I couldn’t help wondering how many times he’d rehearsed this little speech.
“But I actually painted our color on the wall,” I said, pointing to the wall that had previously boasted a patch of my favorite yellow but was now painted the color of orange sherbet. “I registered the color at Nales. I even left the can of paint with the label on it so there wouldn’t be any mix-ups. I’m not sure what else I could have done except paint it myself.”
Rod sighed dramatically and looked around the room.
“I like the color,” he said as if that made all the difference.
“That’s not exactly the point,” I said. “I didn’t tell you guys to choose your favorite color and go crazy. We chose the color. All you had to do was hire someone to slap it on the walls.”
He glanced at his watch, a gesture that was beginning to seem like a Daniel/Rod family tic. “You’ll have to talk to Daniel about this. I need to run.”
“This is a serious problem,” I muttered half-heartedly, acknowledging to myself as I spoke that it’s foolish to argue with someone who’s more or less reading from a script.
“Ask Daniel to call me,” I said to his retreating back.
“Will do,” he chirped. “Bye-bye.”
Michael and I stared at each other in disbelief.
“What a freak,” I tossed out, my voice flat.
“Totally,” Michael replied with an equal lack of conviction.
And then, without another word, we sprang into action—our usual antidote to all things negative.
In a blur of activity, we assembled the bed frame, divested the mattress and box springs of their plastic shrouds, flopped them over onto the bed and swaddled them in crisp new sheets.
At least we’d have a place to crash at bedtime.
That done, we finished unpacking, showered and drove to dinner in Esperanza. We were dead tired and more than a little discouraged, though after a couple of drinks we managed a few lame jokes at Rod’s expense.
When we got home we switched on the ancient window unit and were soon lulled to sleep by its old-fashioned clank, which happily drowned out our neighbor’s barking dog and the roosters that crowed like banshees all night.
The next day was my birthday. Despite all that had happened, it was sheer bliss waking up in our new house for the first time. Michael got up early and made coffee. By the time I dragged myself out of bed he was already fully caffeinated and busily unpacking boxes and unwrapping furniture.
Before pitching in, I wandered out onto the balcony and drank in the stunning view. It was an almost unimaginably clear morning. In the middle distance lay Isabel Segunda, dotted with red-roofed buildings. On the horizon, across a dreamy patch of sapphire water, rose the gray-blue ridges of Culebra, Vieques’ smaller sister-island to the north.
The breeze rustled the palm trees fringing the driveway while a wild mare and her colt grazed in the pasture below our house.
I turned back inside with a renewed sense of purpose.
☼ ☼ ☼
We worked hard those three days, but it was rewarding labor. By Monday, the day before our return to D.C., the house actually looked almost habitable. Everything we’d bought during our February shopping blitz in San Juan was now unpacked, wiped down, brushed off, and in place—sofa, coffee table, wicker armchairs, the works.
But one major piece was missing: a large mahogany corner cabinet with louvered doors. Ironically, this was the most expensive piece of furniture we’d bought, not to mention the largest. We were mystified by its absence. Another question for Daniel, if we ever got to talk to him.
After our recent contretemps with Rod we hadn’t exactly expected Daniel to sprint to the phone and call us, but we had thought we’d hear from him at some point.
The silence, however, was deafening.
In total frustration I dialed his cellphone later that morning and was astonished when he picked up.
“Happy birthday!” he exclaimed.
“Thanks,” I said, flattered in spite of myself that he remembered. “By the way, Rod may have told you we have a few questions. Could you stop by later today? We leave tomorrow.”
“Absolutely,” was his prompt reply. “I’ll be right there.”
“Maybe he’s realized what an ass he’s been,” I said to Michael when I hung up.
“And maybe someday pigs will grow cute little wings and become airborne,” he said with a nod and patted me on the back.
☼ ☼ ☼
Within twenty minutes Daniel was on our doorstep.
I offered him a seat. He said he’d rather stand. I expected him to begin looking at his watch any second.
“How’s everything?” I asked tentatively, determined to make our encounter as pleasant as possible.
“Good,” he snapped.
Didn’t sound so good to me.
“I’m not sure if Rod mentioned it or not, but this isn’t the color we picked out,” I began, gesturing widely around the room.
“Yep, he told me,” he said, arms folded defiantly across his chest.
“In a nutshell, Daniel, it’s the wrong color.”
Not the color we picked out
He sighed extravagantly. “It’s the color the hardware store told us you chose.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I registered the color in their book.”
He flashed an unpleasant smile, revealing large yellow teeth. “This is Puerto Rico, Patrick. Anything’s possible.”
“Including the fact that you screwed up.”
Dead silence. I took a deep breath.
“So what’s your plan for fixing it?”
He looked around the room before replying.
“I’m not planning on fixing anything. Mistakes happen, you know.”
“It’s a $1,500 mistake. We’re having it repainted, and you should at least split the difference with us.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
We stared at each other with barely disguised hostility, clearly at an impasse.
Michael, who had kept quiet during this exchange, spoke up now.
“By the way,” he asked, “any idea where our corner cabinet is?”
Although Daniel had obviously rehearsed the wall-color conversation, he was clearly unprepared for Michael’s question.
“What corner cabinet?”
“The one we bought in February when we ordered the other stuff. We sent you a copy of the itemized invoice.”
“And emailed you photos of each piece,” I added triumphantly.
Daniel looked around the room again, perhaps hoping the cabinet would suddenly materialize.
“Maybe it was back ordered,” he suggested weakly.
“Nope, we called the warehouse on Saturday. They said it shipped with the other furniture.”
He looked blank.
“In other words,” I went on, “they delivered the sofa, the chairs, even the end tables, but not the corner cabinet?”
There was a long pause. He reached for his watch and adjusted it on his wrist. I could almost feel him resisting the urge to check the time. “You know, guys,” he said at last. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to end this relationship.”
An even longer pause.
“Excuse me?” Michael said.
“This just isn’t working out for me. To be honest, I’ve never been spoken to this way.”
“What way?” I asked, puzzled.
“The way you’ve spoken to me this morning.”
“Then you must have led a very sheltered life,” I shot back.
This time he really did look at his watch.
“I’ll track down your corner cabinet and have it delivered. Other than that, I don’t believe we have any unfinished business.”
“Are you kidding?” Michael barked. “We’re in the middle of at least seven or eight projects, and we’re leaving the island tomorrow. Who’s going to take over?”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone great,” Daniel said,
all but running for the door.
“Oh my God,” Michael said as Daniel made a quick getaway in his trailer-park truck. “That prick just fired us.”
Thirteen
Counter Revolution
Panic, properly contained, can be remarkably motivating.
Within minutes of Daniel’s departure we were burning up the phone lines.
First we called the airline and postponed our return to D.C.
Then we called work and explained the situation.
“We’ll get back as soon as possible,” was all we could say.
Next—well, frankly we didn’t know what to do next. Who could help us? Our network of contacts on the island was almost non-existent. Other than the realtors we’d dealt with—and of course Daniel and Rod—we hardly knew anyone.
Then we remembered Carlos, the owner of the Puerto Real Inn. He had welcomed us with open arms when we’d eaten at his restaurant a couple of times the previous year. Even more encouraging, he was one of the best-connected people on the island. Even Clara had said so.
It took a few minutes to get Carlos on the phone, but he was immediately sympathetic when we told him our tale of woe.
“Come over and have a Bloody Mary,” he said. “We’ll figure this out.”
We reached the hotel in record time. Carlos greeted us warmly and led us to the hotel’s open-air restaurant, where he served us drinks while we regaled him with the saga of Daniel and Rod.
He listened patiently until we were done.
“I’ve got a great idea,” he said.
We felt better already.
“There’s a wonderful new property manager on the island named Jane Compton. I heard the other day she’s looking for new clients. Why don’t I give her a call?”
Jane met us at the house at three o’clock. My first thought was that she could have been Meryl Streep’s sister. Like the actress, her features were sharp and mobile, her gestures charmingly expressive. She smiled a lot, laughed even more and managed to seem both self-possessed and vulnerable at the same time. With her hair pinned up in an untidy bun and her reading glasses perched halfway down her nose, she might almost have been Streep’s twin.
Hailing from Wisconsin, she had come to the island a couple of years earlier to visit her cousin, who was married to a local, and after a few weeks had decided to stay.
We were instantly smitten. She was professional and charming. She even loved our furniture from Pier 1 and Sears.
“Carlos told me you’re in a jam,” she said.
Michael spoke up—dear, blunt Michael.
“Our property manager fired us,” he said.
That got her attention.
“What do I need to know?” she asked, smiling impishly.
We told her what happened. She listened without comment.
“Do you know Daniel and Rod?” I asked.
“Sure, I’ve seen them around. All the property managers know each other, at least by sight.”
“Have you ever heard anything bad about them?”
She smiled again.
“If I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
This made us like her even more.
For the first time in five hours we exhaled.
☼ ☼ ☼
We gave Jane a tour of the house. She asked good questions and took lots of notes.
All seemed well, though the dismal condition of the middle floor, particularly the run-down kitchen, stopped her dead in her tracks.
“How much did those guys tell you it would cost to knock this place into shape?”
“Forty thousand.”
She scrunched up her face in disbelief, then lapsed into a diplomatic silence.
“Let’s see the bottom level.”
Down we went. She made gagging sounds when we showed her the recently-gutted bathroom, but praised the workmanship of the projects Daniel had overseen so far.
Then we strolled into the side yard, where she eyed the raw, cinderblock façade of the house’s west side.
Lots of work ahead
“Wouldn’t this come under the heading of unfinished business?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
“You would think so.”
Back upstairs twenty minutes later, we sipped iced tea and hammered out an informal agreement.
“We’re going to have to take this step by step,” Michael said. “We don’t have a bottomless bank account like some of the folks buying houses down here.”
“I understand.”
“Our short-term goal is to get the upstairs ready for the coming season,” I added.
“Okay…” she said, glancing around the room dubiously. “For starters, you’re going to need to rip out that kitchen.”
“That’s our first priority.”
“And the bathroom needs lots of work.”
“We know.”
“And this place is just begging for some curb appeal. Let’s tart it up a bit.”
“Bring it on!” I said, ready for anything now.
She sat back in her chair.
“Great,” she said. “But you’re going to need a first-rate handyman to get all that stuff done.”
Michael spoke up again.
“Makes sense. Do you have anyone in mind?”
She all but glowed.
“As a matter of fact I do.”
“Fabulous. When can he start?”
She cocked her head.
“Hey, wait a minute. What about me?”
I was puzzled.
“What about you?”
“Am I hired?”
I glanced at Michael, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“You are so hired,” I said, smiling for the first time all day.
☼ ☼ ☼
From the start, it was obvious that Jane was an action person.
In her first week on the job she called us more times than Daniel had called during the whole three months he’d been on our payroll.
Sometimes she even pushed us to speed things up.
“We’re spending as fast as we can,” I laughed feebly.
Her first big coup was hiring our new contractor/handyman.
“He’s from Boston,” she said. “And he’s very low-key…not your typical handyman-type. Best of all, he’s very talented.”
I gulped.
“And very expensive, I’m guessing.”
She laughed.
“He’s worked on other houses for me and I think he’s pretty reasonable, considering the quality of his work.”
“And how do you define ‘pretty reasonable’?”
“He said he’d install your new kitchen for $3,000.”
Reasonable enough.
“Okay, hire him,” I said, feeling uncharacteristically decisive. “What do we do next?”
“Nothing much,” she responded, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Just design and order a kitchen and send it down by next week.”
We ordered the kitchen from Home Depot.
Don’t tell Daniel.
The night before we placed the order, I dreamed that we were wandering up and down the broad, cheerless aisles of a generic big-box store and actually ran into Daniel. He had a pastel sweater draped over his shoulders and was cradling a tiny, ill-tempered dog in the crook of his arm.
“I’m just here for the research,” he offered defensively, in the same tone you’d imagine Marie Antoinette would use if you caught her haggling over tchotchkes in the Paris flea market.
Clearly, I needed to erase Daniel from my memory banks forever.
☼ ☼ ☼
“Okay, now pay attention,” Michael instructed as we approached the yawning doors of our nearest Home Depot in the Virginia suburbs. “We’re going to pretend that this kitchen is for our house in D.C. We’ll get them to design it here, then we’ll take the plans to San Juan and order the whole thing down there.”
This strategy made perfectly good sense but it also made me squirm. I’m a terrible liar, and even though this
wasn’t technically a lie, it did a pretty great job of tap dancing around the truth.
So I decided to let Michael do the talking.
Our “kitchen associate” was a young Asian woman named Luong. She was kind and patient, which made me feel even guiltier about our little ruse.
We described the general effect we wanted, told her the type of cabinets we’d chosen, and gave her the exact measurements of the space.
She laid it all out on a computer grid and shifted appliances and cabinets around with a practiced flourish, peppering us with questions as she worked.
“Where this house is?” she inquired, batting her preposterously long lashes.
“Upper Northwest,” Michael hastily replied.
There was an awkward pause.
“I don’t think so,” she giggled.
How could she possibly have known?
Michael stared single-mindedly at the computer screen, determined to bluff his way through.
“How about if you put the dishwasher there?”
But I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“It’s in Puerto Rico!” I blurted out.
You’d have thought she was applying hot coals to the soles of my feet.
Michael gave me a very pronounced Look.
“We’re planning to buy everything from Home Depot,” he explained to Luong. “Just not this Home Depot.”
She paused for half a moment.
“No matter,” she said good-naturedly. “Maybe someday I come to Puerto Rico to see.”
This seemed unlikely though maybe no more unlikely than our ordering a kitchen for our house in Puerto Rico from a Vietnamese woman in Virginia.
She gave us a computer printout that included detailed drawings and all the necessary specifications.
As we said goodbye, we told her we’d bring back photos of the finished kitchen. (We kept our promise a year later, after the kitchen was completed.)
Over the next month, Michael developed a close personal relationship with a woman named Ana Maria at the Home Depot in Carolina, just outside of San Juan. He even learned to say, in halting Spanish, “Quiero hablar con Ana Maria en muebles de cocina.” (I need to speak with Ana Maria in kitchen furniture.)
This usually got the desired results, although on one occasion he was transferred to light bulbs, proving that just when you think you’re getting the hang of a foreign language someone shoots you down.
The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House Page 8