The more Wanda thought about everything she’d done, the more worried she became. Sure, buying the luncheonette hadn’t been nearly as expensive as it would have been a few years back. Her agent had assured her the price was a steal, considering the prime location. With the city doing all it could to beautify the central business district, even if Wanda decided she didn’t want to keep the place, she would probably sell at a profit.
The carpenter who’d built new storage shelves had been grateful for work and priced them accordingly. The plumber had done the same. Two friends of Ken’s had come in after work four nights running and painted the inside a creamy white. The entire population of Happiness Key had come in on a Sunday to paint the trim and baseboards Williamsburg blue.
Wanda had decided that since pie was so all-American, she would capitalize on the theme. She and Janya had stenciled red cherries and apples on the new white wooden tables, and the chairs had red cushions to coordinate with those on the counter stools. Framed covers of old Life magazines were hanging in strategic spots
The narrow storefront had been given a fresh coat of pale blue paint, and Janya, Olivia and Lizzie had painted a mural of trees with assorted pies hanging from the limbs in between the windows and door. Janya had added Wanda’s Wonderful Pies over the windows in script and designed a similar logo for paper place mats. Between friends and discounts, Wanda had made out well. No, her biggest worry was that nobody would buy her pies. Nobody who didn’t know her and feel obligated, anyway.
On the Monday morning of her grand opening, she squinted at the bedside clock. Five o’clock. Wanda’s Wonderful Pies flung open its doors in just five hours, and she was worried there were still things she needed to do besides get all the pies finished and displayed.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure what those things were, and that worried her more. Even in the midst of a sunrise panic attack, she knew the place looked spiffy. The health inspector had complimented her on the shop’s appearance. He’d found a few problems, of course, but she had slapped a couple of coats of paint on the pegboard behind the stove, and raised the bottom shelf on a butcher-block table so it cleared the floor at the requisite height. She had gotten her permit on time.
“You get any sleep at all?” Ken turned over and flopped his hand onto her shoulder.
Wanda was sorry he was awake, since she preferred to worry alone. “Slept like a baby.”
He grunted. “A baby with colic. You tossed and turned all night long.”
Every morning Wanda pondered the unfairness of life. When he first woke up, Ken looked wonderful, hair mussed, eyelids drooping, beard bristling. Somehow all that made him sexier. In comparison, every single morning she was scared spitless at the sight that greeted her in the bathroom mirror. She suspected more divorces occurred over this simple difference between men and women—something no psychologist ever seemed to take into account—than any other.
“I kept checking the clock,” she admitted.
“You set the alarm, didn’t you?”
“I was afraid it might not go off.”
“You set your cell phone, too.”
“That would be just the way. Set two and have ’em both malfunction. I guess I’ll feel better if everything’s ready earlier than later.”
“You go ahead. Better than holding yourself back.”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Any other morning she might have tried for more, but today, sex was the last thing on her mind. She would be baking pies in her head, and as sexy as pie was, thinking about it shouldn’t be anything but a prelude.
In the bathroom she avoided so much as a glance at herself and took a shower first. Still, when it was time to paint her drooping eyelids Shady Lady green, she wished she had used the money she’d spent on the shop for a face-lift. This morning she looked every one of her fifty-seven years.
Once her hair and makeup were done, she slipped quietly back into the bedroom and donned her new uniform She and Dana had decided on navy blue shirtwaist dresses covered by voluminous red-and-white-striped bib aprons with Wanda’s Wonderful Pies embroidered on them. Wanda fastened shiny earrings shaped like cherries in her earlobes. Tracy had found them, along with apples, and slices of limes and lemons. All that shopping experience from Ms. Deloche’s former life