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My manager appeared next to me like a ghost emerging from another plane of existence. “Is there a problem here?”
The look of pleasure on the customer’s face made me sick to my stomach. “Yes. Your girl just insulted me to my face! She cursed at me!”
My manager turned to me. He was usually a good guy. I didn’t dislike him. He had an even tougher job than me: keeping difficult customers as happy as possible.
“Nadia,” he said in a measured tone, “please apologize to Mrs. Williams.”
Ouch. He knew her name. That meant she was a regular.
“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms and sticking her chin in the air. “Apologize to me.”
My manager gave me a look. Disarm the bomb and we can all survive.
“I am very sorry, Mrs. Williams.”
She pursed her lips and looked me up and down. She knew she was judge, jury, and executioner right now. “Very well. Be a good girl and fetch the proper size for these shoes.” She turned to my manager. “And please send another shoe girl to assist me from this point on. I do not want this one receiving the commission.”
The commission on the shoes would have been more than I made in an entire day. It was the last straw.
“Fucking bitch.”
The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. Mrs. Williams and my manager both stared at me, jaws dropping in slow-motion.
Well, shit. Too late now.
Now that I’d dropped the atom bomb, I might as well get my money’s worth.
I grabbed the pair of expensive heels and squinted at the label. “I’ll go see if we have this pair for men. Because the only way those fat-ass feet are fitting in a size six are if they’re a men’s six.”
Rage crossed Mrs. Williams’s face. For a brief moment my manager looked impressed, or even jealous, by my outburst. He struggled not to laugh.
Before they could both go off on me, I tossed the shoes over my shoulder and stormed out of the job I couldn’t afford to lose.
10
Ryan
I stared at the two screws in my hand and said, “This place is fucking bullshit, bro.”
Andy and I were messing with the lights up in the catwalks above the stage. The ones that had malfunctioned yesterday. I’d seen it before plenty of times. The bulbs were screwed into mechanical housing which were controlled by servos, giving them a range of movement which the lighting tech—Andy—could control from the booth. The pressure and force on the screws that held the lights in the housing caused the screw threads to become stripped, which eventually gave out and made the lights swivel out of control. It was a normal, routine problem that a stage hand like myself dealt with.
But these screws weren’t stripped. They were brand-fucking-new, pristine and sharp. I’d just installed them this week. There was literally no reason for them to give out last night.
Andy scrunched his face up with thought. “Perhaps the problem is with the housing?”
“Housing’s fine too,” I said. “They were bought second-hand, but I don’t think they’ve ever been used. There’s zero wear-and-tear. The screws just… came loose on their own.”
Andy opened his mouth to launch into one of his lectures. I stabbed a finger at his face before he could.
“Don’t even fucking suggest that I forgot to put locktight on the screws. I’m not some fucking intern who makes basic mistakes.” I held my palm up to his face. “See the blue line?”
Andy didn’t examine the screws. He closed his mouth and blinked twice. “There must be a logical explanation for the malfunction.”
I hissed air out through my teeth. “Yeah. This place is fucking haunted.”
Andy’s gaze was stoic. “I said logical.”
“It’s a better explanation than these flawless screws suddenly giving out for no reason.”
