Chez Stinky

by Susan C. Daffron

  “John Wolf. He’s in the phone book under Contractors. He helped me fix the roof on this place.”

  “Thanks! I need to make some calls.” Kat paused for a second. Was she overwhelming Joel with all this entrepreneurial inspiration? “So are you going to be around? I was hoping I could see you again. Soon.”

  Joel paused before saying, “I’m not sure. It looks like I may have someone visiting this weekend. I’ll give you a call, okay?”

  Kat hung up the phone and rested her hand on the receiver. Was Joel regretting the kiss the other night? If the visitor was the mysterious Allison, he might be trying to distance himself. Dwelling on that idea was way too depressing. Best to think about new opportunities instead. Kat got out a legal pad and started making notes about her new business idea.

  Before she could move forward with her boarding-kennel idea, Kat needed to get a better understanding of the terms of Abigail’s will. She picked up the phone to call Larry.

  He answered on the second ring. Perhaps things were slow at the law offices today. “Larry, I was hoping I could see a copy of Aunt Abigail’s will. I have decided to stay here in Alpine Grove permanently, so I need to understand all the stipulations.”

  Larry cleared his throat. “Could we meet? I can bring the document with me and explain it to you.”

  “That would be fine. When can you do that?”

  “I have to be in court today. Perhaps we could meet for dinner later?”

  Kat had a sinking feeling in her stomach that Larry might be considering the dinner another date. She sighed quietly. On a positive note, at least they’d have something to talk about. “We can do that. Could you also make a copy of the document for me to keep? I need to understand what I need to do to get the inheritance, so I can fix the house. I have other plans for the property, as well.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  Kat had a bad feeling about the evening, but to be fair, how could this date (if that’s what it was) possibly be worse than the last one?

  Moving on to more pleasant ideas, she looked up John Wolf in the phone book and had a nice chat with his answering machine. Maybe there was an agreement among the contractors of Alpine Grove that no one ever take or return phone calls. So far, she was getting exactly nowhere on the Chez Stinky reconstruction project. Maybe she should go to trade school and learn how to do it herself. It might be faster.

  Failing in her mission to talk to anyone about the house, Kat went to the library to get books on how to start a business. Running a kennel and freelance writing were actually two businesses, so she needed all the help she could get.

  At the library, it was story time, and a group of little kids had gathered in the corner along with a few parents. Cindy Ross had contorted herself into a tiny chair and was looking bored. Kat waved at her across the room, catching her attention. Eager for an excuse to talk about something other than a hungry caterpillar, Cindy launched herself out of the chair toward Kat.

  Cindy whispered urgently, “I got your message! I’m so glad I don’t have to go back to your place. Joel said he went for a walk with you and the dogs with that leash thing and it was fine. I don’t know how you did it. I guess it works for you, but not me. Tessa is such a pain.”

  Kat was a little taken aback by Cindy’s vehemence, but whispered back. “It’s okay. All the dogs are fine, and I’m staying here. I plan to fix up the house if I can ever get a contractor to call me back. The roof leaks and it sounds like it needs to be replaced.”

  “Joel told me he went out there with Cliff and a couple other guys and tarped it.”

  “Yes. It was nice of him to do that. I was going back to work, so it was a bit of an emergency. But I gave the guys some beer and they seemed happy.”

  “So how come you’re here?”

  “I quit my job.”

  Cindy said much too loudly, “What? You quit your job? Why?” The librarian at the desk pointed at Cindy and put her finger to her lips.

  Cindy continued in an emphatic whisper, “What are you going to do? That’s just like Joel. He’s been sitting around feeling sorry for himself after he got laid off. He’s so lame.”

  “It’s a long story, but I have an idea of what I can do here, so I’m working on that. I need to do some research. I think Joel has plans, too. He didn’t seem like he was moping around to me. Or lame.”

  Cindy raised her eyebrows. “Oh reeeeally? You seem to know more about what he’s thinking about than I do. So what’s going on there? Did I miss something?”

  Kat blushed and stammered, “No. No, he just helped me out the other day and we were talking about work, that’s all.”

  “I wonder what Allison thinks about that. She’s coming up this weekend. This could get interesting.”

  Kat’s heart did a painful back-flip in her chest. Allison was the visitor. She shook her head and stood up straighter, trying not to look surprised or disturbed. “He told me about her. It’s fine. Nothing is going on with us. He just helped me out. As I understand it, he does that for you, too. He’s a nice person.”

  Cindy raised her eyebrows. “Sure he is. Real nice. I know he’s my brother, but I’m not blind. He’s quite the catch for Alpine Grove.”

  “I admit that he does have all his teeth, which is a big plus.”

  Cindy laughed and glanced quickly over at the librarian, who was glaring at her. “I hear you on that. I hope you’re not moving here for the hot dating scene. You’ll be disappointed.”

  “My friend Maria and I discovered that the other night. We went out on the town and it was a bit of a bust.”

  “You didn’t go to the saloan, did you?”

  “Yes. That was a mistake.”

  Cindy giggled. “I can imagine.” She glanced over at the circle of kids. It looked like story time was ending. “I gotta go grab my kid. Good luck with Joel. I can never figure him out. It sounds like you do better with him than I do. At least you get him to talk. That’s better than Allison, too. Here’s hoping they don’t kill each other this weekend. That shack of his is pretty small.”

  “I told you, nothing is going on with us. Really. I know he has a girlfriend.”

  “Yeah, right. Whatever you say. I gotta go. Thanks for letting me out of dog duty! See you around.”

  Kat waved as Cindy marched off to collect her little boy. It was interesting to discover that other people found Joel difficult to talk to. She had enjoyed her conversations with him. Yes, she thought he was cute (okay, really cute), but she wasn’t just being polite to Cindy when she said Joel was a nice person. She liked him as a human being, too. The fact that she thought he was attractive and they obviously had some serious chemistry was a bonus. But not if he already had a girlfriend.

  Turning back to the shelves of books, Kat considered the impending weekend. What was Joel going to be doing this weekend with Allison? Probably nothing she wanted to know about. As she mulled over the implications of the impending girlfriend visitation, her mind delved into increasingly distressing territory. Pulling a business book off the shelf, she attempted to distract herself by immersing herself in the world of entrepreneurship instead.

  After the library, Kat’s next stop was the hardware store. Using pliers to turn the shower on and off was getting tiresome. She stood in the plumbing department studying the wide array of pipes, fixtures, and water-related gadgetry. She knew she needed a shower handle that had one lever as opposed to two. Beyond that, it was hard to tell these things apart. She grabbed a package and turned it over, trying to determine from the tiny, cryptic exploded diagram if it would work for her shower.

  She jumped when Joel tapped her on the shoulder. He grinned at the startled expression on her face. “Looking for something?”

  Kat blinked a couple of times, feeling unreasonably flustered. She had been thinking about the evening Joel had fixed her shower and about other things related to being close to him, so it was a little spooky to suddenly find him standing right next to her.
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  “Yes. I was looking.” She proffered the package at him. “It’s plumbing stuff.” She shook her head. “I guess that’s obvious.”

  He smiled. “How’s it going?”

  “Not too well.” Kat shrugged. “I think I need a magnifying glass to read the diagram.”

  He leaned over her shoulder, looked down at the package, and pointed at the picture of the shower knob. “This one should work. See how it connects to the pipe? That’s like your shower.”

  Kat could feel the warmth of his body and the slight scent of fabric softener from his flannel shirt. She closed her eyes for a long second. No. Stop it. He has a girlfriend. “Right. I’ll get this one. And I can return your pliers to you. Thanks for leaving them so I can shower.” Ugh, could she sound like any more of a dork?

  “No problem.” He smiled again. “I can stop by and help you put it in if you want.”

  Kat hesitated before replying, “You said you had company. I don’t want to take up your time…again.”

  “That’s not until this weekend.”

  Kat looked up into his eyes, which seemed especially green at the moment. “Well. Okay. Yes. That would be great. I still don’t know where Abigail has tools. Maybe they are in the downstairs bedrooms. I haven’t really cleaned them out yet. But if you could put on the shower knob that would help. I’m used to the pliers, but Maria didn’t appreciate the rustic nature of my shower fixtures.”

  “I’ll bet. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll stop by later.”

  Kat watched him walk down the aisle. It was best not to dwell on how good it had felt to have him close to her again. She repeated to herself, “He has a girlfriend. He has a girlfriend.”

  After a quick stop at the grocery store for non-snack-cake items so she’d have something to eat other than Twinkies, Kat went home and walked the dogs. During the walk, she pondered the mess downstairs. Today was the day she would attack the clutter in the downstairs bedrooms and see if tools were in there somewhere. It was embarrassing to admit to Joel that she still hadn’t found the stupid toolbox. No one could live at Chez Stinky as long as Abigail had with no tools. They had to be somewhere.

  She waded through the maze of boxes to the bedroom closet. When she opened the door, an avalanche of moth-eaten sweaters and dust fell off the shelf and landed on her head. Kat shrieked and leaped backwards, frantically brushing herself off, hoping that nothing with six or eight legs was living within the pile of clothes. Coughing and spitting out dust, she bent down and peered at the floor of the dark closet.

  Linus barked sharply, startling Kat. She jerked upright and hit her head on something heavy in the closet. She put her hand on her chest in an effort to still her racing heart.

  A knock came from the front door and she ran upstairs to answer it. On the landing, she found Joel petting Linus. Given that Joel and Linus together weighed probably 400 pounds, the rickety-looking plywood landing must be sturdier than she thought. She coughed, causing a flurry of dust to arise around her. “Sorry, I was downstairs.”

  Joel gazed at her, put down his toolbox, and reached out to touch her hair. “Did you collide with a spider web?” He pulled a bit of cobweb off her, shook it off his hand, and then reached back to tuck a wayward lock of her hair behind her ear.

  Kat flushed slightly and warmth spread through her as his fingers grazed her cheek. “I was looking for tools in the closet. Some things fell. Then I hit my head.” She reached up to rub the bump that was forming on the crown of her head. Feeling something sticky clinging to her hand, she pulled more cobwebs out of her hair. “Oh gross!” She whirled around. “Is there a spider on me? Yuck!”

  Joel leaned in closer, looking for wayward arachnids. “I don’t see anything. Can I come in?”

  Kat looked up from her frantic cobweb-removal activities. Joel and Linus were still standing outside. “Sorry. Spiders freak me out.”

  Walking through the door, Joel passed close by Kat, followed by Linus. She was again acutely aware of his nearness to her. She followed him into the kitchen and handed the shower package to him. “Here’s the thingie.”

  “That would be the technical term for it.”

  “Of course. I am a technical writer, you know. Or I was anyway.”

  Joel laughed. “True. Let’s get this thingie installed.”

  Kat leaned on the sink in the bathroom and looked down at Joel, who was crouched in the bathtub working to restore her shower to full functioning status. She paused in her quiet admiration of his shoulder muscles moving under his flannel shirt. “I called John Wolf. He hasn’t called me back. Nobody calls me back. I think I have cooties.”

  Joel looked up from his task. “Cooties? I don’t think people have cooties after third grade.”

  “Well, I must. Or every contractor in the county is booked up.”

  “A lot of them may be working or hunting. It will be worse this fall. Stocking up the freezer is a big deal around here.”

  “I got that impression from Bud. But how am I ever going to get my roof fixed? I think you are the only male in the area who has tools and doesn’t hunt.”

  Joel stood up in the bathtub. “That may be. I did a lot of the work on my place myself. Before I went to college, I worked construction for a while to save up money for tuition.”

  Kat’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? So you do know what you’re doing. I knew it! I’ve seen men use tools who obviously weren’t sure how they worked. You’re not like that. You don’t even cuss at things or hit them in frustration.”

  “Not usually. Anyway, I’m done here.” He stepped out of the bathtub, crowding Kat closer to the sink in the small bathroom. He smiled. “Happy showering. You might need one after the spider episode.”

  Kat looked down, “Spider? Eww, is there a spider?” She spun around, scanning herself again for creepy-crawlies.

  Joel reached out and grabbed her to stop her spinning. “It’s fine. You’re fine. In fact, you’re better than fine.” He tilted his head down to kiss her. At his touch, Kat wound her arms around his waist. All of her nerve endings were on fire. As the kiss deepened, Kat gripped him more tightly, in an effort to erase the Impending Girlfriend Visitation from her mind. It seemed like he had forgotten about the visit for the moment, as well. And then nobody was thinking much at all.

  The sink was digging into Kat’s back and she paused to come up for air. “Yikes. You’re very good at that.”

  Joel grinned. “Thank you. You’re not so bad yourself.”

  Kat remained wrapped in his arms, but as the beating of her heart slowed down, her brain started to function again. “Would you be willing to help me fix up this place? I can pay you. I have an inheritance, if I can figure out how to get it. But there’s some money. You are unemployed, and I really need someone to get the house fixed up before winter comes and the roof caves in. It’s what they call a win-win in corporate America.”

  Joel made a cringing face. “You aren’t tempting me with the marketing-speak. But I’ll think about it. I did enjoy fixing up my cabin. It was satisfying to build something tangible again instead of programming circuit boards.”

  The phone rang and Kat disentangled herself from Joel and ran to answer it. “Maybe that’s a contractor and you’re off the hook!”

  Joel packed his tools in his toolbox and then followed her into the kitchen. Linus was lying in the middle of the floor doing his imitation of a bear rug. Joel crouched down to pet him.

  Kat said, “Okay, thanks for calling. I’ll see you later tonight.”

  Joel stood up and looked at Kat. “I should go. It sounds like you have plans.”

  “I’m meeting Larry at the Italian restaurant later. He really likes that place.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “So will you help me fix my house?” Kat smiled slightly and raised her eyebrows. “It could be fun.”

  Joel shook his head. “I’m not sure. Maybe we can talk after this weekend. And Larry might have ideas, too.”

  Kat shrugg
ed. “I don’t think so. He’s the one who suggested Bud. Bad suggestion.” She reached out and touched his arm. “If I have to spend a lot of time fixing up Chez Stinky with someone, I’d rather it be you.”

  “What does Larry think about that?”

  Kat’s smile faded. Why was Joel suddenly backing off and acting weird? She raised her eyebrows. “Larry? No. A hundred times no. He’s the lawyer in charge of my aunt’s estate. We’re talking about the will tonight. He can’t talk at his office because he’s in court all day today.”

  The tense expression Joel had on his face relaxed. “I see.”

  Kat was mildly annoyed that he’d be jealous of Larry, given his upcoming house guest. “By the way, I met Cindy at the library and she told me who your visitor is this weekend. It seems that there are few secrets in Alpine Grove. Your girlfriend might not appreciate you spending time here either.” Kat smiled overly sweetly. “Not to mention what just happened in my bathroom.”

  Joel flashed a grin. “Yeah, that was nice.”

  Kat leaned back on the front door and looked up at him. “Yes, it was. Kindly remember that while you’re entertaining your house guest this weekend.”

  He moved to nudge her away from the door, picking up his toolbox with one hand and wrapping his other arm around her waist. As he bent down to kiss her again, he murmured, “I think I need one more reminder.”

  After Joel left, Kat walked the dogs and took a shower to ensure that any cobwebs, spiders, or spider parts were no longer lurking anywhere on her person. It also gave her an opportunity to try out the new shower thingie. As she turned on the water and it came on without incident, she smiled at the memory of the impromptu post-repair lip lock. Who would have thought a tiny bathroom could be so romantic?

  She spent some time selecting an outfit and working on her hair in an effort to look more like a girl again. Even though meeting Larry wasn’t really a date, it felt good to put on nice clothes and go out to a restaurant.