Naughty Or Nice. Sherri Browning Erwin
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The same woman who would agonize for hours over fabric swatches to find the right shade between eggshell and ecru couldn’t take an extra twenty minutes to pump. To her credit, it probably wasn’t easy running a business and being a mom. I’d never had to juggle motherhood and a career, but maybe I would learn.
“Who’s a happy girl? Wook at da big smile.” Kate lapsed into baby talk.
My smile was bigger than Ellie’s at catching Kate’s slip. Aha! Perfect? I think not. “She’s had a good morning.”
“I have to hand it to you, Bennie, you always know just what she needs. You’re a whiz with her.” She looked wistful, almost sad, as she settled Ellie into the crook of her arm.
“I’ve got years of experience. You’ll catch on. After you’ve done it awhile, it’s a piece of cake.”
“I guess. You make it look so easy.”
I could practically feel the swagger in my step as I crossed the floor to refill my coffee. Then I turned around in time for my ego to make a crashing fall back to earth. Spencer stood in the kitchen door, head to toe in black. His beautiful blond hair was dyed jet-black, which matched his kohl-rimmed eyes. His skin looked extraordinarily pale in contrast to the black and his slash-red mouth. Lipstick. I guessed he must have raided my makeup drawer again, and settled on my L’Oreal Cherry Red, something I picked up on sale and had worn only once because it looked cheaper than the sale price.
“Yeah,” I repeated, gesturing to the doorway. “Piece of cake.”
Kate nearly jumped out of her chair. “Are you auditioning for The Cure?”
“The who?” Spence asked.
“No, The Cure,” I said, desperate to keep my cool. “The Who still tours with the original lineup. Except for the bassist. He died. The Cure’s the band with the wild singer in trademark red lipstick. I thought we agreed black was more your color.”
“Seemed a bit much with the outfit.” Spence, charming as ever, winked on his way to the fridge. “I needed to break up the black with a hint of color.”
“Smudged liner really brings out the blue in your eyes,” I said, looking for the bright side.
“You think?” Spence asked before reaching for the juice.
“Definitely. She’ll notice.”
“She?” Kate looked stunned, looking from Spencer, to me, and back again.
“He’s going Goth for a girl,” I said, trying to match Spencer’s casual mood. Freaking out would be the surest way to drive him more solidly into the look. Humor was the only response I could rely on. If I couldn’t make me laugh, I was going to cry. Spencer’s beautiful blond hair! Hair grows, I reminded myself. “Bold move, don’t you think?”
“More like insane. You’re not letting him go to school like that, are you?”
“If he’s willing, I’m willing. As long as he conforms to the school decency standards, why not? Don’t you remember your Madonna phase?”
Kate wasn’t far enough along in the parenting game to understand. “That was different. It was the eighties.”
“So was The Cure.” I shrugged. “Everything old is new again. Spencer’s going Goth to win a little witch’s heart.”
“Mom’s not insulting her,” Spencer explained, taking a seat. “Shelley Miles wants to be a witch. She found an old spell book and everything.”
“Where, exactly, does one find a spell book?” Kate asked, raising a brow. Or tried to, anyway. She never quite got the gesture down, but she had been trying for years.
“EBay,” Spencer said, sparing his aunt the extra “duh” that he usually added to punctuate.
“Be careful,” Kate warned. “You never know what you may be getting into with that occult stuff.”
Kate liked to joke that Ellie’s father was the devil, now absent because of his return to rule in hell. Personally, I agreed that Owen Glendower, whom she fell head over heels for, might have been the devil. In fact, I’d even warned her. But it seemed far more likely that business took precedence over his personal life. He was probably too busy building new empires in Europe to live up to his paternal responsibilities. Jerk.
“Spencer’s got a good head on his shoulders. I’m sure he’ll do the right thing.”
Spencer smiled and I could almost see my son’s freckled splendor under the ghostly pallor.
An hour later, we dropped the kids off at school and were on our way to the impound lot, armed with the computer printout receipt of my now-paid bill. Ellie, snug in her car seat, slept soundly. Kate was strangely quiet, probably dying to offer more criticism or advice but too afraid to wake her baby.
We pulled in to the single available space outside the lot, a fenced-in dump so jam-packed with cars that it was a wonder any remained out in the general population. ’Tis the season. Christmas must have been their prime time.
“You can stay in the car.” A knot formed in my stomach as I looked at the trailer labeled OFFICES. I could do this. I could do it all on my own. “I’ll just take a few minutes. No need to risk waking Eliana.”
“No freaking way.” Kate shut the car off. Apparently, not even the fear of waking the screamer would deter Fix-it Kate. She got out and grabbed Ellie’s seat.
Together, we stepped onto the crumbling pavement and headed for the trailer. Inside, it was as dingy and pathetic as I’d imagined, complete with stale tobacco smell and vinyl chairs, most likely salvaged from the Goodwill down the street. Determined to bail me out, she handed me Ellie and charged right ahead with my receipts balled in her fist.
A dead ringer for Danny DeVito’s Louie in Taxi stepped up to the Plexiglas window, only to tell Kate there was an extra fee, the per diem lot charge for parking. What a racket! After Kate paid the fee, he told her that all agents were out for the day and we would have to come back Monday—Monday!—to pick up my Lexus.
“But—I need it now,” I said, tired of hanging back to let Kate straighten it out.
He looked around Kate right at me. “I’m sure you do, princess, but we got rules. Can’t release the car without an agent to check her out of the lot. It’s a busy day. I’m short a few agents.”
“Why can’t you do it?” Kate demanded, stepping in front of me again. “So you can suck another thirty dollars a day in parking fees out to cover the weekend?”
I sidestepped her in time to see his shrug in response. “I have to man the desk.”
“When do you expect an agent back in?” she asked, steel in her tone. “We’ll wait.”
Kate’s modus operandi was to push back. Mine was to size Louie up, and my guess was that he was not the type to cave to pressure or demands. So what would work?
As if on cue, my charming baby niece startled awake and launched into a full-blown wail. There was my girl.
“You’re out of luck for the weekend,” Louie, unmoved, shouted over the din.
“It’s right near the exit. I can pull it out on my own.” Kate’s words bordered on a threat, as if she fully intended to just do it, wheel-popping spikes in the road be damned.
“No one drives cars on the lot but my agents. Liability issues.” He had no problem making himself heard over Ellie’s din, and he seemed entirely unmoved. I wasn’t deterred. Every man had his Achilles’ heel. What could get to a tough little lump of Boston attitude like Louie?
I handed the baby to Kate. “Take her outside. I’ll handle it.”
She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Seriously. Let me talk to the man.”
Clearly