A Promise to Cherish by Lavyrle Spencer Read Free Book Online Page B

rear-facing kitchen she reached unseeingly into the refrigerator for a peach, and sank her teeth into it while roaming over to the sliding glass door and staring at her tiny private patio, fantasizing about calling the Human Rights Commission to complain that she was being discriminated against. But what could the complaint be? That Old Fat wanted to make her vice-president and give her a raise but she was declining the offer? There was nothing illegal about Thorpe’s ploy to make his firm eligible as a minority contractor. It was only unethical! And Lee adamantly refused to be his patsy in the scheme.
    She prowled the living room, heaping curses on Old Fat’s fat head! Spying the newspaper, she checked the Kansas City Star, but as she’d suspected, no one wanted estimators. The Construction Bulletin turned up nothing more, and Lee’s depression grew.
    Sitting on the floor, her back to the sofa, she crossed her arms over upraised knees and rested her forehead there. The peach pit grew warm and slippery in her hand. She raised her head wearily and propped her chin on an arm, studying the precision pleats of the off-white custom-made draperies she was still paying off in monthly installments.
    She’d worked so hard to get this place. She brushed a hand over the thick nap of the rich, rust carpet. She’d bought the townhouse only six months ago, and though she had a long way to go before it was completely decorated, she loved the furniture she’d managed to buy so far. She had modest dreams of adding decorator items piece by piece, of completing the finishing touches as she could afford them.
    She sighed, slunk low onto her tailbone, and caught the nape of her neck on the cushion of the tuxedo sofa, which was covered with an arresting Mayan design of rich, deep earth tones, its soft depths strewn with plump matching cushions. Lee’s eyes moved to the spots where she wanted side chairs.
    But the room made her suddenly feel lonelier than ever. She studied the plants in the baskets, willing them to grow faster and fill up the extra space. Her eyes moved next to the only other item the room possessed—a loosely strung God’s-eye on the wall behind the sofa, its rust, brown and ecru yarns so inexpertly stretched around the crossed dowels, that there could be no question it had been done by a child’s hand.
    Yes, the room was decidedly bare and lonely, but it was a beginning, and if she lost her job, she would lose this too.
    Dejected, she wandered back to the kitchen, threw out the peach pit, rinsed off her hands and opened the refrigerator again only to find herself, some two minutes later, still staring into its almost empty space, remembering a day when she had shuffled and rearranged, trying to make room for family leftovers.
    She closed the door on her memories, wishing the judge could see now what she’d made of herself since she’d faced him in court. Carrying a quart of milk onto the patio, she sank into a webbed lounge chair and drank the remainder of her supper right out of the red and white carton, too dispirited to care if it was in a glass or not.
    It was much later when she finally plodded upstairs. The second floor of the townhouse had two bedrooms and a bath. As she neared the door of the smaller room, she slowed. Stopping, she reached inside and switched on the light. A pair of twin beds with heavy pine headboards took up the far wall. Between them stood a matching chest of drawers whose rich, dark wood looked richer against the bright scarlet carpet, but whose top was bare—nothing there but a lamp and an unopened box of paper tissues. Still, the room was completely decorated. The bedspreads and draperies were crisp and new, with an all-over design of NFL insignias in a blaze of basic colors. On the wall beside one bed hung two Kansas City Chiefs pennants.
    Lee studied the room sullenly, biting back tears that stung her eyes, feeling again the frustrating sense of unfairness that she could never shake