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With her hand still on the door bar, she turned slowly to face him.
His eye contact was pristine as he snugged the nail polish bottle back onto its shelf.
“You promise, Miss Heidi? Or you be busy again for a long time? Hmm?”
“She gets swamped,” Carine chimed in.
“I think I’m going to be extremely busy,” Heidi announced, then left.
She was going to have to find a new nail spa.
Possibly in Atlantis. No one would know me there.
___
“Just put him on the phone, Kalimah,” Heidi said tightly. She had to speak low because there was an echo in that fabric showroom, and too much of Eastern North Carolina already knew more of her business than she liked. “If your father believes what the mechanic said is credible, I’ll deal with it.”
“Deal with ithow?” came the crestfallen voice through Heidi’s cell phone.
“In the plastic way and not the mobster one.”
“You’re…paying for my clutch repair?”
Kalimah’s transmission had decided to take a self-care day without informing her in advance of her commute home from work. She’d managed to get her car onto the shoulder only by the grace of the good Lord and a whole lot of frantic steering. The moment she’d said “clutch,” Heidi had gotten a sick feeling. As responsible a driver as Kalimah was, she simply didn’t have enough years of experience behind her to have a plan for every disastrous contingency.
Kevin would have gone feral if anything had happened to her, and Heidi didn’t want to imagine that kind of misery.
“You said your father didn’t have the cash,” Heidi said. “I’ll cover it. Listen, we’ve all been there. I’m pretty sure my first car was a lemon five minutes after getting off the factory line and more so ten years later when I got it. Cars are one of the worst things to spend money on, but what choice do we have, right? No other way to get around in these parts.”
Heidi heaved the bolt of floral-print, water-resistant upholstery fabric out of its stand and dropped it onto the platform truck.
“But I feel bad,” Kalimah warbled wetly.
Oh, God, don’t cry. I’m not hydrated enough for this.
“Why? Did you break the clutch on purpose?” Heidi changed her mind about the fabric. She was pretty sure Carine had once worn a skirt in a similar print at Clay’s place. The last thing Heidi wanted was to spend three months decorating a Dowd boat interior for their charity auction donation and have to think about Carine saucily inching her hem up her thighs to annoy the regulars. Heidi used to be amused by those antics. The passage of time had altered her sense of humor somewhat.
“It wasn’t acting right when I bought it, but I didn’t know better,” Kalimah said. “I’d only driven my cousin’s car before.”
“Well, not too many people drive manuals nowadays. It’s hard for a novice to know what she’s hearing or feeling with them.” Heidi tossed a gold-patterned textile onto the dolly. “Is Kevin going to pick you up from the mechanic’s place, or can your father get down there?”
“Kevin’s coming. He should be here in forty minutes.”
“All right. Stay in the shade, and don’t let anyone talk you into paying for anything else. Give the phone to the shop owner, please.”
“Okay. Thank you, Heidi. I still feel bad.”
“And I would have felt bad if Kevin had thought he couldn’t ask me. Go on.”
“Thanks.”
Heidi wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and navigated to the section of plums and deep reds. She didn’t have a design plan so much as a vibe. Unlike Valerie, Heidi’s design sensibilities at any given time were based on what things annoyed her the least. Sometimes that list was uselessly small.
“Mrs. Dowd?” came the presumed mechanic’s twang in her ear.
“Yes, this is Heidi. I need you to go to your card machine. I’m going to give you a number to run so you can fix that young woman’s car, but before you say anything, I need to ask you flat-out how much life that vehicle has left in it.”
“I guess you have a knack for collecting people with car problems,” Carine said in a soft, laughing voice behind her.
