Glorious Sunset (2 page)

Present day: Columbus, Ohio, USA

 

Violet Jackson's company, Shades of Violet, was buzzing with activity, phones ringing and people moving around; it was crazy and manic and Violet loved it.

Her business wasn't large, but it was profitable and growing every day. She had a staff of one assistant and a multitude of interns eager to cut their human ecology teeth in a bona fide design studio and Violet was more than willing to take advantage of their free labor. It freed her up to do other things like what she was doing now: convincing someone to do what she wanted.

Violet thrust a swath of material toward a slight woman with glasses perched on her nose.

“Red?” the woman said. “I don't know.”

“Absolutely, red,” Violet assured her.

“Red seems so radical.”

“This change in your life is very radical.”

“But, what about this nice pink here?” The woman meekly held up a “candy hearts” pink paint swatch.

Violet hid a sigh and dropped the material. The thing about Columbus, Ohio was that it wasn't New York City. There were precious few people who had both the money and the desire to delve into unchartered territories. Artists with courage were always broke, unlike those rich little bohemians in New York. And the rich people in Columbus were busy trying to one-up each other by seeing which one could get the dullest dull colors they could find and calling it “classy.” Sure, she liked some plain stuff too, but not all the time. The reviewers claimed it was because she was black and naturally took to reds and golds. Whatever.

She took the woman by the arm. “Doris, I love you to death but I will not do another pastel chic job for you. For some people that might work, but not for you. Red is your favorite color.”

“But red walls? What will people think? I'm forty-five years old. It'll look like a hippy pad.”

“It will be tasteful and classy and you will wonder why you ever hesitated.”

“But—”

“Listen to me, Doris. You said you wanted to completely change that house and I don't blame you. But you also told me pastel is what
he
liked. Ivories, beiges, light peaches: those were colors he wanted, am I right?”

Doris nodded, wide-eyed.

“Where is he, Doris? Where is this man you spent your whole adult life trying to please? I'll tell you where: he's shacking up with some silicon-stuffed porn star in a penthouse with a Porsche and his freedom, that's where. So what the heck are you still trying to please him for? The kids are away at school, Doris. There's no one rumbling around in that house but you. It's pretty much the only thing you got in the settlement.”
Well, that and maybe a million or ten.
But rich women loved it when you pretended they were just like regular working-class grunts. “So you tell me, who should you care about impressing now? Doris?”

Doris looked at her shyly. “Me?”

Violet held her hand to her ear. “I'm sorry, I can't hear you.”

“Me?”

“You're darned right. And what has been your favorite color for only your whole entire life?”

“Red.”

“Okay then. Am I going to be creating a warm, comfortable home for you with red walls that reflect the fire in your fireplace and in your soul and giving you a sense of peace and pride and confidence? Or am I going to my Rolodex to refer you to one of my associates who specialize in your ex-husband's favorite pastels?” Violet was bluffing, of course. She would no sooner turn away business than she would cut off her right arm, but bluffing sometimes worked.

Doris smiled, bashfully, and pumped her arm in the air. “I want red! Oh, I want red!”

Violet smiled. “That's all I need to hear.” She hugged Doris. “Now, get out of my shop and let me work.”

Doris looked at her, eyes twinkling. “Thank you, Violet. I'm so excited!” She was dreaming of her new red walls as she scurried out of the shop.

Violet was thinking of the potential of this sale. She would give Doris a redesign that would be the envy of every moderately wealthy divorcee in Columbus. And then they would all flock to her thinking that that Violet woman had some innate sense of color credited to her ethnicity. Then they would all want to do the “ethnic” and Violet would happily smother her indignation under the blanket of money and fame that was sure to follow. It was a win-win situation all-round.

Whew, that almost made up for the fact that her neighbor had stolen her paper, again. It almost made up for the fact that the cleaners had somehow forgotten to send out her clothes so the thirty minutes out of her way had been wasted. It almost made up for the fact that her hairdresser had overbooked and she was the casualty. Sure, they all got a piece of her mind but Violet got the short end of the stick. Couldn't trust anyone in this darned town. It was the story of her life.

Violet barely had a moment before the phone rang and her assistant was handing her the receiver.

“Yeah. What?” It was one of her contractors working on a house and trying to give her the shaft. It was like she had C
HARLIE
B
ROWN
stamped on her forehead! “No, I told you pink marble. Look, you little twerp, if I have to come down there and kick your tail all the way to Italy, you will get that marble and have it properly laid by the opening date or . . . What? Try suing me; my lawyer is even worse to deal with. Mhmm, mhmm. I thought so. Thank you so much.” She hung up the phone. It was always amazing how quickly fear could motivate the jack-offs of the world. For goodness' sake, all she wanted was for people to do what they said they were going to do! But she knew the cliché was true: if you wanted something done right you had to do it yourself.

Her receptionist handed her some pink message slips and she was about to go back into her office when the front door opened and a thin, pretty, cinnamon-colored woman ran in smiling. Her best friend, Brenda, was fifty pounds soaking wet with a trust fund big enough to cover the state of Texas. Brenda: friend and competitor with her own shop not too far from Violet's. Brenda: who'd only just last night revealed in a lavish, intimate to-do—with 200 of her closest friends—that she was engaged to none other than Violet's ex-boyfriend, Gary. Brenda: who'd put Violet on the spot, asking her to be her maid of honor while the fiancé/ex-boyfriend smirked with malice. 200 people stared with morbid curiosity and Violet managed to successfully accept the heartfelt invitation, and keep the champagne-flavored bile from projectile vomiting from her throat at Linda Blair
Exorcist
speed, at the same time. That Brenda. If Violet weren't so quick on her feet it might have been a disaster of epic proportions.

Though they were best friends, she could easily have gone a week without seeing her smiling face but Brenda was back with the timing and frequency of a bad penny. Violet seriously thought about ducking behind a bolt of fabric but her doe-eyed friend was too quick, herself.

Brenda spotted Violet and ran over on the balls of her feet, looking more like a strange gazelle than a socialite. “You'll never guess what happened!” she said to Violet.

“Umm, you're marrying my ex-boyfriend? I mean, really, Brenda, how many times do you have to say it? Do you think I forgot in the eight hours since I saw you last?” Violet tried to smile over the grimace and stamp out any trace of hysteria.

“No, something else! You'll never guess in a million years!” Brenda dissolved into giggles, only slightly less annoying than the guessing game. She was giggling so much, this had to be bad news.

Something else? What else could there be? After the engagement bombshell everything else should pale in comparison, right?
Prickles of discomfort made their way over her skin. “Tell me, Brenda, before I slap it out of you.”

“You know the Bickman account?”

Violet's ears perked. “Ronald Bickman? The zillionaire who is decorating his newly built five million dollar home? That Bickman?”

If Brenda's jumping up and down didn't confirm, her open-mouthed, soundless scream did the job. “I got the account!”

“The Bickman account?” Violet's skin turned icy. “The one that every designer in town is trying to get?”
The one that I'm trying to get?

Brenda nodded enthusiastically and she jumped again, making the male interns all happy at the sight of her bouncing boobies. “I got the account!”

Violet felt stuck on phonics. “Ronald Bickman?”

“Yes, Ronald Bickman, yes! Violet, I got the account!”

Violet was silent and still for a moment, swallowing down an unexpected wave of hurt, then: “You witch.”

Brenda dissolved into tears of joy and laughter, enveloping Violet in a hug. “I knew you'd be happy for me! Oh, Violet, this is going to put us on the map.”

“You mean it'll put your business on the map, not mine.”

“I've been waiting for something like this my whole life. And really, I have you to thank. Once he saw the Melting technique—”

Violet felt her stomach slowly slide toward the bottom of her pelvic cavity and sink somewhere underneath her intestines. “Melting technique?”

“He was looking for something different, original. And when I showed him how we could lay the patterned material on the walls and paint over them in a semi-translucent color and then apply low-grade heat, he was hooked. We used a tweed-ish material with an oatmeal overlay.”

“You showed him my technique?” Violet asked. The air swirled about her head, dangerously. It was the first sign of fury; she knew it well as it was one of only two danger zones. But Brenda was her friend and her sense of loyalty was throwing her synapses all off whack. Fury had no place in friendship, right?

Brenda covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes grew large. “Oh, Violet, I haven't offended you, have I? It's just that I was losing his interest so fast I had to think of something. And it isn't like Melting is your trademark or anything. I mean, it's a procedure anyone could have thought of.”

“But anyone didn't think of it. I thought of it. And patented it,” Violet ground out through her smile.

“Oh God, Violet, you're not mad, are you?” Brenda had finally caught a whiff of Violet's inner fury and the water in her eyes threatened to spilleth over.

Violet could feel the eyes of her staff and customers on her. It would not do to make a scene. And what would be the point? If she ran around now claiming the Melting technique was hers, it would only look like sour grapes. She would have to find another way to handle this. She shuffled her anger beneath her pain, which was anchored somewhere underneath her stomach and intestines, and shrugged, despite the dangerous pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears. “Don't be silly. I'm happy for you.”

She was the bigger person, she said to herself as she enveloped Brenda in a hug way too tight, hoping to rupture her spleen. Sometimes extra weight came in handy. But Brenda was immune to injury and pulled herself from Violet's grasp, happy again.

“Besides, this isn't just a good thing for me. Ronald Bickman could have flown in someone from New York, Milan, Paris, anywhere. But he stuck with a designer from right here in Columbus. This is going to put all of us on the map. I hear his last home was featured in
InStyle.
”

Violet winced and was only half joking when she said, “Okay, stop right now or I'm really going to have to do you bodily harm.”

She hadn't had a blow to the gut like this since . . . last night. And before that? Oh yes, the time she'd found out Brenda and Gary had been going at it like jackrabbits behind her back; that had nearly made her pass out. She'd always thought it was ridiculous when she'd read about women catching the “vapors” but that time she was pretty darned sure she'd caught a vapor or two. She must have caught a whole vat of vapors. She could barely crawl out of bed after that. If it weren't for the fact that Brenda was her only friend, she would no longer be a friend at all, but beggars couldn't be choosers. And the cheating thing, that was a memory best reminisced along with a bottle of tequila and a quart of ice cream at home. It had no place in the office.
No place in the office!

“You know, I feel a little headache right here between the eyes.” Violet tweaked the area of her nose in that spot, disappointed that it was actually true. It had started out such a wonderful day.

“I know; it's like my luck is incredible, right? But now I don't know how I'm going to do everything. A wedding and a contract and we're going to have to move, for sure. We need something way bigger, for expansion, you know?”

Violet covered a hiccup behind pursed lips. The hiccups were the first sign of her second danger zone: the one she was more afraid of than blind fury.

“Look at me standing around, shooting the breeze when there's so much to do. Gotta go. I'll see you later!” Brenda called happily, in her unique blustery, self-centered way. The bell tinkled behind her as her jaunty, skinny behind wiggled out the door.

It was the tinkling bell signaling the utter futility of her life that finally did it. In what “law of averages” universal theory did spoiled little rich girls always trump lower–middle class, hardworking, smart, determined, ambitious girls?
Every freakin' time.

Violet's breath caught in a louder hiccup gasp and all eyes swung her way.
Calm down
,
sister.
But how could she calm down? Brenda stole her man and her contract right from under her! Her eyelid jerked ominously and before uttering another word she began a quick, stiff power walk to her office, feeling the eyes of her staff following her all the way. Shutting the door behind her, she fumbled the blinds closed, and made a mad sprint to her desk. Quickly, she procured an empty brown paper lunch bag from her hidden stash as the gasps erupted from her in progressively louder, stronger increments. Finally, Violet plopped into her chair, leaned her head between her knees, and pressed the opening of the bag to her face with trembling fingers. She let loose, breathing in a huge amount of air so quickly stars swam in front of her face, exhaling just as violently. The brown paper balled up tight and then expanded on her exhale like a crazed balloon as she gave in to the hyperventilation.