Bound for the Outer Banks (13 page)

Ella held her wine up waiting patiently for Lacey to assemble her glass and fill it with wine from the tiny bottle.

Lacey insisted, “Go ahead Belle. By the time I finish I can think of something else to toast. No worries.”

Ella shrugged. “Cheers,” She gestured with her plastic container of wine toward Lacey.

Lacey finished pouring the wine from the glass bottle in to her beach friendly plastic copy of a fairly sophisticated looking wine glass.

Ella declared, “To the most hospitable new neighbor a girl could ask for!”

They clinked their faux glasses together and yelled, “Cheers!”

Ella looked at Lacey and smiled. “I have to ask how exactly you got into the air conditioning business.”

Lacey groaned, “Ugh. Well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

“You’re a successful businesswoman. It can’t be that embarrassing,” piped Ella.

“When I graduated from high school, I went off to Chapel Hill,” Lacey began. “I cried the entire semester I was so homesick. Momma and Daddy could see that I was miserable. The fact is I was a Daddy’s girl and he had been diagnosed with cancer. I was so scared. I wanted to spend every moment I could with him. Momma told me I could come home as long as I was enrolled in college online or something, but I had to be in school. I hated the thought of sitting in front of a computer so I found a technical school in Elizabeth City about forty miles from here. They had an air conditioner repair program. I figured people hated being hot. My Momma was going through menopause at the time and I knew she’d give her eye teeth if she had to in order to get that AC fixed. So fifty credit hours later, I had an associate’s degree in Air Conditioning Technology. I made a good decision because my Daddy passed away my last semester and I knew in my heart that I’d spent as much time as I could with him during his last days. Anyway, demand grew as more people built vacation homes on The Banks so I expanded my business to sales and service. Now I do mostly paperwork, payroll and handle the sales part of the business. I work in the field during my employees’ off days and vacations.”

“Wow!” Ella exclaimed, stunned at such an impressive story.

“O.K., now you know my life’s story. What about you? How did you get involved in the fashion world?”

It was all Ella could do to keep from saying that had it not been for the abrupt death of her parents, being kidnapped and dragged around Europe by her boyfriend, and then having federal agents secretly shift her from safe house to safe house then maybe she truly would be a player in the fashion world. Instead Ella just smiled and told Lacey bits and pieces of her involvement in fashion from sewing for her high school theater, attending SCAD, starting out as a seamstress at the Hard Rock Casino altering uniforms, and eventually being placed on the design staff of the Hard Rock Hotel. She decided to skip the geography that accompanied her story, just in case. She then fabricated her jaunt through Europe as her transition into women’s fashion writing.

Ella did reveal that she’d had a two year relationship with a guy who turned out to be a real asshole. She didn’t feel too badly about revealing this tid bit of information, besides, ex-boyfriends being assholes was universal. It happened to every girl sooner or later. She didn’t dare mention his name, but instead told Lacey she’d sworn since the breakup to only refer to him as asswipe. Lacey thought it was a good idea not to give him the dignity of a name.

For the next twenty minutes or so the ladies polished off another white zinfandel miniature and tilted their heads back on the sand chairs, already comfortable enough with one another to sit in silence and not have it be the least bit awkward. Ella heard a snort coming from behind them. Startled, she quickly turned around, but instead of facing one of Dante’s goons she was staring at a beautiful, majestic animal which was standing only about fifteen feet away.

Lacey turned and saw it too. She whispered to Ella, “It’s one of the wild horses of Corolla. The theory is these Spanish mustangs swam ashore after the ships carrying them crashed on the Diamond Shoals.”

Ella was entranced by the beauty of the wild horse. It was jet black with a white starburst shape on its forehead. Slowly Ella rose up and began lightly walking on her toes toward the animal.

“Belle, you can’t pet them. They’re too wild to even get near them,” Lacey insisted.

Continuing as if Lacey hadn’t spoken, Ella came closer to the mustang. The horse lifted its head and brayed loudly. For whatever reason, Ella didn’t flinch and kept moving toward the lovely beast. You were orphaned here on these islands, Ella thought to herself, although she knew she was thinking of a long ago ancestor of this horse. It was sink or swim, Ella thought, just like I had to do. Just like I’m still having to do. Ella then slowly reached her hand toward the horse’s neck and gave it a gentle rub. After a brief moment the horse slowly turned and walked away.

At this point Lacey had stood up, watching in awe at what just occurred. “I’ve lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen anyone get that close to one of these horses, much less pet one.”

Ella smiled and sat back down in the sand chair. Although she had been raised in the hustle and bustle of New York City, she felt at home here in the tranquility of The Outer Banks. Maybe she was more of a country, southern girl than she knew. Biloxi was no metropolis, but once you were inside the casinos you may as well have been in New York or Las Vegas when you considered what you had access to. Ella could have Starbucks with her Ben and Jerry’s. She could shop at the Taunt boutique which carried Free People, and True Religion. She could choose between Louis Vuitton, Vera Bradley, or Kate Spade for bags, buy blown glass chandeliers from Italy, or buy evening gowns by Badgley Mischka. With fifteen casinos in Biloxi, each promenade was full of exclusive stores where big winners could spend big bucks. On the other hand when Ella was in the mood for a greasy spoon, Biloxi boasted a Waffle House right on the beach.

As Lacey took a sip of her wine, the sun sent shots of long sparks from her rings. Ella had noticed Lacey’s wedding set when she met her at Pinkie’s. Her engagement ring was a princess cut diamond set in an infinity twist diamond band. Ella always wondered if there was any romance left when a guy presented his girlfriend an engagement ring or if the majority of couples just went to the mall and got a ring. She did understand the woman wanting to have some say so in such an expensive gift, but Ella was old school and sincerely hoped one day that the ONE would do something romantic and surprise her with a ring. She figured what he chose would be beautiful to her.

“How did you meet your husband?” asked Ella.

“I met him in Waffle House which just sounds pure low brow, but I do love the Waffle House.”

Ella couldn’t believe it, a Waffle House kindred spirit. Ella grimaced, “I do too! I’d sell my soul for that waffle batter recipe.”

“Amen honey,” Lacey agreed. “I was sitting up at the bar all by my lonesome – you know, because of the cardinal booth rule of two or more people.”

Ella shook her head knowingly.

“Anyway,” Lacey continued. “I thought I saw a squirrel run up under my stool. I screamed like I had gone bat shit crazy. Sam, my now husband, and his brother Chief ran over like an IED had blown up under me. Chief was on leave from Iraq and he was home visiting. Sam hung around the bar chatting for a few minutes.”

Ella interrupted, “Well, was it a squirrel or what?”

Lacey laughed, “Oh no, it was a waitress behind me trying to mop under my stool with one of those big, gray, rag mops.”

Ella died laughing, “So after you mistook the mop for a squirrel did Sam ask you out?”

“Nope,” replied Lacey. “Apparently after I left he asked his waitress if she knew who I was. She told him I was the air conditioning lady. I had fixed their air conditioner a few months before. Let me tell you. An open grill and no air conditioning in The Outer Banks sun is a Waffle House recipe for disaster, especially when you consider a clientele that faithfully eats Waffle House fare is typically large and in charge. The extra pounds plus no air conditioning don’t exactly gee-haw.”

Ella laughed then took another sip of her wine, “So then what happened?”

“About a week later I got a call to fix someone’s air conditioner in Wanchese. This was when I was a one woman business taking all the calls myself. I knocked on the door and it was Samoset. As I opened the case of the air conditioner, he brought out an iced pink lemonade. No one had ever done that. I was thinking hmmm… thoughtful. When I got in there I could tell the unit had clearly been tampered with. He kept coming back making small talk so by the time I had finished he’d asked me out. I accepted and the rest is history.”

Ella couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself this much. She looked out at the water and thought about how the ocean had the power to soothe one’s soul. Then she noticed down the beach a lone fisherman standing waist deep in the surf. “I’ve never seen anyone fish in the water like that,” Ella pointed out.

“We call that swimming with the bait. I also call it Darwinism in action,” Lacey smirked.

“I like it here,” Ella declared suddenly.

“What’s not to like?” asked Lacey. “This beach is my favorite. In the summer, just south of here, the beaches are covered with so many people you can’t stir them with a stick. Then we get this short reprieve until Labor Day which is next week!” Lacey said, the inflection rising in her voice with excitement. “You should come to our Labor Day Party! We have it right here on the beach. Sam and I smoke some Boston Butts and we play volleyball and stuff.”

Ella protested, “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable crashing your family’s celebration like that.”

“Oh, it’s not just family. It’s neighbors and our employees and their families, and sometimes we invite people we don’t even like just to have someone to talk about.”

Ella’s eyes grew wide.

“I’m kidding, Belle!” Lacey snickered.

Oh why not Ella thought to herself. Maybe I’ll actually slip up and have some fun. Ella conceded, “Count me in!”

Chapter 14

Ella sat up in bed, finally surrendering to the fact that although it was two a.m., sleep was not in the cards for her tonight. She thought about everything that had transpired over the last several years. She wasn’t licking her wounds necessarily. She was just astounded at what had been thrown her way in such a small space of time. When Ella would complain in the past, BeBe’s response was always, “Tell it to Job.” Finally one day when Ella was fourteen she snatched down a Bible from the bookshelf and finally found the Book of Job. She sat in her father’s study entranced by its poetic beauty. “At this moment,” she told herself. “There are things beyond me which I do not understand and there are also things too wonderful for me to know.” At fourteen this was the mantra she extrapolated from the words of Job, the words she told herself now. Ella smiled and thought, Well, BeBe was right. You think you have it bad until you think about Job and all his trials and tribulations.

Ella thought about how she’d struggled that first year in Biloxi, selling her blood and working as a seamstress for the Hard Rock, altering the employees’ uniforms. She took things up, then she’d let things out. The Hard Rock provided the uniforms for their employees and recycled them by giving the staff their attire in a ballpark size and having Ella “make it work.”

When delivering uniforms to the casino one day, Ella noticed one of memos on the jobs bulletin board:

DESIGN CONSULTANT

Employee will act as an on-site liaison for the design staff at the corporate office. Job responsibilities will include but are not limited to selection of all textiles including bed linens, drapes, carpets, and all upholstered furnishings for the suites in the new Hard Rock Hotel. The selected candidate will also select fabrics for awnings, valances, drapes, carpeting, and all upholstered furnishings in the common areas of the hotel.

Candidate must have a minimum of five

years experience in the design industry

or a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design

from an accredited university.

“Crap,” muttered Ella. A Fashion Design degree was not a substitute really for an Interior Design degree, but she decided to take a chance. Ella delivered the uniforms to employee services and raced home to apply for the job online. She figured it was a plus that she already lived in Biloxi and already worked within the organization. The company would not have to pay any relocation fees or pony up any money as an incentive for someone to come to lil’ ole Biloxi, Ella thought.

After two weeks of checking her cell phone every five minutes, she finally received a call to schedule an interview. A design team member was flying in and would meet with Ella to examine her design portfolio and give her a brief interview. It turned out that the woman interviewing Ella had lived one street over from the Barrantine’s brownstone in New York. Although Ella’s portfolio included just her work from SCAD and wasn’t an Interior design portfolio, the representative liked Ella and thought she had excellent taste in combining fabrics. She decided interior design and fashion design were not such different animals. She was also impressed that Ella had been willing to start as a seamstress just to be part of the Hard Rock Organization (Her words not Ella’s). Cynthia Ladson offered Ella a job as one of the on site design consultants for the new Hard Rock Hotel. Ella was the textile designer, with the design team at corporate having veto power and ultimate oversight. Other consultants working on-site with Ella would specialize in things like lighting, hardscapes, and fixtures for the new hotel.

Once the hotel was hard hat clear, the team set to work measuring and drawing design schemes. The designers were able to meet in what would be one of the hotel’s swanky new meeting rooms, but instead of the proposed black and white piano key inspired, extra-long conference table that would eventually be placed in the room, they made do with an elementary school type metal lunchroom table and metal folding chairs that felt like blocks of ice after having the newly installed monster air conditioners blowing on them.

The day of the Grand Opening of the Hard Rock Hotel, Ella attended the private party with all the big wigs from the corporate office, local politicians, the teams which had been flown in to train the hotel staff, and of course the design team. Ella had anticipated this moment, the moment that her first true design job would come to an end. She had been disappointed that it was only a temporary position even though she was dealing with interiors and not fashion design.

Ella clutched her small sketch book and looked everywhere for the leggy redhead, Cynthia Ladson, the lady who’d interviewed Ella and given her a chance after she was employed as only an alterations person for the organization. She saw her former New York neighbor holding a piece of cheese on a toothpick using it to point and gesture while she talked to the manager of the hotel. Apparently Miss Ladson made whatever point she was trying to make with the help of the impaled cheese. Then George Swanson, the nervous new manager, hurriedly excused himself. Cynthia Ladson then consumed the entire piece of cheese, pressing her teeth against the toothpick and sliding it out of her mouth.

Ella made her move. She approached the design team head who now had a mouth full of cheese and couldn’t have protested if she’d wanted to. Ella quickly flipped open her small sketchbook and explained to Miss Ladson that the casino’s cocktail waitress uniforms were much too generic for the Hard Rock brand. She showed Cynthia three sketched designs for uniforms inspired by musical instruments. Ella’s favorite was a red electric guitar inspired tux jacket which had instead of classic black tails on the back, the bottom of a heart shaped guitar which mimicked the shape of the waitress’s buttocks.

Miss Ladson used her tongue to remove the cheese stuck behind her teeth and then finally swallowed. She took the sketchbook from Ella’s hands, slowly examining each design. She told Ella her designs were intriguing and said she would be in touch. After waiting on pins and needles for one week, hoping she wouldn’t be forced to go back to her menial alterations job, the call finally came.

Cynthia Ladson told Ella that she agreed the cocktail waitress uniforms needed to be edgier and sexier instead of looking like a shortened bell hop uniform. She told Ella she liked her designs but she would have to run them by the powers that be at corporate. Ella was then asked to design and construct ten different cocktail waitress uniforms that would be shown to the head of casino operations. Ella thanked Miss Ladson profusely and apologized for catching her while she was eating, although that had been Ella’s strategy all along.

Clutching her sketchbook to her chest, Ella took a Rockin’ Rita cocktail from the tray of one of the servers and gulped down about a third of it in one breath. One of the pit bosses she’d seen around who personified the phrase tall, dark, and handsome, approached and asked her to dance. Ella danced and made out with “Trevor the Boss”, the name she had dubbed him with until she woke up dry mouthed and in a fog the next morning in one of the new Hard Rock Hotel rooms she was very familiar with since she had picked all the furnishings for it. She hung her head off the side of the bed and she got the spins from looking down at the bright swirls of floral cascades in five different bold colors. The casino’s aim was to keep people awake and alert so they would gamble for a longer period of time instead of just enjoying the accoutrements of a luxury hotel room, especially if it was comped. Ella had been sure to comply with the casino’s design demands, selecting bold colors and busy designs for the fabrics, unfortunately at the moment bold and busy patterns inundating her alcohol logged brain were the last thing she needed.

Ella stealthily pushed down the covers and followed the path of her clothing to the bathroom, plucking up each piece as she went. After becoming as presentable as she was going to get, she left the room only to run the gauntlet of casual hellos from hotel staff for which she had doled out and altered uniforms. As Ella rounded the large mahogany table in the atrium, she saw Cynthia Ladson having another conversation with George Swanson in front of the main entrance. Ella ducked down behind the massive flower sculpture that looked like a small rose parade float featuring a drum set, electric guitar, and a bass. She looked around for an alternate escape route and noticed the cashiers in the Rock Shop and a few waiters from Ruth’s Chris staring at her, probably wondering if this was the Hard Rock Hotel’s inaugural walk of shame.

Ella ignored the onlookers and walked toward the pool. She finally arrived at her bungalow after a circuitous route around the Hard Rock pool cabanas, through a Waffle House parking lot, and around “The Mad Potter of Biloxi Museum.” She then made her way across the grounds of Beauvoir and into the backyard of her bungalow.

The only thing on Ella’s mind was sketching Hard Rock cocktail waitress uniforms, narrowing it down to ten, and constructing the samples. Unfortunately Ella was not going to be compensated for this, however, if the casino chose one of her designs it would be a huge boost to her resume for a potential fashion house design placement. The seamstress job would again be her reality, but Ella knew every spare moment would be spent doing what she loved, designing.