by Debra Dixon
After the aforementioned tea, a half an hour of small talk, and two helpings of chocolate-mint Girl Scout cookies, I got the nerve up to ask when she thought she might be moving. That’s when the tearful confession started.
It’s a well-known fact that Irishmen are suckers for tears. We’d rather have a screamin’ fight or punch each other in the eye before voluntarily comforting a crying woman. As Mrs. Chesterfield went on about how she’d tried to give away her things but each time she set one close to the door she’d think of a reason to keep it, I went to find the box of tissues she kept on the kitchen counter. She boo-hooed about her furnishings being the symbols of her life, after all, and she just couldn’t decide how to let them go. That news was bad enough, but then she confessed she’d given the money she’d gotten from the sale of the house — my money, as it were — to her son to invest in Enron stock. We all know how that turned out.
Like I said, trouble. I had no clue what to do. So, after thanking her for the tea and assuring her that I’d figure something out, I went straight back to the pub, phoned up Mayor Walker and invited her for a free round of Jack Daniels. The mayor would know what was needed.
“You can’t very well throw her in the street,” Ida helpfully pointed out.
“Should I call her son?” I ventured. “Convince him to fix the mess he helped make?” I could think of several unsavory ways to get him in high gear. Most of them involved bruises.
Ida warmed the glass of bourbon between her capable hands and watched me. One on one with Ida Hamilton Walker was a unique and slightly intimidating experience. She was beautiful, she was older than me, she was rich, she was a tough businesswoman, and she wasn’t above scheming to get what she wanted. If I didn’t know better, I would think she was sizing me up for something. I fought the urge to squirm like a teenager. As a man, I couldn’t tell whether I was being asked to dance, so to say, or being measured for a rail out of town.
Ida already had a dance partner in Del Jackson. That would be retired Lieutenant Colonel Del Jackson. I wasn’t interested in stepping on his combat boots. I’d have to take my frustrations elsewhere. Also, I’d learned the hard way about mixing friendship with let’s say, physicality. Bad feelings after a romantic flame-out had to be reserved for strangers, not for women who held the fate of your liquor license in their diamond-studded hands.
“I’ll stop by and talk to Annie,” Ida said. “We ought to be able to work something out.” She knocked back the remainder of her drink and aimed a ‘not-to-worry’ smile in my direction.
I let out the breath I’d been holding, nodded and offered a refill which she declined. As I watched her slide off the bar stool and move toward the front door, stopping to speak to a few of the regulars, I was reminded of that old saying, Be Careful What You Wish For.
We Irish have a love/hate relationship with wishes. We come from the home of the Leprechaun and the four leaf clover, yet never has a country had the distinction of having so many wishes not come true. The people are some of the friendliest on earth — except to their own countrymen. Well, and then there’s the bad relationship with our neighbors on ‘the island.’ A mob of us had to come to America to fulfill our true potential. The land of the free and the brave. And in Mossy Creek — of the crazy.
I remembered the sentiments of my Irish heritage when I heard Ida’s solution two days later.
“You get half the house,” she said, as though: 1) it was all settled, and 2) it made any sort of sense.
Genuinely puzzled, I tried to clear the forest for the trees. “What do you mean, half the house? What am I supposed to do with half a house?”
“Live in it,” she said. When I couldn’t find a suitable reply, she went on, “Call Dan McNeil and send his carpenters over there to put up temporary walls and divide the space. Annie only needs one downstairs bedroom, the kitchen and bath. You get the rooms on the other side and the second floor since she can’t navigate the stairs. It’s the perfect solution. You don’t need a kitchen. You eat most of your meals here at the pub.”
I must have looked as flummoxed as I felt because she patted my hand. “I know you won’t put an old lady out of her home. Think of this as a Do-It-Yourself experiment. Half a home is more than you’ve had in a year. I’m behind you one hundred percent.”
“But —” I managed.
“No ‘but.’ It’s settled.” Ida waited, looking so serene I knew I didn’t have a chance.
“That’ll work.” I said finally, without a clue how to make it happen.
* * * *
That brings us back to Michelle DeSalvo — my imported, faux, almost-Irish redhead, due to arrive in two weeks. I’d spent the last nine months working on my half of Annie Chesterfield’s house, doing some of the labor myself and contracting out the rest. I also had Miss Annie make a list of things she needed fixed. I had to say, the whole house looked a lot better after replacing sagging gutters and wobbly stairs, cutting back overgrown shrubs and adding an updated coat of paint.
My suite of rooms had been patched and painted, the floors refinished, and the bathroom updated. I’d moved my lonely bachelor twin bed from the bar to the upstairs of my new home and the big screen TV with matching recliner into the living room. But that’s as far as I’d gotten. Time was running out — I knew my chances of impressing Michelle would increase dramatically if I at least had a couch and some curtains on the windows.
As my mother would no doubt tell you, I knew better. I hadn’t grown up in a house without furniture. But let’s just say, beyond a bed I hadn’t had the need to branch out into the other rooms. Until now. Even I recognized I had what Josie McClure, Mossy Creek’s budding interior designer, called a design emergency.
But there was no way I was dialing 911 for Josie’s pit bull of a boss, Swee Purla. Even the persuasive Ida wasn’t going to talk me into letting that woman put up gold, two-hundred dollar curtain rods with little flying angels on them. Turns out, Ida had a different kind of torture planned. She turned the cops loose on me. Specifically, Sandy Crane.
On Monday morning at ten o’clock (early for a bartender who closes at two a.m.) someone started banging on my private front door at Annie’s. Since I sleep in the ‘boof’ — that’s Irish for buff — I had to yell down, “Hold your horses!” before draggin’ on a pair of sweat pants.
In Chicago, my apartment door had a double dead bolt and a peep hole for security reasons. Opening the door to strangers in the city could be hazardous to your health. In Mossy Creek, I rarely even locked the door and had no advance warning what I was about to face when, scratching a red mark on my bare belly from sleeping on rumpled sheets, I swung the door open.
Three women faced me from the other side. One curly-blond little dynamo in a police uniform. That would be Sandy. One sweet-faced, brown-haired failed beauty queen holding an armful of fabric samples. That would be young Josie McClure, who was engaged to Harry Rutherford. Their wedding was still a month away at the time. And then there was Jasmine Beleau, the aforementioned inspiration for all sorts of blasphemous thoughts.
After months of lonely bachelorhood, suddenly three sets of feminine eyes were staring at my naked chest. Jaysus, Mary and Joseph.
Sandy grinned but looked like she’d swallowed her walkie-talkie. Josie turned red from her fingertips to her matching hair. And Jasmine, well, all I could see was a slight narrowing of her wide green eyes as a kind of ‘knowing’ look crossed her features. Not embarrassed or particularly impressed, simply taking in the scenery. I didn’t know whether I wanted to hear her opinion of my manliness, but I was sure she had formed one.
Sandy recovered first. “Ida sent us. We came as soon as we heard,” she said, still grinning.
“Heard what?” I managed before realizing I had to do something before Josie swallowed her tongue and Sandy arrested me for indecent exposure. “Hang on a sec. Be right back.” I turned and took the stairs two at a time up to my alleged bedroom. After digging through the laundry for a T-shirt I pulled i
t over my head, smoothed out a few of the wrinkles, and ran a hand through my bed-head hair.
By the time I came back downstairs, my three visitors were in the center of my empty living room, holding a deep discussion.
“We can’t have some out-of-towner looking down on us just because Michael —” one was whispering.
“Because Michael what?” I asked, a little out of sorts. I’d been up till four doing book work and I hadn’t had any coffee yet. Before I could hurt everyone’s feelings, another knock sounded on the door that separated my half of the house from Miss Annie’s. Without waiting for an answer, the door opened, and Miss Annie herself tottered through it. Thank the saints she was carrying a cup of black coffee. She handed the coffee to me and I thanked her, but her attention zoomed right past the ‘Good morning, Michael’ part.
“What’s all the excitement?” she asked Sandy.
“Mayor Walker sent us over to help Michael decorate his place,” Sandy said. I swear on my sainted mother that Josie McClure then confirmed, “It’s a design emergency.”
“Well,” Miss Annie replied, “I have plenty of extra furniture if you need something.” She gazed at me. “Michael? Do you remember that chest of drawers you moved out of this room? We could put it back.”
I’d only had half a cup of coffee at this point and I wasn’t certain I could say anything resembling a good mannered reply so I kept my mouth shut. That chest of drawers smelled like a mothball factory. And although I appreciated the coffee, I was already deciding to put new locks on all the doors, especially the one between Miss Annie’s side and my own.
“Oh no, thank you, Miz Chesterfield,” Sandy said. “Mayor Walker said we had to start new and do it fast.” She put her hands on her utility belt — the one with the notepad where the gun should be — and pinned me with her curly-blond, Barney Fife stare. “Isn’t that right, Michael?”
“Yes, Officer.” I slugged back the rest of the coffee and handed the empty cup to Miss Annie. “Better get started,” I said.
I’d had no idea what I was in for.
Between Josie looking in the vicinity of my feet every time I walked into a room and Sandy’s non-stop list-making I thought I’d surely died and gone to Martha Stewart hell. But that was before I had to face Jasmine Beleau across my own rumpled twin bed and discuss new mattresses and sheets. It takes quite a lot to stun an Irishman but let me tell you, I found my Achilles heel. Watching a woman who makes your palms itch and other parts of you rise to the occasion sit on your bed to test the firmness struck me dumb.
“Sure . . .” was all I could manage.
One of her slender eyebrows arched and her amazing lips twitched into a smile. “I’ll take care of your bedroom,” she said, pushing to her feet. “Don’t worry, your girlfriend’ll love it.”
The sound of Sandy clearing her throat behind me saved the day. “Uh, I’ve got to get back to the station. If I’m gone more than half-an-hour the chief starts to worry. He doesn’t say so, but I can tell. The whole durned place falls apart without me there to run things.” She looked down at her notepad. “I think we’ve got the essentials here. Don’t you, Jasmine?”
“We’ve made a good start,” Jasmine answered.
I was hoping that meant I could shoo them downstairs and out the front door so I could catch my breath. Sandy did that for me, however. Once you put Sandy in the driver’s seat you might as well take the bus. Personally, I was just happy that the chief had seen fit to hire her on the side of law and order. I shuddered to think how good a crook she would be if she put her mastermind to it.
“We’ll be back day after tomorrow,” she promised, and I had no reason to doubt her.
I determined that the best thing would be to leave my credit card and a key under the mat and let the trio of women have at it while I hid out at O’Day’s. Hell, how bad could it be? It had to look better than empty walls and bare floors. That was before my rickety twin bed was delivered to the pub, however, with a bag of clean clothes and a note from Jasmine.
You can come back on Friday.
I took that to mean it would take most of the week to finish everything. As curious as I might be as to how they were spending my money, I decided to let nature or, ah, femi-nature take its course. The closest I came to spying was an occasional walk down Pine Street. On Wednesday I spotted Dan McNeil’s truck parked outside my house and wondered if they’d decided to tear down my temporary walls and start over again — but I resisted the urge to find out. Friday would be soon enough to face my own version of While You Were Out.
* * * *
“That’s the biggest bed I’ve ever seen.”
Jasmine Beleau smiled. “It’s a California king. Plenty of room for —” her appraising gaze measured me from my running shoes to my hairline — “two people, or whatever.” Her smile transformed into a challenging grin. “Why don’t you stretch out and see how it feels?”
No way. I was about to swallow my tongue as it was. “I’m sure it’ll feel . . . great.” I wasn’t lying or lie-ing. At that point I could only hope, though, that each time I slid between the Indian cotton, 380 thread count sheets, Jasmine Beleau’s fallen-angel face didn’t haunt my dreams. If we were talking baseball, she was so far out of my league we’d need an interpreter. My only defense was to change the subject, so I turned to check out the rest of the room.
“What’s with the sword?” She’d transformed my empty utilitarian sleeping quarters into the black and white lair of a Samurai. A sleek black dresser had been placed so the large mirror would reflect the Japanese screen serving as a headboard for the aforementioned largest-bed-in-Mossy-Creek. The bed itself was covered with a mostly-white-but-with-big-blue-geometric-chrysanthemums comforter, flanked by matching lacquered night stands. From the woven mat on the floor to the dueling pillows situated on either side of a low table complete with glass enclosed sword, the only thing missing was a geisha. Pretty soon Ms. Beleau would have me speaking Japanese. At that moment I probably would have agreed to speak pig Latin, if she’d been the teacher.
“You don’t like the sword?” Jasmine asked.
“I’m more the baseball bat type,” I said, snapping out of it. If Katie Bell saw this room, the news would be all over Mossy Creek before you could say Benihana.
“Boys play with baseball bats, men play with swords.”
Jaysus, Mary and Joseph. That pretty much shut me up. “Oh,” I managed. “Let’s go back downstairs,” I said, trying to sound cool and casual.
Sandy and Josie were waiting at the bottom of the stairs. By the time I reached them, I was feeling a little less stressed and a lot more grateful. “You ladies have done a great job.” I crossed the room to try out the leather sectional artfully arranged between my own big screen and the fireplace. My old recliner had been banished to a corner. Accordion blinds and sensible curtains covered the windows and an abstract painting in manly tones of charcoal, red, and black hung over the mantel.
Before I could sit, Sandy interrupted. “Come and see your kitchen.”
“My kitchen?” Now I knew what Dan McNeil had been doing here — adding rooms. I made a mental note to sit down before I opened my next Visa bill.
“It’s more like the galley of a ship,” Josie said, looking saucy. I had to figure it had been her idea.
And a good idea it was, too. They had installed a granite-covered bar complete with sink and small refrigerator. A microwave was tucked beneath the counter along with my very own espresso coffee maker. Cabinets on the wall behind the bar held a wine rack complete with glasses.
“You girls are a wonder,” I said, no blarney intended. I’d never have thought about putting in a mini-kitchen.
“This is all you’ll need for entertaining and those midnight snack attacks,” Josie added. Jasmine and Sandy both nodded their heads. “We filled your linen closet with new towels and updated the bathroom with a fresh shower curtain and rugs. Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you that Dan said it would only take half a day to
install a deck and a hot tub out back. Said you could make it hot or cold as it suited your mood.”
A hot tub? I’d never live that down. Since the ladies looked like they thought it a fine idea, I kept my misgivings to myself. “I’ll think about it.”
“One last thing,” Jasmine said. She motioned for me to follow her out of the kitchen toward the front of the house. She stopped at the door that led to Miss Annie’s side of the house. “I had Mr. McNeil install a lock in this door.” She handed me a key. “We wouldn’t want to give Mrs. Chesterfield heart failure, now would we?” She glanced at my chest, and all the sudden I felt naked as the day I’d first answered the front door. “By the way, I picked up a few things when I was down in Atlanta. I hung them in your closet.”
I nodded in agreement, secretly wondering if she’d bought me some leather pants and silk shirts like those romantic pirates wore. Saints preserve me. “Looks like you’ve thought of everything.”
Sandy joined us. “Yep, it’s all up to you now.”
I didn’t want to think about what she actually meant by that. “I don’t know how to thank you —”
“We’re putting your name on a reference list for Josie here. You can repay her by recommending her for design work. You’re gonna give Swee Purla a run for her money, right Josie?”
“You bet. She’s a Scorpio-rat. Doesn’t stand a chance against a Cancer-snake.”
I had no clue what she was talking about and frankly, I didn’t want to know. “What about you two?” I’d included Sandy but I was looking at Jasmine. I’d heard something about her being in the image consulting business. Business meant money. “What do I owe you?”
“I’m just doing my community service,” Sandy declared.
Jasmine gave me that unreadable look she wore most of the time. “I’ll think of something — not money — but something.”