The flutter of nerves in her tone makes me swallow. “Yeah.” I round the bottom of the staircase and she comes into view, leaning against the cinderblock wall of the landing six steps lower than me. And there’s no mistaking that she’s the source of the chest tug I’ve been experiencing for the last few days. I’m like a metal detector beeping over a silver dollar.
Here it is. X marks the spot.
She might be wearing the same boots, but her clothes are different. Her dress is tight, black, long-sleeved, made of sweater material. Thick gray tights cover her legs. Legs I definitely shouldn’t be checking out in a dark stairwell but can’t seem to help doing. It’s a shortish dress and those tights hug her thighs in a way that a priest couldn’t ignore, let alone a man who hasn’t had sex since…well, let’s not put a date on it. Pre-pandemic, at least. No need to remind myself that I hadn’t been intimate with anyone for a good while before that. Or that I’d taken a break from dating because women seemed to find my personality baffling.
Too unusual. Too nice.
And speaking of people who think I’m just a smile and a piece of neckwear—although this time, I can sense her questioning it, wondering if she’s wrong—there’s a folder In Stella’s hand. Which she promptly hides behind her back.
Okay, then. Here we go.
I sit down on the top step, leaving her at the bottom and her shoulders relax slightly. “Did you know my grandfather named this store Vivant because he wanted to impress a French lady named Camille? It didn’t even work. Now here we are fifty years later. Stuck with it.”
“Your family owns this store,” she states slowly, clearly having no idea. “Wow. I guess it was a mistake to skim the About Us section of the website.”
I wave that off. “Ah, it’s mostly boring nonsense about tradition and quality.”
Her head tilts to the right. “You seem like a guy who would value tradition.”
“Oh, I do. It’s just…my family hasn’t always valued it. At least not in the way it’s portrayed in their store windows.” My fingers fly to my bow tie, adjusting it hastily, the back of my neck gathering like wool in water. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I’m supposed to be making her comfortable enough to do this interview, not bemoaning the pitfalls of being a Cook. Especially when it’s clear this girl has had it a lot harder than me. “I’m just telling you about the legendary rejection of Camille and naming of Vivant as a way of saying…crazier things have happened than me interviewing someone with great ideas and a background in fashion merchandising. Even if we are conducting said interview in Lucifer’s living room.”
She scrutinizes me while turning that over in her mind.
“The way you’re looking at me reminds me of those lasers that scan thumbprints in a spy movie. You know what I’m talking about?” Scenes from the film I watched last night play in my head and I slap my thigh. “I love a good spy movie. Enemy of the State might be my favorite. There’s already high stakes and intrigue and espionage. Then they want to throw in Will Smith and Gene Hackman on top of it? Hell, I’ll rent it twice.”
Stella looks around as if she’s just been teleported to the moon. “This might be the weirdest moment of my life and I’ve been trading cornbread for toothpaste and other assorted toiletries for the last four years.”
My heart jumps up into my mouth at that.
I don’t like thinking about her being locked up.
But she probably likes thinking about it a lot less, so I force myself to imagine it, what her day-to-day life must have been like, and I can’t stop my frown.
The silence is ticking by.
She cocks her head. “Aren’t you going to ask me what I did to get sentenced?”
Am I curious? As all get out. As a prospective employer, I should be asking. Perhaps selfishly, I don’t want to be predictable to her, though. And I don’t want to make her tell me something uncomfortable when we’re already standing on fragile ground. “No, I’m not going to ask. I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope you weren’t a bow tie thief. My collection is valued at forty, some might say fifty dollars.”
A laugh just gets to building in her throat, but she locks it down and visibly searches for something to say. “Okay, don’t ask. But you should know…I deserved to be there for what I did. A lot more than some of the other prisoners. My crime was serious. Some inmates were given harsher sentences for doing way less. Stealing to feed their families. Or getting caught with weed—and they’re still in there while I’m already back out here. I was given more consideration thanks to privilege when I probably deserved my sentence more.” She brings the folder out from behind her back, twisting it in her hands. “And now you’re going to overlook my record? It’s just more special consideration that I don’t deserve. I don’t know if I can…I don’t think I should let you do that.”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself. We haven’t even done the interview yet.” It’s hard for me to say those words, because I sound like a grade A asshole, but she’s about to walk. I can feel it. She needs me to be tougher on her than I’d like to be in this moment because my kindness is making her feel guilty. I’m not going to point out what that says about her character, as much as I’d like to. So I reach my hand out for the folder instead. “Why don’t you start by showing me what you brought?”
Her fight-or-flight instinct is in high gear.
She shifts in those boots, like a runner waiting for the gun to go off.
My pulse is sprinting but I try not to show it. Try not to show how badly I want to stay in this stairwell with her and keep talking.
Finally, she rolls her eyes, stomps up a few of the stairs and hands over the folder, before clomping back down and resuming her defensive stance. But this time, there is a spark of determination and hope lighting up her expression, thank the lord.
I let out my pent-up breath, flipping the folder open to find a copy of her résumé, which holds all of the same information as the online application form. Beneath it is a series of sketches. They’re good enough to make me sit up straight—and my spine is already as vertical as a highway mile marker by default. “Talk me through this one.”
I hold up a sketch of a window featuring a red dress in the center surrounded by greenery. Vines with big pops of white. Cut-out butterflies hanging from the ceiling. Along the bottom of the window are the words, “Give them a new beginning.”
Stella’s eyes are closed, but she takes a deep breath now and starts talking. “Give and take. That’s the theme I settled on. Next year is all about renewal, a fresh start after two years of lockdowns and masks. We’re looking past the melancholia of Christmas and cold weather. The message is this: help your loved one find their footing again.” She nods at the artwork I’m holding. “A lot of people wouldn’t buy themselves a bright red dress like that, but if someone else did, it would be a breath of fresh air. Suddenly they’re wondering, am I the kind of person who wears a red dress? The answer is we all are, we just need help believing it. A loved one’s vote of confidence goes a long way. It can lead to discovering more of your own.