“Is everything okay?” I asked.
A pause.
“I hope so. I’m headed to Fajardo tomorrow for some tests.”
“What kind of tests?”
“A chest x-ray.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. “Bronchitis?”
Short silence.
“I don’t think so.”
I forced myself to shift into a more upbeat mode.
“I’m sure everything will be fine.”
“Fingers crossed,” he said, his voice flatter than usual.
“Is Sue going with you?”
Sue was his wife.
“Absolutely.”
He sounded alarmingly un-high.
We called Jane.
“I’m worried,” she said in her no-nonsense way. “That boy hasn’t looked right for a while.”
“How do you mean?”
“His color’s off. He’s kind of gray.”
“You mean his hair?”
“No, his skin.”
“Oh.”
She sighed. “But let’s not jump to conclusions. I’ll call you if I hear something.”
“You’re a brick.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Nineteen
Unglad Tidings
I was in the shower two days later when Jane called. Her message said the news was bad.
“It’s cancer,” she burst out when I called her back.
It sounded like she’d been crying.
“Where?”
“Pretty much everywhere.”
I sat down.
“What’s the prognosis?”
“Lousy.”
“As in?”
She blew her nose
“I wouldn’t bet the farm on Steve being around for Christmas.”
Michael and I were shattered. True, we didn’t know Steve all that well. It wasn’t like he was a close friend. And yet there was something deeply endearing about him. We felt connected. His bad news, in a very immediate sense, was ours.
We tried to think of ways we could help. For starters, we decided to call him and tell him not to worry about our house.
I made the call.
“Jane said you didn’t get great news.”
He laughed with a low, throaty rasp.
“Not really.”
“That sucks.”
“Big time.”
“What’s the next step?”
“We’re headed to New York. Sloan-Kettering. Believe it or not, one of my college buddies is a doctor there. He’s already worked out my treatment plan.”
This sounded promising.
“Steve, that’s great. I’m so glad.”
“Yeah, and we’re going to live in Carnegie Hall.”
I tried to take this in.
“I hope you practiced.”
It was a lame joke, but I was at a rare loss for words.
“Actually there are apartments in the building, and a friend of a friend who lives there is on sabbatical in Australia. So we’re in.” He paused. “My Sue and me.”
I swallowed hard.
“So how are you guys for money?”
He laughed again.
“We’re not exactly charity cases, you know.”
I chuckled too.
“True, but we owe you around two grand. I’m sending you a check today.”
“Cool.”
A pause.
“You haven’t mentioned your house,” he said at last. “Aren’t you worried about what’s going to happen now that I’m out of commission?”
I tried to sort out my thoughts.
“Sure, I guess. But we’re a lot more concerned about what’s going to happen to you.”
“That’s nice, Patrick, but business is business. Here’s my plan.”
In essence, he was turning our project over to his business partner, a local guy named Carl. He gave us Carl’s number.
“He’ll be calling you soon to go over next steps,” he said.
“Steve?”
“Yep?”
“Don’t worry about our house. It’s not important.”
“It’s important to you and Michael.”
“Compared to what you’re going through, it’s not important at all.”
Another pause.
“Thanks.”
“Can I call you in New York?”
“Sure, same number. That would be nice.”
We never heard from Carl. I left him five messages; Michael left three.
Finally we called Jane. “Do you know this Carl guy?”
“Sure.”
“Is he working on our house?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“Is he ever going to call us back?”
“Doubtful.”
“What do we do?”
She sighed dramatically.
“Call me, I guess.”
☼ ☼ ☼
Jane is feisty.
I’ve always disliked that word and I suspect she does too, but it describes her perfectly. She’s high-energy in a good way, unless you get on her bad side. Then she’s even higher-energy.
Think hell-fire.
Think brimstone.
We had watched her in action over the past eleven months. She was tough but fair. She trusted but meticulously verified. She could be charming and harsh almost in the same breath.
Now she was in charge of our renovation. After assessing the situation for a couple of days she sprang into action. The first thing she did was hand Carl his walking papers (she told us later she wasn’t even sure he was aware he’d been fired). Then she called the crew together and told them she was the new boss.
“Says who?” one of them muttered.
She got Steve on speaker phone from New York.
“Jane has the money,” he said. “She’s your paycheck.”
After that, things got easier.
Like all good leaders, Jane proved to be an effective delegator. She zeroed in on the most proactive member of the crew, a wiry fifty-year-old named Pablo, and essentially put him in charge of the other guys.
Pablo was a go-getter. He had a truck, something none of the other guys had. And he was a native so he knew virtually everyone on the island. This was a distinct advantage. Also, he was smart.
A routine was soon established: every few days Jane would call Steve, who would give her a list of things that needed to get done; Jane would meet with Pablo later that day to go over Steve’s list; and Pablo would push the crew to move the work forward.
That’s not to say Jane didn’t stop by to check on their progress in person on a regular basis. In fact, she gave us an eyewitness account every three or four days and often sent photos.
Under this fairly rigorous regime, work progressed nicely. Recently I opened my photo file from that period and was amazed to see how steadily the job got done. From one day to the next a wall would go up, a ceiling fan would be hung, floor tiles would be laid.
The men may not have liked taking their orders from Jane but they ended up respecting her.
Thank God for brimstone—and for small determined women.
☼ ☼ ☼
We thought about Steve a lot.
Although he had encouraged us to keep in touch, we felt awkward calling.
One day I mentioned to Jane that I hadn’t spoken to him in almost a month.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to bother him.”
“Are you kidding?” she shot back. “If he’s ever needed his friends it’s now.”
“I don’t want him to think I’m calling to talk business,” I countered lamely.
“Then don’t talk business.”
He picked up on the second ring. There was lots of background noise.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“At the hospital.”
“Oh.”
“Getting my chemo.”
I gulped.
“I’ll call you back another time.”
&nbs
p; “No, don’t go. I’m bored as hell. Think about it…I’m here for hours, hooked up to an IV, with no one to talk to.”
“Where’s Sue?”
“Visiting her mom in Burlington. How are you and Michael?”
This was vintage Steve, steering the conversation away from himself, even in dire circumstances.
We chatted for five minutes or so.
“Thanks for doing such a great job on our house.”
He laughed.
“Hey, I just knocked down a few walls. I missed out on the rebuilding part.”
He was a master of self-effacement but I wasn’t going to let him shrug off my praise so easily.
“Jane tells me how great you’ve been, guiding her.”
“Bull crap. She could have done it by herself.”
“Okay, Steve. Just take a compliment. It won’t kill you.”
Hmm. I wished I hadn’t put it quite like that. But as always, he finessed the moment perfectly.
“True enough,” he chuckled. “Thanks, buddy.”
Twenty
Tile N All
Jane called me at work the following week.
“We’ve run out of ceramic tiles.”
I got up from my desk and closed the door.
“What do you mean?”
“Neither bedroom floor is finished, and we’re out of tiles.”
My head spun. After all we’d gone through finding the tiles we wanted, this couldn’t be happening.
“But Steve bought more than enough tiles. I told him to buy the whole warehouse full if he had to.”
“Yeah, I know, but he didn’t. Pablo was with him when he placed the order. He was short on cash and bought less than he needed. Frankie at Nales told him they had a huge stock and he didn’t need to worry. But someone came along and bought the rest in the meantime.”
My mind rushed ahead, imagining the outcome. The living/dining room would have one kind of floor, the bedrooms another. The visual flow from one room to another would be disturbed, the overall effect of spaciousness ruined. We would be social outcasts.
“What can we do?” I asked numbly.
“I’m on my way to Nales to find Frankie and make him search his warehouse from top to bottom. I’ll call you back from there.”
I dreaded telling Michael. Although he’d take this latest blow in stride as always, he was sure to be upset. In the end I decided to wait until I heard from Jane.
Two hours passed, then three. No call. I sat through a meeting in a complete daze and when it was over I rushed back to my desk to see if she’d left a message.
Nothing.
I tried her number. She didn’t pick up. I realized this didn’t mean anything—cell service around the island was spotty—but I felt my shoulders tighten up even more. If she hadn’t called by the time I was ready to leave for the day I’d try her again. Twenty minutes later the phone rang.
“Frankie and I ransacked the place. There’s not one tile left.”
“Oh my God,” I wailed dramatically.
“But I have a couple of ideas.”
Her suggestions weren’t bad: pull up the tiles that had already been laid in the bedrooms and either completely replace them with as close a match as possible or use them as a border around a central section of contrasting tiles. But I was still in denial.
“Did you check the other hardware stores?”
Jane sighed.
“Frankie bought your tile in Miami. What are the chances that another vendor in Vieques is going to have that same style?”
She was right. I felt sick.
“Thanks Jane. Let me talk to Michael.”
“Don’t be mad at Steve.”
“I’m not.”
But I was.
And to make matters worse, I was ashamed of myself for being mad.
☼ ☼ ☼
Michael took one look at my expression when he walked through the door that night.
“My God, what’s wrong?” he asked.
I told him about the tile shortage. He sighed with relief.
“I thought it was something serious.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“You don’t understand—our floors are going to look like a patchwork quilt,” I almost sobbed.
He gazed at me very steadily.
“They’ll look fine. No one will ever notice. And if they do it’ll just make the house more interesting. I’ve heard you say over and over again that perfect is boring.”
“I couldn’t possibly have said something so moronic.”
He rolled his eyes and headed to the kitchen.
“How about a drink?”
“Maybe we could check some home improvement stores around here and see if we can find a match,” I hazarded.
He shook his head.
“They’d cost a fortune to ship down. And anyway, how do you know you could match the color from memory?”
Why, oh why did he always have to be so logical?
“I don’t,” I said, strolling towards the dining room buffet. “Luckily I brought a tile sample home with me the last time we were down.”
I pulled a piece of tile from a drawer and laid it on the kitchen counter.
He looked at me in amazement.
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“I thought it might come in handy.”
He handed me a vodka tonic.
“You need a hobby.”
“I already have a hobby. Obsessing over minor details.”
“Good point.”
I stared at the shard of tile.
“I’ve got it. We can look for a match the next time we’re passing through San Juan.”
He settled into his comfortable chair, eyeing me with good-natured tolerance.
“Which is only three weeks away.”
Maybe it was the Grey Goose, but I felt better already.
☼ ☼ ☼
We must have traipsed through every kitchen and bath store in the greater San Juan area. Okay, maybe not every last one, but at least seven or eight.
It was raining—my God, it was raining—and we were tired. We’d been up since four-thirty that morning and we were booked on the six forty-five flight to Vieques.
It was nearly five now and we were running out of time.
Our last stop was a high-end place called Astoria’s, only a couple of miles from the airport. The woman who greeted us was friendly and helpful, although she looked (and spoke) like a street walker who had smoked at least five packs a day since birth.
“Yes, I think we have,” she rasped when we showed her our sample.
She led us to a display containing a variety of tiles that bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the one I held in my hand.
“Okay…” I said, embarrassed for some strange reason to admit that I didn’t get her drift.
At all.
“Umm,” I dithered. “Which one?”
She pointed an inch-long crimson nail towards a tile that was several shades darker and a completely different texture from ours.
“Thees one,” she said. “Ees perfect.”
Michael cleared his throat.
“Right!” I responded cheerfully, completely at a loss. “That’s definitely an option.”
“How about this?” Michael asked, holding up a sample further down the aisle.
It was a near-perfect match.
“Oh my God,” I said, laying our tile on top. You could barely tell them apart.
The saleswoman looked baffled. “You like thees?”
“Absolutely. This is it!” I exclaimed.
She seemed not only skeptical but mildly alarmed. No doubt I took my tiles more seriously than most of her customers.
“How much you need?” she asked.
Michael had the numbers written down.
“Two hundred and twenty square feet,” he quoted.
“I dunno,” she muttered, ambling towards the back of the store.
We waited fifteen min
utes.
“We have to go or we’ll miss our flight,” Michael said.
I literally wrung my hands.
She came back.
“We have,” she said simply.
“Great. How much?”
She stared.
“¿Cuánto cuesta esto?” (How much does this cost?)
She slouched back to her desk, consulting a chart. “Four dollar. Each.”
“Ouch.” This was Michael.
“We’ll take them!” I exclaimed, all but throwing my credit card at her.
We made our flight by twelve minutes.
☼ ☼ ☼
This time Jane met us at the airport in Vieques, clearly feeling that we needed a little extra TLC after our floor trauma.
“We found the tile!” I exclaimed, giving her a quick peck on the cheek.
“Great,” she said, smiling from ear to ear. “But I don’t think you’re going to need it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pablo had a brainstorm a couple of days ago. We took all the chipped tiles—there were boxes and boxes of them—and laid them down on the diagonal with little squares of darker tile in the corners. It looks great.”
It sounded horrible, but I held my tongue. Her excitement wasn’t exactly contagious but it was clearly genuine and I wasn’t about to rain on her parade until I’d seen the finished product.
It was fabulous.
The corners of every second row of larger tile had been cut away, and much smaller squares of tile in a contrasting color had been slotted into the open spaces on the diagonal.
If possible I would’ve asked the workmen to pull up the living room floor and start all over again based on this new and improved model, but in the interest of preventing apoplexy on Michael’s part—and mutiny on Jane’s—I decided to keep this thought to myself. Of course, we’d need to cancel our tile order in San Juan, but since we’d paid with our credit card that could be done with relative ease.
In the meantime, it was hard to believe that the highly-finished rooms we were walking through today had emerged, under Jane’s hawk-eye, from the “bomb site” we’d seen in photos just six weeks earlier.
She was a magician. Everything was just as we’d hoped. The white-framed doors and windows popped brightly against the yellow walls, which weren’t too pale or (as I’d feared) too mustardy. The kitchen’s poured-concrete counter, though not exactly to my taste, was a success and certainly durable.
Last, and perhaps best, the bathroom was crisp and sparkling and boasted a view from the shower straight down to the ocean.
The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House Page 13