A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (9 page)

“So what are you picturing?” he asked, thoughtfully, leaning against the stool again, one arm crossed, the other stroking his chin. “Like, maybe band signings or something?”

“Yeah, and maybe turning the store into a venue some nights. Having little intimate shows with the indie bands and local artists. But to broaden whom we sell to, we need to sell online. EBay, Amazon, stuff like that, and ship to people.” As the idea blossomed, her voice became more animated, excited about the prospect of saving something she cared about. 

“I agree. I’ve tried to get Darryl to OK that before, but he says it’ll cost too much upfront—to get everything uploaded and catalogued.”

“Stupid Darryl, if he had a better system, a transition like that would be so much swifter.”

“Swifter? Like, the broom company?” Ferg teased.

“Shut up.” She rolled her eyes.

“Let’s brainstorm more. Take notes.” He handed her the clipboard.

“OK, I don’t see why you can’t take notes.” She took it from him reluctantly, eyeing the chewed on pen.

“I’m the thinker. You’re the writer.” Ferg stood up and began to pace as though he’d been the mastermind behind the plan. Kate shrugged, not minding. If it saved the store, why did it matter who came up with the concept?

“If I’m going to write, I’m taking the stool,” Kate said, walking around behind the counter.

“Fine. Just this once,” Ferg conceded, moving out from behind the counter into the blues vinyl section opposite the entrance.

They began to draft their plan to save the store. It was best to strike while the iron was hot, they decided, and Kate couldn’t have agreed more. The blow to her security that Ferg’s announcement made let in new light and the ideas began to flow like spring run off, or like knocking out an old decrepit wall to begin a renovation.

When a customer came in, Kate and Ferg paused and gave that person their full attention, trying to up-sell and make them feel comfortable, rather than driving customers away with elitist attitudes (that wasn’t easy). It was funny how it worked, Kate noticed—when the employees of Suga’s thought they had it made, they’d treated customers like crap. When Ferg, Kate, and the others realized how much they needed the customers, said customers—no matter how doltish—were suddenly royalty.

By the time Luke came in at two, Kate and Ferg had a good list going. Ferg gave Luke the news, which he absorbed without fainting. And then he pitched in. The three of them decided they’d need to invest some of their free time and money into opening a virtual storefront, and do it bit by bit. Instead of spending so much in-store time alphabetizing and pricing used albums, one of them would always be uploading product and quantities to the storefront. Ferg decided he’d go to Darryl with their plan and ask for an integrated system that would keep track of store sales and quantities and also update online information at the same time.

Then they began to map out how to host bands and shows. The competition would be Salt and Sugar Coffee, but there was no reason they couldn’t utilize their proximity to Suga’s benefit. They decided there should be several little mini-festivals with local bands where Suga’s hosted a band and Salt and Sugar hosted a band, and anyone else along the block that made up their little collection of stores would be invited to join in too, sponsoring a band or a little stage if they wanted to.

They felt pretty good about their plan, but wouldn’t know anything for certain until Ferg talked to Darryl. Until then, they’d keep planning and maintain hope. Not that Kate wanted to work for the rest of her life at Suga’s, but it was best to plan ahead.

***

“What are you going to do now?” Ferg asked as he and Kate left the store at three. He shoved his fists into the pockets of his skinny jeans, waiting expectantly beside his Civic, rocking back on the heels of his Vans.

“Probably go see Audra at work,” she answered. “Why?”

He removed a hand and leaned it casually on the roof of his Civic, but jerked it back immediately. “Damn, hot, hot, hot,” he hissed. He looked at Kate, flexing and relaxing his hands like they both smarted from getting burned. “Stupid summer sun. Man, OK, well I was just wondering if you’d want to run to get some food with me at Lucy’s diner. We could go over our plans for the store. You know, and some other . . . uh, other stuff.”

Kate cocked her head to one side. “Other stuff, like maybe Emily might be there?”

He sighed, rubbing his hands together. “All right, all right. I
heard
through the old grapevine that she might be there with her friends when she finished her shift.”

“So you were eavesdropping?”

“Look, I was getting a coffee, OK? It’s not my fault those baristas have to talk so loud to be heard over their machinery.”

“You should just talk to her, Ferg. She’d probably like to work things out with you. But I can’t today. Sorry. I need to go talk to Audra.” Kate began moving in the general direction of her home.

Ferg nodded, frowning. “Fine. No big deal, then, go hang out with the friend you see all the time.”

“I see you all the time too,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but we never just hang out anymore. It’s always work these days.”

“We’ll go this weekend or something,” she reassured him, smiling.

“We better,” he answered and got in his car. As he backed out of his space, Kate turned and increased her stride. She lived just up the street, so often she walked to work rather than driving. As she headed up the street on foot, Ferg followed alongside her slowly through the parking area pull-out that ran parallel to the street. Finally he rolled down the window and shouted out, “Want a ride?”

She laughed and shook her head.

He waved and drove off.

At home, she went inside and freshened up—changed into a clean T-shirt and put on her Rainbow flip-flops. On her way out, Kate filled the dog’s water bowl which was dry as a bone—he belonged to Kate’s roommate but the day was too hot to ignore—then jumped into her Jetta and headed to the Home Warehouse where Audra worked.

When she got there, Kate found her friend at the returns desk, wearing a mauve apron and gabbing with customers and the other cashier.

“Hi,” Kate said, walking up to the desk. “How’s work? Loving all the returns?” she asked, leaning her forearms on the counter.

“Oh it’s been great. As long as I remember I don’t give a crap if people really do return things like toilet seats, literally speaking.”

“Nice, nice. That’s pretty gross. I guess you can’t re-stock that, eh?” Kate said, pausing. “So, good news, I had another—” she covered her mouth with one hand and checked around to make sure no one else was listening, “sex dream the other night.”

“Yeah, really?” Audra laughed, but furrowed her brow. “Is that normal? To have so many?”

“No, it’s not. At least, I don’t think it is. And get this, it was with the
same
guy as the others have been.” Her stomach bunched up and doubled itself into several knots.

“What? No way,” Audra said. “Have you figured out who he is?”

“No, but it seems like I remember and know in my dreams literally, and biblically,” Kate said, grinning sarcastically. “Oh, and there’s something else,” she added absently, almost catching his name as it winged through her mind like a blackbird. She frowned. It got away.

“What, tell me.” Audra leaned over the other side of the counter, her face close to Kate’s in rapt attention. Before they could discuss it, a man in white stained, dirty jeans and steel-toed work boots came walking up with a huge return on one of the big item carts. A bunch of PVC pipe and lumber and plumbing supplies. Kate watched in slight irritation until he was done. Audra swung back toward Kate.

“Tell me, quick, before someone else comes in.”

“We can just go hang out after work. You get done in fifteen minutes, don’t you?”

“But I want to know now,” she said.

“Last night,” Kate began as Audra leaned forward, hanging on every word. Kate told her about the dragonfly ring and the chase through the marketplace. Audra’s eyes widened as she absorbed it, immediately obsessed with the mystery and possibility.

“So, let me get this straight, you’re having recurring dreams about some hot guy who says he’s dead, and now you’ve had a dream where he puts a dragonfly ring on your finger?” She checked over her shoulder, but the other cashier was busy ringing someone up. “Kate, we need to find out what a dragonfly symbolizes in a dream!”

Kate laughed. “What, you don’t know? Tsk, tsk. Some dream interpreter you are.”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t insult the Madame or else she’ll stop helping you. Anyway, don’t you have a climbing date with Ty?” Audra asked, fiddling with the scan gun.

“So?”

“Well, sounds like things are going well. Maybe if you, you know, got it on with him, the dreams would stop? Sealed the deal, that kind of thing.” She shrugged, put the scan gun down and picked up the big black marker she’d been using to make sale posters for the store.

“Ty’s out of my league,” Kate muttered. “I mean, he’s gorgeous, yes and I want to go out with him. I’m
going
to, I should say. But it’s hard to imagine it turning into anything long-term.”

Audra popped the lid off the marker and began writing out a price and sale information in big blocky letters on the mauve colored poster paper. “Someday you’ll realize I’m right and the only guy who’s out of your league is a guy you dismiss as being out of your league. When you think beautiful and confident, others sense it and want to be around you. Trust me.”

“That works for men, Audra, not women. Men are too superficial. Women can look past a guy being too short or bald or overweight, but men
never
do that.”

She stopped writing and studied Kate, her green eyes running up and down Kate’s body. “I see none of those problems with you. You’re blonde. Men love that. You have full lips, men love that. You have a contagious smile. Again, love. You’ve got a nice figure and an ample chest. All lovely feminine traits. All you need now is to think like you’re a million bucks and it will radiate from you.”

“Easy for you to say,” Kate mumbled, straightening, feeling suddenly self-conscious from Audra’s scrutiny. She walked over to the candy endcap and grabbed a Snickers. “Can I buy this?”

“No, it’s not good for you,” Audra said, avoiding eye contact. She didn’t even look up to see what was in Kate’s hand.

“It’s fine. I’m starving.”

“Sorry babe, nope.” She put the lid on the marker and set the poster aside just as a customer with a return came striding up to the counter. Soon a line formed, and Kate realized she’d be busy until her shift was over.

Kate put a dollar-fifty on the counter and as she turned away with the Snickers in her hand, Audra grabbed Kate’s arm, leaned over the counter, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll be out in a minute and we’ll go get dinner or something, but I just wanted to reiterate what you need—you need to get laid. By Ty. That’ll fix your dream problem.”

Kate chuckled nervously as fire spread through her cheeks. “Right.”

Audra began ringing up another contractor’s return—this one better dressed than the last—chatting flirtatiously and amiably with the guy as Kate headed out to her car.

Taking a bite of the Snickers as she walked through the parking lot, a beady-eyed gull landed in front of her and stared at the candy bar menacingly. “What are you, the godfather seagull?” Kate muttered at it. She kept walking and it flew away. With a sigh, she broke off a bit and threw it in the space next to a cart return where the bird wouldn’t get crushed by a vehicle.

She got in her Jetta, turned on the radio and sat there, listening to music as she ate her snack and thought about the guy in her dreams and the guy in real-life, who wanted to get to know her. Audra was most likely right, not that Kate would ever tell her friend as much—the dark haired vixen already thought the advice she handed out was prime material and she was constantly talking about starting an advice blog like some sort of Dear Abby thing.

The chunk of candy bar Kate had tossed down for the birds had become the object of a tug of war between two gulls. Kate watched as a third bird appeared and tried to snag it from the beak of another bird.

Kate needed to hear what Audra said—she knew that, if she was being honest with herself. It was stupid to long for some figment—some ultimately intangible hallucination—from a dream. How dumb would it be to pass
up real life
love (and sex!) for what happened in her dreams? So. Dumb. She’d deserve no real life relationships if she rejected Ty for a dude she only remembered when she fell asleep.

She briefly considered what it would be like to sleep with Ty. She blushed and looked around. It would probably be pretty nice. He had an extremely luscious body. And it
might
make the dreams go away.

Audra was, as usual, probably right, she mentally admitted again with a sigh.

6: Deserts

She opened her eyes and found herself in darkness. A fire whipped and crackled a few feet in front of her, giving off a sparse amount of light. The fragrant smell of whatever was burning bit at her nose. A light breeze brought the odor of disturbed sand and incense rippling by. She sat on a large cold rock, watching the fire. Through the flames, the bluest eyes she’d ever seen caught her gaze, staring at her. A slight smile tugged at the corners of their owner’s mouth from his seat on a large stone. A dimple formed in his right cheek.