Laura (homeandhearth) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-20 12:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | marian, rose red |
Who: Laura and Eloise
What: Questioning a charge, meeting of women
Where: The crappy flower shop where Laura works
When: About now?
Warnings/Rating: Some cattiness? Talk of infidelity?
Eloise was exhausted, and she was rather shaken. She felt quite certain that she shouldn't be tired, if what Gabriel had said was true. Two weeks sleeping? At her age, it seemed forever, two weeks. It unsettled her. Her bones ached, and she felt off. Tea would help, and a fag would help. But time would help the most. She asked the taxi driver to take the long way round, hoping the extra time would settle her before she saw the children. Before she saw Gabriel.
You see, Eloise vividly remembered the dream she'd dreamt as she slept. She remembered it like she remembered standing ovations and the sweet scent of roses beginning to turn after a performance. She remembered in the way oft-repeated memories were remembered, as if she'd been working it over, even sleep. Bastard. As if she needed reminders of what was no longer hers to hold.
Cursing, Eloise asked the driver to pull over a moment. She needed that fag now, and he'd a sign posted that said smoking in the vehicle was not permitted.
The cigarette lit, Eloise paced in front of the small flower shop, the feeling returning to her legs.
Flower shop.
Eloise had found the charge for the shop quite by accident. Gabriel had charged the flowers to a card they retained in tandem, for the childrens' needs. And Eloise had opened the statement, instead of forwarding it in utter innocence. The card hadn't been used since the divorce, and she wasn't in the habit of receiving bills for it.
And here the flower shop was, quite by accident.
Eloise stamped out her fag, and she pushed open the door to the shop. She was tired circles beneath her eyes, trousers and a dress shirt in black, and she looked every bit her age, almost forty and gone rail thin from two weeks asleep. "Hello," she called out, all British entitlement, a tone that expected to be catered to.
Laura had been putting more effort in at work. More than just the fact that she had free time and needed the distractions from whatever was or wasn’t going on with any number of people that she knew. The plants seemed all the more important lately, and she was proud of the way she was able to take care of them. The way they thrived with a little attention, even if it was in a shop that she hated, gave her a warm sense of satisfaction. Her boss was still awful to deal with, with her “helpful” comments that were more often than not horribly insulting. But Laura knew that she couldn’t have her own shop, and she needed to make the best of what she had. Between her work and the way she’d been making both the temporary apartment and then the one she had with Max somewhat homier, she was more content than she had been in a while. There was still a large part of her, right below the surface, that felt broken beyond repair. But work and home were both steady, if not perfect, and the fact that Gabe had invited her to grab a drink later in the week was a very tentative icing on the cake. Not the best cake, but doable. And there was the possibility that things might get better. And she had to admit that she sometimes found herself humming again while she worked. Sometimes she couldn’t place the tunes, but she liked the way they sounded.
So she was in a better mood than she often was when the door to the shop opened, and she turned from the shelf of violets she was watering. The shop was still pink and ugly, filled with more knickknacks than actual flowers, but the ones that were there, were looking better. The potted ones, at least, seemed actually healthy. Wiping her hands on the half-apron she wore, Laura stepped around a large display with a small smile. “Hello.” It wasn’t her shop, but she seemed confident enough that it might have been. “Can I help you?”
Eloise registered the voice first, and she registered it with an ear that had been cultivated on the boards. She'd a great respect for what carried in a person's voice, for what a person could become if they'd the right intonation and inflection. Likewise, a person could drag themselves terribly far down using speech and language, and sometimes without even realizing it. The woman who called out to her sounded, confident, and she'd already assumed it wasn't the shop proprietor, as the woman had no true ownership in her tone. An employee, then. That would make it rather easier.
Eloise pulled the bill from her purse, where she'd tucked it when it had arrived, and she approached the woman with all the regality of a queen approaching a supplicant. "Yes. I received a charge from this shop, and I'm not responsible for this purchase," she said, rail thin and nothing to speak of really, save for her voice which belonged on a stage. She held out the paper, and she eyed the blonde with casual disinterest, which was not casual or disinterested at all.
The smile flickered from Laura’s face for just a moment, replaced by a subtle frown, but her expression calmed again after only a heartbeat. She’d seen it before - men that had someone on the side, buying flowers with the wrong card, the wrong check. Putting down the wrong confirmation phone number and having their wife get the call about a mistress’ flowers. It never failed to make her stomach turn, but her good mood meant she could be professional about it. She headed for the counter, the register, and beckoned the woman over. She hoped it was just a mis-bill somehow, that this frail looking woman wasn’t going to have to deal with a cheating husband. There was a rush of pity that she did her best to hide, exuding assurance that things were simply a mistake.
“If you’ll let me see the charge, I’ll see what I can find.” From behind the counter, she pulled out the receipt books, thankful that the shop was too cheap to buy a computer to have at the front. It meant that she was working with ink on paper and could easily find what she was looking for. “Is there a date on the transaction?”
Eloise almost chuckled at the woman's flickering smile and evident discomfort. It was rather cruel, perhaps, to enjoy the faltering, but Eloise was enough of an actress yet to see it as a potential expression to be stolen away without permission and tucked away for a future performance. And, of course, she realized these things happened with rather frightening frequency in a shop like this. Men were never terribly smart when it came to cheating. But Gabriel wasn't a cheat any longer, since he'd no commitments now, not as he had then. It made her take pity on the woman with the receipt book. "Don't fret, darling, he's cheated before. If it's not an error, I'll go about my business and carry on. It's rather less of an infraction this time, I should think," she said, a cryptic reference to her divorce. "Gabriel Reed. You couldn't miss him. Cane, handsome, rather larger than life," she said, sliding the paper over with the appropriate date atop it, and the billing address listed as Gabriel and Eloise Reed.
Laura’s fingers were on the credit card statement, pulling it closer across the counter, when the woman’s words connected with the names above the address. There was a slight jerk of her fingers, and she kept her unseeing gaze on the paper before looking back up at the woman. This time, it was more about study, done in a glance that was intense in its briefness, taking in as much as she could about the woman on the opposite side of the counter. And came to the conclusion that she, Laura, was as far from Eloise as it was possible to be and still both be women. From the delicacy and bearing, right to the dark hair and pale, smooth skin. The woman that Gabe had married was her complete opposite. She shook her head to clear it, to focus on the customer at hand instead of her own racing thoughts. “I remember. The flowers were a joke for a co-worker. A male co-worker. We had extra stock in back, so I only charged him for the vase.”
In that moment, though she was left reeling by being faced with Gabe’s ex that was seeming less like an ex the more she said (the subtle hint of their divorce not registering at all), Laura did her best to stay professional. And also did her best to repair whatever strange rift might have been caused by a joke of a flower arrangement. The action was laced through with her own hot guilt, her own part in flirting with an apparently married man making her want to fix everything she could about the situation. The guilt was easy enough to deal with, but the anger, threatening to inch its way out, needed to be pushed down forcefully. He’s cheated before... Apparently so. He hadn’t seemed the type, had seemed like a good man when she’d spoken with him, and her anger took on the flavor of betrayal. All hidden behind a polite retail worker’s mask.
Really, it was the slight jerk of the woman's fingers that had done it. Eloise was rather good at looking for things hiding in shadows. With Gabriel, there were always shadows, and there were always things hiding in them. Perhaps she didn't always learn what was there, but she learned that something did, indeed, live in that darkness. It was lovely not to be paranoid unnecessarily, truly, but at times she would have rather prefered it.
The woman in front of her was very American. No willowy frame, but solid. No delicate features, but rough. Blonde, of course, and younger, as one would expect. Eloise stared a moment too long, and it was an intentional perusal this time. She'd every expectation that Laura would notice it. In fact, she wanted the other woman to notice. It was the keen-eyed look of a woman nearing forty that had found a secret where she'd not been expecting it. Ah, yes, just there.
"I see," Eloise replied, and it left little doubt as to what she saw. There was more in the acknowledgement than flowers sent as a joke, surely.
Eloise took back the slip of paper, and she folded it over onto itself with deliberate slowness, deliberate care, and then she tucked it away inside her purse. "That was kind of you, only charging him for the vase," she added, as the paper disappeared. She didn't turn and leave immediately, because silence made for interesting outbursts to fill it, as every woman past twenty knew.
Laura knew the second the woman in front of her figured out that something wasn't quite what it should be. Whether it was due to her own expression, her voice, the betrayal of her own tensing body, she didn't know. It could have simply been a general sort of female awareness of things that were not right with the man in her life. Whatever the reason, Laura felt the weight of regard, the study of another woman to assess and dissect. And all she could do was keep her expression calm and let the other woman look. She didn't shrink from it, not after so many years of knowing herself and all of her own flaws. But she wasn't going to offer any of her own information either, not freely, and not even into the silence that followed the dry, papery fold of the credit card statement. The statement that held a shared name and only one address.
"It was a mis-shipment. We received things we normally wouldn't use. There wasn't much call for them." The business talk was stilted at best, but it filled that silence that asked those questions that Laura wasn't going to answer.
The stilted response was answer enough. "Of course," Eloise replied, and that of course meant anything but of course. "He can be quite charming. I understand," she added, snapping her purse closed with drama fit for the stage. "I do thank you for your time. It's been informative," she told the woman-
Ah, yes. Woman. That would hardly do.
"I'm terribly sorry. I'm Eloise Murphy-Reed. I didn't catch your name?" She smiled. It would be rather hard not to give a name in a setting like this, where the woman was an employee and not the owner of the shop. Eloise liked names. The ones parents gave children never struck her as particularly important by themselves, but how people pronounced them, how they claimed them, it was rather interesting. But she wasn't asking for any arbitrary reason. No, simply, she wanted to know what the woman was called.
Laura was never good at the sorts of games that girls and women played with each other. The cattiness grated on her and she found herself ill-suited to it. It had led to her having only one or two very good girl friends in the past, and up until a few years ago, most of her acquaintances had been male. It had just been easier to not have to deal with the ins and outs of feminine attitude. She could do it. She just didn't like it. Nor did she appreciate the insinuation that she couldn't help herself around such a charming man as Gabe. Her shoulders tensed, as if for a physical fight, but she forced them back down away from her ears after that first second.
Everything in Laura wanted to keep her name behind her teeth, to not share that bit of information that could be used to find out so many other things about her. But in the sort of dynamic that came with being customer and employee, all Laura could do was offer a small smile and introduce herself. "Laura. It's nice to meet you." And if refusing to give her last name at first was rude, she made no sign or comment of that sort.
The tensing shoulders told Eloise quite a lot about this woman Gabriel had selected. Perhaps it wasn't surprising, really, that she was the antithesis of Eloise herself. Eloise, on the surface, was a smooth, polite smile and nothing angry or challenging at all. But then she'd never needed a fight; silence worked much better, she found. Gabriel was the exception. Gabriel, who made her yell and throw things in the most horrific manner. But that was a thing of the past, wasn't it? Recent dreams aside.
Eloise took a step back, and she inclined her head. It was an acknowledgement, of sorts. After all, this Laura had won something she'd discarded.
"Thank you for your time, Laura," Eloise said, lingering on the other woman's name and possessing it in lengthened, elegant syllables. "I'll show myself out," she added, as if this was a residential visit of the friendliest sort, and not a commercial establishment at all.
With that, Eloise turned gracefully, the movement befitting the stage, and she left the shop entirely. She'd wait before calling Gabriel and asking him to leave the children with the maid until she arrived. She'd give Laura a chance to call him first, you see; Laura seemed the type.
The nod didn’t seem like an acknowledgement of Laura having won. It seemed like an acknowledgement of an enemy made. And it made Laura feel a little sick. And yet, the mask of employee stayed on as well as she could make it. “Let us know if you need anything else,” she said, watching the turn that was more dance than step, a graceful movement that Laura was aware she never had and never would possess. The sick feeling shifted into something with jealous teeth, and she sighed when the door closed behind the other woman.
She returned to watering the violets, distracted in a way that resulted in some receiving too much water, and some not enough, and when the end of her shift finally rolled around, she grabbed her phone to text an increasingly-familiar number.