reconsidering the concept of playing sexy nurse?
No, Stella. You promised yourself a sabbatical from men. Don’t even think about it.
When I opened the door, my neighbor was nowhere to be found. Instead, an older woman half sat and half lay on the ground in a way that suggested she’d missed a step and fallen backward.
Lord, please tell me she didn’t break a hip.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said, clearly still stunned.
“Do I need to call for help?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, no,” she said as she attempted to climb to her feet.
I offered a hand even as I wondered if she should try to stand. But what could you do with an adult who refused help?
I got her to her feet, and she tested putting weight on one foot and then the other. She gently pressed her left wrist and hand. “I think I’m okay.”
“Maybe we should take you to the doctor,” I said. “Just to be safe.”
She patted my cheek. “Sweet girl, I’m not going to the emergency room at this time of night. That would be a fool’s errand. If anything is swollen in the morning, then I’ll reconsider, but ain’t nobody got time for emergency room tomfoolery.”
“If you’re sure . . .”
She put her hands on her hips. “You are just the kindest, but I can handle myself. You’re new around here, aren’t you?”
“Stella Stark,” I said, extending my hand.
Her hand was little more than veins and sinew, but she had a hearty shake. “Marcia Quattlebaum, but you can call me Mrs. Q. I’ve been here since the place opened.”
Wow. That would mean—
“Yes,” she said, as though reading my mind. “Eighty-two years old next September. So you can see I’ve been handling myself for a good long while.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My response mollified her. “I like a young person with some manners. Why don’t you come up and see me tomorrow? I’ve made a lemon pound cake, and I can’t eat it all myself.”
“Sure.”
“Apartment two-fourteen. Sometime after three. But before seven because I won’t miss Wheel of Fortune for anything or anyone.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She’d already made it to the second step, but her progress was slow. It took effort to lift each foot up enough for the next step, and she clung to the railing. Was she hurt, or did she have arthritis?
“Staring at me won’t make me go any faster.” Her voice might’ve been sweet, but her intent was clear.
Pride was an emotion I recognized. No matter how much I wanted to reassure Mrs. Quattlebaum that I only cared about her safety, I retreated to my apartment to will the clock to move faster so I could see why Havisham had requested my presence at the Waffle House.