The Hummingbird House

by Donna Ball

  “Who names their baby Blanket?” Bridget said. “Or Apple?”

  Lindsay said, “Michael Jackson and Gwyneth Paltrow.”

  Bridget looked surprised, and Lindsay explained, “I read the same tabloid article.”

  Bridget sipped her wine. “That’s the whole problem, you know. America’s obsession with celebrity.”

  “It’s not just America,” Cici said. “Look at the British and their Cinderella fantasy about the royal family.”

  “Well, in that case it’s justified,” said Lindsay. “I’ve been wild about Harry since he was in diapers.”

  Cici glanced at her. “The fact that you can remember when he was in diapers should tell you exactly what’s wrong with that picture.”

  Lindsay refused to dignify that with a reply, but sipped her wine in a superior silence.

  “Anyway,” Bridget said, “you have to realize that it’s not just modern culture that deifies celebrities … humans have elevated other humans since the beginning of time. Most of the Roman gods started out as regular men—Icarus trying to fly with a pair of homemade wings, Hercules the strong man—and what about the ‘ton’ of eighteenth-century Britain and the railroad barons of nineteenth-century America? They were the celebrities of their own eras.”

  Bridget could always be counted upon to contribute a scrap or two of arcane knowledge to any conversation, and Lindsay and Cici gave this one the consideration it was due. “I think,” Cici said, “the whole purpose of celebrity is to give the rest of us something to think about besides ourselves.”

  “I think it’s to give the common man—or woman—something to aspire to,” Lindsay said.

  Bridget said, “Good heavens, who would want to be a celebrity? I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

  They all murmured agreement to that, and rocked in silence for a time, idly watching the path made by a small bunny through the tall grass at the edge of the lawn. Without so much as a bark of warning, the border collie who had been sleeping under the porch streaked across the lawn after it, tail cartwheeling for balance, and within the next blink of an eye both bunny and collie disappeared into the woods.

  “I just don’t understand why they couldn’t just hang an ‘open’ sign on the door and update their website,” Cici said. “Why does it have to be such a big deal?”

  “Well, you know Paul,” said Bridget. “Everything with him has to be over the top.”

  “And Derrick is just like a crow when he sees something shiny,” Lindsay said. “He can’t resist picking it up.”

  Cici slid her a skeptical glance. “I assume you’re referring to that Heavenly person.”

  “Who?”

  “Harmony,” Bridget supplied.

  “Right,” said Cici. “I lay full responsibility for this whole thing at her door. I mean, what is she, a paying guest, or a business consultant?”

  “Spiritual consultant,” corrected Bridget.

  “Oh, please.” Cici did not bother to disguise the roll of her eyes. “I have the distinct impression that this entire thing was her idea.”

  “It’s going to end up costing them the earth,” Bridget said.

  Lindsay shrugged. “They can afford it.” She frowned a little. “I just hope Paul doesn’t get so caught up in this crazy scheme he doesn’t have time to help with the wedding.”

  Cici glanced at her. “So when is the big day, now?”

  Lindsay had changed the date so many times that Bridget and Cici had stopped marking it on their calendars. As Lindsay explained, her last wedding, almost twenty-five years ago, had been as unremarkable as the short-lived marriage it symbolized, and she wanted this one to be perfect. Getting married in mid-life was a huge deal, and she had every intention of taking her time with the details.

  Lindsay tilted her head thoughtfully. “Well, it depends a lot on when this party is scheduled. But I’ve always loved the idea of a Christmas wedding. Red roses and white lace, twinkly lights everywhere … we could put evergreen boughs on the floor and hang them from the ceiling so it would look like a bower. I saw that in a magazine.”

  “You try that and Ida Mae will kill you,” Bridget warned. “I’ll help her. We’d be sweeping up pine needles for the next two years.”

  Lindsay shrugged. “On the other hand, Dominic is pretty set on having it in the vineyard, and I suppose he’s right. That’s what brought us together, after all.”

  Then she grinned. “Wouldn’t it be cool if Johnny Depp really did come?”

  Cici lifted her eyebrows. “To your wedding?”

  “No, silly, to the grand opening.”

  Cici sipped her wine. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “Derrick says they’re inviting Nancy Reagan. Apparently Harmony is a friend of the family.”

  Cici’s answer was a skeptical grunt.

  Lindsay said thoughtfully, “Do you suppose they’re homesick? It just seems to me they’re trying a little too hard to bring the city to the country.”

  “And it’s never going to work,” Cici pointed out.

  Bridget agreed, “It never works. If you’re going to be someplace, you have to be one hundred percent there. You can’t live in between.”

  Lindsay nodded her head thoughtfully. “Sometimes having too many options is not a good thing.”

  “On the other hand,” said Cici, “if anybody in this world could pull off a celebrity party in the middle of nowhere, it would be Paul.”

  “And if anybody could convince celebrities and movie stars to actually come to the middle of nowhere,” Bridget added, “it would be Derrick.”

  “You know,” said Lindsay, sipping her wine, “it’s entirely possible they just might be onto something here. The Hummingbird House B&B could actually put this little corner of the Shenandoah Valley on the map.”

  The women considered this for a time. Then Lindsay looked at Cici. Cici looked at Bridget. Bridget looked at both of them. As one, they shook their heads.

  “Nah,” said Cici.

  “No way,” agreed Lindsay.

  “Not in a million years,” added Bridget.

  In their quiet corner of the valley, a tree frog began to trill, and dusk cast its purple shadows over the faces of the hydrangea blossoms. A light came on in the house behind them. They sat and finished their wine in the sweet evening air and listened to the peace, happy to be living in the middle of nowhere.

  ~*~

  FIVE

  Morality, like art, means drawing the line somewhere.

  Oscar Wilde

  The postmaster at the Blue Valley, Virginia, post office talked for weeks about the custom-designed, Express Mail, caligraphied packages he had sent out to exotic, prestigious addresses in zip codes like 90210, 10010, and 20007. And while postal ethics prevented him from revealing the exact names or addresses to which the packages were directed, he concluded every telling of the story with a low whistle and a shake of his head, observing that the new owners of that B&B over on the highway surely did have some high-class friends. Things were changing around this little town, he always liked to add, and that was a fact.

  And so the invitations to the Hummingbird House Grand Opening, beautifully inscribed and accompanied by hand-woven baskets of home-grown Hummingbird House blueberries still dewy from the garden, sped across the country in a dozen different directions by jet, by truck and by postal carrier until they arrived at their destination, where they came to an abrupt and screeching halt. There they were X-rayed, opened, scrutinized, photographed, background checked, tasted, and approved by as many as four security guards, household managers, and assistants before being carefully rewrapped and hand-delivered to the social director or personal assistant of the person for whom the invitation was intended. That person would check the name of the sender against a list of known acquaintances, rank the invitation by priority, and deliver it accordingly. The blueberries, however, were enjoyed by all.

  Lester Carson, travel editor for the New York Times, received his invitation the
day after he arrived home from Beijing, although by then it had already been sitting on his desk for four days. Lester kept a strikingly neat home office in the loft area of his midtown apartment: all chrome and glass and white lacquer, books precisely arranged on shelves amidst carefully chosen souvenirs of his travels—a mask from Africa, a geode from Madagascar, a small carving of a fertility goddess from India—and everything was dusted, polished, and put back exactly where it belonged twice a week by his housekeeper. The wide glass desk held a computer monitor, a chrome box for mail, and a framed photograph. He sorted through and disposed of his mail on a daily basis; it made him uneasy to see the chrome box full.

  And it filled him with sorrow to see the box empty, because he never found inside it what he was hoping for.

  Mrs. Goddard, his secretary—who liked to be called an administrative assistant—had been with him since the days he had kept a haphazard, randomly cluttered office in the corner of an apartment that had been, more often than not, in a constant state of happy chaos. Novels had been placed on shelves between works of non-fiction, manila folders packed with notes and research material had been stashed between bound atlases, and crayon drawings and test papers had been proudly displayed on a corkboard behind his desk. But that was before the light had gone out of the world and everything had grown cold, ordered, and sharp-edged.

  Mrs. Goddard had been trained to extract order from chaos, and she knew how to keep his in-box clean, so that even after half a month away it rarely took more than ten minutes to deal with what awaited him there. That was why he was so disappointed to find the invitation to yet another event he had no intention of attending, much less covering, lying atop other, far more important, papers. He tossed it aside.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Mrs. Goddard, how did this get in here? I think you must be slipping.”

  Mrs. Goddard was not much older than he was and still an attractive woman, but they had agreed long ago on an atmosphere of formality at work—a construct that not only made the long hours together in often intimate surroundings much more comfortable for both of them, but which also gave her husband of twenty-five years a certain amount of reassurance as well. She turned from unpacking his briefcase to notice the heavy vellum paper he had discarded.

  “Actually, sir, I marked it for your attention. It’s from Paul Slater.”

  He frowned a little. “Who?” Then his brow cleared, though he still didn’t look happy. “Oh. Right.” There had been a Christmas party some years back that he’d felt obligated to give even though it was the last thing he wanted to do. He’d gotten drunk, the whole thing had been on the verge of being headlined on Page Six the next morning, and Paul had stepped in to diffuse things. That had been decent of him; Lester hoped he had sent him a bottle of wine as a thank you but he really couldn’t remember. He didn’t like to think about those days.

  “He’s opening up a B&B in Virginia,” Mrs. Goddard went on, “did you know that? It actually sounds quite delightful. I thought you might enjoy the getaway.”

  “Virginia? Good God, I can’t think of anything more tiresome.” He picked up a contract from a publisher for whom he had agreed to write a book at some time in the undetermined future and began to glance through it.

  “It’s shaping up to be quite the gala,” went on his secretary, transferring some papers from his briefcase into their proper file in the lacquered credenza. “He’s called a couple of times. A good many people you know will be there. Also, the invitation was accompanied by the most extraordinary basket of blueberries. I hope you don’t mind, but they were about to spoil so I took them home.”

  “Hmm.” He did not look up. “Hate blueberries.” He snapped closed the pages of the contract and tossed it on his desk. “Call my agent. Tell him we agreed on a thirty-five percent bonus for the first week on the Times list and six percent increments for every week thereafter and that’s non-negotiable. Regrets to Slater.”

  Mrs. Goddard made a few quick notes on her iPad and picked up the contract, but hesitated with his last sentence. Her look was so pointed that he was forced to ask, “What?”

  “The invitation was personalized and handwritten,” she said. “At the very least, it requires a response from your personal e-mail account.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he muttered, swallowing a groan. “All right, all right. I’ll get around to it.”

  “The deadline for RSVP is in two weeks,” she said, but he was no longer listening.

  His attention was fixed upon the photograph in the silver frame, and as it always did at such times a weight seemed to fall upon his shoulders that aged him twenty years. His eyes appeared sunken, his face haggard. One could almost imagine that, if the shell of the man could be peeled away in search of the soul, there would be nothing there. Nothing at all.

  He said in a low tone, without looking up, “I don’t suppose...”

  Her silence was his answer. She had long ago lost the will to say the words.

  In a moment he straightened his shoulders and gave himself a small, almost imperceptible shake, as though tossing off the weight of an uncomfortable cloak. He said simply, Well, then.”

  “I’m praying for you, you know,” she said softly.

  He turned back to his inbox and took up another handful of papers. His tone was brusque. “You are wasting your time, Mrs. Goddard. I have it on very good authority that there is no God.”

  She just smiled, and turned toward the door. Then she turned back.

  “Oh, and a Mr. Halligan called this morning before you were up. He said it wasn’t urgent, but you should call him back when you had a chance. Shall I get him for you?”

  A faint, almost undetectable transformation came over Lester’s face, although his tone remained calm. “Thank you, Mrs. Goddard, but I have it. That will be all for now.”

  He waited until she had descended the stairs to her own office in the back of the apartment before he took out his cell phone and punched the numbers. His voice was low and fierce when the man on the other end of the call answered.

  “You have my cell,” he said shortly, “why did you call my home number?”

  “Cell wasn’t working,” said the other man. “I guess you were out of range.”

  Lester’s heart was pounding; it always was when he talked this man. “I told you I want to know the minute you find something. What do you have?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carson,” said the private detective. “It’s not good news.”

  Lester Carson sank to a chair, pushed up his glasses and pressed his fingers to his eyes, trying not to cry as he heard the report.

  ~*~

  There was an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of Winter Lake, Idaho, where the indigent, the homeless and the just plain down-on-their-luck gathered every morning before dawn hoping for day labor. Every town had a place like that. The trucks would come by, pick out the healthiest and biggest looking, and drive off, leaving those left behind to hope for better days. Josh, who wasn’t the healthiest or biggest by any means but who happened to be one of the few men who looked sober on that particular Monday morning, picked up two days’ worth of work unloading landscaping timbers into some rich person’s yard, and earned a hundred fifty dollars. He spent six dollars on a box of protein bars, two of which he consumed on the spot, and three dollars on a roll of duck tape. Another thirty went to a cell phone with twenty-five minutes worth of free airtime. After he cleaned up a little in the Wal-Mart bathroom, the girl at the electronics counter even activated it for him.

  He found a plastic patio chair outside in the garden department, behind a hedge of wilted tropical plants, and took out the phone. There he hesitated, staring at the keypad. There were two numbers he knew by heart. If he dialed one of them, the person on the other end would deny him nothing. Money, airline tickets, a car. All he had to do was ask. Dial the number.

  Ask.

  He set his jaw, and dialed the other number.

  It rang. Once, twice, three times …
“Come on, Leda,” he muttered, hand tightening on the phone. “Come on …”

  Four times, and then, “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service …”

  He removed the phone from his face and stared at it in disbelief. He punched “end call” and tried again, his fingers a little unsteady this time. It rang only twice before the message came again. “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.”

  “Damn it!” he whispered, because his throat was too dry to make a louder sound. He disconnected the call and tightened his fist around the phone, thinking for a moment about tossing it across the parking lot. Instead, after a long and helpless moment, he put the phone in his pocket. His fingers brushed the photograph there, and he couldn’t help himself: he had to take it out, and look at it one more time. It was all sweaty and wrinkled and starting to fade, but it was like a drug to him. Better than a drug, because one hit could keep him going all day and there wasn’t any crash afterward. He looked at it, and his heart smiled.

  Carefully, he put the photograph away. The guy with the landscaping timbers had told him he’d have more work for him in a day or two. God knew there were worse places to sleep at night than a Wal-Mart parking lot, and he’d learned that if he was lucky and smart he could sometimes cop a night inside in the AC, as long as he avoided the security cameras. But staying here was wasting time. Staying here was too far away from where he needed to be. He had four protein bars and a hundred dollars, and six hundred miles left to go.

  He took the roll of duct tape from the plastic bag and wound it around his shoe to keep the sole from flapping. He’d found a thrift store that had let him have a clean pair of jeans and a tee shirt for a dollar, but they hadn’t had any shoes in his size. Maybe he’d have better luck at the next town. He’d picked up a cotton backpack for fifty cents at the same thrift store, and he dropped the duct tape into it with his other clothes and the remaining protein bars. The next town was twenty miles down the highway, and when he left the Wal-Mart parking lot, he turned in that direction. By nightfall he’d be twenty miles closer to St. Louis, and her.