Chapter Two
Violet Dufresne staggered to her feet, staring at the car that had nearly side-swiped her, and was now speeding away down the street. Her Great-Aunt Dorcas was standing on the sidewalk, yelling as the driver sped away, and waving her cane furiously. Fortunately, nobody had been hurt by the lunatic behind the wheel.
Violet tried to look on the bright side, like her late mother would have wanted her to. Sure, she was now splattered with mud from head to toe, and she’d tripped and broken a heel and ripped her last good pair of pantyhose, but she wasn’t dead.
Also, times like this made her glad that she was well-padded. It might not make her the most desirable date, but it cushioned the blow when she fell on her butt.
Her hair, which she’d carefully flat-ironed that morning, had been splashed with water when the speeding car had gone through a huge puddle. She glanced at her reflection in a picture window and grimaced. Now the left side of her hair was smooth and flat and the right side had sproinged back into its usual wild, out-of-control brown curls.
Well…it had just been an accident. It must have been.
“Maybe that person is just a terrible driver,” she said to Dorcas.
“And maybe pigs can fly.” Dorcas squinted through her thick Coke-bottle glasses and scowled at her cell phone. “Curse it. I tried to get the license plate number, but the picture came out blurry.”
Violet leaned down to look at the cell phone. “That’s because it’s not turned on. You have to turn the phone on to use the camera. Did you forget to charge it again? If it’s not charged, it won’t work.”
Dorcas looked at the phone in disgust. “Well that’s just stupid. Poor design. I’m going to write a letter.”
“To who?”
Dorcas adjusted her glasses and looked down her nose at Violet. “Who do you think? To Mr Apple, of course. He made the stupid thing.”
“Riiight. Okay. Anyway, they’re gone now. I’m sure it was an accident.” But she couldn’t keep the doubt from creeping into her voice.
Dorcas shook her head. “Violet, stop being such a chucklewit. That person just tried to flatten you. On purpose.”
“Possibly,” Violet conceded. The car had disappeared around a corner. Various passersby who’d witnessed the near-fatal incident shrugged and moved on. Just another day in the big city.
“Definitely. That car aimed at you. If you hadn’t tripped, you’d be singing with the angels. And I don’t need to remind you, your singing voice scares the birds out of the trees. I don’t think the angels are ready for you just yet. You’ve got to go to the police again.” Dorcas had her hand on Violet’s arm and tried to turn her around.
Violet shook Dorcas’s hand off. “I’ve got a job interview in twenty minutes,” she reminded her.
Dorcas stared at her in disbelief. “You’re still going? Looking like that?”
Violet winced and glanced down at her mud-splattered clothing. She’d recently finished her master’s degree in marketing, and was interviewing at Clotham & Taylor, a fancy firm in uptown Manhattan. If she limped really fast on her broken heel, she’d make it on time.
“I need this job,” Violet said, hobbling as fast as she could. “Student loans to pay, groceries to buy. I’m strangely addicted to eating, I find.”
Dorcas’ social security check was barely enough to keep her in a rent-controlled apartment in a terrifying neighborhood. She supplemented her earnings by playing poker (and cheating, Violet was pretty sure), but Violet couldn’t impose on her great-aunt for money. It was enough that she was crashing on Dorcas’ couch rent free – for now. She had to pay her back.
Dorcas picked up her pace to keep up with Violet, slamming her cane down on the sidewalk with each step.
“No, you need to stay alive. Believe me, I want you to start making money so that you can support me in the style I’d like to become accustomed to, but you need to be alive to have a job. Go to the police.”
“The last time I went to the police, they didn’t take me seriously at all. Or the time before that. I can see the looks they give each other now when I walk in the door.”
Violet had suffered weird near misses multiple times over the last few months. A flowerpot falling from a window had nearly brained her. Another car had nearly sideswiped her. A gunshot had shattered a window as she was walking by. A mugger had popped out of a doorway and chased her ten blocks until she ran around a corner and into a restaurant.
But the police had insisted there was no proof that any of those incidents were more than just bad luck.
“You’ve got to try,” Dorcas protested.
“I have no information to give them,” Violet pointed out. “Other than that it was a gray car. I don’t know what make or model it was, and I didn’t see the license plate. Did you even get a look at the driver?”
Dorcas shook her head. “No, I was too busy running for my life.”
“Me too. Well, tripping for my life. Well, tripping over my own feet and accidentally saving my own life.” She hobbled faster. Her ankle hurt.
