Million Dollar Road (12 page)

“What do you say?” Con relaxed in his chair, confidently awaiting her answer with the satisfaction of knowing that he'd played this hand to perfection—as well as a new admiration for Lireinne's unexpectedly having driven a better bargain than he'd meant to offer her.

The girl met his eyes, and Con was gratified at the way hers were shining. “We can use the extra money, for sure,” she said. Her smile slowly dawned. “Swear to God—I won't let you down, Mr. Costello.”

“Please.” Con laughed in pure delight. In that instant he couldn't help imagining her in his arms, how delicious she was going to feel, how happy he was going to make her. “Call me Con. ‘Mr. Costello' was my dad.”

Lireinne, not smiling now, nodded. “Um, okay. Thanks, Mr. Con.”

Mr. Con. Well, that was going to have to be enough for now, he thought. The time wasn't right to push anymore on that front. He could wait.

“Take the rest of the day off, why don't you?” Con said. “Pick up that check from Jackie and go shopping.”

“Yes
sir,
” Lireinne said. She gracefully rose to her feet. “Thanks again. I really appreciate the chance.”

Con watched her leave, experiencing an intense appreciation for her slender, retreating back that was mixed with a fine impatience. Sighing as she shut the door, he picked up the phone and dialed Jackie's extension.

“I need you to cut a check, made out to Lireinne for six hundred. It looks like we're going to be needing another hoser,” Con said affably, lighting a cigar. “Harlan can take over Lireinne's job until we get someone new. Give Manpower a call, why don't you. This time around, let's have a guy for the job if we can get one.”

Done. Satisfied and keenly looking forward to tomorrow, Con hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. He had this, he thought. His plan was well-begun.

In his hand, the cigar's ember glowed like a banked fire.

 

The September afternoon was mild and dry; the rich, dusty scent of oak mast, wild asters, and goldenrod an aromatic promise that fall would be coming soon.

Unaware of her surroundings, Lireinne walked home with the carefully folded check for six hundred dollars in her hand, glancing at it in dazed elation from time to time. She couldn't seem to feel certain yet it was real.

How freaking amazing, the way life could turn on a dime!

When Lireinne had left the trailer this morning, her jaw had been clenched with the surety that today was the day she was going to be fired. All morning she'd hosed the bad Monday barns, bad because no one ever cleaned them over the weekend, and the five she'd had to leave undone on Friday were enough to have made her gag. Sick with apprehension, Lireinne struggled to ignore Harlan's sniggering comments, his talk about how she was going to be out on her ass by the end of the day.

But against all her dire expectations, this afternoon she'd been promoted instead!

Even the squirmy memory of Mr. Con's fingers on her knee couldn't mar this oceanic relief, this feeling of
freedom
. Her new boss might be a toucher, but he probably didn't mean anything by it, she thought. In Lireinne's book of all-time-worst experiences—Brett and Harlan—the bad guys didn't mess around. They grabbed you, and then they took what they wanted. No, Mr. Con was just a little pervy that way, and hadn't she taken care of herself with one creep already? So what if her boss tried anything more? She'd find a way to handle that, too, because she had something real going for her now. Lireinne had a real
job
.

“Two thousand dollars a month!” Even said aloud, the words couldn't seem to make the outrageous amount of money any less impossible-sounding. Two thousand dollars a month was like winning the Powerball, or digging up a trunk full of gold in Mose's field behind the trailer.
And
she was going to get a car. Suddenly, the world's front doors were opened wide to her, a limitless horizon stretching as far as she could see. A
car
.

Lireinne stopped in the middle of the road, her arms outstretched, her face tilted up at the cloudless sky of deepest blue.

“Two thousand dollars a month!” she sang to the astonished cows in the field beside her.

“A car!” Lireinne called in triumph to the startled crow perched on the power pole overhead. “And
two thousand dollars a month
.” With money like that, she could save for Wolf to go to college. He couldn't drop out now, not when she'd have an honest-to-God salary coming in just like somebody with an education. Lireinne's heart beat a strong, happy rhythm as she resumed her walk home, imagining the flabbergasted looks Wolf's and Bud's faces would wear when she told them her news.

And as if her day wasn't already great enough, she had a check to buy new clothes, right here in her hand.

Lireinne sobered at that thought, remembering that the bank closed at five—it must be nearly three o'clock—and after she cashed the check she'd still need to go shopping. She was going to need special clothes now, clothes unlike any she'd had before. Jackie at the office and Tina the farm manager dressed in skirts and tailored pants; they wore nice shoes. She bet they had purses that cost a lot, too. No way she could find real clothes like that at the Dollar General, probably not even at Walmart. In fact, she didn't even have the first clue as to where to
begin
to get that kind of stuff.

And more importantly, without a car, how the hell was she going to get everything done before tomorrow morning? She owned nothing that might work for her first day at her new job.

Bud was going to be late getting home; he'd told her so yesterday. “Going to be a long one on Monday, honey. That well over to the Pentecostals' has got to get done and over with before they run out of money to pay us.” So, getting a ride from Bud was out, she realized in discouragement.

Lireinne hadn't thought to ask to take the promised Explorer home, and anyway, hadn't Mr. Con said she'd have to be on the insurance first? She couldn't bring herself to call him now. What if he told her the promotion was a mistake, that he'd thought it over and she wasn't right for the job after all? No, Lireinne decided. That was out, too. She'd have to find another way.

Then she remembered that lady, Emma Favreaux. She could ask
her
for a ride, couldn't she? Emma had
said
she could call if she needed anything. Lireinne had kept the slip of paper, the name and number printed on it in an elegant hand, in her wallet.

Well, why the hell not? She had nothing to lose by asking.

Lireinne struck out walking faster than before, hurrying toward home to find out if Emma had been telling the truth.

She
did
say she wanted to help.

 

“Oh, yes!”

After listening to Lireinne's excited news, Emma seemed completely down with the trip to town. “A
promotion
?” she exclaimed. “How wonderful for you, how happy you must be! I'll be there in thirty minutes, okay? We'll have to get to the bank before they close, but then we'll head to New Orleans, to the mall at Lakeside. They're open until nine so we can take our time.”

Lireinne hugged herself in giddy relief, cradling the phone between her shoulder and her ear. “Oh, wow,
thanks
. I've never been to Lakeside, like ever. Sometimes I used to hear the girls at school talking about shopping there. Holy cow, now
I
get to go.”

Emma chuckled. “I'm looking forward to it, too. See you in thirty minutes, then.”

After she hung up the phone, Lireinne dashed outside and fed Mose without taking the time to hang out with him while he ate. Instead, she ran back inside to the trailer's cramped bathroom for a quick shower to lose the stink of the barns, afterward blow-drying her long hair at the speed of sound.

Lireinne looked at her reflection in the foggy mirror, debating whether she should put on some makeup. No, there wasn't time, and besides, she almost never bothered with it. Makeup did nothing to cover her scar, never had. So, dressed in her best pair of jeans and a fresh white tank top, she was just sliding her feet into the red flip-flops when there was a light rap at the door.

“Coming!” Grabbing her old purse, Lireinne ran to the front of the trailer and slipped quickly through the door, hoping to keep Emma from seeing inside. The sectional was covered in rumpled blankets and she hadn't had a chance to pick up after Wolf, who was MIA again this afternoon. She hadn't needed to worry, though. Emma, wearing a shapeless gray linen dress and clunky sandals that made her look kind of dumpy, in Lireinne's opinion, was waiting for her down in the yard and was nowhere near the door, thank God.

“Hey, let's go!” Lireinne said happily. She rushed down the cement steps and climbed up in the front seat of the shiny silver truck, the interior rich with the smell of new leather. She was already buckling her seat belt before Emma had even gotten in on the driver's side.

“Take a deep breath.” Emma smiled reassurance at Lireinne. “We're going to have enough time.” She slid the key into the ignition and the truck's diesel engine turned over with a well-tuned rumble. Classical music filled the cab, an atonal cascade of complicated notes that Lireinne found bewildering. Who listened to this stuff?

“Change the station if you want,” Emma said as she backed the truck down the drive. “Oh, and by the way—congratulations on your promotion. You know, I'm embarrassed to realize that I forgot to ask where you work.”

Lireinne was looking for another radio station. “I didn't tell you? At Sauvage Global Enterprises, down at the alligator farm.” Her usual music station acquired, she was applying lip gloss in the truck's vanity mirror and didn't notice Emma's interested face turning stony.

She was going on a shopping trip with six hundred dollars to spend!

But after a flying trip to the bank, during the trip across the Causeway to New Orleans, Emma was almost wordless. Lireinne didn't think much of it. She was too busy telling Emma all about how freaking awesome it was, getting that humongous raise, how the money was going to change
everything
for the Hooten family, so those murmured, single-worded responses didn't really register.

And once they were at the mall, Lireinne couldn't wait to begin shopping. In Dillard's, after avoiding a trio of scarily made-up women shoehorned into black dresses who threatened them with atomizers of perfume, Emma and Lireinne took the escalator—another new experience—upstairs to a section called “Career Separates.” Lireinne was surprised by how much everything cost there, even something as simple as a skirt. She'd thought six hundred dollars was a lot of money until she looked at the price tags. At this rate, she wouldn't be able to buy more than a couple of things, she thought in discouragement, much less a whole new wardrobe for work.

Now that she was no longer looking, Emma's preoccupation was impossible to miss. Emma didn't seem to see that Lireinne had stopped shopping for what she couldn't afford, that she was reduced to hanging around, feeling depressed. Instead, Emma flipped through the racks of clothes without saying anything to Lireinne at all.

Finally, Emma glanced at Lireinne. She cleared her throat. “I think you're going to get more for your money if we go out into the mall,” she said. “And all this is too old for you, too severe.” She looked away, frowning at a pair of black slacks. “Let's go try Banana Republic. There's always a sale there, and for the money, the quality is fairly good. Clothes matter, you know. People treat you differently when you're well dressed.” She seemed to say this with an effort, as though she'd rather not be talking at all.

Emma's clothes came off as pretty dumpy to Lireinne. Still, Emma must have better taste than she'd originally thought: she'd seen the automatic respect the salesladies had given her, but Lireinne had assumed it was because she was older. Maybe that dress of hers was as expensive as the rest of the merchandise and Lireinne just didn't get it. She nodded, relieved that Emma must really know what she was doing when it came to clothes.

“I don't know what to buy anyhow,” Lireinne said. “Not really.”

“Let's go,” Emma said quietly.

She didn't say anything more after that, but in mutual agreement they walked out of Career Separates and went downstairs out into the mall. It was an enormous, dazzling corridor of stores, shops, kiosks, and crowds.

Trying to stroll nonchalantly through Lakeside's wide marble aisles among the throngs of other shoppers, Lireinne was rendered almost speechless at the choices before her, the cool places she'd only seen advertised in the pages of
Vogue
and
Cosmo
. There was an Abercrombie & Fitch (“too casual and way too expensive,” Emma said), a Gap (“mostly cheap jeans”), and a Talbots (“not really your style, I don't think”).

They passed at least fifteen shoe stores, a candle shop expelling a thick, almost visible fog-bank of competing smells through its open doors, glitzy boutiques selling evening gowns, swimsuits, and ski clothes, an Apple Store with what seemed like a million people in it, a Build-A-Bear store with nobody in it, an opulent jewelry gallery where the windows were draped with ropes of pearls, chalcedony, and gold, a Victoria's Secret, and a JCPenney. She could have window-shopped for weeks at Lakeside and never have gotten tired of it, no
way,
Lireinne thought in mounting excitement as they walked through the aisles of the enormous mall.

At the Godiva chocolate shop, though, she tugged at Emma's sleeve. The older woman had been striding along in her thick-soled sandals through the crowds, showing no interest whatsoever in the wonderfulness surrounding them. It was like she was on some kind of superimportant, special-ops mission with no time to spare for plain old window-shopping.