And what was that all about? That text message she didn’t want to deal with? That text message at all, when she never gets messages or calls, at least not here?
I sigh.
I should be concentrating on the teak doors.
She’s right.
Somebody has to sign for delivery. More than sign. Stuff like this, there’s sure to be a shitload of paperwork. Plus, somebody has to supervise the unloading and uncrating of the doors, check them over, install them, and the only somebody in sight for the physical part of all that is me.
So I sigh again and head for my closet, but Bailey beats me to it. She opens the door, reaches in, takes out a pair of jeans, a blue chambray shirt, heavy cotton socks and the roper boots I mentioned earlier. They’ve been with me, same as she has, since day one.
Added to everything else, the woman reads minds.
“I’ll phone for a car.”
“No car,” I say as I undo my tie. “We’ll take one of the trucks.”
I toss the tie on the desk. Bailey picks it up, smooths it out and marches to the closet to hang it over a hook.
“Very well, sir.”
If I’m not Mister, I’m sir. So old-fashioned. So, I don’t know, so obedient.
Under other circumstances, meaning, coming out of another woman’s mouth at a different time, different place those words—sir, mister—might get a reaction from me. Well, from a part of me. The part behind my fly, which is always ready and happy to participate in something new.
“Shall I tell José to stand by?”
“José?” I unbutton my white broadcloth shirt. I’m not into T-shirts so what I’m uncovering is my naked chest. Bailey doesn’t so much as blink. Why would she? That’s one of the benefits of having a neutral relationship. “Why do we need José?”
“To drive the truck.”
“I’ll drive it myself.”
“Very well, Mr. O’Malley. I’ll call and tell the foreman to expect you in half an hour.”
“Fine.” I yank my shirttails free of my trousers. “And see what you can scrounge up to change into.”
This time, she does blink. “Me?”
“You.” I undo my cuffs. “I’ll deal with the doors. You’ll deal with the paperwork.”
She nods and turns towards the door. “I’ll requisition a pair of coveralls from Supplies.”
“And boots.”
“Boots. Of course.”
She starts for the door again.
“One more thing,” I say.
Bailey swings towards me just as I’m peeling off my shirt. There’s barely a pause before she turns away again, but not before I see a faint wash of pink spread over her cheeks. Is she blushing? I’m baffled. Then I realize that no shirt isn’t the same as an open shirt.
Uh oh. I’ve embarrassed her.
“Sorry,” I say quickly.
“No problem, sir.”
Maybe I misunderstood. She certainly doesn’t sound embarrassed. And when she turns towards me again, her expression is as professional as always.
“Mr. O’Malley?”
“Yes?”
“You were saying…?”
What was I saying? I’m still puzzled by that blush.
“I was saying…Oh. Yeah. Call Burt.” Burt’s my foreman. “Tell him we’re on our way and if the truck delivering the doors arrives before we do, he should just stall them. Then you meet me in the lobby. Five minutes.”
Bailey nods. ”Five minutes.”
“Fine,” I say, but I don’t reach for my belt or anything else until the door shuts firmly behind her.
Okay, I think as I change out of my pants. Okay. Today I get to be a construction guy.
The truth is, even the thought makes me happy.
4
It takes half an hour to reach the Schecter site.
I consider mentioning that text message, but I don’t do it. Bailey’s private life is her private life. I don’t know anything about her, well, nothing beyond the fact that she has that degree and that she comes from some town in upstate New York. Troy. Schenectady. Something like that.
So we spend the time with her reading me the specifics of the teak temple doors from the dealer’s catalogue where I first discovered them, and I try to envision where I’ll be placing the necessary screws and fasteners when I install them.
The screws and fasteners, made to order by a place in California, cost three thousand bucks all by themselves so, yeah, this job is a big deal—and actually, I’m looking forward to it. It’s been a long time since I did anything meaningful in the field. Too long, I think, as we turn onto a quiet road that leads to the Schecter place.
My guys are happy to see us.
They weren’t looking forward to the doors being delivered without Barfing Bob on hand, except they didn’t want him there if he was barfing.
They greet Bailey as they always do. High fives, hand shakes, nods of the head. They see her as one of them, which is good. The last thing you want on a construction job is some hot babe to distract everybody. Of course, you can’t say that, not in today’s litigious world, but everybody knows it. Burt put it best the time we’d hired a plumber who also happened to be a babe.
“Got a problem here, boss,” he said after she’d been with us a couple of months.
“Which is?” I asked.
I remember Burt looking around, making absolutely sure we were alone. Then he leaned in close enough for me to figure out he hadn’t really stopped smoking, the way he claimed.
“The new guy. I mean, the new girl.”
“Woman,” I said.
“Girl. Woman. The thing is, she’s gotta go.”
“She’s not working out? Her references were—”
“She’s a good plumber. She’s also female. The guys…”
“If they’re coming on to her, Burt, it’s your job to stop them.”
Burt shook his head. “That’s not the problem.”
“So what is the problem?”
“She drops a wrench, four guys rush over to pick it up. She starts to lift a box, they trip over each other running to help her. You know what I mean?”
I knew.
My crew was treating the lady plumber like a lady instead of like a plumber.
It was a serious problem. It took me a month to figure out how to ease her out of the job without laying the burden of it on her—and without anybody ending up in court. We did it by transferring her to another site where two of the crew were female and the odds of creating a problem were limited.
Bailey was with me the day we told the plumber we were moving her elsewhere. Afterwards, Burt yanked off his hardhat and swiped an imaginary layer of sweat off his forehead.
“Phew,” he said. “Glad that’s over. I know I ain’t supposed to say it, but women don’t belong on jobs with men. Oh, not you, Bailey,” he said hastily. “You’re never a problem.”
I recall thinking that as well meant as the comment was, it might be a little rough, but Bailey took it like the pro she is, just nodded and gave Burt a kind of quick smile as she stood there next to me, all but swallowed up in the coveralls she’d borrowed from Supplies.
She’s swallowed up in this current pair, too. She’s got the sleeves rolled up. The same for the cuffs. Still, the coveralls look huge on her. The boots, too.
Or maybe it’s that she looks small. No. Wrong word. She looks kind of, uh, kind of delicate.
She catches me staring at her.
“Something wrong?”
“Why didn’t you take a pair of coveralls that would fit you? “ I jerk my head at her ankles. I don’t know why, but I sound pissed off. “Those pants roll down, you could trip and fall.”
She looks down at herself, then up at me.
“You’re worried about accident reports,” she says briskly. “No need. I’m not about to trip. Or fall.”
“Still,” I say, “next time, requisition a size small.”
“This is a size small,” she says.
And that’s the end of the conversation.
* * *
The morning turns out to be fun.
As intended, Bailey deals with the paperwork—it’s fucking endless—while I deal with the teak. We unload it. Uncrate it. Check it over, inch by inch. Then we move it—it takes three of my guys plus me. The doors are going to the rear of the house where they’ll open onto the Zen garden. Yeah, I know. I’m mixing cultures. Thai temple gates, Japanese garden, but it’s all good. It all goes together just fine.
Burt puts the little box of attaching stuff on the floor next to me.
“Here we go,” I say.
I look up. Everybody’s eyes are on me. Well, no. Not my PA’s. Bailey is staring at her smartphone. Is she finally checking out that message? I’m kind of surprised she’s doing it at a moment like this and I find myself waiting until she finishes reading, taps in a reply, then just stands there until, obviously, a response comes through. She must have turned off the sound but I can tell she’s had a reply because her mouth goes all tight and grim.
I clear my throat.
“Here we go,” I say again.
Bailey looks up. Looks around. Damned if she doesn’t blush again.
“Sorry,” she says, jamming the phone into her pocket.
I take a deep breath and get to work.
To my relief, Bob’s done all the prep work exactly right.
The doors fit into the space he prepared as if they’d always hung there. The screws, the special tools he’d ordered…Perfect.
I work slowly. Carefully. It takes me two hours to hang the doors. By the time I’m finished, most of the crew is standing around behind me.
I step back. “Done,” I say.
“Fuck,” one of the electricians whispers, and that just about sums it up.
The doors are not just spectacular; they look as if they’ve come home.
There’s a faint smattering of applause. For the centuries-old work, not for me, which is just how it should be. Burt produces a case of cold beer. We pop the tops and drink to what’s rapidly starting to look like the best project we’ve done yet—and that’s saying something.
We joke, laugh, kibitz for a few minutes. Then the guys get back to work and Bailey and I head for the truck.
“Those doors,” she says as we drive away. “I mean, wow.”
I flash her a smile. “Really something, huh?”
She nods. “The Schecters will be happy.”
“They’d better be.”
We both chuckle.
“They’re flying in early next week,” I say. “They want to see how things are going.”
“Well, they’re going to be delighted. Which reminds me. You had a call from that couple, the one that wants a colonial on those hilly four acres in Rye.”
“It’s the wrong house for the wrong lot. Besides, if they’re set on something that traditional, they don’t really want me. Give them a call. See if you can set up something for—”
A phone rings. Bailey’s. Definitely not mine. Mine plays the opening chords to Wild Horses.
Hers plays Beethoven.
“Excuse me,” she says politely and she takes the phone out of her pocket, checks the screen and puffs out a little breath of air as she puts the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom.”
I pay attention to the road. For openers, I want to give her some privacy. Plus, the way she said that Hi, Mom tells me she’s not happy to get this call. I don’t know much about Bailey’s mother. I don’t know much about her family at all. We don’t talk about personal stuff, Bailey and I. All I know is what I told you before, that her father is gone.
Come to think of it, she seems a little subdued after weekends home lately. She’s been going home more often since her father died, maybe once a month—I only know this because the Fridays she’s heading home, she comes to the office with an overnight bag. As for the subdued part—she’s kind of quiet on the Mondays afterward. When I ask if she’s okay, she always says she’s fine, just tired from the traveling. And then I always say she could take a longer weekend, three days, four, and she always says, very politely, “Thank you, Mr. O’Malley, but that isn’t necessary.”
Now it occurs to me that maybe what she seems those Mondays isn’t so much tired or even subdued as, you know, worn down.
“Mom,” I hear her whisper, “I already said, I’m not coming. No. I don’t care if you told them I’d be there. I am not—”
I take a quick look. Bailey’s huddled in the corner and turned as far towards the window as she can get.
She needs more mental space for this conversation.
I reach out, punch in something, anything on Sirius. Shit. The music comes on so loud that we both jump.
Bailey looks at me. I mouth “Sorry,” and shut off the sound.
If there were a place to turn off so I could park, get out of the car and leave her alone with the call, I would, but the road we’re on is narrow and trees press in on either side
There’s some more back and forth, with Bailey’s answers coming fast. They’re one-word answers. The fact is, all of them are No, and her voice is rising and rising and then she makes this strangled sound, pounds her fist against her thigh and says, “What do you mean, why? Because I don’t want to, that’s why! I am not going to cousin Violet’s wedding!”
There is a two second pause.
“Is that what you think, Mother? Well, you’re wrong. It is not because I’m embarrassed to show up without a date! In fact, I have a date! That’s right. A date. A man. A gorgeous, successful, fantastic man. He’s taking me away for a weekend of hot sex, not for a weekend at Cousin Violet’s fucking wedding!”
I can feel my eyeballs pop.
Did my logical, always calm, always proper PA just drop the F-bomb? Did she say hot sex?
Is she really going away for the weekend with a man?
Apparently, the answers are yes and yes. I don’t know abut the weekend part, but telling her mother about the hot sex thing? Saying the F-word? Both happened. And she doesn’t just end the call, she slams the phone against the dashboard and then drops it into her lap where it lies as still and silent as a dead mouse.
I am not stupid enough to say a word. Hey, I might be a dude, but even I know when to keep quiet.
Bailey sighs. It’s a sad sound, and I look at her. She’s looking out the window. In fact, her nose is all but pressed to the glass.
She mumbles something.
“What?”
“I said, I’m sorry.”
“For what? You don’t owe me an apology.”
She doesn’t answer. I wait. And wait. I tell myself not to speak…
Myself doesn’t listen.
“Bailey?”
“Yes?”
“What’s the matter?”
She shoots me a look. I deserve it. What kind of question is that? I know what’s the matter. Her mother’s nagging her about a party she doesn’t want to go to. She wants to spend the weekend with a man instead.
Except, that isn’t true.
There is no gorgeous, successful, fantastic man whisking my PA away for the weekend. It’s a lie. A protective lie. And yes, it’s cruel for me to be as sure of that as I am that the sun rises in the east each morning, but there it is.
There’s no studly stud waiting in the wings. There’s no guy from GQ hovering. There’s no guy, period.
And maybe that’s the exact reason Bailey doesn’t want to go to the party.
I mean, I remember when Casey was in high school. Eighth grade. We laugh about it now, that eighth grade was not her finest hour. Finest year. You know what I mean. She had braces on her teeth, she was growing so fast that she’d taken to walking so hunched over that I helpfully called her Quasimodo, and a squadron of zits had taken over her forehead.
Of course, by ninth grade she was tall and proud of it; the braces were gone; her skin was flawless. She was gorgeous—she still is—and now we can
think back and roll our eyes.
But not then.
I can recall, all too clearly, her flat-out refusal to attend the eighth grade graduation dance, where she was sure she’d be the only girl without a date.
I clear my throat.
“Weddings always suck.”
Bailey shoots me a look. “It was impolite to listen to the conversation, Mr. O’Malley.”
“I didn’t listen. Well, yeah, I did, but only because I couldn’t avoid listening. I tried not to, remember? I turned on the radio…”
“It’s Cousin Violet who sucks.”
Wow. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard my PA say a mean thing about anyone.
“We’re the exact same age. Exact! We were born on the same day. Same hospital.”
I risk a glance at Bailey. She’s sitting with her arms folded, starting straight ahead.
“My whole life, I had to share birthdays with her.”
“Well,” I say helpfully, “I’m sure it’s not fun to know some other person is—”
“Our mothers made one party. One party! For the two of us. And it always was at Violet’s house because her house was bigger. Her yard was bigger. Big enough for pony rides, even though I loathed them!”
Silence. Am I supposed to say something here? I shoot another glance at her. Yes. It’s my turn, but, shit, what can I…
“Not the ponies,” she says. “I loved the ponies. It was seeing them used like that. You know. Going back and forth, back and forth, kids riding them, yelling, shouting, digging their heels into the ponies’ bellies…”
“I think they probably dug their heels into the ponies’ flanks,” I say, being helpful again.
Bailey gives me a look I deserve. She’s feeling pity for the ponies, and I’m correcting her pony parts.
“And there was always cake. Chocolate cake. I hate chocolate cake!”
This time, I am smart enough to keep quiet.
“With vanilla frosting. I hate vanilla frosting.”
The F-Word: A Sexy Romantic Comedy Page 3