South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [39]
“I am not paying that bill!”
“But you have to. I mean, you did Use the groceries, right? Aside from the ones you took back that day? If you don’t pay, they’ll get a judgment against you.”
“I don’t care. I wouldn’t pay that bill now if they dragged me to China on the end of a rope.”
“But, Gladys—”
“I mean what I say. I will not pay.”
Madeline sat back. Gladys pressed her lips into a thin line. They glared at each other for a long moment. “What about Arbutus?” Madeline asked at last. “How’ll she feel? You tell me you don’t want her Upset with money worries or anything else, you’re sneaking around to sell off your prized possessions, but you’re going to fight a battle you can’t win in court?”
Gladys brushed invisible specks of lint off her slacks, and said again, “I will not pay that bill. Not like this. Not their way. I won’t go crawling. I’ll see them in court.”
Paul thought the situation was funny when Madeline told him about it the next day. She was doing an extra shift because one of the Russian girls he’d hired claimed she was so ill she couldn’t get out of bed, but Paul said it probably had more to do with a party he’d heard went on the night before. “So she’s history,” he’d said on the phone when he called Madeline to see if she could come in.
“You’re firing her? What if she’s really sick?”
“She’s not sick,” he’d said, as if that answered the question completely.
“But it’s not funny at all,” she said now, snapping an order Up on the wheel. “Arbutus will hate it, all the fuss, people talking. Gladys’ll get listed in the paper for God’s sake, don’t you ever read the court news?”
“Everybody reads the court news. Major entertainment.”
“My point exactly.”
Paul slid a deep-dish Mediterranean onto the shelf and Madeline delivered it. After that they were too busy to talk. The stream of tourists coming through was getting larger; McAllaster was a different town than the one she’d pulled into a month before.
She returned to the subject of Gladys and the SuperValu in the late afternoon lull. “I can’t believe she’s going through with this.” She shucked off her sneakers and flexed her feet. Paul sprawled in the booth opposite her.
“I’ll send a calzone down with you to the prison, hide a file in it.”
“Stop.”
“If Channel Four news comes, mention Garceau’s.”
“Be serious.”
“We could Use the publicity. I’ll be glad to come out in support of this brave old Finlander who’s fighting for her right to free groceries.”
“Paul.” She swatted at him across the table.
He grinned. “Well, isn’t that what she’s after?”
Madeline sighed and shoved her feet back into her sneakers. “It really isn’t funny, you know.”
“But it is. Everyone gets so excited. Every little thing is an inferno.”
“I thought you’d be on my side.”
“I am on your side.”
“Right.” She gave him a look.
“Of course I am. Otherwise, would I offer to ruin a perfectly good calzone with a file, and compromise my reputation as a law-abiding citizen to boot?”
“Stop it, I’m worried.”
He tipped his head slightly and his glasses glinted in the sun coming through the side window. He ran a hand through his hair. “So do something about it.”
“Like what? You know Gladys.”
“Go and explain to the Bensons, maybe. I don’t like them much but they’re not monsters. Maybe they don’t really know the situation, maybe they just need to be asked. Sometimes that’s all people want, to be made to feel correct, you know? You’re right, I’m wrong, forgive me my trespasses.” He had his hands together as if in prayer or placation, and he was smiling, but there was sympathy in his face, she thought.
“I don’t think so.”
Paul shrugged.
Madeline considered his suggestion through the last hour of her shift. Maybe he was right, after all. It was the simplest solution, and maybe for that reason alone it would work.
“I’ll drop the case when the entire bill is paid in full, including what she returned that day, no sooner,” Terry Benson said.