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Stormy told them, and the women gaped.
Noreen was the first to recover. “You’re not joking, are you?”
Stormy pulled out a chair from the table and sat down. “No joke. I’m stunned myself. I still have a lot to learn, though. And I have run into a snag.”
“What snag?” teased Noreen. “You need help to carry the cash to the bank?”
“No. But help is the operative word.”
“That’s what we’re here for. Fire away.”
“I could use another pair of hands.”
Sandy, who had been sitting quietly, lifted her head. “I need some part-time work.”
Stormy scrutinized the other woman. Sandy didn’t look as sad and scared as she had last week, but she didn’t look exactly happy, either. “You didn’t get custody of your children?”
“No,” the woman said in a painfully soft voice. “But I can have them every other weekend, every other holiday, and four weeks in the summer.”
“That’s a beginning,” Janice said consolingly. “For a first skirmish in court, I’d say it was a victory.”
Sandy managed a smile. “It is. I know it is.” She looked at Stormy. “Now I need to make more money. The lawyer said if I wanted more time with the kids, I’d have to prove I’m able to provide for them. I can work evenings, and the weekends that I don’t have the kids. I don’t care what I’m doing, as long as it’s legal.”
“What I need is someone to work yard sales to buy up inventory,” Stormy told her. “I can’t manage to work the sales and the flea market at the same time. And weekends are when people hold the best yard sales. You’ll have to have the nerve to bargain prices down, though.”
Sandy straightened in her seat and said with spirit, “Just watch me—I’ll have people practically giving me the stuff!”
Everyone laughed with delight.
“I can’t pay you a salary, though, because I can’t guarantee sales.”
Sandy looked startled. “I won’t be paid by the hour?”
“Nope, you’ll be a contract worker. We’ll write up a contract that details what expenses I’ll reimburse, like gasoline and, of course, I’ll provide the upfront money to buy the toys.”
“But how do I make any money?”
“You’ll receive a percentage of net sales. Say ten percent. If you wash and repair the things you buy so that all I have to do is market them, I’ll pay you twenty percent.”
Sandy paled. “Of what you made? That would be—”
“Not quite,” Stormy cut her off. “That would be twenty percent of my gross. Don’t forget expenses—renting the space, cash to buy the inventory.”
“I don’t care. Write up a contract!” yelped Sandy. “I’m in.”
“See?” said Noreen, laughing. “I told you we learned from one another. Who’d have guessed we had an entrepreneur among us?”
“It could’ve been a fluke that I made so much money,” cautioned Stormy. “Easter is coming up, so people were buying things for Easter baskets. But I’m keeping an ear to the ground for other things to sell, too.”
“Like what?” Thelma asked.
Stormy shook her head. “I don’t know. Something unique, something people might not expect to find at a flea market. But most of all, inexpensive.”
“I have the feeling that next week we’re all going to be hitting garage sales,” said Janice. She leaned forward, her expression intense. “Maybe down the road, we could think of forming a business partnership or something. Think of the money that could be made if you had tables at all the other flea markets. There must be more than a dozen within a hundred-mile radius of St. Augustine.”
Stormy hesitated. “I like the idea—but for the future. Because what you’re suggesting means we’d need to rent a storeroom to house inventory, enough cash to buy what we hope to sell, time to repair—”
“But suppose,” put in Thelma, “that we each buy a few things as we have the cash to spare. Maybe then we could all go in on a vendor space a couple of times a year. I always need money for the kids’ school clothes and Christmas.”
