ears are small but brilliant diamond studs.
Around her neck is a simple silver chain, flat and shiny against her bare, white skin.
Seven o’clock comes and goes while Fern steadily paces the floor, disappointment etched into her young, 20-something face as I shift from foot to foot behind the shimmering, candlelit and quite untouched serving table.
“Oh my god,” she squeals after the latest call, tossing the phone onto the nearest leather chair in disgust. “That’s it; I’m officially ruined!”
“Fern?” I ask.
“30 discreet invites just before Thanksgiving, 30 courteous RSVPs as of last week, two hours of snowfall and that’s all it takes for all of them, every last one of my potential clients, to bail on me. I can’t believe it! You’d think in a town called Snowflake, for Pete’s sake, folks would be able to drive in a little SNOW. These people act like it’s raining anvils and meteors out there or something!”
With that she whips open the nearest slider dramatically, stepping onto the snow-covered patio and peering down into the raging Atlantic Ocean a dozen stories below.
I can’t tell if she’s getting ready to scream “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,” light up another coffin nail or throw herself directly into the floundering sea.
By now we’re coming on eight, and the chafing dishes are in full swing; if I don’t keep turning the scallops and rotating the baked brie like clockwork, they’ll scorch on one side and… well, I suppose, who cares now, right?
I turn them down and start to pace myself.
I’ve never been in this situation before.
Not that I’ve been doing it long but, in two Christmases of working for Simply Snowflake this has never happened to me.
I know the food can’t be returned, that even if Fern calls the party off now – which she probably will – she’ll have to pay for the entire evening, even if she sends me home two minutes from now.
Fern emerges from the patio, her hair damp with snow, her jacket spotted with moisture, her face moist from… well… I’d like to say snow but nothing but crying – and plenty of it – makes your eyes look that red.
“What should I do?” she asks, voice pleading, eyes empty. “I mean, I would hate for all this food to go to waste.”
“What about your neighbors?” I ask. “I mean, if I lived next door I’d love to get a knock on the door offering me all the free champagne and brie I could eat!”
She’s already shaking her head halfway through my suggestion.
“All my neighbors hate me,” she confesses, quietly slipping the diamond studs from her ear and sliding them into a kitchen drawer for safe keeping.
I smile; my Mom used to do that after a dinner party, too.
Never before; always after.
“They wouldn’t even answer the door if they looked through the peephole and saw it was me.”
I shrug.
“Well, I know Simply Snowflake sponsors the local homeless shelter. We’re always taking them leftovers after big parties like this?”
“That’d be nice,” she says listlessly, kicking off her shoes into the foyer closet. “At least someone would have a nice Christmas Eve.”
I sigh, not looking forward to breaking down the entire dinner and then schlepping it all the way across town after working all afternoon setting it up.
I start for the buffet table and just then the power kicks out; the music stops, the lights blank out and the giant tree grows dark.
“Well,” she says, “so much for that.”
I stare at the darkened elevator and ask, “No stairs?”
“Oh sure,” she harrumphs, leaning against the kitchen door. “You gonna haul a complete dinner for 30 people down 12 flights of stairs? It took you about 40 trips up the elevator, how many do you think it’s going to take going down the stairs?”
“A lot?”
She snorts, a first, then sighs.
“Listen, no disrespect to the homeless of Snowflake, South Carolina but… I haven’t eaten all day. Have you?”
I go to shake my head but, at that very moment, my empty stomach decides to rumble and answer for me.
“Exactly,” she smiles, looking at me with something resembling actual human emotion for the first time all evening. “Why don’t we sit out the storm, have a little snack, maybe some bubbly and then, when the power comes back on, you can at least use the elevator, right?”
“I don’t know,” I hem, mouth watering over the warm, rich smells of the warm, rich food that permeates the spacious penthouse. “I’m not really supposed to eat, let alone drink, with the clientele.”
“Oh please,” she says, slipping out of her jacket and revealing a snug black, sleeveless sweater beneath. “Who’s going to know? You think your boss is going around during a power outage, checking every employee’s breath for bubbly fumes?”
I smile and she strides to the table, still at least 5’ 9” with her heels in the foyer closet!
I pop the bubbly as she arrives, pouring generous helpings into two nearby glasses.
She takes one, I take one and go to take a sip.
“What, no toast?” she snarks before it reaches my dry, parched lips.
“Merry Christmas?” I ask/answer, clinking her glass.
She winks and says, “It’s getting there…”
I make us both a plate, and bring them over to where she’s taken a seat in one of a pair of buttery white leather chairs that face each other across from a small, square silver table.
She has moved candles all around so that the space is well-lit.
In many ways, other than the howling storm outside and the lack of Christmas tree lights, it’s like the power hasn’t gone out at all.
“Mmmmm,” she says, taking her first bite of baked brie. “Those clowns don’t know what they’re missing.”
Her voice has an edge of bitterness, at least until her second glass of champagne.
By then we’ve nibbled our way through most of what the buffet table had to offer, and have eased back into our seats, the champagne mostly gone, the two empty plates stacked up on top of each other to make room for the flickering candles and half-empty glasses.
“My compliments to the chef,” she says, crossing her long, luxurious legs.
Her brown eyes swim in the candlelight, the warm glow caressing the hollows of her soft, feminine face.
“I’ll be glad to let her know if I ever get home.”
She makes a big show of pouting and says, “Ah, would staying over be so bad?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I stammer.
“Relax, Scott; I was only kidding. Hopefully the storm will die down soon and—”
Just then a massive gust of wind rattles the hurricane door behind her; snow swirling outside in the dark like a snowman trying to will itself to life.
Already the balcony is piled high with an inch of the white stuff, and still more has collected on the buried deck chairs.
“Then again,” she says, sighing contentedly and draining the last of her glass.
She holds the empty out playfully and I groan, standing to take away the plates and bring back a new bottle, chilled steam wafting from its stem after I opened it at the buffet table.
“I’m wondering if I still have to tip you even if nobody shows,” she says playfully over the lip of her recently filled glass.
“Hey, I’m still on the clock aren’t I?” I joke.
She rolls her eyes and sets her glass down, as if she wasn’t really thirsty, but wanted the option just the same.
I do the same and try not to stare at her long, slender arms.
Ditto for her legs and the way her small, pert breasts press at the clingy material of her expensive black, sleeveless sweater.
Meanwhile, her eyes look everywhere but at me; they roam the walls, gazing into the well-spaced oval mirrors or at the flickering fireplace.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I say quietly, so as not to jar her.
She looks back at me, focuses her eyes and says, voice cracking, “I’m just taking one last look around at the place before I have to leave.”
“What? You’re going somewhere?”
“I used to think so,” she says cryptically, avoiding my eyes and reaching for her champagne; she finishes half the glass in one quick swig.
Finally I get her and say, “Fern, it’s just one bad night; one rotten storm with really, really bad timing. I guarantee you after a good night’s sleep you’ll—”
She shakes her head and looks away, biting her lip until she says, “You don’t get it, Scott; tonight was my Hail Mary pass, you know? My three pointer from just under the other team’s basket, with 4 seconds left in the game.”
She pauses, holds up her hands, lets them fall back to the top of her thighs where they land with an unflattering “snap.”
“I’m done, finished, through. Those 30 clients were me casting a net on the best and brightest in Snowflake. I was hoping to snag at least one to make it through the rest of the month. I’m broke, Scott; flat busted. Now there’s no chance of making my bills in December.”
“You don’t mean that, Fern,” I say, though she doesn’t seem the type for histrionics.
“I wish I didn’t, Scott, and I don’t