“P., have you forgotten he spent five hundred dollars here yesterday? And that we love him?” Damaris chided. The phone was answered and Damaris delivered her important news into Hugo’s ear.
Hugo felt his heart jump as he gazed as Garda looking so handsome in Laura’s grey cashmere dressing gown with her light red hair down on her shoulders. “How thoughtful of you to let me know that,” he told Damaris, looking at his watch. It was already a quarter to ten. He could see he wasn’t going to open the shop on time today and longed wistfully for the not so distant past when he had an assistant to rely upon.
“So, what do you want me to do?” Damaris asked.
“That’s a good question,” he mused, feeding Garda a small piece of buttered toast.
“I can keep her here at least an hour if you need time to think of a good answer,” Damaris said helpfully.
Hugo laughed and said, “Just tell her the truth, that a dear friend of mine was in town yesterday doing business with Randy Price and I brought her to visit the shop before sending her over to him.”
“I didn’t know she was meeting Randy,” said Damaris, distinctly repelled by the name.
“She met him alright,” Hugo disclosed in a tone that spoke volumes.
“He can be so loathsome. Was he rude to your darling?”
“Let’s just say you made her look a little too good.”
“Oh my god, you don’t mean he tried to take advantage of her?”
“Since when did Randy Price ever just try to do something?”
Damaris hung up and reported to Pamela, “Hugo said that Garda saw Randy last night.”
“Randy Price?”
“I think he may have forced himself on her.”
“No, Mr. Price doesn’t rape. But he knows how to take better than any man I’ve ever met,” said Pamela bitterly. Never had she given in to a man so quickly and for so little reason.
“Tell me about it! You have no idea what misery that man caused me at one time,” Damaris replied, heading for the fitting room with a copper silk dress over her arm.
Laura had put on the cranberry dress and was admiring the effect in the three-way mirror when her friend joined her.
“So guess who was in yesterday?” Damaris begin.
“Who?”
“Hugo and a very old girlfriend.”
“An old girlfriend?” Laura stared at Damaris in the mirror, her heart contracting painfully as she sat on an upholstered pouf, her legs gone to sand.
“A pre-1980’s girlfriend. Just about the same age as Hugo, give or take a few years,” Damaris said soothingly.
“A leggy redhead?”
Damaris nodded.
“Garda,” Laura sagely concluded, for she had been Hugo’s companion long enough for him to have told her about all his important lovers. “Still a beauty I suppose?”
“Very cool, smart and slim.”
Laura took off the red dress and exchanged it for the copper one as Damaris told Laura of Garda’s encounter with Randy Price. Like Damaris and Pamela, Laura had also been had by Randy Price, knew Randy for the extraordinary piece of work that he was and felt a pang for Garda, of whom Hugo had always spoken so fondly.
While getting back into her clothes Laura asked Damaris, “How come Pamela is here? Did Hugo lend you her for a few days?”
“He gave her to me permanently.”
“You mean she’s working here now?’
“Has been for a week.”
“But, why?”
“She won’t say.”
“What about Hugo? What was his reason for sending her to you?”
“He claims her talents are better suited to my shop than his. And he’s right. She’s been to design school you know.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that,” Laura guessed. Damaris lead her back out to the shop with the two dresses over her arm. “Did you want these?”
“Yes, please,” said Laura, getting out her credit card.
“You’re not to pay for anything, per Anthony,” Damaris said, refusing the card. “He said I was to send all of your and Susan’s bills to him.”
“How sweet,” Laura smiled. “I’m sure he’s delighted to encourage your new enterprise.”
While Damaris was zipping the dresses into a smart carrying bag Laura wandered over to Pamela, who was behind one of the counters folding bias cut silk slips from Paris with extreme care.
“Pamela, I was surprised to hear you’ve left Hugo,” Laura said.
“Yes, me too,” said Pamela, without raising her eyes.
“You don’t mean he dismissed you?”
“I think I was beginning to get on his nerves,” Pamela observed not completely untruthfully.
“This is very mysterious,” said Laura to Damaris as her friend walked her out of the shop. Overhead lightning was striking. “Why do you suppose Hugo fired her?”
Damaris shrugged, though she had already formed a good idea.
“Do you think I should call Hugo before going over today?” Laura asked as thunder struck noisily above.
“Most definitely,” Damaris counseled.
“So it’s like that between them, is it?”
“She was his first scene girlfriend, Laura.”
“I know. I suppose she was amiable?”
“Laura, she has an important job in California to return to forthwith,” Damaris reassured her as the rain began to fall in the street.
Laura took the dresses and hugged Damaris. “Maybe I won’t call him until tomorrow,” Laura mused, getting into her car.
“Yes, I’d worry about this one more than that one,” said Damaris, jerking her thumb towards the boutique where Pamela was still brooding and folding slips.
Hugo Sands was thinking along the same lines as he put Garda into her car and watched her drive out of the village in a windy, driving rain, later that afternoon. He walked aimlessly back from the inn to his shop, glancing at his watch and wondering if it was even worth it to open up that day. If Pamela were still in his employ,
