Hissy Fit (13 page)

It was only
ten o’clock in the morning, but by the time I pulled into the parking lot at the Loving Cup bra plant on Monday, I’d been working for nearly seventy-two hours straight.

With Gloria’s help, I’d assembled sample boards for all the main floor rooms at Mulberry Hill, as well as sketches for the master bedroom suite, one of the guest rooms, and my personal favorite—the upstairs sunroom. In reality it would be a sitting room for the lady of the house—Stephanie—but in my own mind it was just the sunroom.

As I was unloading my portfolio case from the backseat of the Volvo I glanced around the parking lot. Will’s big yellow Caddy was there, along with maybe a dozen other cars. I frowned. There were certainly not enough workers to be running even a skeleton shift at the plant.

Still, the grounds looked better than they had in a long time. The crumbling old brick sign out on U.S. 441 had been rebuilt, the bricks painted white again, the familiar Loving Cup cursive logo—with a stylized cupped hand under each word, was outlined in bold gold-leafed letters. Where tall weeds had nearly obscured the old sign before, now were planted neat beds of hot pink geraniums and asparagus fern. A row of watermelon-colored crape myrtles were blooming their heads off along the front drive, and a man on a riding mower crisscrossed the lush lawn in front of the factory, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and flowers—and gas fumes—was particularly sweet.

I smoothed the skirt of my yellow linen suit and tucked an errant strand of dark hair back into my French braid before crossing the parking lot toward the plant’s reception area. My stomach twinged. Too much coffee, too little sleep, I told myself. I was
not
nervous.
There was no reason to be nervous. The designs for the house were wonderful. I’d knocked myself out getting everything assembled over the weekend. Stephanie Scofield would love it. Will Mahoney would love it. And Gloria and I would love bringing Mulberry Hill back to glory—and our bank account would definitely love the paycheck.

I pushed open the plate-glass door and entered the reception area—and another era.

Will might have gussied up the outside of the plant, but the reception area was in a permanent time warp, with knotty pine paneled walls, threadbare institutional gray carpet, and a “conversation area” consisting of two orange vinyl–covered sofas facing a boomerang-shaped coffee table. The reception desk was in the corner, and the woman sitting there, her fingers dancing over a keyboard, was unchanged from the last time I’d seen her, when I was sixteen, reporting for my first real job as a summer file clerk.

Her head jerked up at the snick of the glass door closing, her sharp brown eyes giving me a critical assessment behind the steel-framed eyeglasses.

“Miss Nancy!” I exclaimed, “you’re still here!”

“And where the hell else would I be?” Nancy Rockmore drawled. “Sailing around the world on a yacht? Climbing Mount Everest?”

She clamped one hand on the edge of her desk and stood with difficulty, reaching out to me with her free arm. “Come here, young’un,” she ordered me. “Let me see how you grew up.”

I wrapped my arms around her neck and gave her a hug.

“Quit,” she said, pushing me away after a minute. She sank back down into her chair with a grunt.

“Your knee still giving you trouble?” I asked. Nancy Rockmore had been born with hip dysplasia, and though she was only in her mid-fifties, had walked with a variety of crutches and canes all her life. Still, she’d worked as the plant’s receptionist since graduation from high school, the sole support of her mother, who’d also worked at the plant as a stitcher until retirement.

“Knee, hips, ankles, you name it, they give me hell,” Nancy said. “Had both my knees cut on last winter, and now the doctor says he wants to replace my right hip joint again.”

“Ow,” I said. “Y’all still living over there in Rutledge?”

“Not on the farm,” Nancy said sadly. “Mama went in a nursing home in January, so we sold to her cousin’s youngest boy, and I’ve got me a cute little house closer to the plant. What brings you back to Loving Cup? Not hunting a job, I hope. We’ve been on reduced shifts since last year, and I can’t tell you the last time we hired anybody new.”

“I’ve got a job,” I said. “I’m an interior designer. Will Mahoney’s hired me to work on his house.”

“Mulberry Hill,” she said, pursing her lips in disapproval. “I heard he’s got big plans for the place.”

“Very big,” I said, grinning. “I’ve got an appointment to show him the plans this morning.”

She glanced at the clock on the opposite wall and then gestured toward the door beside her. “I reckon he’ll see you. He doesn’t tell me nothing about his personal business, but he did say he had an appointment this morning.”

Nancy went back to her typing. I fidgeted a little with the handle of my portfolio.

“Things still aren’t any better out here?” I asked, looking around the shabby room. “Business hasn’t picked up any since he bought out that last outfit?”

“He spent some money fixing the place up a little, but production’s down to nothing. I know the boss is working on some big deal, but if something doesn’t change around here pretty fast, we’re screwed. You know who our biggest account is these days?”

“Who?”

“Big Lots,” she said, hating the sound of it. “We’re down to making bras for Big Lots. They sell ’em for four bucks. You know what a four-buck bra looks like?”

I shook my head no.

“Good,” she said. “You don’t wanna know, either. Go on back. Mr. Mahoney’s office is right where Mr. Gurwitz’s office used to be. And make sure you knock good and loud before you go in. He thinks I don’t know, but he’s basically living in that office. So you want to give him time to hide his laundry before you go busting in there.”

“Thanks, Miss Nancy,” I said. “It’s sure good to see you again.”

“I heard about your breakup with that Jernigan boy,” she said, going back to her typing.

I could feel my face reddening.

“Good for you,” she said, nodding for emphasis. “I never could stand any of them Jernigans. And that Paige Plummer? The one summer she worked out here she broke up three different marriages. And one of ’em was the Gurwitzes. Little slut.”

She looked up at me again. “I hear you busted up the country club pretty good. Really showed your behind.” She grinned broadly and gave me the thumbs-up. “You made us all proud, girl.”

What do you say to something like that?

“I’ll just go see if Mr. Mahoney is ready to see me now,” is what I decided on.

“You could do worse for yourself,” she called after me.

I set my portfolio on the floor and took a deep breath before knocking on the battered wooden door with the nameplate that said simply
W. MAHONEY.

No answer.

I knocked again. “Will?” I called. “It’s Keeley Murdock.”

Still no answer.

I looked around. The hallway, with its battered green linoleum floor and scarred pine paneling, seemed deserted. There were other doors, and other offices, but no light shone under any of them. It was a far cry from the summer I’d worked at Loving Cup, when the place throbbed with activity, with phones ringing, typewriters clattering, and the constant hum of machinery from the
plant just down the hallway through a set of double swinging metal doors.

I tried the doorknob. It turned, so I pushed on it slightly and peeked inside.

Looking at Will Mahoney’s office was like taking a trip in the way-back machine, with the clock stopped sometime in the mid-seventies. Bad burnt-orange shag carpet, a huge pseudo-French Provincial wall unit heaped with books and file folders, weird orange and green striped wallpaper, and an even weirder desk made of aluminum saw-horses topped with a hunk of smoked acrylic were offset by a pair of actually good-looking Knoll armchairs covered in black leather facing the desk.

I stepped inside to get a better look. Now that I was inside, I could hear the sound of water running from the other side of a door set behind the desk. A black rolling suitcase was lying open atop a small ugly orange loveseat, and a suit jacket and rumpled white dress shirt had been thrown across the back of the desk chair. The desktop was covered with lingerie. Black satin bras, hot pink push-ups, underwires in nude lace, complicated corsetières, teeny-tiny silken bandeaus, and yes, several unmistakably homely Loving Cup numbers in serviceable white spandex.

I picked up the underwire bra to get a better look. It was unlike any bra I’d ever seen, and since I’m a C-cup myself, always in search of something that doesn’t make me look like something from a Wagnerian opera, I’ve bought, tried, and discarded a lot of bras.

The fabric was a marvel, silky, lacy, stretchy, all at the same time. The straps were slightly wider than most, but the construction seemed all of one piece. I turned the bra inside out to get a better look at the underwire. It wasn’t like any wire I’d ever seen before. It was dense, but with the same silky feel as the rest of the bra. There was no label on the bra, but it looked like my size—32C.

The water was still running in the bathroom. Impulsively I shed my suit jacket and slipped my arms through the straps. I was bending
over at the waist, fastening the bra over my blouse, when the bathroom door opened.

I looked up, startled. Will Mahoney came bounding out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam. His damp red hair stood up in spikes, and a trickle of blood ran down his chin from where he’d cut himself shaving. The only thing he was wearing was aftershave—and a threadbare towel knotted loosely at his hip.

“Well, hello!” he said, wiping water droplets from his eyes. “Are you early—or am I just late?”

“Oh!” I managed. Will Mahoney looked good wet. His shoulders and chest were well muscled, dappled with freckles, and flecked with the same curly red hair going to gray. The towel sagged a little, and I glimpsed tight abs and more of that red hair, just before he had the grace to blush a little and readjust things.

I covered my eyes with my hands and whirled around to face in the other direction. “Oh God. I’m sorry. Excuse me. I’ll, uh, I’ll go outside. Until you’re dressed. Or I could come back later.” I was inching toward the door, one hand on the doorknob, when I felt his wet hand clamp my elbow.

“Hang on now,” he said, chuckling. “You might want to stay a minute.”

“No, no,” I said hastily, not daring to look behind me. “I’ll give you your privacy.”

“Well, okay, if you insist,” he said, letting go. “But could I have my bra back before you leave?”

Oh shit. I reached my hands back and tried for the hooks, but they weren’t like ordinary bra hooks. I fumbled around, clawing blindly for the catch.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I had no right. It’s just that, I saw it, and it was so different. I mean, it’s an underwire, but there’s no wire. And the fabric is so luscious, I just couldn’t resist…”

“You really like it?” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around so I was facing him. He seemed to be oblivious to our
bizarre situation—he wearing what was essentially a terry loincloth, me fully dressed, but with a bra fastened over my blouse.

Will gave me a cool, appraising look, ran one finger under the bra strap and lifted it gently. “It doesn’t bind at the shoulders?”

“Not at all,” I said, surprised.

“How’s the fit of the cups?” he asked, his gaze shifting toward my chest. I looked away from his chest, tried not to inhale the scent of his aftershave.

“Perfect, actually,” I managed. “Well, as best I can tell, over the blouse and all.”

He nodded, thoughtful now. “Why don’t you just take off the blouse, then?”

Okay, this was too weird. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

He frowned. “I don’t mean it like that. You can use my bathroom. Come on, Keeley, please? I just want to see how it fits. It’s the prototype for a new line I’m thinking about.”

“Don’t you have models for that sort of thing?”

He scratched his belly absentmindedly, and the towel slipped a little lower. I whipped my head around and stared at the office door, so he wouldn’t see the streaks of color on my cheeks.

“The fitting models are all beanpoles. This bra is a new kind of minimizer. I haven’t seen it on a woman with actual normal-sized breasts yet.”

He grinned. “Until now.”

That did it. I reached down and yanked the bra upward, and over my head.

“No deal,” I said, flinging the bra in the direction of his desk. “Now, get dressed, and let’s talk about Mulberry Hill.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. He turned around and walked slowly toward the bathroom door. As he walked, he let the towel slither farther down his hips. Just before he closed the door, he yanked it off, giving me a flash of his bare white flanks.

Will made a big show
of locking the bathroom door. As if.

I put my suit jacket on again—buttoning it all the way to the top. Then I looked around the room for a place to dump the pile of bras. His suitcase was the perfect place. Once Will’s desktop was reasonably clear, I spread out the floor plans and the sample boards as artistically as possible.

When he emerged from the bathroom again, Will was dressed in a pair of khaki slacks and a blue oxford cloth dress shirt. A wad of toilet tissue was gummed onto his neck.

“How was the trip?” I asked, resolved to get things back on a businesslike footing.

“Long,” he said, sitting down at the desk. “My flight was delayed leaving Miami last night, so I didn’t get back here until two this morning.”

He picked up the boards and shuffled through them. “Looks like you’ve been pretty busy yourself,” he said, running his fingers over the fabric samples. He held up a swatch of damask to the light. “This is nice. What’s it for?”

“It’s for the sofas in the east parlor,” I explained, pointing to a board with a photograph of the sofa style I’d picked out.

“Is this something a woman would like?” he asked, frowning.

“I like it,” I offered. “And I think Stephanie Scofield would love it.”

He looked up quickly. “What makes you think so?”

“I’ve seen her home,” I said. “And how she dresses. I even know her dog’s name.”

“Really?” For the first time he looked impressed. “She likes dogs?”

“Loves ’em,” I said.

“What else did you find out about her?” he asked, shoving aside all my hard work. “How tall is she? Is she just as beautiful in person?”

I resisted the urge to gag. He really was totally and hopelessly smitten with this woman.

“She’s very attractive,” I said. “Probably about five-foot-four.” And then I couldn’t resist. “Although I doubt that’s her natural hair color.”

“Who cares?” he muttered. “Tell me more.”

I racked my brains for details that would be meaningful to him. “Decent figure.” It was a gross underexaggeration, which he would soon find out for himself.

“I think the boobs are man-made. But she does have great legs.”

He smiled. “I’m a leg man myself.”

I thought ruefully of my own God-given C-cups.

“She’s a runner,” I added. “And I happen to know she spends a lot of time at the gym.”

“Great.”

“And at the mall,” I added spitefully. “Whoever marries Stephanie Scofield is getting a world-class shopper.”

“What does she like?” he asked, stroking the striped silk fabric I’d picked out for the dining room drapes.

“Money.”

He pushed his chair away from the desk and went back over to the pile of bras on his suitcase. “So she’s ambitious. I like that in a woman. I bought this company because I want to build something here in Madison. And I want a partner, somebody who’ll be in it with me all the way. I’m not looking for Betty Crocker, you know.”

He picked up the underwire bra I’d so recently discarded and handed it back to me. I felt myself blushing again.

“You saw it for yourself, right, Keeley? This bra is the answer. It’s the first new thing to happen in the industry since Victoria’s Secret brought out the Miracle Bra in the nineties. I think this little number could be what keeps Loving Cup Intimates afloat. You get it, don’t
you? This bra is something totally new, revolutionary, really. And we’re the only one who has it.”

Determined to hide my embarrassment, I ran my finger over the lacy cup of the bra. “What the heck is this, anyway? I mean, it’s like an underwire, but different—right? It looks and feels like lace, yet it’s pliant and strong at the same time.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “You got it. Exactly. I’ve been researching this since before I bought the company. I hired a marketing company, and they organized focus groups. Think of it. Five hundred women, from all over the country, from all walks of life. And they all told us the same thing. The thing they hate most about being a woman is having to wear bras.”

“And panty hose,” I said. And Kotex, I thought, but that was a discussion for another day.

“Women said they love having breasts,” Will continued, his voice rising with enthusiasm. “But they hate accommodating them. They hate how most bras fit. They hate how the straps slip or dig into their shoulders. They hate how they fasten. I mean, can you imagine men wearing pants with a fly that zips in back? That would never happen.”

“No, because men wouldn’t put up with the kind of crap they subject women to,” I said. But he wasn’t really listening. He was on a roll.

“And the women in these focus groups hated, I mean, DETESTED, underwire bras. That’s when I knew what we had to do to save Loving Cup. We had to invent a better, er, mousetrap.”

“Just how much money did you spend on this research?” I asked.

He did some scratching around with a pencil and a notepad. “Five target cities, telephone polling, in-depth interviews, follow-ups…maybe two hundred thousand dollars, ballpark,” Will said.

“I’d’ve told you the same thing for free,” I said, wincing as I felt my own underwire dig into the flesh of my rib cage. “Underwires are the scourge of modern American women.”

“Were,” Will said, taking the bra and turning it over lovingly in his hands. “But all of that is fixing to change.”

He took the bra and snapped it playfully at my knees. “And this little baby is going to do it.”

“Where’d you get it?” I asked. “Sri Lanka? Is that what you were doing there?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” Will said, crossing his arms over his chest and looking unbearably smug.

“Try me.”

“Not Sri Lanka. Not Hong Kong. Not New York. Not even Atlanta. This bra came from right here in little old Madison, Georgia.”

I snatched the bra away from him. “You’re right. I don’t believe you. What? The bra fairy just left it out in your cabbage patch last night?”

“I wouldn’t call Dr. Soo the bra fairy,” Will said. “Maybe a bra genius, though.”

“Dr. Sue?”

“Not like Sue the girl. Although technically, she is a girl. It’s spelled S-O-O. Like soo, pig. Her full name is Dr. Alberta Soo. She’s a Ph.D. kind of doctor. And she lives right here in Madison.”

“Never heard of her, and I’ve lived here all my life,” I said.

“Dr. Soo only retired here about a year ago,” Will said. “She and her husband live pretty quietly, not too far from here, actually. They have sort of a farmette. Keep a few chickens, some sheep, and they raise a little cotton, of course.”

“Of course?”

“Dr. Soo is a retired textile engineering professor. From Georgia Tech. She’s the one who designed this new underwire. Been tinkering with it ever since she retired. Once she had a lightweight, ultra-thin wire with the proper tensile strength, she sent it to one of her colleagues over at Tech, and they put some grad students to work on it, figuring out possible applications for it. One of the women suggested they try using it in the design of a new kind of bra. And that’s where I come in.”

I smoothed the bra out over my kneecaps, bent over to look closely at the fabric. “How on earth did you find out about all this?”

“Same way a blind pig finds an acorn,” Will said. “Right after I first bought the plant, I was over here one Sunday, moving stuff into my office. She was driving by, saw me standing in the parking lot, and stopped to say howdy.”

“And she just happened to mention that she’d invented this wonder wire,” I said.

“Yeah, basically,” he said, missing my sarcasm. “I mean, here’s this old Oriental-looking lady, dressed in baggy khaki shorts with a bandana on her head,” Will said. “At first I thought maybe she was looking for a job on the sewing line. Next thing I know, she’s telling me she’s a retired professor and she’s asking if I was gonna shut the place down. Said one of her neighbors used to work here, and he’d told her we were having hard times. She hated to hear it, because it turned out she’d gotten a little research grant from Loving Cup, back when the Gurwitzes owned it, when she was a grad student at Tech.”

“And that’s when she sold you the magic bra—in return for a bag of gold coins,” I said.

“She’d been thinking about approaching somebody in the apparel business. Used to be there were more than a dozen clothing assembly plants in this area alone,” Will said. “We’re the last ones left. And it just happens that our plant is down the road from her farmette.”

“And she hates underwire bras,” I said.

“I wouldn’t swear to this,” Will said, “but from the look of her, I don’t believe Dr. Soo wears foundation garments. She probably only weighs eighty pounds soaking wet.”

“So where’d you get the bra?” I repeated.

“I signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Tech,” Will said. “Then I found a plant in South Carolina that could spin the wire, and another one in Dothan, Alabama, that could weave the actual lace fabric. That bra you’re holding is the first one stitched in the plant in Sri Lanka.”

I handed the bra back to him. “If it’s made in Sri Lanka, what happens to the plant here? How does this help good old American workers in Madison, Georgia?”

“It will,” he said stubbornly. “It’s going to save this company.”

“All by itself?” I asked, looking around at the timeworn office. “Will, I worked out here, years ago, when Loving Cup was in its heyday. Back then a Loving Cup bra was a status symbol. We were running three shifts a day, and we even had a smaller plant over in the south end of the county. A machine operator working here could make seven dollars an hour. That was big money. But things have changed. The company didn’t keep up. The bras you’re making now, they’re a joke. How are you going to turn all that around—and just like that—overnight?”

“We’re going to become a different company,” Will said, leaning forward, his eyes glowing with intensity. “Same name, but a whole different product. We’ll be smaller, leaner, meaner.”

“Smaller than now? How is that possible? This place is a ghost town.”

“That’s not how I mean small,” Will said. “We’re going to retool the plant. Completely. We’ve been making cotton garments all these years. Now we’ll switch to MMF.”

“MMF?”

“Man-made fabrics. We’ll produce and cut the fabric here, but mostly the bras will be stitched overseas.”

He saw the unhappy set of my face.

“It’s a fact of life, Keeley. We can’t compete in the marketplace with a garment made totally here in Madison. But what we can do is this—we can weave the lace here in the States, and we can do the cutting here. Most of the assembly is done in Sri Lanka—but the bras will be sent back here for packaging and shipping. We’ll do enough work here to earn a ‘Made in USA’ label, and we’ll get the plant back up and running—and we’ll be making a damn good product.”

“It sounds like you’ve got everything all figured out,” I admitted.

“Not everything,” he said. “Not by a long shot. I’ve gotta get the financing for the new machinery we’ll need, and I’m hoping we’ll get some tax incentives from the state to help with that. We’ll have to retrain folks for new jobs, and yeah, the ones who can’t or won’t adapt, those people will be out of luck. And then there’s you.”

“Me?”

“I need you,” Will said. “Need you to get the house rolling. I can’t keep sleeping here in the office. I’m getting a crick in my back from the sofa, and Miss Nancy looks at me funny when she comes in every morning. I don’t think she approves of me living here.”

“She doesn’t approve of you, period,” I informed him. “She thinks you’ve got some uppity ideas.”

“Uppity.” He laughed.

“But if you keep this place running, and her working, you’ll have her undying support. She’ll take a bullet for you, if she’s on your side.”

“What about you? Are you on my side? How soon can you get the house livable?”

“You said Christmas,” I pointed out.

“I need to be in there sooner,” he said. “The old pump house will be ready for me to move in by Friday, sort of as a guest house, you know? They’re putting the finishing touches on the roof today, and we’ll have wiring and a bathroom by then too. For furniture, I just need the basics. How soon can you get me a bed and a table and some chairs? And some lamps. And a television,” he added. “So I can watch the Braves games at night.”

“You don’t have any furniture of your own?” I asked. “Nothing? Have you been living in that car of yours?”

He sighed. “I had a lady friend. She got a promotion and moved to San Francisco, and that’s when we parted company—by mutual agreement. She kept all the furniture and stuff, since I was moving here anyway, and didn’t have a house lined up. I kept the Caddy. Now, is that enough information? How about it? How soon can I move in?”

“The end of the week? It won’t be anything fancy. I guess I can
get a mattress and box spring and bedding delivered by Friday. And I can pull some odd chairs and a table and dresser from our storage locker, to fill in until the real stuff arrives.”

“Great,” he said. “You’re doing great.” He gestured at the drawings and fabric samples. “Stephanie’s gonna love this. I just know it.”

“We’ll see,” I said, gathering up my stuff. “The rest is up to you. Your big night is Wednesday, right?”

He yawned. “Right. If I can stay awake that long.”