The Secret Lives of Dresses (4 page)

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m paying? Or the hours?”

“Not especially. I figure you’re paying at least the going rate, because you’re trying to get someone late in the semester. And as for hours, if you have to be done by August, it’s as many as possible, which is fine by me.”

“Can you lift seventy pounds?”

“How many times?”

“Once or twice a day will do.”

“Well, then, yes, I can lift seventy pounds.”

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Gary. I’m your new boss.”

Dora took his hand and shook it. “I’m Dora. I’m your new employee.”

Gary swept up the rest of the sheets and dumped them in the recycling bin. He shoved his stapler into his pocket. “Let’s go get your paperwork in order.”

Dora followed him back to his office. Surprisingly, it was in the Music Department.

“The Music Department runs the coffee shop?” she asked.

“Well, not exactly, no. But I run the coffee shop, and I’m a grad student in musicology, and so this is where the office is.”

Dora followed him up the steps. Music was in one of the older buildings on campus. In the distance she could hear a flute repeating the same lighthearted phrase over and over again, stopping and starting like someone trying to tell a joke through an attack of the hiccups.

The office was tiny, ancient, linoleum-floored. Gary shuffled through the papers on his desk, and came up triumphantly with a battered folder marked
COFFEE SHOP
.

“Wait—you’re a U.S. citizen, right?” He looked so alarmed by the possibility that she wasn’t that Dora was almost tempted to claim that she was Bosnian or Venezuelan.

“I’m a citizen,” she reassured him.

“That’s good; I have no idea where to get the noncitizen form.” Gary dug around and thrust a stack of papers at Dora. Dora held them while Gary realized there was nowhere for her to sit and fill them out. He rushed out to the hall and dragged in a chair, and then shoved a stack of journals from his desk to the top of the radiator. With a last flourish, he produced a pen.

“Sign here,” he said.

Dora sat, accepted the pen, and filled out the forms. Her name, her Social Security number, her complete lack of any felony convictions. It didn’t take very long. Gary hovered.

She pushed the papers back to him, and stood up.

“When do you need me to start?”

“How about now?”

Dora shrugged. “Fine by me.”

Gary talked the whole way over to the coffee shop. He was from Detroit, well, the Detroit suburbs. His folks were retired. He’d been at Lymond five years, with two to go. “Except two years ago I also had two years to go.” Running the coffee shop was new for him; the previous manager had actually, finally, really finished her dissertation and left. Dora listened, amused.

Gary was fumbling with the keys to the coffee shop. Dora watched. “It’s probably the biggest,” she offered. “That’s a Medeco key, most of the university facilities use those locks. The others are probably storeroom keys.”

Gary looked at her. “You are quite possibly the best hire I have ever made.”

Unaccountably, Dora blushed. “I’m the only hire you ever made, aren’t I?”

“Unless you count getting my embezzling stepbrother to help at my lemonade stand, yes.”

Finally he had the door open and they were inside. Gary flipped on the lights.

“Where do we start?”

Gary looked so confused by this that Dora had to laugh. “You don’t know, do you?” He looked indignant for a moment, and then laughed himself. “No. No, I don’t. They left me a manual, but it’s for the cash register.”

“First of all, we’re not going to get anything done in here today. We need cleaning supplies, furniture catalogues, paint, probably some new shelving, information about distributors. . . .” Dora stopped, realizing that Gary was staring at her.

“So we need all that, do we? You are now officially the brains of this operation. I am reduced to mere clerical support. Hold those thoughts while I get pen and paper.”

Gary went to rummage around behind the counter, emerging with a coffee-stained legal pad and a capless ballpoint. He looked at his watch.

“Hey, it’s getting late. . . . Do you have any plans right now?”

Dora realized that she should probably say yes, start off firmly on the right foot, not let herself be imposed upon, but what she said was “Not really . . .”

“Good!” Gary beamed at her. He really was cute, Dora thought. She tried to avoid thinking about exactly how cute he was. He was now her boss, after all. “How about we head over to the Skell? We can work over dinner. Coffee shop’s buying,” he added quickly.

Dora felt, unreasonably, as if the coffee shop had just asked her out on a date.

The Rathskeller was empty; the visibly bored hostess waved them to a booth in the front. “I can’t believe we got a booth without begging and pleading,” Dora said.

“Summer at Lymond.” Gary shrugged. “Nobody here, and the people who are here don’t want to be. If it weren’t for this coffee shop I’d be bumming from music festival to music festival. That’s what I did the last couple of summers. If you know the right people you can work at them and get in for free.” Gary polished his fork and spoon with his paper napkin. “What would you be doing?”

“Nothing much, I guess. Working a research grunt job.” Dora folded her menu and set it on the table’s edge to serve as a flare for their server. Gary didn’t note her diffidence, or, if he did, he didn’t seem inclined to pursue it. He shoved his menu aside, putting down the legal pad. He rummaged in his pockets. The pen had disappeared.

“I have a pen,” Dora said, and took one from her bag.

“Thanks.” Gary smiled at her again. “What would I do without you?”

“Write with the place-mat crayons.”

“Yes, a list in purple crayon just screams ‘efficiency.’” Gary hesitated, the ballpoint hovering over the first line.

Their waitress showed up. “Youse guys ready?” She took a pencil from behind her ear. Her Skell T-shirt, with its cartoon-skull logo, was stretched tightly across her chest. Gary seemed to be doing a stress analysis of the fabric. With his eyeballs.

“I’d like the burger, very rare, with fries, and an iced tea.”

Gary’s gaze transferred itself regretfully from the T-shirt to the face. “I’ll have the Reuben and a Heineken.”

“ID.”

Gary made a big show of pulling out his wallet and showing her his driver’s license.

“Huh. You’re thirty?”

“Some people are, you know.”

The waitress shrugged and wandered off with their order.

“Very smart, not to drink on the job. Or are you not legal?”

“I’m twenty.”

“Ah, undergraduates. Otherwise known as forbidden fruit.”

Dora didn’t know where to look. Gary picked up his pen again. “Where were we?”

“Cleaning, we were at cleaning.” Dora focused on the list. She knew she could handle the list.

“You were at cleaning. I was at beer. Okay. I can call the facilities head about cleaning tomorrow morning. Good.”

Gary wrote “Cleaning” on the list. At least, Dora thought it was the word “cleaning.” Gary looked up and saw her squinting at it.

“I know, I have terrible handwriting. It’s a very manly failing, though.”

“Do you want me to make the list?” Dora asked.

“Nah, you’ll have to learn to read my scrawl eventually.” He turned the pad around and pushed it across the table. “But move over—I’ll sit next to you, and then at least you won’t have to read it upside down.”

The booth was slightly too small for two adults to sit side by side, but Gary didn’t seem to notice. His leg pressed against hers.

Dora went on. “Furniture.”

Gary wrote down “Furniture.”

“What’s the budget? Is any of the stuff there still good? Does the university have preferred suppliers? Who has the catalogues? What’s the delivery time? Eight weeks is cutting it a little close to have commercial-grade stuff delivered.”

“How do you
know
all this stuff?”

“My grandma owns a store. . . .” Dora trailed off.

“My grandma plays bridge in Florida and calls me on my stepbrother’s birthday. She’s kind of losing it.”

“I’m sorry.” Dora looked down at the list again.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. You’re a lifesaver. I should stop on the way home and buy a lottery ticket, as I’m obviously the luckiest guy at Lymond today.” He looked around the empty restaurant. “Of course, there’s not all that much competition. . . .”

Dora didn’t know what to say. She took a sip of water.

“Hey, where’s your iced tea?”

“Over there.” Dora could see it on the counter.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

Gary hopped up and walked over to the counter. The waitress intercepted him, and he gestured back to the table. Dora couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the waitress smiled. Gary grabbed the tea and came back, grinning, to sit across from her again.

“I told her I was going to make you tip
me
.”

“I don’t think you tip your boss.”

“Even if he waits on your table?”

“That might be a special case.”

Gary pulled the list across the table. “What’s next?”

“Stocking. Do you have any invoices from previous years? Catalogues? Does the shop have credit accounts anywhere? What do the students like to eat? Who delivers the hot food, and from where?”

Gary scribbled. “I think I have a big file from the previous manager.”

Dora looked at Gary. “I could come by tomorrow and look at the file . . . maybe make some calls. I bet some of them have online catalogues. I could call the suppliers while you figure out the cleaning stuff.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Gary looked at her consideringly. “I am beginning to think that you are the kind of girl a man could come to rely on, Dora Winston.”

Before Dora could respond—not that she knew what to say—the waitress swooped in with their plates, giving Gary the hamburger with something that looked suspiciously like a wink. She put the Reuben in front of Dora like an afterthought. Gary let her walk away before switching the plates.

“I think you made the better choice,” he said. His sandwich was oozing Russian dressing and sauerkraut. He took a bite, and winced as dressing dripped onto his shirt. Dora laughed.

“Hey! Laughing at your new boss is not a good career move.” Gary grinned, and swiped a French fry from Dora’s plate.

“So you want my letter of resignation? Already?” Dora smiled back at him. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so at home with a person. With a male person. A male person whose last name she didn’t know.

“I wouldn’t even know how to address it,” she said. “Dear Mr. . . .?”

“If I don’t tell you my last name, you can never quit! This works out great. It’s like ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ in reverse.” Gary stole another one of Dora’s fries to mop up the Russian dressing on his plate.

“No, really. You must have another name, you’re not famous enough to have only one.”

“Ouch. Okay, it’s Dudas. And whatever joke you can make out of it, I already heard. In the third grade.”

“All right, Mr. Dudas.” She smiled across the table at him.

“C’mon, it’s Gary.” He looked at her a bit too long, and there was a tone in his voice that gave her a little shiver.

The waitress came back for their empty plates, and dropped the check on the table. Gary covered it with a couple of bills, standing to go.

“Don’t you want a receipt?” Dora asked. “So the coffee shop can reimburse you?”

“You are really gunning for employee of the month, you know? I see a very shiny plaque in your future.” Gary waved the waitress over.

Dora scooted out of the booth. “I’ll be right back.” As she turned the corner to the ladies’ room she saw the waitress laughing at something Gary must have said.

When she came out, Gary was hanging over the hostess station, still chatting with their waitress.

“Dora! Thanks again for everything tonight. I’m so glad I found you. You’re a miracle worker, possibly even a miracle. . . . So I’ll see you in the morning? Not too early. Maybe ten?”

“Um, sure.” Dora stood there maybe a second too long, wondering why Gary was saying goodbye now, lingering in the restaurant. Then the waitress tossed her hair and smiled again, a deliberate smile, focused to a pinpoint, directed squarely at Gary.

“See ya,” Dora said, and stumbled out.

Dora had been stumbling around Gary ever since. She was always off-balance with him. Just last week she had been sitting on the counter in the coffee shop (in a blatant violation of health-department policy), swinging her legs and talking to Amy, who at that point was just called “the New Girl.” Nobody at the shop bothered to learn a new hire’s name until they’d been there three weeks. It was a tradition. You were either the New Girl or the New Guy, and Gary had even (on Dora’s suggestion) made name tags with those sobriquets. It was one good way to sort people out; if the New Girl got huffy at wearing a New Girl name tag, you could be sure she wasn’t going to work out in the long run. The ones who relinquished their New Girl name tags reluctantly after the three-week period were the ones that turned out to be the most fun to work with.

Amy had been loading the coffee machine, and Dora had been sitting on the opposite counter in part to stop herself from taking over. Amy had to learn, and if learning involved getting up to your elbows in wet grounds because you didn’t seat the filter right, well, that was all part of the process.

“So—where are you from?” she asked Amy. Being able to answer customers while fiddling with the machines was a necessary skill. Since the shop was nearly empty, Dora had to step in and provide the distraction.