Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“He calls everybody pet names. Choreographer’s habit, I guess. Besides, he saved her bacon.”

“Hmmm.” Janice gazed at the dressed-up people filtering in twos through Maylords’s maze of model rooms filled with modern, and very expensive, furniture. The orange leather sofa was $4,800, Matt had noticed.

He eyed Janice, wondering how Temple had seen her: a tall woman with short brown hair, wearing a beige linen top and skirt hand printed with rather cryptic images, like three wavy lines and a fish. Not pretty, but pleasant and strong looking.

“So she’s the one.” Janice’s mild tone set alarm bells clanging all along his circulatory system.

” ‘The one?’ “

“Don’t play dense, Matt. The one-something-almosthappened-with-except-she-was-taken.”

“Did I mention-?”

“Yes, once, a while back.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I do. So. Is she the one?”

“How did you guess?”

Janice gave him the same narrow perceptive look that she applied to the subject of a sketch before she began slicing the charcoal across the paper.

“By the very thorough once-over she gave me. She knew who I was from ten feet away.” “She did?”

“Made me with one glimpse of my name tag.”

Matted eyed the small rectangle of plastic plastered to Jan-ice’s left shoulder. “Janice” was incised into it, no more.

“I’m sure she was just interested because she’d seen those two sketches you’d done for me. She said they were great.”

“I’m sure not. Matt, don’t be naive,” Janice said. “I wouldn’t underestimate that munchkin for a minute. She’s smart as a whip and faster than a speeding bullet and other assorted clich�s, and doesn’t miss a thing. I don’t blame you for falling for her.”

“Well. Am I right?”

He was now thoroughly lost in no-man’s-land. Janice had invited him to be her escort for the landmark occasion of her first full-time position since her divorce. Now here she was grillinghim about his feelings for another woman. Even an undersocialized ex-priest understood that this was a lose-lose situation.

Janice laughed. “It’s okay. The real world is filled with the echoes of unfinished symphonies. I’m just saying you couldn’t find two more opposite women than she and I.”

Matt silently objected. Lt. Molina and Temple were even greater opposites, but he didn’t intend to inject Carmen Molina into this mess.

“You think it’s odd,” he ventured, “that I could like two such different … people.”

“Fudger!” Janice laughed again, then put her hand on his forearm, a comforting gesture. She wore one ring on her second

finger: a sherry-colored citrine in sterling silver with gilt accents. “It’s okay. I’m just glad that awful woman who stalked you is out of the picture. I can handle adorable, but I cannot cope with psychotic.”

“Funny; I’m the other way around.”

“That’s because you’re a counselor,” Janice said. “Speaking of psychotic, did I fill you in on the corporate dynamics around this place?”

Matt gazed at the softly lit vignettes of perfect rooms, the ambling magazine-chic couples clutching wineglasses. “They sell furniture. What corporate dynamics?”

“Very odd.” She leaned in, leaving her hand on his arm, whispering. Matt smelled something light and elusive, like very pleasant soap. “That’s what I thought. Selling furniture. Not a noble profession, but a necessary one.”

“Who’s arguing?”

“Well, our esteemed manager, for one. Did you see a pudgy, red-faced man in a wrinkled oatmeal linen suit scurrying around?”

“Yeah. He’s the manager?”

“The one and only Mark Ainsworth. When we got our final pep talk before opening, Kenny Maylord himself addressed us en masse. He said what a fabulous group of designers and sales associates this was. Well, they should be; they all jumped ship from the other major furniture showrooms in town. Anyway, it was all about how great we are. Then he left and pigeon-toed Ainsworth took over and stood up in front of God and everybody and said, get this, ‘In three months half of you will be gone.’

We’re all still blinking at that one.”

“Gone? Like … let go?”

“That’s what he said.”

“In three months? After paying you all for six weeks of training? Doesn’t make sense.”

“No. I had a strong impression of good cop/bad cop being played on the discount mattress front.”

“Discount mattress?”

“Don’t let all the fancy furniture fool you; the real duel for home furnishing power in Las Vegas is over mattress sales. Figures. Everybody’s got to have them and they need periodic replacement. Plus the markup is retail heaven. Not to mention the psychosexual implications.”

“Mattresses?’ He had noticed a low-lit area off to one side furnished with naked box springs and tufted brocaded mattresses but it hardly seemed the glamour part of the showroom. That was reserved for the parade of lavishly accoutered room arrangements that fanned off the central courtyard.

The centerpiece of that courtyard right now was a vivid burnt-orange Nissan Murano SUV, the object of a prize drawing.

Somehow mattresses seemed way out of its league.

“Guess how I spent my day getting ready for this do?” Janice asked.

“Hanging pictures?”

“Hell, no. All the pictures I hung were taken down and rearranged by some self-important babe from Accessories. I spent the day on my back-”

“Janice! This place isn’t that bad-?”

“On my back under the frigging mattresses writing down stock numbers as all good little Maylords workers had been directed to do, while Missy Modern Art Museum was flitting about whipping display guys into undoing everything I’d done:’ “I can’t believe it.”

“Welcome to the working world. I’d forgotten about office politics.”

Matt was about to go into a sincere riff about how superior Janice’s artistic instincts were when a figure suddenly appeared before them.

She was a tall woman with dark hair, like Molina, but unlike Molina her hair brushed her shoulders in soft, Miss Muffet curls. She was willowy to the point of scrawniness. Her face was pale and the expression on it was stern and supercilious at the same time. “People, please! No fraternizing between staff. We’re supposed to mix with guests.”

“He’s a customer,” Janice answered.

“Janice, please.” The laugh was short and denigrating. “We don’t have ‘customers,’ we have ‘clients.’ I know it’s hard for a former full-time wife like you to know the difference, especially after your mall work-”

“Mr. Devine is not on staff. He’s a potential client.”

The woman frowned at him, displaying impressively deep vertical tracks between her brow for someone in her late twenties.

“You’re not on staff?” She eyed him with sudden smarm. “Well. I’m Beth Blanchard, and if I can direct you to any department or sales associate-?” she suggested with sudden and unbelievable sweetness.

“She’ll get fifty percent of the commission for that,” Janice said, “and I won’t.”

“Well.” Beth Blanchard laughed in an unconvincing manner and shrugged her sharp shoulders. “You always have a choice at Maylords, and that includes in sales associates.”

Janice put her hand through Matt’s arm. “If Mr. Devine wants to buy something, I’ll be happy to sell it to him all by myself?’

“Uuuh’ Beth’s face twisted into irritation again. “We do not ‘sell’ anything at Maylords. Haven’t you learned a thing on probation?”

Matt decided to speak up. “I suppose you give it away, then,” he said pleasantly. “Most impressive.” “We ‘place’ pieces with clients. We don’t sell furniture.” “Will I have to sign adoption papers?” he asked.