Claustrophobic Read online

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, and I worried he tried to ward off a headache in vain.

  “Your mother is a fashion designer, Julian. Not a shopper assistant person. She’s a fashion designer. She’s a fashion designer who headlines on magazine covers because she can wear her own clothing without looking like an idiot.”

  “I was hoping she’d be able to do some sort of quick fix to the dress,” he admitted.

  “That’s possible?”

  Julian’s mother snorted from the general direction of the kitchen. “You can’t fix that disaster. It’s the wrong size. It’ll take thirty minutes to modify the dress I have in mind and another twenty to add the fur. Stop whining, Julian. We’ll be playing Scrabble in no time. Chloe, come here, dear. I want to confirm your measurements so it’s a once and done job.”

  Julian pointed in the direction of the kitchen. “Dining room is right around the corner from the kitchen, and that’s where she invades and sews when she can’t be bothered to go home and sew there.”

  “You might survive this delay of your planned game,” I replied, heading for the dining room, hoping I wouldn’t spend the entire night posing as a doll for Mrs. Carter. She pounced the instant I crossed the threshold, armed with a measuring tape. I stood still, did as told, and puzzled over how she made sense of the measurements without writing anything down.

  In addition to the sewing machine, she had a sketch pad, which she used to draw a slinky dress edged with white fur. Like Kristine’s dress, there were no straps, but she scribbled in a fur shawl that could hide straps. “Straps?” I asked, pointing at the shawl.

  “Sneezing should not be a peril when working in a mall.”

  My eyes widened. “How’d you guess?”

  “Chloe, you were sucking in your gut to not bust out of that dress. If you sneezed, you would’ve been showing the entire mall your bra. And while Julian appreciates a good bra thanks to a strong education in feminine apparel, he’s not the type to enjoy such displays in public settings. Or get caught enjoying it in public settings.” Julian’s mother leaned in the direction of the living room and hollered, “And I don’t want to hear a single word about you admiring the scenery, young man. I raised you better than that!”

  “Mother, would you stop!” Julian howled.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s shy, and you saw his collection of board games without turning tail and running. He’s expecting me to drive you off in five minutes. It’s not my fault every woman he brings home with him can’t handle being dressed up by a fashion designer. I’m being honest about what you’re getting yourself into here.”

  I was getting myself into something, and it involved being dressed up by a fashion designer? What girl didn’t want to be dressed up by a fashion designer at least once in her life? “I don’t think I’ve owned an authentic designer anything in my life,” I admitted.

  “Well, shit.” Julian’s mother pulled out her phone and pressed a button. “Darling, raid my shoe closet and my purse rack. Grab the first three black purses you see that look nice and pick a few pairs of boots.” She paused to look at my feet. “Bring a variety of sixes and sevens. Hell, load the car. I’ll have the boy open his garage. Julian brought home a girl in dire need of designer purses and shoes. View it as a chance to clean my closet for me. Oh! The new leather coat prototype. Bring it over. I think she’ll fit it. And the faux-fur shrug. That should work, too. Fuck it, bring everything you can fit in the car that you think’ll fit.”

  “Mom!” Julian skidded into the dining room. “What are you doing?”

  “Distracting the competition between turns in Scrabble. Anything for my victory, and if she’s changing between her turns, she obviously won’t be able to strategize. You know I hate losing, Julian. Stop complaining and go fetch some carry bags for her new clothes. It’s not every day I get to dress such a pretty woman at my leisure. Merry Christmas to me!”

  Why hadn’t I run away at the first sign of trouble? Ah, right. I’d obviously misplaced my common sense the instant I’d agreed to play elf for Kristine’s benefit. I’d need a miracle to escape Julian’s house alive and in my own clothes. Sighing, I lifted a foot and stared at my cheap boots. “I like these boots.”

  “They’re good boots, dear. Not all good things have to cost a fortune, and I’d wear those if I owned them. Good boots need not bankrupt you, but we all deserve a little luxury in our lives. Consider it an early Christmas gift. I certainly can’t wiggle into what you wear. I haven’t been a size two or three in years. I like chocolate chip cookies too much to work my way back down from a five.”

  “I can make cookies,” I said, jumping on the one thing I could do well. “He has a stand mixer if he has the ingredients.”

  “Julian, if you don’t have the ingredients, go get them from my house.”

  “I’ll just go help Dad or he won’t make it back here for hours. Anything else you need?”

  “Cookies.”

  I laughed, dug into my purse, and grabbed my pad and pen, jotting down the ingredients I’d need to make a batch of cookies. “Sorry, Julian.”

  “You’ll only be sorry if I don’t get any.”

  Well, if I needed to do the whole gift-giving thing, I knew what would get me out of it with minimal discomfort: cookies. “I think I can manage to save you at least one.”

  “I’ll be back soon. If I leave Dad unsupervised, he’ll empty your closet.”

  “More space to design new clothes. I like it. You should help him empty my closet. I’ll even be nice and drive Chloe home, as I’m sure your dainty little car won’t fit her new wardrobe.”

  “You are a nuisance,” Julian muttered before stomping off. He even slammed the door.

  Hah! I’d found a flaw. Door slamming definitely counted as a flaw. “He’s moody.”

  “We have dared to delay his inevitably defeat, and from the moment he started talking, he just wanted to play games. He never outgrew that phase, but now that phase costs him a small fortune. He has a special insurance policy just for his games.”

  “Really?”

  “Follow me. I’ll show you something.” Julian’s mother led me to his living room and pointed at an older game with a worn box on the top shelf. “This went out of print ten years ago, and is worth approximately five thousand dollars now to the right buyer even in its worn condition. It was a small one-time game press title, and they only sold a few hundred copies. It’s a fun enough game. One of Julian’s favorites, but it’s nigh impossible to get a copy these days. He wants to get a duplicate of the game made so he can play it more often without risking damaging anything. The problem is, he hasn’t been able to find the license holder for the game, so he can’t get permission to have a custom copy made. Unbeknownst to him, I was able to find the owner and am getting a new version made for him. I should have it in time for Christmas.”

  “Wow. That little box is worth five thousand?”

  “That’s what I said when I first found out. He loves old, unusual games like that. If you’re ever looking for a present for him, ask me for a copy of his spreadsheet and get him something that’s not on it. I also have a list of rare games he’s been looking for but hasn’t been able to acquire.”

  “Like what?”

  “The original edition of Monopoly is a good one. It’s hard to get one with all the original pieces.”

  “The one in the white box with the red trim? Is more square than the current ones, and has a big blue dollar sign on it with the Monopoly man?”

  Julian’s mother blinked, and her brows raised. “You know which one it is?”

  Well, I had an ace up my sleeve, and I’d be able to enjoy teasing Julian. “I have a copy under my bed.”

  “You have an original 1935 edition Monopoly game under your bed?”

  “It was my grandfather’s, and he got it when it first came out. I don’t play a lot of games, but I hate losing pieces of the few games I have, so everything is there. I count the bills every time I get it out and play
it.”

  She tossed her head back and laughed. “He’d love a chance to play on that board.”

  “I already told him I don’t play with any house rules.”

  “Well, yeah. When you have an original copy, you play the game right! We sometimes do house rules if we want to drag the game out all day. Otherwise, it ends too quickly.”

  “Well, it wasn’t meant to be a fifteen-hour monstrosity, which is what happens when you have four people and house rules.”

  “Please invite me and my husband over when you show Julian your game of Monopoly for the first time. I want to see his expression when you pull it out from under your bed.”

  Why the hell not? My life couldn’t get any weirder if I tried. “Sure. Just as a warning, my apartment is small. I have two more stints as an elf ahead of me, so maybe one Sunday after?”

  “Make it so, and I’ll make sure Julian goes along with it. When are you scheduled in?”

  “Good question, but knowing Kristine, the Sunday right before Christmas will be one of them.”

  “Ouch. That’s Christmas Eve this year. I’ll bring some wine.”

  Shit. I fled to my purse, brought it to the dining room, and retrieved my phone. Sure enough, Christmas was on a Monday. “What have I done?”

  “Fallen prey to absolute insanity. I’ll tell Julian he will not be driving to the mall that Sunday, and I’ll pick you up so you won’t have to suffer through public transit. Traffic will be hell, though.”

  The proud New Yorker in me wanted to decline her offer, but the sensible, practical woman in me seized the opportunity. “Thank you. That would be helpful. I think Julian was frazzled from parking.”

  “He’s stubborn, my boy. It’ll take me a few hours of bitching at him to get him to agree to accepting a ride from his dear old mother. I can hear his whining now. How dare I imply he’s not a proper adult?”

  I laughed, marveling how he’d gone from living in his parents’ basement to incapable of accepting help. Oh, right. Same way I did. We had a serious case of New Yorker. “Suggest he’ll lose IQ points if he tries to drive himself there and park on Christmas Eve.”

  “Good idea. I’ll try that. So, how much closet space do you have?”

  “Not a lot. I’m thinking about moving to somewhere with a bit more space and lower rent.”

  “I wish you the best of luck with that in this town. What field are you in?”

  “I’m a receptionist at a legal firm.”

  “Ah-ha! You must have worked at his old workplace. He said there was a nice blonde who used to work with him. He must have meant you. That salary’s tough around here. Where do you live?”

  Julian had told his mother about me? “Parkchester.”

  “That’s a tough commute. Thinking about leaving town, then? It’s hard to get much cheaper without living in some seriously sketchy areas.”

  “Maybe. Depends on how the next few weeks at work go. They’ve been shoveling on more hours.”

  “Did Julian give you a card for any of his headhunter friends? If not, I’ll mug him and get one for you. There are some good firms that pay receptionists well, depending on what other skills you have.”

  “He did give me a card.”

  “Use it. And if you decide you’re headed out of town, let me know. I have a few lines good for women in business, and you’ll want every edge possible. You can do a shoot or two for me in exchange for the clothes. I always need models who can wear real clothes well, and my damned marketing department forgets waists and breasts are real things women have. I design my clothes for everyone, damn it! If I wanted to design clothes for a stick, I’d go get a stick and dress it up.”

  I wondered if telling Julian’s mother I might move had been a bad idea. Oh, well. I only had myself to blame. If I had more friends and spent less time at work, I probably wouldn’t blurt everything out as often. “I don’t know anything about modeling.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll set up the shoot to catch you acting naturally. Translate that to mean I’ll dress you up, follow you around, and take pictures. Maybe I’ll even coerce Julian into playing along. He won’t wear my suits, damn it!”

  I laughed. “Did Julian get his tendency to wager from you by any chance?”

  “Already started betting with you, has he?”

  I nodded.

  “He likes competing. In a way, yes. We do fun little wagers all the time. Got something in mind?”

  I smiled, thinking of a way I could assuage my New York pride and still accept her offerings without my guilt getting in the way. “If I beat you at Scrabble tonight, you have to do the wardrobe thing for me, knowing I’m a receptionist who works for attorneys and don’t usually keep much in my closet.”

  “If I win, you’ll give my boy that 1935 original Monopoly game for Christmas.”

  I could see how she’d view the wager to be equal; I lost something of value to me, she gave me something of value. My grandfather would approve, too.

  I’d gotten my mean streak and my sense of right and wrong from him more than anyone else.

  “Deal.” I held out my hand, and we shook on it. “Julian’s already convinced he’ll lose, and I humored him to make him feel better, but if I have anything to say about this game, you and your husband are going down, and I plan on enjoying my victory.”

  “That’s the way the game is played. Know I’m thinking the exact same thing. Just remember this, Chloe. You can take the girl from New York, but you can’t take the New York out of the girl. Or, in the case of my boy, you might find yourself with a very awkward stalker who is really just trying to figure out how to get you to come back and live in the city again so he has someone to play games with. I just thought you’d like a little warning.”

  I snorted. “Julian wouldn’t do anything crazy like that.”

  “Chloe, I love my son, but he has an obsessive compulsive gaming disorder, and you didn’t run for the hills the instant you realized you’d entered the home of a crazy person. He can’t bring his co-workers home with him; they’d laugh him right out of town. When it’s his turn to host a party, he hosts at my house or does a restaurant gathering. This is my son we’re talking about here. When it comes to games, he’s a crazy person. You’re going to need a stick to beat him off, just you wait and see.”

  I wished, but instead of arguing with her, I changed the subject to safer waters, including where I might find an affordable apartment if the tides of my employment luck didn’t change.

  An hour after leaving, Julian and his father returned, and they brought enough clothing to stock a department store. My brows rose, and I scratched my temple, wondering how I’d fit even a quarter of the clothes into my apartment if I won my wager with Julian’s mother.

  Never before had Scrabble been such serious business.

  Julian’s mother dove into the boxes as her husband and son ferried them into the dining room, and a pile of heeled boots, high heels, and purses grew in front of me. While she’d specified black, the pair had brought a little of everything.

  “Obviously, my son and husband are color blind, but this works well. There’s something for every damned dress and outfit in my closet here. What do you two have against my closet?” Julian’s mother wailed. “You emptied it, you fiends!”

  Julian’s father snorted, dumped another box on the table, and slapped his hand against it. “You don’t wear a size two or three, and I brought both sizes. I’ve heard you howl over the variable sizes enough times to know some of these are going to fit her without you adjusting a damned thing. You have one hour to play dress up, then we are playing Scrabble.”

  “Dictator!”

  “Some of us have to work tomorrow, including you.”

  Of everyone, I likely had the easiest schedule, but if we sacrificed an hour to trying on clothes and playing Scrabble, it’d be two in the morning at the earliest before I made it home.

  “I’d say I’m sorry for them, but somehow, I’ve become an equal playe
r,” Julian admitted, grimacing at the collection of clothes and accessories taking up space in his dining room. “Why does this always happen?”

  “This doesn’t always happen. What usually happens is you call me to rescue you because you realized you’d made an error of judgment in who to bring over to your house. You then, for some foolish reason, hope I’ll save you,” his mother muttered grabbing a pair of red stilettos and shoving them into my hands. “Put those on and walk. I need to see how you move in heels.”

  I obeyed, and I walked around Julian’s kitchen and dining room while his mother watched me, her eyes narrowed. “Good, you don’t pussyfoot in the heels. You have no idea how many women I have to correct on how to walk. If the stiletto can’t handle your weight on the heel, it’s a shit shoe, and I don’t buy shit shoes. It doesn’t look like you’re sliding in the shoe, either. Feel okay?”

  “For a stiletto,” I replied, lifting a foot to stare at the heel. “My feet aren’t screaming yet.”

  “The price we pay for fashion.” She picked a pair of ballet flats and set them on the edge of the table. “These next. These will be your best friend for life. They will fit in any decent sized purse, and when the damned heels have killed your feet, you have a good shoe to get you home.”

  I took off the heels and tried on the flats, which fit, although I had a tendency to want to crunch my toes.

  “No good,” she declared, pointing at an empty box. “You’re pulling your stride. Toss them there.”

  It took five pairs of flats to find a pair she was happy with, which joined the red stilettos in the acceptable pile. The next twenty minutes of my life went down the drain, walking on command and trying every pair of shoes.

  Ten pairs survived her scrutiny, including three pairs of leather boots I’d probably name and take to bed with me every night for the rest of my life.

  “Alright, boys. Out! And no peeking. If we’re going to get this done in the next forty minutes, I can’t be chasing her into the damned bathroom every time we try on a new dress. If you’re required, we’ll ask for you. Out!” Julian’s mother ordered, snapping her fingers and pointing in the direction of the living room. “Go play a game while you wait.”