Four, p.3
Four, page 3
“I got you a new one, silly. Like I said, I’m a terrible roommate, but you’re the only person on the planet patient enough to put up with me, so let me help you out this time.”
“Does it involve kinky phone sex gigs?” Georgia asked.
“My aunt said something about needing a weekend receptionist at her firm. It’s not glamorous, but nothing gets you a job around here quite like nepotism.”
“Wouldn’t I have to be related to her for it to be nepotism?” Georgia asked with a raised brow.
Alice flopped back on the couch. “This is what gets you into trouble, my friend. You simply don’t know how to communicate without using sarcasm,” she teased. “So, should I give her office manager your number?”
“Nothing weird, right?” Georgia asked.
“She does, like, real estate. Just because I’m a freak doesn’t mean my whole family is,” Alice said with a little laugh. “I think she needs someone to answer the phone and collect paperwork while she’s off at the Cape all weekend. I doubt it pays six figures, but it would save asking for one more check from Daddy.”
“You know, you are a terrible roomie, Alice, but you’re still a pretty kick-ass best friend.” Georgia sighed. She saved her current resume and hopped over to the couch. As the back of her head pressed against the cushion, she furrowed her brows together.
“You know what?” Georgia asked.
Alice grabbed the remote and eased next to her friend. “What?” she asked as her eyes glazed over to find something on the television.
“I’ll go get that haircut . . .”
“It seemed so innocuous at the time,” Georgia said as she once more focused on the girl back in the present. “But you know, there are some times where just the smallest thing can start a chain reaction that throws your whole life into a tailspin.”
“Like going on an interview?” Gail offered.
Georgia began playing with the hacked-off ends of her hair. After a moment she twirled the loose strands behind her ear. “She was right, you know. I had gone totally into pity-party mode.”
“Over losing a job selling doughnuts?”
“I kinda had a thing for the assistant manager there. When I found out he was shoving his cream filling elsewhere, I may have said a few things I regretted—very loudly and very publicly,” Georgia said. “Bottom line, I was one hot mess living in a two-bedroom in Allston.”
“And you got a haircut that changed everything?” Gail asked.
“Like I said, it’s the little things sometimes. Alice was right. I needed to snap out of it, so I went to Newbury Street and blew the better part of my food budget getting prettied up. Nothing quite makes you feel better than looking a bit better and having a message on your phone that your interview is all set.”
“So her aunt was the vampire?” Gail asked, confused.
Georgia cringed a bit. “Remember how I was saying that Alice liked to borrow my phone whenever she ran out of minutes?” she said with a little laugh. “I did mention that for a reason . . .”
“You said take it all off. I’m a man of my word.”
Georgia opened her eyes and stared back at a decided lack of hair. All of her long dark blonde locks were piled on the linoleum, leaving only boyish remains to frame her shocked face. She turned from side to side, admiring the neat lines around her now decidedly visible ears.
“Wow,” she said.
“You like?” the hairdresser asked again.
“It’s just so different . . .” She trailed off as she felt vibrations from under the salon apron. She pulled out her phone to read the text she’d been waiting all morning to read: “Interview on at two,” with the address following in the next line.
“This is the start of something great,” Georgia said.
“Well, you look fabulous. You’ll knock them dead,” her stylist proclaimed proudly before brushing away the stray hairs from her neck.
She took a deep breath as the layers were peeled away. New hair and a new top had her beaming at her reflection. She curled her lip back to check for any remnants from lunch and did a final check for any snags in the hose.
“Telling you, you’re fabulous,” the stylist reassured her again.
Georgia made sure to leave an extra twenty for a tip before stepping out into the sun. Her phone buzzed again from the same number.
“Don’t forget your references,” it cautioned.
Georgia checked her bag again. A folder kept her resume copies safely tucked away from a thorough collection of emergency lipstick, deodorant, feminine products, and breath mints.
“I’ve got this,” Georgia said as she started toward the subway. “Bye-bye, retail hell.”
She didn’t dare drown out the noise on the T with headphones, not with her brand-new perfectly coiffed locks. Instead she focused on staying in the far back, keeping a sharp eye out for any potential stains that might mar her new ivory top. A kid with a bright red slushie nearly gave her a heart attack as they shuddered their way out of Back Bay and into the stops on the way to the wealthy suburb of Brookline, Massachusetts.
She smiled as she noticed at least one guy eyeing her hemline. She stood a little taller until the sway of the trolley car nearly sent her plowing into a fake wood-paneled wall.
Her stop was near the end of the line, in the midst of trendy restaurants and expensive brownstones. She took in the vista of parking spots full of luxury cars rather than taxicabs, and breathed deep to take in a heady mix of fresh air and Thai food.
She set out toward the main thoroughfare of shops and little offices, always keeping a lookout for her cross street. As she rounded past a little jewelry store and a burrito joint, the businesses rapidly faded into row upon row of high-end residences.
“This can’t be right,” she said as she found herself in front of number 122. She checked her phone again.
Number 122 fit in with all the other houses on the street, a stately little red brick building with beautiful bow windows, shaded by a lovely old tree. Big planters of bright red begonias marked either side of the outer glass door, while little concrete bunny statues peeked from behind the bars on the first-floor windows.
Georgia eased into the vestibule, her heels clicking on dirty black and white tiles. A row of old bronze postboxes lined the wall to her left, but only one of them had a name card tucked into a slot: “Lambley, Apt 1.”
“Of course,” Georgia muttered as she saw all the blank spaces. She peeked at the inner door, but could see just some stairs in the darkened hallway. “Excuse me?” she called out, but no one answered. She checked the ground around the postboxes and the wall next to the door, but only found a single doorbell.
She looked at her phone—one forty-five. She paced around the entrance one more time and triple-checked the number placard over the main door. Finally she opened up her last text and pressed the link to call the number. It kept ringing and ringing.
“Don’t panic,” she cautioned herself. She quickly flicked through her phone, checking desperately that the address was in Brookline and not some other suburb. Her phone buzzed.
“Are you here?”
“Yes,” she texted back.
A moment later she could hear a door open from within. She tugged her cuffs and made absolute last-minute adjustments as footsteps came closer and closer. She raised a brow when she could just make out a distinctly male silhouette in the glass.
“That’s not your aunt, Alice,” she muttered under her breath as the door opened.
Instead, the door opened to reveal a bespectacled man in a three-piece suit, the kind of suit that didn’t come off of a warehouse rack. He raised a brow as he stood face-to-face with a girl in sensible pumps and a pencil skirt. “You’re here about the position?” he asked, his voice smooth and deep, like one of those voices that read off movie trailers or tried to sell single malt scotch. It was definitely tinged by some sort of European accent, but in her jitters, poor Georgia couldn’t quite fathom exactly where it was from.
For a moment Georgia tried to speak, but she simply had to just stop and appreciate a chiseled jaw and dark wavy hair that somehow managed to look completely controlled yet untamed at the same time. “Hi, I’m Georgia Sutherland, Alice’s friend,” she said, extending her hand.
The stranger’s eyebrow remained arched over his glasses, which had darkened into sunglasses the moment he stepped into the hallway. “You’re Alice’s . . . friend? Not quite what I was expecting.”
Georgia breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah, we’re nothing alike. I’m at the right place, thank god. I thought I’d gotten lost. Is this one of your properties?”
“Mine?” the stranger asked. “No, it’s owned by Mr. Lambley’s estate. I’m just here for business. He’s waiting for you inside.”
“Is Alice’s aunt . . .? I mean, is Ms. Stafford here too?” Georgia asked.
“Not today. This is your interview. You’re here about being the secretary, right?”
“Yes, I’m here about the weekend job. Alice said—”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” he said, moving to the side and propping the door open. “Mr. Lambley doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I came early then,” Georgia snapped. She winced as she heard the tone of her words. “I mean—”
“Upstairs, first door on your right,” he said brusquely.
“Was I supposed to get your name?” Georgia asked as the stranger walked out without another word. “Whatever,” she said before heading up the stairs.
Unlike the cheery outer facade, the interior décor consisted of dingy sepia-toned wallpaper and hardwood desperately in need of fresh stain and polish. Georgia wrinkled her nose as she passed a rather fragrant corner. She could see a small pile of mousetraps behind the banister. She stopped just shy of the first door on the right.
“Hello?” she asked. “Mr. Lambley?”
“Are you the girl here about the job?” a pleasant enough voice replied.
“Yes, I’m Georgia. I thought I was meeting Ms. Stafford today, though.”
“Ms. Stafford, eh? Well, she’s not in here. Come on in so we can get started.”
Georgia stayed outside of the door. “You know, I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to be meeting Alice’s aunt, so I’ll just be going,” she said quickly. As she took her first step back down, however, she heard the front door slam shut.
She pulled out her phone and slid one finger across to unlock it. She peered back down the stairs, but no one was there.
“Don’t go, Georgia. I thought you were here about a job,” the same kindly voice said from the first room on the right.
“Something is just wrong,” she muttered. As soon as the words left her lips, she gulped and pressed a hand to her stomach. Her eyes widened in horror as her previously perfectly functioning cell phone went suddenly and inexplicably black. “Oh no, no, no,” she hissed as she pressed every button in a vain attempt to bring it to life again.
“Georgia?” the voice asked again. “Is something the matter?”
She took stock of her options. Mr. Lambley remained only a voice. The guy in the high-end threads seemed to have vanished into thin air, and the front door was shut. She looked once more to the flickering light in the doorframe. “Not worth it,” she declared as she hustled back down the stairs.
The front door, however, had made a different decision. No matter how hard she wrenched the knob, it refused to turn. “Oh, hell no,” she declared as it refused to budge. Undaunted she sped past the base of the stairs and looked for another door, all the while trying to get her phone to come back to life.
She quickly found another bright red exit sign just down the first-floor hall. “Thank you, fire code,” she declared as she shoved down the latch. The button gave way limply under pressure, but the door refused to budge. She shoved all her weight against the wood, but all she ended up doing was leaving a dirt stain on her sleeve.
“Is there something wrong, my dear? Are you playing hard to get?” That same damnably sweet old man voice called again, “Georgia?”
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but your door is broken. If you don’t let me out, I’m calling the cops!” she snapped.
“And how are you going to do that with no reception, little girl?” the voice taunted. “Don’t worry. I don’t . . . bite, unless you ask me to.”
Georgia took a deep breath and reached into her purse. She carefully wrapped her fingers around her keys and pushed the sharp edge of one of them between her knuckles. Next she eased out of her heels and took a slow deliberate pace up the stairs.
“Why are the doors locked, Mr. Lambley? It is Mr. Lambley, right?” she asked as she inched toward the one open door.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the voice reassured her.
“I’m locked in a strange apartment building by some creepy stranger, and I’m being taunted by an old man who knows exactly when my cell phone decided to act up—”
“Wait, did you say creepy?” the voice asked abruptly.
“Yeah, the guy in the suit. He had a totally douchetastic, creepy vibe going on—”
“Gray suit? Brown hair? He read as creepy to you?” Mr. Lambley interrupted again.
“Yeah, he totally put me off once he started talking, and I’m really getting the same feeling about you, so could we stop playing games and you just let me out of here before anyone does anything stupid?” Georgia warned.
“But I don’t understand. Stefano never fails me. Tell me, Georgia, are you perhaps a lesbian? Did you respond to the wrong advertisement?”
“I was here about the weekend receptionist position!” Georgia snapped.
“Well, I wanted a dirty little secretary. I thought you were here to replace Alice,” Mr. Lambley said.
“Hold on—a dirty secretary?” Georgia asked. “You were expecting Alice? Oh, crap, you’re one of her . . . friends, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ve never met her before, but she seemed ever so charming responding to my advertisement. When you arrived I just assumed that you worked with her or that it was going to be something like a two-for-one special.”
“I wanted to answer phones for a real estate agency, Mr. Lambley. There has been a terrible mistake, and while I’m not sure exactly what sort of kinky hoedown you were planning here, it certainly wasn’t supposed to involve me.”
“This is terribly unfortunate,” he sighed. “Could we maybe just talk for a moment?”
“We’re talking now,” Georgia said.
“I mean face-to-face? Everything is so impersonal now with the Internet and the chat and cell phone stuff,” Mr. Lambley lamented from his room.
“That depends,” Georgia said. “Are you wearing clothes?”
“Oh yes, indeed!”
She kept her keys ready in one hand and held her purse in her fist as she slowly inched toward Mr. Lambley’s weak little voice. Sure enough, the room was a bedroom, complete with an oversize four-poster bed, fireplace, shag rug, and enough candles going to put a Catholic mass to shame. As she crossed the threshold, she picked up the distinctive scratch of a needle hitting vinyl. Sure enough, a second later the sultry sounds of a saxophone filled the air.
“Is that Kenny G?” she asked. Something danced just past the corner of her vision. Instinctively she flattened against the doorjamb and put up her improvised weapons.
“Please don’t be frightened. You are perfectly safe, I swear,” the voice said again.
Finally she could pinpoint the location to an armchair facing the fireplace that, even though it was daytime and April, was still roaring and crackling at full blast. It was one of those stereotypically Hollywood gothic red velvet chairs with claw feet and a back just high enough to obscure the person sitting in it. Only an arm could be seen, hanging limply over the arm, with fingers lazily twirling in time with the oppressive sounds drifting from near the mantle.
“Nothing about this situation reads as safe. Sorry, man,” Georgia said, still maintaining her defensive stance. “Contrary to whatever impression you may have gotten from my roommate, I am not into this sort of thing. Hey, you said you wanted to talk face-to-face. Right now all I’m getting is the back of a chair.”
“You aren’t calming down,” the voice said. The genuinely confused tone in his voice made Georgia lower her guard for barely a second.
“We’re not going over this again, Mr. Lambley. You have me locked in a kinky gothic love nest with smooth jazz playing, so you really can’t expect me to be any calmer than this. Now are we going to diffuse this situation, or am I going to have to break a window and cause a scene? It’s a really busy street out there.”
“Nothing fazes you, does it, Miss Sutherland?” he asked softly. “How remarkable.”
“You have five seconds, Mr. Lambley,” Georgia warned.
He pushed slowly up from the chair. Something creaked louder than the smooth jazz as a mop of shockingly ginger hair drifted into view. It seemed more like a bird’s nest than human hair, scraggly and whorled around a central bare spot.
He turned slowly and flipped his mane like a would-be romance cover model and revealed not one but two distinct chins and a rather girlish little mouth. That same perky pout curled into a coy smile as frightfully bright green eyes positively lit up as he took in the girl making fisticuffs in his doorway.
“Wow,” both of them mouthed at the same time. Each of them seemed focused on the pleasantly jiggly chest area of the other.
“Some things are actually worse than I imagined,” Georgia said as she found herself staring at a portly little man in a green smoking jacket and silken yoga pants. He smiled sheepishly and wiggled his stubbly little fingers all at once, showing off an impressive array of golden bling, while at the same time wiggling his feet in a pair of fuzzy slippers. However, all of his clothing paled in comparison to just how ghastly the skin peeking out from every cuff and collar and mat of ginger fur was in the firelight.
“You may call me Geoffrey,” he said, this time smiling wide enough to reveal that his incisors were blackened and very pointy. He lunged.
