Not Another Bad Date

Chapter 11

From across the shoe aisle, Devon Hamilton-Zemaitis eyed the new shipment of Metro7 dresses. From where she stood, she could see the choices were black, gray, and hot pink. Devon would never be caught dead, even when she was dead, in hot pink. Hot pink was vulgar, and gray washed her out.

To her left, she caught sight of her competition for the black jersey dolman. Her name was Jules Brussard, an upstart Junior Leaguer from New Orleans.

Devon jumped over a stack of shoe boxes, did a roundoff into a back handspring, and finished with a left-side hurdler, accidentally landing her foot in Jules’s ample chest. Jules flew backward and knocked over a rack of Hanes Her Way thigh slimmers.

“Sorry,” Devon said, hardly winded as she grabbed the black jersey from the rack.

Since getting sentenced to Walmart three years ago, Devon had learned a few things. First, that just because she’d been reduced to wearing Walmart couture didn’t mean she had to let herself go. Being dead hadn’t changed her fashion sensibilities. Naturally, she was envied by the other associates.

The second thing she’d learned was that she had the energy and stamina of a teenager. She could do herkies and pikes and back handsprings like no one’s business, just like when she was on the UT squad. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one with her former body. There was a woman in Beauty who delivered a mean karate chop to the throat if you got too close to the lip liner.

The third thing she’d learned was that behind the smiley face logo lived a lot of severely pissed-off dead people who, like herself, had been unjustly charged, unfairly sentenced, and doomed to a life of Muzak.

She’d been assigned to an eternity of shelving shoes. Which should have thrilled her, but just made her long for the days when she’d sunk her feet into Prada, Manolo Blahnik, and Valentino. Cheap shoes just didn’t smell like Fendi.

She supposed it could have been worse. She could have been sentenced to the kitchen, where she’d have to churn out cole slaw and chicken nuggets for eternity.

She moved into the changing room and shed the print chiffon she’d wrestled from the grasp of a woman from home appliances just yesterday. She pulled the black jersey over her head, and it clung to her body. As she gazed at herself in the full-length mirror, she smiled. She was beautiful and perfect, as always.

But unlike always, the image wavered and dissolved in front of her eyes. The racks of clothes shimmered like a mirage, then disappeared. She stood in a gray mist, and her skin tingled. She looked down at herself and gone was the black Metro7. In its place was her Chanel bouclé tweed and Mikimoto pearls.

“There you are. You never did stay where you were supposed to.”

She looked up. “Mrs. Highbanger?”

“Highbarger,” her sixth-grade teacher corrected. “You were supposed to be in shoes. Not apparel.”

Devon shrugged.

“Come along.” Without moving her feet, Devon slid along through wispy clouds behind her old teacher. “You have earned another chance to move up.”

“I have?”

Mrs. Highbarger inclined her head slightly. She still wore that hideous purple suit with the gold buttons, but Devon supposed it wasn’t her fault someone had buried her in that fashion-hell-no. Although it must have been hanging in her closet when she’d died.

“I’m going to heaven now?” she asked.

“The choice is yours.” As if they stepped onto an invisible escalator, they moved up through the clouds.

“Okay. Let’s go.” After the hell of Walmart, she was ready for heaven.

“Not yet. The gift you granted the woman you wronged in your life has righted some of the harm you caused while you inhabited your earthly body.”

“Huh?”

Mrs. Highbarger looked back over her shoulder at Devon. “In the long run, your gift actually helped more than harmed.”

“It did?”

“Surprised?”

Shocked. Hadn’t she cursed what’s-her-name with bad dates? Which the woman had richly deserved for trying to steal Devon’s man. “Of course not.”

God knows when you lie.

Oops. “Did she find someone?”

They stopped, and the clouds gathered and formed a filmy television screen. Images of a football game played out across the surface, and Devon recognized Zach standing on the sidelines. He looked as handsome as she remembered.

“What’s he doing?”

“Watch.”

He called a few plays, made some hand signals, then stood on the sidelines as the Cedar Creek Cougars snapped the ball. “Is he a coach at my old high school?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he took a job with ESPN.”

“He stayed in Cedar Creek for your daughter.”

“Oh.” Devon was glad. Tiffany loved her home and her friends.

The image cleared and re-formed and a silver Cadillac Escalade’s headlights cut through an inky night and burned up the flat Texas highway. Zach sat inside, his thumbs tapping the steering wheel. She recognized the impatient gesture and smiled. In her way, she’d loved Zach. He’d given her what she’d wanted and cared about most. Money and position. Their child.

“How’s Tiffany?” she asked her old teacher. She really didn’t worry about her daughter. She knew Zach would take care of her, but she missed her baby. Death changed a lot of things, but it didn’t change that.

“She’s well.”

The Escalade pulled up to a curb, and Zach got out and walked to the front door of a condo. He knocked, the door opened, and what’s-her-name stood in the threshold wearing what looked like a black slip that hugged her body. Devon gasped as Zach stepped inside and wrapped her in his arms.

“Oh hell, no! This can’t be happening.” Death changed a lot of things, but not a strong emotion like hatred. She watched Zach devour the woman’s mouth. Over the course of their ten-year marriage, he’d been with other women. She’d known and hadn’t cared. The day she’d decided to move back to Cedar Creek while he had to live in Denver, she’d known he’d fill his needs with someone else. She’d expected him to, and as long as he avoided getting caught in a sex scandal, she was happy with the arrangement. He could sleep with whomever he wanted-except that woman.

“How did this happen?” Devon stepped forward and waved her arms and hands until the image dispersed.

“Every date she’d gone on for the last three years has kept her single.”

“Why hasn’t the curse-or gift, I mean-worked on Zach?”

The old teacher shrugged. “God works in mysterious ways. Perhaps it is fate.”

“So they’re together?”

“The relationship is new, but yes. In part due to you. If not for your hand in things, she might have married someone else.”

Devon folded her arms across her suit. This could not be happening. Some people didn’t understand what it was like to have things that belonged to you taken away. To watch your momma’s car repossessed, your furniture removed, and your house foreclosed. Her momma’s second husband had cleaned out her bank account, and they’d lost everything. Like beggars, they lived off the kindness of relatives until Momma had found a rich man to marry and replaced it all. Devon had hated living like that, but she’d learned a valuable lesson. Win at all costs and don’t let anyone or anything take what belongs to you.

Ever.

“You said I’ve earned another gift.” She unfolded her arms. “Right?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to use it on the woman you wronged this time. That wrong has been corrected, and you can use this gift to serve mankind. You can do wonderful things. Help end poverty or aid in the research to find cures for diseases. I suggest you use this gift for the greater good.”

Greater-schmater.

I suggest you don’t do what you’re thinking.

She’d never listened to Mrs. Highbarger, and she wasn’t about to start now. There was one thing to do. One thing that Zach had always resented and hated her for. One thing he would hate what’s her-name for, too. She closed her eyes, and said, “There. It’s done.”

Mrs. Highbarger shook her head, highly disappointed yet again. “You still don’t learn,” she said, as her image began to shimmer.

“She can’t have him!” Devon hollered. “What’s her-name was always jealous of me. In the sixth grade, she took Tinkerbell away from me. Then she tried to take Zach, but he was mine!”

As before, the teacher took a step back through sliding glass doors that suddenly appeared. The doors whooshed closed, and the gray mist formed solid walls. Devon’s skin tingled as her beautiful Chanel suit warped and faded into a horrible polyester floral-print dress with a big lace collar. The hem hit her just below the knee and she looked like an escapee from 1983.

She looked beyond racks of clothes, shelves of towels and sheets, to a big wall of automotive tools. “Where the hell am I?”

A gentleman with a friendly smile and the name Norman sewn above the pocket of his polo walked toward her.

“Hello,” he said. “Welcome to Sears. Home of fine Craftsman Tools.”