The House of Seven Mabels jj-13

by Jill Churchill

  She mentally shook herself.

  Stop thinking this way, she thought. You're possibly going to be the hired help, not the mistress of this old mansion.

  Five

  Let me take you upstairs now," Bitsy said. "Wait," Shelley said. "I want to measure every room."

  "No need to," Bitsy replied. "Sandy had an architectural engineer out and there are detailed measured plans for each floor, as well as the landscaping. I just need to go pick up a copy for each of you."

  "Just the same, I want to measure for myself. It'll make it more meaningful if and when we take on the job," Shelley said in her don't-cross-me voice.

  "If and when?" Bitsy asked.

  Shelley smiled. "We haven't seen the contract yet."

  Bitsy made a half gesture as if to slap her own head. "I had them with me yesterday and completely forgot to give them to you. Come on upstairs and I'll fetch them as you leave. It's a very good contract. You'll agree, I'm sure."

  Neither Jane nor Shelley replied to this remark.

  She led them up the right-hand curved stairway, which appeared and felt solid all the way up. Jane wondered if this were the single stable element of the house.

  When they reached the second floor, it was a total shock. There was only a tiny landing. The other side of the house was blocked off with very old plywood. They turned and looked down a narrow, dirty corridor with rows of dingy doors on both sides and an extraordinarily ugly, brown, worn cheap vinyl flooring on the hall floors.

  "I told you you'd be surprised."

  "Surprised is hardly the word," Shelley snorted.

  "But it's going to be lovely when we finish."

  Shelley started walking along the hall, opening doors. The ones that weren't stuck shut revealed tiny rooms, some still with grubby futons on the floors, or ancient bedsteads with disgusting mattresses. The rooms were hardly six feet wide. Trash had been swept into corners, and the floors were bare. Pegs were on all the walls for hanging clothes, instead of providing closets.

  "It was for druggies," Bitsy said. "And homeless people, I've been told."

  "Someone set it up that way," Jane said. "The people who lived here didn't build these partitions. Who owned this wreck?"

  "That's hard to answer and the reason it stood vacant so long," Bitsy said, sounding extremely socially enlightened. "It had belonged to a series of largely fake Middle Eastern holding compa-

  nies. I'm told there used to be a pair of enormous thugs who came by every week to collect the rents. According to the Realtor who eventually acquired the right to sell it, the thugs didn't even speak English."

  "Thugs with bulges in their jackets don't need to speak English," Shelley said.

  "So how did somebody clear the people out?" Jane asked.

  "The county zoning people relocated them. The drug dealers were taken to jail, their 'clients' were put in halfway houses, and the homeless were taken to shelters. When the thugs came back, there was nobody to collect from. The county got an offer to buy the place from someone in Romania."

  Jane and Shelley exchanged a quick glance. This didn't sound good.

  "I assume there's a quitclaim deed somewhere?" Shelley asked. "Does anyone know where it is and if it's valid?"

  "The county register of deeds has copies," Bitsy said cheerfully. "I've seen it, and the Realtor, Sandy, and I are all satisfied it's legal."

  No mention of a lawyer's opinion in that statement, Jane noted.

  Shelley went on opening doors without further comment. Jane took over on the other side of the hall. In one heavily used area, the crummy vinyl had been worn clear through, and a glimpse of a once-nice floral-patterned carpet showed through. Jane wondered idly why anybody would tack

  down what was probably stolen vinyl flooring over the carpet. Had one of the supposed owners considered renovating it someday? It seemed that someone had wanted to protect the carpet. How very odd, Jane thought.

  The doorway where the carpet showed turned out to be the only bathroom on the floor. Inside, there was a disgusting pair of toilets without a barrier between them, one chipped and filthy sink, and an equally revolting shower that was almost entirely black with mildew.

  Jane looked at Bitsy. "This really should have been torn down. There's no way you can restore this house. Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't condemned as unfit for human habitation and demolished. It isn't even structurally sound, I'd guess."

  This didn't faze Bitsy. "Come on down the stairs and go back up the other side where the work is under way."

  Feeling enormously depressed by the sight of a dilapidated house that must have been grand in its heyday, Jane dragged herself along behind Bitsy. Shelley followed, just as disappointed.

  As they reached the head of the stairway to the left side of the entryway, they could immediately see the difference. It was a huge area. All the room partitions had been removed. The vinyl flooring had been ripped up. If there had been carpet here, it had also been taken up. Good hardwood floors were still scarred with nail holes.

  There were windows all around the perimeter letting sunshine in. Most of the framing had been done. Piles of Sheetrock were stacked in the far corner, ready to be put up. Some of it had already been installed.

  Two women were running some lumber through a planer. Bright shiny aluminum duct work for heating and cooling was all in place and glittered in the sun. Thick bunches of electrical wires covered with white coating snaked to the spots where there would be overhead lights and sockets galore.

  "This must have been twice the size of the other half," Jane said, shouting over the noise.

  "Nope," Bitsy yelled back. "Exactly the same. Isn't it astonishing how large it is when it's opened up? The part at the far end is the master bedroom. His and her bathrooms on either side. The front one will have a hot tub and big overhead windows. The area at this end will be divided by a low partition of bookshelves into a living room on the farther side and a small utility kitchen and bar where we're standing. There will be two small bedrooms nearer the stairs for people who bring along assistants or an au pair."

  "Will the other side of the house be the same, but backwards?" Shelley asked.

  Bitsy nodded.

  "Do you want them to have the same decor?"

  "Oh, no," Bitsy replied. "Some visitors may

  stay two or three times. I'd like the two suites to be quite different in style."

  "What styles?" Shelley asked.

  "Well, that will be partly up to you two. But I picture this one sort of Old Englishy. Big deep claw-footed bathtub, heavily canopied bed with lots of pillows with shams. Floral drapes. Deep, lush carpeting with a subtle pattern. Not too feminine, though. Antique furnishings."

  Shelley nodded knowingly. "And the other?"

  "I've been thinking of something just a hint retro, do you see? Those big white tiles with the little black ones in the corners in the bathrooms. Curved dividers. A classy 1930s sparse but expensive look. Sort of like those Poirot mysteries on television."

  "That's a look that's popular right now," Shelley said, "but I don't think it's going to last much longer. I think you'd make a better investment if you went with something less trendy. So many offices these days are done in that sparse, sterile look. People who work in them don't want to live in them, too. Especially not when they're traveling."

  Bitsy was nodding enthusiastically. "I knew I'd picked just the right people!"

  Jane had to turn away and pretend to examine the piles of Sheetrock to conceal her laughter. Shelley was talking off the top of her head — quite impressively, to be sure — but without any experi-

  ence in sparse decor. Except the time they saw a house decorated that way and Shelley expressed her hatred of the style.

  She was still trying not to laugh when Shelley said, "Jane, we must get on with our measurements."

  "There's really no need—" Bitsy began.

  Shelley quelled Bitsy with The Look.

  The sound of the planer stopped with a
gentle moan and Bitsy recovered enough to say, "Let me introduce you to Jack and Henry, our head carpenters on the project."

  These two individuals, hearing their names, put down the wood they'd been working on and approached. The taller, burlier, and darker of them put out a sturdy hand to shake theirs and said, "Henrietta Smith at your service." She nearly crushed their hands when she did so.

  "Henry is an excellent carpenter, but drives a hard bargain. Her contract states that I, and any future owners, shall never paint over the woodwork. Jack is fanatic about nail placement and concealment. We're really lucky to have them."

  Jack, who was short with curly blond hair and lovely blue eyes, extended a small hand and said, "Jacqueline Hunt."

  Bitsy said, "These are our decorators, we hope. Shelley Nowack and Jane Jeffry. I know they're going to come to appreciate your fine work as much as Sandy and I do."

  "If you don't mind our being in the way, we

  need to take some measurements," Shelley said with a bunding smile.

  "Go right ahead. We're going to take our morning break. You can have this area to yourselves for a while," Henry boomed. She hoisted a thermal cooler, set it on her shoulder, and strode away with Jack following.

  "I'll let you get on with it," Bitsy said. "I'll get the contracts and have them downstairs for you when you're finished."

  It took a full hour on their hands and knees and climbing ladders to measure down to an eighth of an inch to complete their data on the big open area and a little less than two hours to measure the other side of the house.

  Shelley put a thumbtack in the center of each doorway on the other side of the house to take into account the flimsy walls of the tiny rooms that would be coming down eventually. Then they went downstairs and spent another quarter hour measuring the ground-floor rooms. Jane acted as holder of the far end of the metal tape and the recorder of the information in a notebook Shelley had brought along. Shelley herself determined the measurement.

  "We're both filthy," Jane said when they were done. "Let's go home and get showers, tidy up, and look over the contracts over lunch."

  "I think it's going to take a long soak in the tub," Shelley said, brushing sawdust off the knees of her stylish jeans. "And don't let me forget to get the architectural drawings."

  Six

  It was nearly two-thirty in the afternoon before the two women were cleaned up enough to go to lunch. Jane had staved off her hunger with a handful of Cheez-Its and brushed her teeth afterward to hide the evidence that she hadn't been able to tough it out.

  Most of their favorite restaurants were open for lunch and dinner but closed for the afternoon. So they tried a buffet they knew perfectly well they wouldn't like.

  "Buffets are all grease and starch but no salt. Inhabited solely by the elderly," Shelley said.

  "You can ask for salt," Jane said. "It's a safe place to go with almost no danger of running into young to middle-aged feminists who might overhear our conversation."

  Shelley rushed through the line, getting only soup and a roll. Jane dawdled over everything and finally ended up with macaroni and cheese with a side salad and overcooked green beans. It took her a while to find Shelley, who had the con-

  tract from Bitsy in front of her face. Meanwhile, she wandered all over the place, nearly losing her grip on the tray several times as she tripped over walkers, crutches, and oxygen containers on little trolleys some of the older customers had left in the aisles.

  Shelley made a semi-ladylike snort as Jane sat down.

  "You ate before we came, didn't you?" Jane asked.

  "Just a soda and a few crackers," Shelley responded. "Oh, no."

  "What's the 'oh, no' about?"

  "Wait till you read through this. Didn't you bring your own copy along?"

  "I forgot," Jane admitted as she pushed a suspicious-looking bean to the side of her plate. It looked as if it might have already been chewed. "Is the contract awful?"

  "It's probably fixable, and if it isn't…"

  Shelley put the papers down and gazed at Jane for the rest of the sentence.

  "… we don't really care if we take the job or not. Right?"

  "Right."

  "So tell me the worst," Jane went on.

  "The payment, of course. She's offering us three percent over our cost. That's ridiculous."

  "It might not be in this particular business."

  "Jane, you've told me before that writers pay agents ten to fifteen percent. And after we took

  that botany class I looked up a bunch of stuff on the Internet. Do you know that plant breeders who want someone to promote and sell their flowers and vegetables often pay as much as forty percent the first year? So three percent is peanuts. A downright insult."

  "So what do we ask for?"

  "Why not twenty-five percent?" Shelley said with a grin. "And be willing to come down to— oh, maybe twenty. Maybe even seventeen and a half?"

  "What's this stuff going to cost?" Jane asked.

  "Thousands and thousands of dollars. Have you priced wallpaper recently?"

  "To my sorrow, yes. My disastrous front hall. Remember? And it was so dark when it went up on the wall that I had to buy a very expensive light fixture that would take a hundred-and-fifty-watt bulb without burning down the house."

  "We'll have to have a hefty advance," Shelley continued, not even mentioning the outrageous figure it had cost to recarpet her guest room in a good Berber.

  "According to this silly contract," she went on, "we're to be reimbursed for the goods and our fee is paid on the first of every month. That's unacceptable. We need a good five thousand dollars up front. And then there's this other clause that'll make you laugh. If we provide something unacceptable, we have to take it back ourselves. No way. Imagine having a sofa delivered and having

  to cram it back in my minivan, or pay someone to haul it away?"

  "But won't Bitsy go see the choices we've made beforehand? The ultimate decisions should be hers."

  "Nope. Except for paint chips, fabric samples, and such that we can bring to the project site. We're to provide digital pictures of everything big. At our own expense. Do you know what a digital camera costs?"

  "But you already have one, don't you?"

  "I do," Shelley said with indignation. "But that's not something Bitsy knows. Why should she assume we're willing to invest in one for her convenience?"

  "On the whole, I don't like this," Jane said. "I never have."

  "I'm not crazy about the idea, I have to admit," Shelley said. "But we have nothing to lose by up-ping the ante. If she turns down our demands, we're home free and haven't lost anything but a little of our time. If she caves, we stand to have some fun out of shopping for this stuff and make tons of money for the pleasure. Jane, we have the upper hand here. That's what we have to keep in mind. This is just a first-try contract, to find out if we're stupid enough to accept it. But we're neither stupid nor desperate. And we've got time on our side."

  "Why?"

  "She won't be ready for furniture for months.

  Gives us lots of days to just hang out watching the work, pretending to take notes, deciding if we want to do this, while the clock is ticking for Bitsy. Sooner or later, she'll have to agree to our terms or look for someone else. Or, God help her, do the shopping herself."

  Jane pushed her plate toward the side of the table and sighed. When Shelley got the bit in her teeth, there was no stopping her.

  Shelley took a sip of her soup. "Ugh. It's awful and it's cold already. Let's go home and maybe we can get together this evening after you've read through this carefully."

  Jane was happy to abandon her choices of food as well. The macaroni and cheese must have been made from dried skim milk and the cheapest artificial cheese it was possible to purchase.

  After she had fixed Todd, Katie, and herself a good dinner, Jane told the kids to load up the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. Then she went to her bedroom to study the contract. She was as disap
pointed as Shelley had been. The terms weren't good. What was more, it wasn't even written properly. There were words spelled wrong. Some of the conditions weren't even stated in full sentences. Bitsy had apparently pieced this up herself with no guide at all. And she didn't even know the difference between it's and its. All of the pronouns were feminine gender.

  Jane wasn't normally a fanatic grammar cop, but the contract made her wonder if Bitsy wasn't

  downright stupid. Or simply too stingy to consult an attorney to draw up a contract.

  Either choice was scary.

  As she reached for the phone to call Shelley, it rang.

  "Have you read it yet?" Shelley asked.

  "It's awful. There are sentence fragments about important things that don't even make sense," Jane said.

  "That's not all that's wrong," Shelley said. "May I come over and show you something else I've discovered?"

  Shelley turned up minutes later with wads and rolls of paperwork. She had fire in her eyes. Even her hair was in disarray, as if she'd been trying to tear bits of it out.

  "Wait till you get a look at this." She unrolled the old floor plans as the house had been originally on Jane's kitchen table, and kept them from snapping back into a roll with a salt-and-pepper shaker.

  Then she flipped open her notebook. She pointed to the total dimensions of the back of the house on the second floor in the plans. Then she showed Jane her own figures.

  "It's a foot and half off. Where did we go wrong?" Jane asked.

  "Jane, get a grip. We didn't go wrong. You can't have already forgotten how obsessively precise I was upstairs, could you?"

  "I'll never forget."

  "Didn't Bitsy say this was done by an architectural engineer?"

  "I seem to remember that she did."

  "Do you see the name of the firm anywhere on this paper? Much less an individual's name?"

  Jane stared. "Who really did this? Not Bitsy. She wouldn't even take the time to fake this up, however incompetently."

  "Now look at the finished plan for the first floor," Shelley said, removing the salt-and-pepper shaker and replacing the old plan with the new plan and anchoring them down the same way.