Chapter 2

He paused what he was doing, thinking about his life at the moment.

* * * *

I don’t make friends easily. I can count them on…Hell, two fingers. Joseph and Elaine. And even then, when the day’s over we generally go our separate ways.

His evenings, if he left the apartment, were spent taking long walks through the neighborhood around his building. Weekends, he might go to a movie or out to lunch or dinner at one of the local restaurants. Occasionally, when the walls seemed to close in on him, he’d drive to a club a couple of miles from home where he’d sit at a table for in the corner, sipping a beer while he people-watched.

Growing up, his parents had encouraged him to spend more time with kids from school, but he was too shy to find that fun. Thus, they’d been more than a bit surprised when he’d joined the high school theater group—until he told them he’d done it so that he could work on the costumes.

“You should be on stage, not behind it,” his father had said more than once.

“I’m not an actor,” Lyle would protest. “I’d freeze up the second I saw all those people watching me. Why can’t you understand, costuming makes me happy. The rest of it…” He’d shrug and walk away, hoping his father wouldn’t pursue the issue, which he usually didn’t.

He went to college where he got a degree in costuming, after which he’d found a job at a local costume shop. A year later when the owner retired, Lyle had offered to buy the place, using money he’d inherited from his never-seen but often talked about grandfather. At least that’s where his parents had told him it came from, and he had no reason to doubt them. The fact that he had never met the man didn’t seem to matter to his grandfather, any more than that they weren’t really related.

That was because his parents weren’t related to him, either. They had adopted him when he was a few weeks old and raised him as if he was their own flesh and blood. That he wasn’t theirs by birth was instantly obvious to anyone who saw the three of them together. They were tall and stocky with dark hair and brown eyes. He was slender, blond, and blue-eyed, and even as an adult he barely topped his mother’s five-nine, to say the least of reaching his father’s six-three.

“Thus history was made, once I took those business courses at the local college,” he’d laughingly told Joseph one night when they’d gone out to a local bar to unwind after an especially stressful day. “Thank goodness you and Elaine stayed on or the place would have folded two weeks after I took over. I’m not a people-person and you know it, even if I can fake it well enough to deal with customers when I have to.”

“You do it pretty well. Like today. If it had been me, I’d have told that one couple to get off their high-horses or get the hell out.”

“It was tempting,” Lyle had admitted. “I bit my tongue and did my best to calm them down. In the end, they spent a minor fortune on what they rented.”

Thankfully as far as he was concerned, with Joseph and Elaine handling the rentals, he could spend most of his time doing what he loved, which was creating more costumes for the shop. While he’d never become rich, the shop did manage to grow under his steady hand and make a small name for itself as theplace to come if you wanted something more than an average costume for a party or business event.

* * * *

“Okay, enough of reliving the past, I have work to do.” He returned his attention to the list he was making. I wonder if I should draw up some sort of contract, too. For sure if he does decide to use us he’ll have his lawyers come up with one. If I have an idea of what I’d want on our end it would help.

He decided it would be a good idea and came up with a tentative one, outlining what the shop would commit to in terms of costumes, the maximum amount of time they would reasonably expect to give to the endeavor as far as being on site to help the actors get dressed for rehearsals as well as on the night of the party. Then he added a clause stating that the actors were to make appointments for fittings rather than straggling into the shop when the spirit moved.

With that finished, he printed it out, as well as the list of ideas for costumes the shop could provide, and went down to show them to Joseph and Elaine.