The Apartment Store #16

Chapter 8, Part 2; in which Lydia discovers that success can be a dangerous thing

The Apartment Store is the story of Lydia, a little girl who lives in a ramshackle attic apartment, in a ramshackle apartment building, down the ramshackle end of town. All Lydia wants is a proper Christmas, but it doesn't seem likely until a new tenant arrives in their building and changes Christmas for everyone in it.

The Apartment Store is a book length Christmas story of twelve chapters, split into twenty four episodes for Advent.

“Lydia,” said Artie, “Run down to the Olympic and tell your father to get back to your apartment, toot sweet. Turns out we have a toy department after all.”

"No we don't," hissed her father at Lydia over the counter of the Olympic, "At least, I don't. Just because the paper says it doesn't make it so. That is a pretty good rule for life. Write it down."

"Stop ruining everything," she tried to keep her voice down, painfully aware of the lady who had asked for toys standing by the door, waiting for them, "You make the snowglobes anyway and never do anything with them. You said you'd help. You promised."

"I did no such thing," said her father, "I said you could help. Not me. The snowglobes are a hobby. You don't do hobbies for money. They stop being hobbies if you do."

"You're so irritating," Lydia turned away but the lady stepped towards them.

“I thought your story was so sad,” she said, “But I thought it was lovely about making your little girl toys like that.”

“I’m not sure Lydia thought that,” said Door, “They were supposed to be a special thing, you see, just for her."

"It's such a gift," said the lady, "How I'd love to do something like that for my little girl. I simply don't have the time."

"Oh, he has the time," said Lydia, "He never does anything else."

"It's such a blessing," said the lady.

Door looked at her for a moment.

"Lydia," he said, "Go and close your bedroom door. And but a blanket over my bed. And pick up your shoes.”

Lydia raced ahead of them up the stairs and tried to make their front room as tidy as possible before her father and the woman reached the top of the stairs. Door ushered her into the room and immediately started opening his ludicrous cabinet.

“Oh, how quaint,” said the lady, “Did you make this too?”

“You’re not allowed to sell furniture,” hissed Lydia at him, “Mr Krebs said so.”

"So you think someone would buy it?" he said.

“People are strange,” she snapped back, “Some of them as strange as you.”

"I'm doing this one thing," said her father, "Don't push your luck."

“Oh, what beautiful snowglobes,” said the woman behind them, “Did you make these too?”

“See what I mean?” said Lydia.

“Go away and do something useful,” said her father and then, “Yes, I did, actually.”

“They’d make wonderful presents,” said the woman.

Who for? Lydia wondered. People the lady didn’t like, she could only assume.

“Well, these aren’t for… these are just for display,” said her father, “But I can take orders, of course. Can’t I?” he shot a quizzical glance at Lydia.

Get on with it, she motioned at him.

“That would be wonderful,” said the lady, “Can you customise what goes inside?”

“Of course,” said Door, “One moment… Lydia, go and ask George Joseph if we have a system for ordering things yet and if we don’t, tell him to invent one. Now, madam, um, tell me a little bit about who they’re for and we’ll see what we can think of.”

This rapidly became Lydia’s job for the day. She ran down to ask George Joseph about orders, who gave her a form to take back to her father and a question to take to Ivy about whether that was a 4 or a 2 on the invoice she had just sent over. John wanted know if there was anything particular Mr M wanted him to include in his lunch demonstration and Mrs M wanted Artie to know that she couldn’t fit anymore people in the Christmas room for the moment and to stop sending them up.

And it wasn’t easy because there weren’t just people packing out the Christmas room. There were people everywhere. The stairs were jammed with an endless flow, up and down, the third floor landing jostled with people queuing to see Ivy or struggling through to get up to Door. They packed out John’s kitchen, all snatching fragments of cookie and filed, hushed, past the Misses Pleasaunce on their delicate little settee.

At first it was thrilling, pushing through the crowds, having them point her out as Lydia, the Lydian girl and stop her to speak to her, to congratulate her or complain or ask her where the lavatory was, but as the day worse on it got more and more frustrating. She was used to running up and down these stairs and in and out of these apartments and now she was having to push and shout and apologise. And people were getting everywhere. Into people’s bedrooms and bathrooms, asking nosy questions and people’s family photographs and helping themselves to food in the refrigerators.

And it wasn’t just Lydia’s temper that began to fray, everyone was starting to find it difficult. It started with Ivy. She was already in a bad mood because the newspaper article had only given her a sentence and the photographer hadn’t even taken her picture, and it only got worse from there. What Ivy wanted to do was spend time with her customers, but everyone who visited the store expected to be able to drop by ladies’ fashion and there was no way Ivy could fit everyone in. Not time wise and certainly not physically. Gradually a queue started to form on the landing outside. And gradually the queue got grumpy and Ivy starting to feel guilty about it.

She asked Lydia to ask John to send up cookies to try and keep everyone happy, but when Lydia got down to John she found him simmering in his steaming kitchen. He was hot and harrassed and, it turned out, rapidly running out of ingredients.

“If I see another cookie today, I swear I shall burn it till its sharp enough and then plunge it into my heart and end all this,” he said, “Anyway, I’m out of butter and sugar, so no dice. And no cookies. Go and ask Mr M to send reinforcements. And painkillers.”

So Lydia ran on downstairs to Mr M, who, it turned out, was sitting behind his till, fuming, watching a people edge past each other up and down the stairs to the Christmas department and not a single one of them buying anything from the Olympic.

“If Mr Childeric wants butter,” said Mr M, “He has to pay. This is a shop. I give him a discount, of course, but he pays. You tell George Joseph to to figure out how much.”

“And Ivy wants some cookies,” said Lydia.

“She pays too,” said Mr M

“What!” Lydia thought John was going to explode, “So much for team work! So much for everyone in this together! I’ve been cooking with ingredients I know he has in stock! I’ve been telling everyone to go to the Olympic! And he wants to charge me for butter? Well he can stick his butter…”

“John!” shouted Fairuza from the other room.

“…on a light heat so it melts down easily and then slowly add flour to form a roux,” he turned to the woman next to him, “Now the best place to buy butter is the Krampus food hall, that’s right, the Krampus.”

“Ask George Joseph what we’re going to do about trading between apartments,” said Fairuza, sticking her head round the door, “After all I’m selling cards to Mrs M. too.”

“Hey, what are those?” shouted John, “Are those store bought cookies in your hand?”

“Ivy needs cookies for her queue,” said Lydia.

“And mine aren’t good enough, I suppose,” said John.

“You said you didn’t have any,” complained Lydia, feeling suddenly tearful, “Fairuza, he said.”

“Leave Lydia alone and get on with your cheese sauce,” said Fairuza, “He’s just hot and cross, you take those to Ivy.”

“I’ve got to pay for them?” sputtered Ivy, “How am I supposed to pay for anything if I’m having to turn customers away? This is ridiculous! You’ve got to do something!”

“Not now, Lydia,” said George Joseph, “This man has a terribly tricky swing that needs thinking about. You’ll have to decide something.”

“A life-size dolls house,” said her father, “These people are insane. A life-sized dolls house is just a house. I can’t make a house. Lydia, I’m busy, you’ll have to sort it out yourself.”

Lydia couldn’t find Artie anywhere. She sat down on the top step outside the front door, under the mechanical sign of herself, as people pushed past going to and fro around the Lydian, and felt her bottom lip start to wobble.

Then she saw him.

On the other side of the little square their building stood on was another shop. This one was an old dress shop that very rarely seemed to actually open and which had had the same three ancient dresses in the window for all of Lydia’s life. Only it didn’t any more. Now the window was empty. The whole shop suddenly appeared to be empty, and brightly lit, and there were people coming and going, more of Lydia’s Christmas Elves: men in hard hats wearing bright orange and yellow tabards.

Artie was stood outside the shop talking to one of these men who was wearing a suit under his tabard and holding a clipboard. Lydia got up and crossed to join him.

“Hey kid,” he said, “How’s it going in there? Still busy?”

“Too busy,” she said, “I think we’ve got a problem, Artie. People are starting to get all cross with each other.”

“I think we’ve got a problem too,” said Artie, indicating the shop, “Guy here says someone’s taken a short lease on the whole building, says they’re emptying the place out and fitting it as a store.”

“A store?” said Lydia.

“That’s right,” said Artie, “Looks like we’ve got some competition.”