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“Or you could just get another job,” Lara suggested, placing a soup-bowl size mug of thick black coffee in front of me. “They’re looking for another person to help behind the concession counter at the Movie Megaplex.”
Lara was the queen of part-time. She held four part-time jobs and kept her schedules straight on a large white wipe-off board in her bedroom.
“No way! I’m already putting in my forty hours a week at McAuley and Malcolm.” And it felt more like fifty.
“Well, technically you don’t work a full forty hours,” Jenny pointed out. “You’re usually at least a half hour late, you take long lunches and you leave early. My guess is you really only work about thirty hours a week. Of course, it’s better than when you were smoking and taking all those puff breaks.”
Jenny and I worked together at the law firm of McAuley and Malcolm. Jenny had the prestigious title of legal secretary while I was only the lowly receptionist. Jenny also covered my ass whenever I was away from my desk so she knew all about my lack of attendance.
“Still, what about my social life?” I drank from the hot coffee and felt my armor crumpling. This was my social life.
“I’ll loan you fifty bucks until payday, Tab,” Jen offered generously.
“Come with me tonight and I’ll get Harold to hire you,” Lara announced, as if it were all settled. “A few nights a week and you’ll quickly have your car repairs paid for.”
After a little more coffee and lots more cajoling, Lara convinced me. I called in to report my stolen Visa and then we headed out to the movie theatre where I was introduced to Harold Wembly. He was a beanpole young man with acne-scarred skin and the manager of the Movie Megaplex.
“So you want a career as a Megaplex counter assistant?” his eyes gleamed with power.
“Um, well sure, I guess.” I turned and raised my eyebrows at Lara.
“You’re in luck.” He clapped his hands. “You can start tonight. Joan called in sick and Lara here can show you the ropes. After tonight you’ll work from Wednesday to Saturday, six-thirty ’til midnight.”
“F-four nights a week?” I stuttered. “I was thinking maybe two.”
“Bus,” Lara hissed in my ear. “Do it his way and you’ll get your car back before the November downpours start.”
I sighed. “That’ll be fine.”
Harold tossed me a yellow button-down Henley shirt that had Megaplex embroidered in green over the pocket and popcorn-butter stains on the cuffs.
It was still half an hour before the theater would open so Lara took me to the staff room and introduced me to the two other girls who’d be dishing up popcorn with us. Then she brought me down to the huge counter and familiarized me with movie munchie etiquette.
“There are three basic sizes—jumbo, enormous and colossal.” She pointed to the three-dimensional poster on the wall.
“You mean small, medium and large.”
Lara covered my mouth with her hand and slid her gaze to the left and right. “Don’t ever let Harold hear you refer to the sizes that way, or you’ll be fired on the spot.”
Oh, boy.
“The drinks are the same sizes and you need to fill the cups half with ice before pouring in the pop.” She opened a refrigerator beneath the counter. “Bottled water is kept here.”
“What if they want regular water, from a tap?”
Lara shook her head. “Strictly forbidden. There’s a firing squad outside waiting to shoot the first person who offers free water.”
I almost thought she was kidding.
A few minutes later, after I solemnly swore to never ever touch the popcorn maker, Lara pronounced me ready to serve.
“This isn’t so bad,” I said. “Other than the fact that I’m a fashion nightmare.” Looking down at the running shoes Lara had loaned me, I adjusted the black skirt I’d worn to the office that day and tugged a strand of my wispy brown hair out of my eyes.
Obviously I’d spoken too soon because less than two hours later I was run off my feet and had a river of perspiration flowing between my breasts.
“Great. You survived the first half,” Lara said, smiling and wiping at drink spills on the counter. “Other than the time you nearly dumped a tray of drinks on that asshole who grabbed your boob.”
I groaned and pressed a hand to my lower back. “How much longer?”
“Those were the early moviegoers,” Lara stated, pushing her glasses back on her nose and blowing her black hair out of her eyes. “Thursdays can get pretty busy. The next wave will start in about twenty minutes.”
“The next wave?” I replied weakly.
“We can take a break now, if you’d like.”
The second wave wasn’t a wave; it was a tidal storm.
Huge lineups formed in front of each of the four cashiers but my lineup was continuously longer than all the rest. Not only was I slower at serving than the others, but I was also working the register nearest the ticket counter. I was tired. Exhausted. My mind was in a complete daze and my contact lenses were beginning to fuse permanently to my corneas. But suddenly, things came back into focus, or rather, someone. Oh, no!
I whirled to fill an order and met up with Lara at the popcorn. “You gotta switch lines with me!” I hissed.
“No way. The new girl always gets the first register.”
“But Clay Sanderson’s in my line! He’s one of the partners at the law firm. I don’t want him to see me!”
Lara glanced over her shoulder. “Which one is he?”
I continued to scoop popcorn into an already overflowing jumbo-size container. “Golden hair, body like a Greek god, has on a brown leather jacket and there’s a blonde, a model-type, hanging off his arm,” I whispered.
Lara looked again. “He’s gorgeous! Sure, I’ll wait on him.” She undid the top button on her shirt. “But after he’s gone, we switch back.”
Lara hustled up to my line that was easily double the length of hers and I scrambled over to the next cash register trying to keep my gaze away from Clay Sanderson in case he spotted me. No chance of that, though; he only had eyes for the blonde in the stiletto heels.
A few minutes later I glanced over and couldn’t see Clay in Lara’s lineup. I figured he’d already gone, so I was preparing to switch back when I noticed Lara had a weird look on her face and was nodding sideways in my direction.
“I’ll have two medium Cokes and a large popcorn,” a deep baritone voice sounded in front of me.
I turned my head and looked straight into Clay Sanderson’s azure eyes. I guess being a partner in a law firm meant you had enough brains to switch to the snack lineup that had less of a crowd.
I swallowed thickly. “You mean two enormous drinks and a colossal popcorn?” I asked, offering up a tentative smile.
The corners of his mouth twitched into a lopsided grin. “Sure.”
I quickly headed to the drink dispenser. Maybe he didn’t recognize me? Sure we saw each other every day, when he walked into the office, but I did have a forgettable face. Not like his blond girlfriend.
Returning to the counter with his order, I rang up the total. I offered two dollars in change to him and he reached across and held my hand while he took the bills and stated, “Your secret is safe with me.”
When I looked at my hand I expected melted flesh where he’d touched me. Then he leaned in, and for a split second I actually thought he was going to kiss me, when instead, he whispered, “By the way, you have some popcorn, uh—” His gaze moved down to my chest then back up to my face. I could feel my cheeks becoming red.
I noticed there were a few popcorn kernels balanced precariously in my cleavage. When I looked up again he was gone.
The rest of the shift was quieter, but I was relieved when it finally ended just before midnight. Lara linked her arm in mine as we stepped out of the theatre and into the chilly night air.
“He said he’d keep it a secret, right? So what are you so worried about?”
“I dunno,” I replied glumly, as we cut across the parking lot.
“Oh. I get it.” Lara nudged me with her elbow. “This is the suit you’ve been drooling over for years, huh? Mr. Sexy Lawyer at your firm.”
I began to protest, then relented. “I was surprised he even recognized me.”
“Why wouldn’t he? You’ve been working at that firm for what? Two years?”
“Yeah, but did you get a load of his girlfriend?”
“Yeah, I see your point.”
We continued our walk. My apartment was less than a block from the movie theatre but I was accompanying Lara across the street to her bus stop.
“You don’t have to wait with me,” Lara said. “The bus will be here in less than five minutes. Go on home. You look beat.”
“I am beat. It’s just that…” My eyes were drawn to the old building behind us. It looked like it had been a store at one point, but now it was boarded up with posted signs indicating it was zoned for demolition. My heart was jackhammering painfully inside my chest.
“Oh, my God! You’re doing that thing with your eyes!” Lara grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me roughly. “What is it?” She looked around wildly.
“I’ve got a real bad feeling about that place.” I looked up the road and nodded with my chin. “There’s another bus stop a block up. I’ll walk you over there.”
She shook her head. “No way.” She pointed to the building behind us. “Besides, there’s nobody in there, it’s pitch-dark.”
“Yeah, but still…” My palms were beginning to sweat and I had more than a bad feeling now—I had an image of a woman flash in my mind. A very dead woman. “Oh jeez.” I rubbed at my eyes. “Come on!” I yanked Lara by the elbow and tried pulling her up the road.
She tugged her arm free and studied my face. “You’re really scared. Is this another cat thing? I don’t spook easily but you are making me so curious.” She headed for the main entrance to the vacant building.
My stomach was churning as I followed her. There wasn’t much to see. It was a dilapidated gray stucco building with Keep Out signs hammered to the front door and a cement lot that circled the structure. Lara walked determinedly around the perimeter of the building. At the back, where a board had fallen away, she paused before peering inside the abandoned structure.
“Nothing!” She let out a disgusted breath. “I’m telling you, Tabitha, after everything Jenny’s told me about this psychic thing you’ve got going on, I’m kinda disappointed.”
“Yeah, well, Jenny does tend to exaggerate.” I glanced around and sighed with relief that no bogeymen were lurking in the parking lot behind us either. “Guess my feeling was off.” I didn’t want to think about the image that had flashed through my mind. “Let’s go.”
“Hey, what’s that?” Lara asked before we’d taken a step.
“What?”
“Painted on that Dumpster.” She nodded to the corner of the parking lot with her chin. “Could that be…” She began walking toward it. “Oh, my God, it is! It’s a pentagram! You said there was one at the cemetery, too, right?!”
My feet froze to the pavement. A streetlight in the corner of the lot angled a dim yellow sheen bathing the Dumpster in an eerie glow. Spray-painted over the words, Pacific Refuse Inc., was a black pentagram. That real bad feeling I’d had earlier returned. Lara walked closer to the bin and was now only a couple of feet away.
“Don’t,” I said weakly.
“It’s just a Dumpster.” She looked over her shoulder at me and made clucking noises. “Unless you’re thinking there’s something in here besides trash, like maybe another mutilated cat or something.”
“It’s the or something that bothers me and I’m not hanging around to find out.” I stomped away hoping that Lara would follow, but after a dozen steps I looked over my shoulder and saw that she was not behind me. She’d done the exact opposite—she’d shimmied up the side of the Dumpster.
“You know what?” Her voice echoed loudly inside the container. She shoved herself off, landed on her feet and wiped her hands on her jacket with a look of revulsion.
“What?”
“The Dumpster’s empty but there’s a puddle of something inside there. It looks like it could be blood. Of course, it’s hard to tell in the dark.”
My throat tightened. “I’m guessing there’s a lot more blood than would come from a cat, right?”
“Yep. A lot more.”
I wanted to run. Run far. Run fast. Lara, on the other hand, did the exact opposite, again. She called the cops.
Twenty minutes later I was sitting curbside with a good view of one of Seattle’s finest shining his flashlight into the Dumpster. He pushed himself off it in much the same manner as Lara had and then his partner climbed up and did a similar look-see inside with his flashlight. Lara was pacing nonstop in front of me, her face bright with excitement.
After a few minutes, the cops strode over. One was a fiftyish Hispanic guy with a thick mustache. The other was a younger cop who was built like a refrigerator with stringy blond hair.
Refrigerator Cop spoke first, addressing Lara. “You’re right that it looks like blood but, obviously, we can’t tell just by looking at it that it’s from a human. Probably somebody just dumped some meat.”
I let out a snort from my place at the curb and Refrigerator Cop turned and narrowed his eyes at me. “Tell me again what brought you around the building to look in the Dumpster.”
“Hey, I didn’t look in there,” I protested. “I was just following her.” I indicated Lara with my chin.
“Yeah, and she wanted to check because you had a psychic vision or something,” Mustache Cop said sarcastically and he and his partner shared identical smirks.
I got to my feet and clapped my hands together. “Well, looks like you guys have everything under control, so I’m going to go home to bed.”
“We’ve got the crime lab guys on their way and they’ll check out the Dumpster to be sure,” said Mustache Cop. “And we’ve got your information, so we’ll be in touch if anything further comes up.”
The look on his face said that he didn’t believe anything further would come up. He believed the pentagram on the side of the Dumpster was teenage graffiti and that the gooey stuff in the Dumpster was not human blood. I slid my gaze to the Dumpster and fear made my nerves ping.
Lara caught her bus and I ran the rest of the way to my apartment. I spent the better part of the night not able to sleep because of an unending slide show of morbid snapshots that flashed behind my eyelids. It began with the poor mutilated kitty in the graveyard, then that picture faded and the image of a woman’s bloody torso took its place. In the final slide, I saw the inside of a dimly lit building where someone was lighting a large black candle. I could almost smell the wax at this point. That’s when I would wake up in a cold sweat. Needless to say, fighting the dreams meant that sleep eluded me until I finally helped it along at three-thirty in the morning with tequila—kept for medicinal use only.
Since my car was sick I’d set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. It was an hour earlier than usual, but it would give me plenty of time to catch a bus and get to the office promptly. However, tequila-induced sleep does what it’s supposed to do. I slammed my fist on the snooze button no less than a dozen times. When I finally did roll out of bed—groggily at that—it was after eight.
“Holy shit!” I yelped and stumbled into the shower.
My apartment was described in the ad as a cozy, metropolitan unit with a parklike view. Actually, it was a dumpy basement studio with narrow, dirty windows, one of which looked out onto the parking lot and some sparse shrubs. The pipes grumbled before spewing hot water for my five-minute shower, then I wrestled my eyelids to remain open long enough for me to impale them with contact lenses. I was hopping into pumps and running out the door a couple minutes later.
As usual, my neighbor, Mrs. Sumner, opened her door a crack and peered at me. Also, as usual, Mrs. Sumner, a stale fiftyish woman, had her hair in curlers, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth and sported a ratty pink housecoat. The only time I ever saw poor Mr. Sumner, a meek whipped form of a man, was when he was sneaking out the door and tiptoeing down the hall.
“Mornin’, Mrs. Sumner.” I nodded as I passed.
“If you’re gonna be comin’ in late and leavin’ early don’t always be slammin’ your door!” she shouted after me.
“Bye, Mrs. Sumner,” I shouted back and ran as fast as I could.
