Destined (20 page)

Then she started to steer things a
different way. Some of the DBA members on Main Street had a few concerns, she
said, that needed to be addressed. We had to understand that they counted on
the income from the sidewalk sales to weather the slow summer vacation season.
The Main Street merchants were worried that our free entertainment would
detract from their sidewalk sales, pulling traffic away from the center of
town. She looked pointedly at Lexi, a prominent Main Street merchant.

Lexi smiled at her calmly, not looking
worried at all. Why should she? The gallery certainly didn’t count on the
income from selling a few prints and picture frames on the sidewalk to fill its
coffers. Whoever Sarah was talking about, it obviously did not apply to Lexi.
She had to be here for another reason. I wondered what it was.

“Sarah?” I said, raising my hand. She
nodded at me. “What exactly do the Main Street merchants want us to do about
this, er…problem?”

“Well, there have been several
suggestions. But the simplest idea was proposed by Alexandra Gladstone here
from the Gladstone Gallery,” Sarah replied, waving her hand toward Lexi, who
sat up straighter and tossed back her hair.

“The obvious thing to do, to keep
everyone happy, is for you people to have your little event on another weekend,”
Lexi said, with a charming smile. She spoke as though delighted to have
discovered such a fair, simple solution. “That way, everyone will get more
attention, with no competition for the spotlight!”

Silence in the room followed her
statement. Rocco and Josie looked over at me.

“But,” I said slowly, “The whole idea
was to piggyback the two events. So we can all make the most of each other’s
advertising money, and have more of a draw to pull people into town. The timing
is essential to make the budget for our event work.”

Lexi turned to focus on me, with a
nasty glint in her eye.

“Why, Emily, you can’t possibly be
saying that you want to take advantage of all the effort and money spent over
the past ten years to make our sidewalk sales a success! Steal our customers
away, and give us nothing in return!” She regarded me triumphantly. “Anyone
with a bit more, well,
experience
,
must see that it just isn’t fair to the rest of us after all our hard work.” I
wondered how much hard work exactly she had put in, and decided it was probably
zip.

Rocco stood up and took the floor.

“I think we all agree that we
certainly don’t want to piss off the Main Streeters,” he said with a grin,
lightening the mood and drawing a few chuckles out of the crowd. “Sarah, what
if we think about coming up with some kind of compromise on this?”

Sarah nodded her head in agreement, as
compromise was her business.

“I think we can give it a try,” she
said. “Do you have anything specific in mind?”

Rocco looked over at me, hoping for a
contribution.

“Well, maybe there is a way,” I said,
thinking very fast. Everyone looked at me expectantly. Lexi frowned, but nobody
saw her except me.

“For example, what if some of the
entertainment isn’t just down here? What if we had the street performers cover
Main Street too?” I started to get excited about the idea. This could actually
benefit us, in the end.

“Street performers?” Lexi asked, with
a dubious tone.

“Clowns, jugglers, magicians and
buskers — strolling musicians, that is,” I answered. I already knew she
was going to react negatively, but everyone else was nodding their heads and
making sounds of approval.

“We could still rope off the
intersection here and have the stage events under a tent, so there’s something
special to pull people down this way,” Rocco observed. “The police would never
let that happen in a high traffic area anyhow, so it isn’t an option for Main
Street.”

“Yes, and the street performers would
actually add some new interest to the sidewalk sales on Main,” Sarah added. “I
think it would be fun, festive!”

“Yes,” I agreed, “And you could
mention it in your advertising, which would be a great added feature!” Plus, I
thought silently, we could put posters up along Main Street advertising the
events in the tent, so all the shoppers would be sure to see them.

“Yes, yes,” Sarah said, picturing it
and nodding her head. She looked at our ad rep, who nodded enthusiastically.

“We were planning to run profiles of
the Market Street merchants in the special insert,” Lisa said, “But we could
cover selected businesses from all over downtown.” She spoke to Lexi anxiously.
“We could do a little article on your gallery, Lexi! How would that be?”

Lexi was still frowning, but nobody
paid much attention to her as they all discussed the new development. She did
not reply to Lisa’s suggestion and sat silently, radiating displeasure. She
looked at me with an expression of extreme distaste, as though she had
encountered a nasty smell. I ignored it, and went up to Sarah so she could hear
me over the noisy conversation.

“Do you think the rest of the DBA will
agree to the idea?” I asked.

“I think so,” she replied. “I’ll bring
it up at the next meeting of the sidewalk sales committee.” She looked at me. “This
actually might be a shot in the arm for our tired old event. Sometimes people
get sick of the same old thing, you know? I like your creativity, Emily!”

She and Lisa, who had been listening,
both smiled at me approvingly.

“We should get you to join the
committee!” Lisa suggested.

“Yes, that’s a great idea! Why don’t
you come to the next meeting with me?” Sarah said. “You can make this
suggestion yourself. You’ll represent this neighborhood, and we’ll work
something out that is to everyone’s benefit!”

“Of course we’ll want to contribute to
the expense of the street performers, you understand,” she added quietly,
turning her back to Lexi slightly. “We know how much these things cost.”

“Sure,” I answered. “That can be
arranged!” I looked past Sarah at Lexi, who was glaring at me. But she knew
when she had been defeated. She picked up her purse off the bar and slung the
strap over her tanned shoulder.

“Well, I must fly!” she proclaimed
with a bright, false smile. “A client is waiting.”

She hugged and air-kissed Sarah and
Lisa, in that order. When she came toward me I almost stepped away. I didn’t
like the look in her eye.

“
Bitch!”
she hissed privately in my ear as she
hugged me, grabbing me with her talons when I stiffened in response. “I’ll
never forget what you did! You’ll get what you deserve.”

That’s when I finally realized what all
of this was about. She was still mad at me for defying her. She was willing to
hurt the whole neighborhood just to get back at me! I remembered being worried
that she would do something to scare off any prospective new employers, if they
called for employment verification. I didn’t think Mr. Paradis had ever spoken
with her. If he had, it didn’t seem to have made any difference.

“I’ll be sure to remember,” I said,
pulling away from her. She let go of me reluctantly, but Rocco came over just
then and threw his arms around both of us, a wide grin on his face.

“So, you see what can happen when we
all cooperate, Ladies?” he said happily. “This will be the biggest sidewalk
sales event ever!”
 
He stood
between us, shielding me from her. He turned his head toward me and winked.

“Yes,” I said, “And how lucky for us
that the DBA might pay for part of the entertainment expense! We’re so grateful
for the community support, Lexi!”

I turned towards her and raised one
eyebrow, daring to pull the tiger’s tail. She looked furious, but said nothing
and gave Rocco one of her brilliant smiles. Without another word, Lexi swept
out through the front doors and was gone. Rocco and I stood and watched her
exit. He shook his head in disbelief and gently held my upper arm, pointing to
the crescent shaped indentations she had left there with her fingernails.

“So what did you do to the Countess
Vampira in a former life?” he asked. “She wanted to rip you apart!”

“It’s a long story,” I said, rubbing
the red marks. “I didn’t realize she took it so personally.”

“I’m glad she didn’t screw things up
for us today,” he said seriously. “But I get the feeling she’s not done trying.”

“Don’t worry about Lexi,” I reassured
him. “She carries around a lot of bad karma for all the nasty things she does.”

“Yeah, I guess what goes around, comes
around, right?” Rocco said. His mother had come up behind us and was listening.

“You talkin’ about that skinny woman
with the bleached hair?” Josie asked, to the point as always. “Grouchy, isn’t
she?”

“She just needs more fiber in her
diet,” said Laurel, coming up to join us. She smiled innocently, and we all
laughed.

“I guess we should schedule our next
meeting for after I talk to the DBA,” I said. “What they say will probably
affect the budget, so my numbers aren’t accurate anymore.”

Everyone agreed, so Rocco made the
announcement and the merchants started to file out the door and back to their
places of business. Sarah Bennett promised to call me soon with the date and
time of my presentation to the DBA. Rocco and Josie said goodbye and headed
across the street, the big man bending over to listen as she chattered away.
John had vanished into the kitchen. Soon, Laurie and I were the only ones left
in the room.

“So, what’s new?” she asked, with a
speculating look at the big smile on my face.

“Guess who just moved in upstairs
across the street?”

“Moved in? I can’t imagine.”

“It’s
him
,” I said, “He’s back!”

“Aha! Our wandering hero returns!
Well, well, well!”

“Yes, I found him there when I got in
this morning. And guess what else?”

Wisely, she waited for me to tell her.
I did, explaining the whole situation. When I described his sudden decision to
sell his house and move back to the U.S., she looked at me with a serious
expression.

“Now you be careful, Em! Maybe there’s
more to the story.”

“You mean, like, maybe he’s a spy or
running from the law or something?”

I pretended to be serious, but she
wasn’t pretending.

“I mean, like, maybe he wanted to
leave something behind in London, or some
one
.”

Now, that was a thought. I had figured
he was probably dating somebody over there, back when I hadn’t heard from him
for so long.

“He did say something about getting
rid of old baggage,” I mused.

“See?” Laurie said warningly. “Be
careful! You don’t want to get too involved if he just split up with somebody.
Rebound love doesn’t last long.”

I agreed to proceed with caution. I
wondered how I could find out more about Tony Novak’s personal life, without
seeming to intrude. I suspected that Mr. Paradis might know, if they were as
close as it appeared. My employer had definitely encouraged my interest in his
friend. He had said that Margaret would approve. That meant as far as the old
man knew, there was nothing to hold us back from developing a relationship. But
there might be things, or people, of which he was not aware. I tossed these
ideas back and forth in my mind.

I waited for the walk light and
crossed the intersection diagonally, thinking about what had happened with
Lexi. It was clear to me that she felt totally justified in trying to ruin my
plans. The action that I had taken in self-defense all those months ago, she
regarded as an unwarranted attack. Even though I had behaved in a passive way,
not engaging her in debate or putting up a fight. In her world, anything that
inconvenienced or diminished her in any way was wrong, evil. She thought I had
deliberately tried to hurt her business by leaving them in the lurch when some
new clients were on the way over. I wondered who had finally cleaned the toilet
that day. I could guarantee it wasn’t Lexi. But in any case, I doubted she
sacrificed any art sales because of my unexpected absence.

It was ironic how things had turned
out today. Lexi had tried to make us change the date of our event so we
wouldn’t get any benefit from the DBA’s planned promotion, hoping our plans
would fail and I would look stupid. But instead, now it looked like they were
going to end up paying part of the tab and giving us some additional
advertising power. Well, it served her right!

I realized that was only true from my
point of view. In addition to the scales, Lady Justice holds a double-edged
sword and it cuts with both sides. We all need to think very carefully before
we decide that our views are perfectly justified, and our opponents are totally
in the wrong. In fact, that is probably a very rare occurrence. Because every
action has a reaction. You can never really be sure where people are coming
from when they act negative or unpleasant. Sometimes they think they’re
defending themselves. I hoped that I hadn’t inadvertently set something in
motion that we would all regret when it came time to weigh the final outcome.