Chapter 13 I am the Girl Boss, Coo Coo Ca Choo
MY DATE WITH HANRY WAS, simply put, a rousing success. So much so that before he says good night, we make tentative plans to hang out again on Friday. It gets even better: first thing in the morning, I finally hear from someone at EFG.
It’s my HR admin contact. Apparently, Steve is in trouble for failing to reply to me within a seventy-two-hour window.
Also, FMLA is a touchy subject with HR, and they’ve ensured me they’ll fix things—and that I should have as much as twelve weeks, per company policy.
This gives me rapturous relief. Twelve weeks is certainly a long enough time that I can figure out how to help Grandma’s spirit ascend.
I text Jane about the situation, promising to keep paying rent while I stay in Massachusetts for ambiguous family reasons.
She speculates that Steve and the admin might have internal work drama I can use to my advantage. She says Desmond is nice.
Presumably, this is why the winds of fate—those cruel, stupid, Salem-y winds—fail to shift any more in my favor.
For another thing, while I’m trying to brew a pot of coffee in what may not actually be a coffee maker, I catch my grandmother’s friend Matilda gathering the flamingos from the front lawn.
She wanders away with them tucked beneath her arm, which I’m fairly sure is a criminal offense.
Why is she doing this? Unwilling to engage further, I wave a solemn farewell.
For a third thing, the late afternoon wedding I’m crashing at Hamilton Hall is a thousand times duller than Dave and Amanda’s.
It’s got some lovely points, though: for one, there are exactly zero vampires present.
This major win aside, the bride’s choice of fringe tulips as an accent flower is inspired.
So is the silver-and-lilac color scheme, and the extra chairs she sets aside for unexpected plus-ones—or wedding crashers like me.
This is about where the highlight reel ends.
During the long-winded, boring speeches, I employ my powers of invisibility, standing near the various doorways of the venue like a well-dressed fly.
I listen intently to the drink staff whine about the bride’s desire for a champagne tower, forcing them to serve flat, warm champagne.
And while I shovel dry, gray, blueberry-crusted cake off a chipped ceramic plate, I overhear the planners manage the unexpected presence of someone’s pet rabbit and source a spare battery for the videographer.
Evidently, the devil’s in the details when it comes to weddings. Which is good news for me. I love details! Finally, a transferable skill.
I don’t get caught in my nefarious wedding crashing until I’m purloining samples of couple-themed goods.
The wedding planner chases me halfheartedly down Chestnut Street, but I blend into a tour group and lose her.
All in all, I’d call my spy mission a success.
Mandy and Bulan, the recipients of two pilfered, overly herbal cake balls, agree.
It’s late Friday afternoon when I catch Rochester glowering at the Spüktacular Weddings sign, his frame backlit like a sexy jack-o’-lantern in my shop doorway.
Honestly, I can’t believe that bitchy fay is back.
“How long should we make him wait?” I call out to the interior of the shop.
Mandy and I have filled the room with bohemian pillows that a vendor delivered for Fi and Asher’s wedding.
I don’t like them. They’re more over the top than a camping tent made out of caftans and macramé.
But the main issue is, I had to put down a deposit for them.
Fi and Asher’s vendor demanded I pay one before he left—which felt like something Fi should’ve done—and it absolutely devastated the funds I’ve been saving up from Fi’s and another client’s wedding deposits. Possibly, I’ve been scammed.
On a happier note, Mandy discovered that Grandma installed speakers in the ceiling, and now the shop is filled with the high-volume croonings of BTS. And the boys are so, so beautiful.
From where she’s plucking dead leaves off a flower stem, the pixie cries over Jungkook’s dreamy voice, “We should make Rochester stay there all day.”
“I support that thoroughly,” says Bulan.
“Oh good,” says Mandy. “Because I need to STARE at him.”
And not only stare, but drool. Well, it’s time to cut the fun short.
Mandy’s saliva could ruin the delicate silver dollar eucalyptus she’s clenching in her death grip.
Getting those from the wholesale florist in Danvers took hard work.
Apparently, he “needs florists to submit orders months in advance” and “doesn’t have extra stems and greenery for nontraditional clients.
” Unless you bring along a disarmingly pretty pixie, in which case exceptions can be made.
I let Rochester in.
“Thanks for knocking,” I say.
He enters the room, paradoxically fluid and stiff. I guess this answers the question I never had of what it’s like to meet an animated block of ice.
“I did not knock,” says the frigid fairy.
“Yep, that was the joke. How can I help you today?”
He ignores the plush spider that has landed on his shoulder and says coolly, “I’m here for your quote.”
“I don’t have it,” I say.
He frowns. After a solid half minute of two-sided stonewalling, I say, “Just kidding. I wasn’t going to give you one, but I’ve changed my mind.”
Kind of.
Rochester’s documents laid out a vision for an elaborate, gorgeous wedding.
Clearly, the financial reward for accepting his clients’ job would be ample—I suspect comparable to half a year’s pay at EFG.
But I have common sense in addition to financial sense.
It’s what tells me that accepting money from fairies is too damn dangerous.
According to Bulan, the fay are responsible for mischievously starting wars in the Community, and for plaguing humans with strange, unearned afflictions—from pimples to polka to full-blown insanity.
They’re rumored to steal children. Plus, these fay are choosing to communicate through an intermediary, likely making them extra dangerous.
I can’t risk taking their money and running out on the job.
Here’s my dilemma: outright rejecting Rochester’s clients might come off as suspicious to other potential clients.
Salem is small, and based off what Bulan’s told me, the Community’s got to be even smaller.
So my goal is to make Rochester’s mysterious clients lose interest in me by putting together a dumpster fire of a proposal.
And oh, what a foul-smelling, accelerant-laced dumpster fire it is. Grandma would be proud.
I signal my one paid employee. “Mandy?”
“Oh, right! On it!” Blushing, she dashes to the back of the store. With that matter taken care of, I brush the spider off the stilted fairy’s shoulder.
“So, Roach. Roachster. Can you tell me more about your client?”
“Those whom I represent would prefer to share more details after confirming their interest in working with you.”
“I take it they’re important?”
“One might say that.”
“I’ve got the folder!” Mandy returns, waving a pink portfolio, red-cheeked and adorable. She passes the folder with her bow-tied pink shoe popping off the ground, but tragically, Rochester fails to notice. His eyeballs clench onto mine like he’s attempting to pierce my soul.
“I will inform you if we choose to proceed,” he says.
“Cool cool,” I say.
Deigning to give us a final, stoic nod, Rochester leaves. Once the front door shuts, Mandy presses herself against it with a dramatic sigh.
“I wish he would notice me,” she says.
“The rest of the street has.” I tap the glass in hopes she’ll observe the awestruck tourists who have essentially walled up the sidewalk, plus the two dads who have caused incalculable anger in their wives.
“Now come on. Stop pressing your boobs against the glass and get back to our garlands. They’re not going to make themselves. ”
Around 11:30 on Friday night, my alarm punches into my dreams with the unfriendly sounds of electronica.
If I close my eyes, I can envision a backwards, happier version of this life, where I’m up at eleven thirty because I go out dancing in SoHo on the weekends, or I stay up late studying with music in my ears.
But no. Nope. This accursed version of Sabby Spük goes to bed before sunset so she can wake up to perform nuptial assistance to druids.
That, and flirt with Hanry Burleson.
These two reasons combined explain why Hanry, Mandy, Bulan, and I congregate in the shadowed alley behind the shop at midnight.
We’re here extra early so that, unlike at Dave and Amanda’s wedding, we have enough time to set up, plus leeway.
Within the next six hours, we’ll receive, deliver, and set up the vendors’ supplies for Fi and Asher’s 6:32 a.m. druidic wedding ceremony and reception.
The nuptials are timed to the sunrise, of course.
Technically, Hanry isn’t here to do anything but load the rented U-Haul truck; he’s mostly here to be eye candy. That, and to perform duties as my emotional support animal.
Our plans to “hang out on Friday” became a three-part adventure.
The first thing Hanry did the morning after our date was to visit the shop with a single white rose in a freshly hammered wooden vase.
He came back at dinnertime with a coupon for two-for-one oysters near Pickering Wharf—and what’s more romantic than a man who wants to save money?
As loathsome as I find being downtown during Salem’s holiday season, it turns out you can avoid most of its chief annoyances when accompanied by a man the height and girth of a medieval battering wall.
As a bonus, Hanry’s presence alone diverts any and all potential attention more than a foot and a half above my head.
Which earned him a make-out session after dinner, while we walked the waterfront.
I guess Hanry wasn’t put off by my scowling at the waves as they lapped against the pilings, rocked the docked boats, and mocked me in general for failing to understand the magical functioning of their tides.
If anything, he seemed like he wanted to help me, and kissing was the best way he knew how.
“You sure you don’t need me to come with you?” he asks now, having kindly piled the last of the pillows and pallets into the trailer for me. His eyes are doing that whimsical thing again, making it hard to answer in a reasonable way.
Fighting temptation, I ask, “What time is your craft fair in Maine, again?”
“Not too early.”
“Uh-huh,” I tsk. “You told me it was eight a.m. No driving without sleep.”
“Is this another ‘rules for thee, not for me’ thing?” says Bulan from Mandy’s arms.
“I got sleep!” I retort. “What did you think I was doing in bed after dinner?”
“I didn’t want to ask,” says Bulan, eyeing Hanry. “I assumed the same thing you’d been doing with the rest of your free time.”
“All right, I think I’m going to leave you all to it. But only because you insist, Sabby.” Hanry seems adorably sad he can’t role-play the noble knight again. “Text me if you need me, okay?”
“We will!” says Mandy on my behalf.
After waving Hanry goodbye—and kissing him good night, to Mandy’s squeak of delighted embarrassment—the three of us depart for Dunks, a warehouse, and the florist. Then I drive us to Harold Parker State Forest. Mandy devours half my doughnut holes and downs my iced matcha before I can take a sip.
I’m discovering she isn’t great with personal boundaries.
But she keeps the conversation lively, so we’re all in a good mood when we unpile into the woods at two thirty in the morning.
I walk around the side of the U-Haul, the forest air piney and fresh in my nostrils.
As Bulan and Mandy chat giddily with each other, I take a moment to catch my breath.
I do a round of calm yoga breathing like Jane did that one time her rotisserie chicken was shoveled onto her plate with herbs instead of being served plain.
I have a bad track record with being in the deep of the woods, just outside Salem, at night. But what’s it matter?
Tonight will go differently. Because tonight, I’m not a na?ve twelve-year-old.
Tonight, I’m the boss.