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She smiled at me, but I thought I knew her well enough to catch a glimpse of the tension behind that smile. “Oh, I’ve managed bigger workloads than this,” she assured me. “All the same, I’ll be glad when Archie and I are safely away in California.”
Because, like Calvin and me, the two of them had decided to honeymoon in Sonoma and Napa. I knew choosing that destination had required a bit of wrangling on Archie’s part, since at first Victoria had been making noises about possibly going to Cancun.
Problem was, Archie knew he didn’t dare leave the country. Calvin, through the means of contacts he didn’t want to reveal even to me, had provided Archie with a fake birth certificate and driver’s license, along with other bits and pieces of documentation that neatly covered up the reality of his situation.
Namely, that he’d been cursed to live as a cat back in the early 1950s, and therefore didn’t have any identification to start a new life as a man in the twenty-first century…well, until Calvin stepped in.
But even though Archie’s current documents seemed to serve him just fine in everyday life, he hadn’t wanted to put them to the test by trying to get a passport. Maybe Calvin could have gone through the same channels to procure one, but again, doing so might have been tempting fate.
Quite possibly, that was the argument Archie had presented to Victoria to inform her that trying to go out of the country was a bad idea. She knew the truth about who he was, of course, and she’d probably realized they had a good thing going here and shouldn’t rock the boat.
“Napa should be beautiful at this time of year,” I told her. Calvin and I had gone in early summer, and being in northern California then had also been wonderful, cooler than I’d thought it would be, with fog off the ocean that burned away to mild temperatures, definitely better than the scorching heat of an Arizona June before the monsoon storms began in earnest.
“That’s what we’re hoping.”
Her expression was its usual serene loveliness, not revealing very much of what she might have been thinking. Was she annoyed that they weren’t going to Mexico for their honeymoon?
If so, I’d never learn the truth from looking at her.
We exchanged a few more comments about her upcoming trip, and I promised I’d see her on Wednesday at five-thirty as planned. Then she hurried off, saying she needed to head into Mesa to order some blinds. Since I knew her current project required a lot of trips to the greater Phoenix area — little Globe just didn’t have the resources to design those homes to her exacting standards — I only smiled and wished her a safe trip.
With any luck, my own day would be equally uneventful.
2
Black Letter
I didn’t know whether it was the wish I’d sent winging out into the universe or mere luck, but the rest of that Monday was unusually quiet. A busload of tourists came by around two, netting me a couple of hundred bucks in sales, but that was the only significant interruption in my day. Sometimes, if things were slow at the dance studio, Archie would come by and we’d chat for a bit before his next class, and yet I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him today. He’d mentioned something to me just last week that he’d been hired to teach an entire wedding party how to waltz, so maybe that was what occupied him now.
Because I didn’t have much else to do with myself, I figured I might as well compose the ad for my shop assistant position. A part of me was oddly reluctant to do so — Once in a Blue Moon was my baby, and I really didn’t like the idea of having a stranger working there — but I knew I needed to put my foot-dragging aside and just get on with it. The longer I put it off, the less time I’d have to train the person who’d be taking over for me after I went on leave. Besides, if the first person I hired didn’t work out, I’d have more time to find a replacement.
I didn’t really like setting myself up for failure from the outset, but I also knew I needed to be practical about the situation.
So I got out the tablet I kept on a shelf under the counter, opened a text document, and started writing.
Full-time sales assistant position now available in historic, scenic Globe, Arizona. Require a responsible, self-starting person to train now and run the shop by themselves in the future. Excellent compensation starting at $25/hour. Position also includes health/dental insurance and paid time off after the first six months.
I paused there, scrunching my nose as I gazed down at the ad and wondered whether I should include that part about vacation time. After all, the whole reason for hiring someone in the first place was to make sure the store stayed open even while I was at home tending to the baby.
Then again, I didn’t want to be that person who didn’t allow their employees to take time off when necessary. In fact, wasn’t some kind of paid leave legally required for someone who worked full-time?
I had to admit I really didn’t know what Arizona’s laws were on the subject…or the laws of my native California, now that I thought about it. Because I’d been working for myself since I was nineteen and had only had part-time jobs while I was in high school, I honestly didn’t have a clue.
Well, better to leave it as-is. Hazel had said she would help out in a pinch, and I supposed Globe wouldn’t exactly collapse if its residents had to go a whole week without buying Tarot cards, incense, or a hunk of rock quartz. Besides, the whole point was to make the job sound as enticing as possible, right?
Before I could second-guess myself any further, I navigated to the local Craigslist site, and followed the steps to get the position posted. For just the barest second, my finger hovered over the “submit” button as I wondered if I was really doing the right thing. Maybe I should show Calvin the ad first….
Stop being a baby, I told myself. Calvin’s the one who’s been on your case about getting the damn job posted in the first place.
True enough. I pulled in a breath, then firmly set my finger on the virtual button on the screen.
That was done. Now I’d just have to see what happened next.
A whole lot of nothing, it seemed. All right, I was probably being naïve to think people were so eager to move to Globe that I’d immediately be inundated by applicants, even so, complete radio silence followed the posting of my ad, even though I got a reassuring email from Craigslist letting me know it was now live.
Or maybe that email wasn’t quite so reassuring, considering I didn’t get a single bite on a job I’d thought sounded pretty good on paper.
Well, there wasn’t much point in stewing over it, not when I had months and months to go before I had to step back from my duties at the store. It would have been nice to have the position filled and someone trained sooner rather than later, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t get someone in here before the first of the year.
