A hot surge of anger shot through me the moment my lights died for the second weekend in a row.
My neighbor’s glitter-dusted empire blazed away next door, powered by a secret extension cord I’d just discovered snaking out from her tent and plugged directly into my power strip.
When I confronted her, she had the audacity to call it “community power.”
That was before she began hiding my business sign behind the trash can and poaching my customers right in front of me.
She had no idea that her cheap extension cord and complete disregard for safety regulations were about to hand me all the evidence I needed to get her permanently relocated to a powerless, unvisited corner of the market right next to the dumpsters.
The Subtle Art of the Uninvited Guest: The Flicker of Doubt
The first Saturday of the Artisan’s Grove Market always had a special kind of magic. A low-lying mist burned off the grass by 8 a.m., leaving behind the scent of damp earth and brewing coffee. My little ten-by-ten tent felt like a sanctuary. Inside, my world was black ink and cream paper, the graceful curve of a capital ‘S’, the satisfying scratch of my favorite nib. I’m a hand-lettering artist. I create custom quotes, wedding vows, little love notes from the universe that people frame and hang on their walls. My name is Yvette, I’m forty-seven, and this little tent is my happy place.
My husband, Mark, had helped me set up the lighting, a string of warm, Edison-style bulbs that made my stall glow like a beacon of cozy. They cast a lovely light on the gold foil accents in my prints and made the whole space feel inviting. A woman was admiring a piece, a simple quote from Mary Oliver: “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
She smiled, her finger tracing the script. “This is just beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I started to say, but the words caught in my throat. The cozy glow vanished. My bulbs, my perfect, warm, inviting bulbs, went dark. A collective, disappointed “aww” came from the small group in my tent. The woman squinted at the print, the magic of the moment broken.
“Oh, what a shame,” she said, her interest already waning. She wandered off toward the booth next to mine.
My neighbor’s stall was an explosion of neon and glitter. It was packed with t-shirts bearing sassy sayings, tumblers coated in shimmering epoxy, and a hundred other loud, shiny things. And it was bright. Impossibly bright. Two massive LED light bars blazed away, making her sequined pillows sparkle like a disco ball. She had a heat press steaming in the corner. The woman who had just left my stall was now captivated by a mug that read, “I run on caffeine and chaos.”
My own booth was plunged into a gloomy twilight. I fiddled with the plug, traced the extension cord back to the central power pole provided by the market. It was plugged in securely. I tried a different outlet on my power strip. Nothing. It was just… dead.
A Neighborly Nudge
The owner of the glitter emporium, a woman maybe ten years younger than me with blonde hair piled in a messy bun and a perpetually cheerful, slightly strained smile, bounced over. “Having trouble?” she asked, her voice syrupy sweet.
“My lights just went out,” I said, frustration making my own voice tight. “The whole strip is dead.”
“Oh, bummer!” She peered at the power pole. “The wiring in this park is so ancient. It’s probably just a finicky outlet. Happens all the time.” She said it with the breezy authority of someone who had never experienced the problem herself. Her own stall continued to hum with enough electricity to power a small village.
I sighed, trying to force a polite smile. “I guess. It just killed a sale.”
“You’ll get another one!” she chirped. She then glanced at the small A-frame sign I’d placed at the edge of my stall, the one I had painstakingly lettered with my business name, “The Gilded Quill.” With a little hum, she nudged it with her foot, pushing it back a few inches. “There, that gives people more room to walk.”
It didn’t. It just tucked my sign neatly behind the leg of her display table, effectively hiding it from the main flow of traffic. I stared at the sign, then back at her. She was already flitting back to her booth, her attention captured by a new customer. I bit back the sharp retort that was on the tip of my tongue. She’s just trying to be helpful, I told myself, though it didn’t feel helpful at all. It felt like being erased.
I spent the rest of the day in the semi-darkness, watching customers pass by my shadowy stall, their eyes drawn to the dazzling light of my neighbor’s. I sold a few small prints to people who specifically sought me out, but my usual foot traffic was gone. Every time I looked over, the glitter woman—Candace, I learned her name was—was bagging up another t-shirt, her smile never faltering.
The Ghost in the Machine
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Mark said that night, turning my power strip over in his hands. He’d plugged the whole assembly—lights, strip, cord—into the wall in our garage. Everything lit up perfectly. “The fuse is fine. The cord isn’t frayed. The bulbs are all good.”
Mark is an engineer. He sees the world as a series of logical problems to be solved. An effect must have a cause. The fact that my rig worked perfectly at home but failed completely at the market was an illogical wrinkle that was driving him nuts.
“Maybe Candace was right,” I said, leaning against his workbench. “Maybe it’s just bad wiring at the park.”
“Then why was her booth lit up like Times Square?” he countered, his brow furrowed. “She’s running a heat press, Yvette. Those things draw a massive amount of amperage. If an outlet was going to trip a breaker, it would be because of her, not your dinky little 40-watt bulbs.”
He was right. It felt wrong. It was a small thing, a string of dead lights, but it had unsettled me. That market was my main source of income. It paid for our daughter Chloe’s art classes, the fancy gouache I liked to use, the occasional dinner out when I was too tired to cook. A bad market day wasn’t just a disappointment; it was a tangible financial hit.
Chloe, who had been scrolling on her phone, looked up. “That lady sounds sketchy, Mom. Did you see her plug anything in?”
“No, I wasn’t watching,” I admitted. “It all happened so fast.”
“Next time, watch,” she said, her teenage cynicism cutting through my adult tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt. “People are shady.”
Mark tested the last bulb. “Well, everything here is working perfectly. It’s a ghost in the machine.” He wrapped the cords neatly for me. “Just try a different outlet on the pole next week. Maybe that one was faulty.”
His logic was reassuring, but the feeling of unease lingered. It wasn’t just the power. It was the way she had moved my sign. The way her smile felt like a mask. It was a tiny, creeping suspicion that this was no ghost. It was sabotage.
Community Power
The second Saturday started with a knot in my stomach. I got to the park extra early and claimed an outlet on the opposite side of the power pole, as far from Candace’s designated plug as I could get. I set up my sign, planting its feet firmly and a little more aggressively in the walkway. For the first hour, everything was perfect. The lights glowed. Customers came and went. I made three good sales. I was starting to relax.
Then, at 10:15 a.m., peak customer time, it happened again. Blink. Darkness.
This time, a hot surge of anger shot through me. This was not a coincidence. I looked over at Candace’s booth. It was, if possible, even brighter than last week. She’d added a rotating, colored spotlight that was currently splashing shifting rainbow hues across a rack of shirts that said “Live, Laugh, Lasercut.” She was ringing up a customer and didn’t even glance my way.
My hands were shaking. I took a deep breath and walked to the back of my tent. Last week, my cord had been plugged into my power strip, which then went to the main pole. I’d done the same thing this week. But now, there was something new. Snaking out from behind my display table, almost invisible against the black fabric, was a thin, white extension cord that I had never seen before. It was plugged into the last available spot on my power strip.
I crouched down, my heart hammering against my ribs. I picked up the cord and followed it with my hand. It was taut, running along the grass, tucked neatly under the back edge of my tent wall, and into the back of Candace’s tent.
I stood up, the white cord dangling from my hand like a dead snake. I walked to the edge of my stall and stared at her until she finished with her customer and finally looked up, her smile bright and automatic.
“Problems again?” she asked, her voice dripping with mock sympathy.
I held up the cord. “This is yours, I assume?”
Her smile didn’t waver. She gave a little tinkling laugh. “Oh, thank God, you found it! I just needed a little boost for my new spotlight and all the pole outlets were taken. Hope you don’t mind!”
I was speechless. The sheer audacity of it. To sneak into my booth, steal my power, and then act as if she was the one who had been inconvenienced.
“It’s tripping my power, Candace,” I finally managed to say. “My lights are out. Again.”
“Oh, that’s weird,” she said, tilting her head. She gestured around the bustling market with a sweep of her glitter-manicured hand. “We’ve all got to help each other out, right? It’s all about community power.”
The Calculated Kindness Offensive: The Smile with Teeth
Her words hung in the air between us, a perfect little smokescreen of faux-bohemian bullshit. Community power. She said it with such sincerity, as if she were a pioneer woman asking to borrow a cup of sugar, not an energy vampire actively sabotaging my business.
For a moment, I just stared at her. I could feel the blood pounding in my ears. The righteous speech I wanted to deliver—a blistering tirade about boundaries and basic respect and the physics of electrical loads—died on my lips. The market was humming with people. A family with a stroller was trying to get by. Making a scene felt… unseemly. Weak.
“You can’t just plug into my strip without asking,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “It overloaded the circuit.”
Candace’s smile tightened, just a fraction. It was the first crack in her placid facade. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Your little lamps can’t possibly draw that much power. My heat press is the real power hog, and it’s on a different circuit entirely.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll just unplug the spotlight for a bit. No biggie.”
She didn’t apologize. She didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing. She framed it as a favor to me, a concession to my melodramatic, low-wattage sensibilities. She breezed back into her tent, and a moment later, the white cord went slack. I trudged back to my power strip, unplugged her cord, reset the breaker button, and my lights flickered back on.
The relief was immediately soured by a simmering resentment. She had won. She had done exactly what she wanted, and the only consequence was a thirty-second conversation where she’d made me feel like the unreasonable one. Her smile, when she glanced over a moment later, was all teeth.
A Sign of Trouble
I tried to shake it off. I had a business to run. I smoothed the tablecloth, rearranged a stack of prints, and forced a welcoming expression onto my face for anyone who happened to glance into my newly illuminated stall. But my focus was shot. I kept looking over at Candace’s booth, my stomach churning.
An hour later, I noticed the flow of people down my aisle had slowed to a trickle. It was odd. I was on a main thoroughfare that led to the food trucks. There should have been a steady stream. I craned my neck, looking toward the end of the aisle. My A-frame sign, “The Gilded Quill,” was gone.
A cold dread washed over me. I left my booth and walked to the entrance of our row. And there it was. My beautiful, hand-lettered sign had been moved. It was tucked snugly behind a large, overflowing trash can, completely invisible to anyone walking by. It wasn’t just nudged. It was hidden.
My breath hitched. This was not an accident. This was a deliberate act. I pulled the sign out, my knuckles white as I gripped the wooden frame, and placed it back in its rightful, prominent position. As I walked back to my booth, my eyes locked with Candace’s. She was helping a customer, but I saw it—a flicker of something, a knowing smirk she quickly concealed.
I felt like I was going insane. Was I imagining this? It was so brazen, so petty. Who does that? I spent the next hour compulsively checking on my sign, a paranoid meerkat popping my head out of my tent every few minutes. The third time I checked, it was gone again. This time, I found it leaning against the back side of the neighboring jewelry vendor’s tent, facing the wrong way.
I put it back, my movements stiff with rage. I didn’t look at Candace. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction. But I could feel her watching me. The market, my happy place, had become a battleground, and I hadn’t even realized I was in a war.
The Poached Patron
The final straw came around 2 p.m. A woman walked into our aisle, her eyes scanning the tents with purpose. She was holding her phone, looking at a picture on the screen, then looking up at the stalls. I recognized the behavior instantly: a commission customer. She was looking for me. The picture on her phone was likely a screenshot of my Instagram.
My heart gave a little leap of hope. A good commission could make a whole market weekend worthwhile. She spotted my sign—which was, miraculously, still in place—and her face lit up with recognition. She started walking toward my booth, a determined smile on her face.
Before she could take three steps, Candace swooped in, stepping directly into her path. “Hi there! Can I help you find something sparkly?” she chirped, gesturing to her glittery monstrosities.
“Oh, no, I’m good,” the woman said politely, trying to step around her. “I’m actually here to see The Gilded Quill about some custom lettering.”
Candace’s eyes lit up with a predatory gleam. “Oh, you’re looking for lettering? I do that too! All custom vinyl work.” She grabbed a t-shirt off a rack. “So much more modern and durable than that old-fashioned ink stuff. We can design it on the computer right now and have it ready for you in ten minutes. What did you have in mind?”
The customer, caught off guard by the sheer force of Candace’s sales pitch, hesitated. I stood frozen in my own booth, ten feet away, watching this unfold as if it were a car crash in slow motion. I should have said something, walked over and introduced myself, but I was paralyzed by a combination of shock and non-confrontational cowardice.
Candace had the woman by the elbow and was steering her into her booth, chattering a mile a minute about fonts and color options. The woman cast one last, uncertain glance back at my tent before being swallowed by the glitter.
Fifteen minutes later, she walked out with a plastic shopping bag, avoiding my eyes as she hurried past. Candace stood at the edge of her stall, triumphantly folding the customer’s cash and stuffing it into her apron. She caught my eye and gave me a tiny, victorious shrug, as if to say, All’s fair in love and craft fairs.
A Melted Peace Offering
I packed up that evening in a cold fury. I barely spoke to the other vendors as I broke down my displays. The joy was gone, replaced by a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. I had been played for a fool, and my quiet, respectful nature had been used against me as a weapon.
As I coiled up my extension cord, I noticed the multi-outlet splitter I used felt… warm. Not just warm, but hot. I brought it closer to my face. The white plastic around one of the outlets, the one her cord had been in, was warped and slightly browned, with a faint, acrid smell of burnt plastic.
A chill went down my spine that had nothing to do with the evening air. This wasn’t just about stolen sales or petty games anymore. Mark was right. Her equipment was drawing a dangerous amount of power. She hadn’t just overloaded my strip; she had nearly melted it. She had created a fire hazard in a park full of canvas tents and flammable craft supplies, plugged into my equipment, and then had the gall to call it community.
I dropped the scorched piece of plastic into an empty box, my hands trembling. That was it. The line had been crossed. The peace was not worth keeping if it meant letting this woman burn my business to the ground—literally.
I drove home in silence, the melted splitter sitting on the passenger seat like a piece of damning evidence. Candace hadn’t offered a peace offering, but she’d given me something far more valuable: a reason to fight back. The quiet, accommodating Yvette was done. Next week, the Power-Strip Princess was going to get a taste of her own medicine.
The Unplugging: The Art of War, Market-Style
The week leading up to the third Saturday was a blur of controlled rage and meticulous planning. I laid out the situation for Mark, placing the melted splitter on the kitchen table like a prosecutor presenting Exhibit A.
His face, usually so mild-mannered, hardened. He turned the warped plastic over in his hands. “This is a Class C fire hazard, Yvette. If an inspector saw this, she’d be shut down. Instantly.” He looked at me, his eyes dark. “You can’t let this go. This isn’t just about her being a jerk anymore. This is a safety issue for everyone.”
“I know,” I said, my voice tight. “So what’s the plan?”
And so, we strategized. Chloe, my brilliant, cynical seventeen-year-old, was my head of psychological operations. “You can’t just yell at her, Mom. You need proof. You need to catch her in the act. Like on a cop show.” She tapped her phone. “Photos. Video. With timestamps. No one can argue with a timestamp.”
Mark, my engineer, was head of hardware and documentation. He went out and bought me a brand-new, commercial-grade power strip, the kind they use on construction sites. It was bright yellow and had its own built-in circuit breaker. “This thing can handle 1,875 watts,” he announced proudly. “Her heat press probably pulls 1,500. If she plugs into this, it will likely trip the internal breaker without affecting the main pole. And when it does, it will be her problem, not yours.”
My role was simple: I was the bait. The plan was to set up as usual, be meticulously polite, and document everything. I felt a strange calm settle over me. The anxiety of the past two weeks had been replaced by a cold, clear sense of purpose. This wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about drawing a line in the sand against the kind of person who smiled in your face while setting your house on fire.
The Hidden Tentacle
I arrived at the market on Saturday morning with my new bright yellow power strip and a fully charged phone. I set up my booth, a placid smile fixed on my face. Candace arrived shortly after, humming a pop song and hauling in a new rack of glitter-encrusted wine glasses.
“Morning!” she chirped, as if nothing had happened last week. “Love your new power strip. So industrial-chic!”
“Safety first,” I replied, my voice even.
I arranged my display, deliberately leaving the tablecloth at the back of my table slightly askew, creating a small, shadowed gap. It was a perfect, hidden entry point to my new power strip, which sat on the ground just behind it. Then I got busy with my first few customers, keeping one eye on my table and the other on Candace’s tent.
It took less than an hour. While I was in a deep conversation with a client about the calligraphy for her wedding invitations, I saw it. A flash of movement in the corner of my eye. A thin black extension cord, like a serpent’s tongue, flicked out from under the wall of Candace’s tent. It slithered across the three feet of grass separating us and disappeared into the gap I had left in my tablecloth.
My heart began to beat a furious rhythm against my ribs. Gotcha.
I finished with my customer, my hands shaking slightly as I wrapped her print. “Excuse me for one moment,” I said to the next person browsing. I stepped to the back of my booth, pulled out my phone, and angled it down into the shadows. The light from the screen illuminated the scene perfectly: the black plug of her cord jammed firmly into an outlet on my bright yellow power strip. I took three quick, clear photos. The timestamp at the top of the screen read 9:48 AM.
Crossing the Line
With the primary evidence secured, I felt emboldened. The rest of the morning became a surveillance operation. I watched Candace like a hawk, documenting every petty transgression.
Around 11 a.m., I saw her saunter to the end of the aisle. She glanced around, saw that I was occupied, and casually moved my A-frame sign again. This time, she didn’t just hide it. She picked up a roll of packing tape from her own stall, taped the legs of my sign together, and shoved it into the narrow space between the port-a-potty and a recycling bin. Click. Another photo.
But her masterpiece of maliciousness came just after noon. The market organizer, a harried but fair woman named Janice, had a strict rule: no cords across walkways. It was the number one liability issue. Candace, apparently needing even more power for a new mini-fridge she’d brought for her drinks, decided the rules didn’t apply to her.
I watched, mesmerized by the sheer audacity, as she unrolled a long, flimsy-looking brown extension cord. She plugged it into an outlet on a light post on the far side of the main thoroughfare, then ran it directly across the path, securing it to the asphalt with three small, pathetic strips of gray duct tape. The cord immediately created a raised ridge in the middle of a high-traffic area, a trip-and-fall lawsuit waiting to happen.
Click. Click. Click. I took photos from three different angles, making sure to capture the feet of customers navigating awkwardly around the hazard she’d created. I even got a shot of a man with a cane nearly stumbling over it. This was no longer just about me. This was a public menace.
Pulling the Plug
By 3 p.m., my rage had cooled into an icy resolve. The time was right. Candace’s booth was packed. A small crowd had gathered to watch her heat press a custom tote bag for a woman who was clearly planning a bachelorette party. The sale looked to be a big one—at least a dozen bags. The woman was pulling her wallet out of her purse.
This was the moment.
I took a steadying breath, my plan clear in my mind. I walked to the back of my own booth, my movements calm and deliberate. The air was thick with the chemical smell of melting vinyl from her press. I reached down into the shadows behind my table, my fingers easily finding the smooth, alien plastic of her plug.
I didn’t hesitate. I wrapped my hand around it, braced myself, and yanked it out of my power strip.
The effect was instantaneous and glorious. The loud, mechanical hiss of Candace’s heat press died with a pathetic sigh. The rainbow spotlight that had been strobing all day went dark. The tiny twinkle lights wrapped around her display stands blinked out. Her entire booth was plunged into the same gloomy twilight she had subjected me to for two weekends.
Silence fell. The bachelorette party looked around in confusion. Candace, who had been holding the half-pressed tote bag, whirled around, her face a mask of disbelief that quickly curdled into pure fury.
Her eyes found me, standing at the edge of my stall, her unplugged cord held aloft in my hand.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she shrieked, her voice cracking. The syrupy-sweet vendor persona vanished, replaced by the shrew underneath. “Put that back! You’re costing me business!”
The Petty, Glorious Payback: The Accusation and the Evidence
Every head in a twenty-foot radius swiveled toward us. The background hum of the market seemed to fade away, leaving our little patch of grass as the main stage. Candace’s face was blotchy with rage, her eyes wide with a mix of fury and panic.
I held up the cord, my hand steady. My voice, when I spoke, was surprisingly calm and carried clearly in the sudden quiet. “This is what I’m doing,” I said, looking directly at her. “I’m stopping you from stealing my electricity.”
I let that hang in the air for a beat. Then I continued, ticking off the points on my fingers. “I’m stopping you from creating a fire hazard with my equipment. And I’m stopping you from tripping the power for my actual customers.”
A murmur went through the small crowd. The woman with the bachelorette party took a half-step back from Candace’s now-dark counter, her wallet still in her hand.
“You’re crazy!” Candace sputtered, taking a step toward me. “I just borrowed an outlet! This is a community! You’re being selfish and vindictive!”
“Am I?” I asked, my voice still level. I refused to get drawn into a screaming match. I had my evidence. I didn’t need to raise my voice. “Is it ‘community’ to hide my sign behind a trash can? Is it ‘community’ to run a cord across a public walkway and trip people?”
Candace’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. She had no answer. Her entire strategy relied on me being too polite and conflict-averse to call her out. She never imagined I’d do it in front of an audience.
“What’s going on here?” A stern voice cut through the tension. It was Janice, the market organizer, her arms crossed and a deep frown on her face. The commotion had finally drawn the attention of the law.
The Organizer’s Verdict
Candace saw her chance. She immediately shifted into victim mode, her eyes welling up with crocodile tears. “Janice, thank God! This woman is sabotaging my business! She just unplugged my equipment in the middle of a huge sale, and she’s making these wild accusations!”
Janice looked from Candace’s theatrical display to my calm expression. “Yvette?”
I didn’t say a word. I simply unlocked my phone. I held it out for her to see, my finger swiping through the gallery.
First, the photo of the black cord plugged into my yellow power strip. Timestamp: 9:48 AM.
Next, the photo of my A-frame sign, its legs taped together, shoved behind the port-a-potty. Timestamp: 11:03 AM.
Then, the series of photos of the brown extension cord stretched across the walkway, the flimsy tape, the customer nearly stumbling. Timestamp: 12:15 PM.
Finally, I pulled the melted splitter from my bag and held it up. “And this is what her ‘borrowing’ did to my equipment last weekend.”
Janice’s face was a study in slowly dawning fury. She took the splitter from my hand, turning it over and sniffing the burnt plastic. She looked at the photos on my phone, her frown deepening with each swipe. Candace kept trying to interrupt, babbling about “unstable power” and how I was “overreacting,” but her voice sounded thin and pathetic against the mountain of digital evidence.
When Janice finally looked up, her gaze was ice. She ignored Candace completely and spoke directly to me. “You should have come to me sooner, Yvette.”
“I didn’t want to make a fuss,” I said quietly. “I thought I could handle it.”
“Well, I’m handling it now,” she said, her voice clipped. She turned to Candace, who visibly flinched. “Pack up your things. We need to have a talk in the office.”
The Metered Reckoning
The justice that followed was swifter and more satisfying than I could have ever imagined. While Janice and a pale-faced Candace were gone, I plugged my lights back in. A few of the customers who had witnessed the whole drama, including the bachelorette party, came over to my booth.
“That was amazing,” one of them said. “She had it coming.” The bachelorette bought a custom-lettered print for the bride-to-be, a bigger sale than the one Candace had lost.
About thirty minutes later, Janice returned alone. She looked tired but resolute.
“First of all, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that,” she said. “That kind of behavior is unacceptable here.” She then explained the resolution, and I had to physically stop my jaw from dropping.
Effective immediately, a new policy was being implemented for any vendor using high-draw equipment like heat presses or kilns. They would be issued a metered power badge. They would have to plug into a designated high-amperage power station and would be billed at the end of each market day for their exact kilowatt-hour usage.
“And,” Janice added, with a small, grim smile, “based on the documented wattage of her equipment and the market hours, we’ve calculated a conservative estimate of her usage for the past two weekends. We’re retro-billing her for it. The charge will be added to her seasonal booth fee.”
I blinked. It was beautiful. It was a perfect, logical, financially painful consequence that fit the crime exactly. No more “community power.” Now, she would have to pay for every single watt she used.
The Corner Office
But Janice wasn’t finished.
“Her extension cord across the walkway was a major liability violation,” she continued, her voice all business. “It’s grounds for immediate removal from the market, but I’m giving her one last chance. She’s being relocated.”
She gestured with her thumb toward the far end of the park. “I’m moving her to the back lot. Stall 94. It’s next to the dumpsters and has no access to power.”
The sheer, petty perfection of it was breathtaking. I could picture the spot perfectly. It got no foot traffic and smelled faintly of stale beer and garbage, especially on hot days.
Then Janice turned to me, her expression softening. “That prime corner feature table just opened up. The one you applied for back in the spring?”
My heart skipped a beat. It was the best spot in the entire market, a double-wide booth with visibility from two main aisles. It was a career-making spot.
“It’s yours,” Janice said. “For the rest of the season. No extra charge. Consider it an apology from the market for what you had to put up with.”
The next morning, I set up in my new corner office. I had space to spread out, to create a real gallery feel. My Edison bulbs glowed, casting a warm, welcoming light over my work. Sales were constant. I made more in that one Sunday than I had in the entire previous month.
Late in the afternoon, I took a moment to sip my coffee and looked out across the bustling market. Far in the distance, in the shimmering heat rising from the asphalt of the back lot, I could just make out a sad little tent, its glittery wares looking dull and cheap in the harsh sunlight. Candace was sitting in a folding chair, listlessly scrolling on her phone. No one was at her booth.
I took a long, slow sip of my coffee. The victory was sweeter than I ever could have imagined.
About the Author
