The Race by Nina Allan Read Free Book Online Page B

I’d have laughed in her face but I knew this contract could really take me places and I didn’t want to lose it – Kiwit wasn’t the only one who would get the exposure, after all. Kiwit kept digging her stiletto heel into my floor and saying nothing. I faced her down for about a minute then named a price that was twenty percent in excess of the usual. It was a fair price, too. Including beading and brocade work, an average pair of runner’s gants takes about three weeks to sew by hand from start to finish. I could do the job in two, probably, but it would call for some serious overtime. Overtime’s part of the business, but both of us were perfectly well aware of Kiwit’s current standing in the league championships.
    If she wanted the gloves that badly she could afford to pay me properly for my time.
    She made a face, pursing her lips, which were painted the dense, contaminated scarlet of black cherries, or blood blisters. Then she folded her arms across her non-existent breasts and straightened up.
    “If you can really get them done in two weeks I’ll go for it. I totally dig those gants you did for Benny Heppler.”
    Benny Heppler was a good friend of Del’s. The gloves I made for him were quite plain, just black calf’s leather, but sometimes plain gloves show your skill better because there’s nowhere to hide. Also, Benny’s gloves had some great stitching on the backs, really intricate stuff. That stitching alone had taken me a week to complete, but I wasn’t about to reveal that to Angela Kiwit. I just smiled, told her I was glad she liked Benny’s gloves, that they’d been great to work on. After I’d taken all the preliminary measurements, Kiwit paid her deposit and we said our goodbyes. I told her I would call at the end of the week so we could arrange a time for her to come in and check the fitting. Half an hour later I was on the tramway, on my way out to Romer’s. I was eager to begin work on Kiwit’s gloves straight away, and there were things I needed.
    ~*~
    Romer’s is the biggest track supply store in Sapphire and it’s nationally famous. Not as famous as Gallant’s, maybe, but then Gallant’s is mostly for the tourists. They sell souvenirs, mainly, and the kind of standard issue kit you can buy off the peg from any decent factory outlet.
    But if you want custom runner’s gants or boots, or gantiers’ haberdashery or uncut leather then you go to Romer’s.
    There’s been a Romer’s in Sapphire for more than a century, since before the war. The current management have photos of the original Romer’s Boot Store hanging on the wall behind the counter, a metal shack on a piece of waste ground with a rusty barbed wire fence marking the perimeter. That piece of waste ground is now the Samphire Industrial Estate, and the rusty tin shack has morphed into a retail outlet covering more square footage than the Sapphire tramway depot.
    To get to the fabrics and leather department you go right to the back of the store then down a flight of concrete steps into the basement. The smell down there is amazing – not just the leather but all the other stuff: wax polish and clean jersey fabric, enamelled buttons and silk lining fabric and polished chrome zippers. I love that smell. For me the smell of Romer’s basement sums up everything in life that’s most thrilling: the heat inside the stadium on a summer’s night, crazy evenings in the casino bar at the Ryelands, passionate friendships and secret plans, most of all the scent of dreams in embryo, floating in the mind, not yet fully formed.
    The first time I came to Romer’s, all I could afford to buy were some small offcuts of purple kid leather from the remnants bin, and I was so afraid of looking a fool in front of the sales clerk that I didn’t count my change, just stuffed it into my pocket without looking. It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered I’d left a five-shilling note behind on the counter. I still kick myself for losing