Best Staged Plans

by Claire Cook

  I was glad I hadn’t ordered the awning yet. I’d have to go back and look at the Sunbrella fabric samples again before I made a final decision about either the awning fabric or the paint colors for the tables and chairs.

  I circled the block three times, trying to find an empty loading zone space in front of the hotel. I was careful not to look over at the spot where I’d last left the homeless woman. I had enough on my plate.

  Fortunately the tables were small enough for me to carry by myself, but by the time I got everything onto the patio, my back and shoulders were screaming from the exertion.

  Just as I was unloading the last chair from the truck, Josh pushed the front door of the hotel open.

  “Your timing is impeccable,” I said.

  He reached for the chair I was carrying. I ignored him and kept walking.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “You could have called me.”

  I put the chair down. “Called you what?”

  If he got it, he pretended he didn’t. He scanned the jumble of tables and chairs. “Are those going to be safe out here overnight?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “We’ll have to find a way to chain the tables to the patio, and the chairs will have to be stacked and brought in at night.”

  He reached for the door. “Let me prop this open, and I’ll give you a hand.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I said. And then I left it all to him and climbed into the truck.

  After I returned the truck, I swung by Mellow Mushroom and picked up a pizza so I didn’t have to get into another whose-turn-is-it-to-cook standoff. A note from Chance saying he had a meeting after work and would be home late was waiting for me on the kitchen counter.

  I put two slices of pizza on a paper plate, poured a glass of milk, and carried them into the guest room.

  When I woke up, fully clothed, I reached for my reading glasses and squinted at the bedside clock: 3:13 A.M.

  I peeled off my clothes and pulled on a long T-shirt in the dark. I rolled back into bed and stared up at the ceiling. Finally I snapped on the light and fired up my laptop. I pulled out a paint brochure and my big fan deck of paint colors, too, since you never knew what kind of tricks your computer screen might play. While I loved all the bells and whistles of the paint company Web sites—the Benjamin Moore Personal Color Viewer even lets you upload a photo of a room and virtually change its colors with the click of a mouse—sometimes I just needed to make sure I was seeing accurate color representation.

  The combination of a front door in Benjamin Moore’s Million Dollar Red and tall chocolate ceramic pots would anchor the entrance. I’d pull the colors for the tables and chairs from the Gaston Seaglass–striped awning. I’d give everything a coat of Rust-Oleum rusty metal primer, and then start right in on the paint, spraying on two to three light coats a few minutes apart. Rust-Oleum had some great colors, too—Spa Blue would work for sure, as would Herbal Green, and maybe Grape and Teal. I’d buy only one can each of Candy Pink and Key Lime, just in case they veered past fun and into too much. As soon as I saw the colors on the chairs, I’d know.

  The trick to using pops of a variety of accent colors is that each one needs to repeat in at least three different locations so it draws your eye around the space. So even though the arrangement of tables and chairs would look random, there would be a method to the cheerful madness.

  Maybe I’d get the painters to do the spraying, or maybe I’d just borrow some drop cloths from them and do it myself out in the parking lot behind the hotel.

  As soon as I thought of the parking lot, I remembered the Dumpsters. I closed my eyes, but I could still see the homeless woman crawling out from between them.

  How could I have let her go back there?

  But what could I have done? Dragged her to the transitional shelter and tried to talk them into letting her cut the line to get a bed? Taken her with me to a house that wasn’t even mine and let her split the guest room with me? Shipped her back to Boston so that I’d have yet another person I couldn’t get out of my house?

  I crawled under the covers and turned off the light. I tossed and turned, trying to imagine what it would be like to try to sleep on a cardboard mattress between two rusty metal boxes. Would I be more afraid to go to sleep or to wake up and face the next day?

  How had the homeless woman ended up homeless? Who had she been before that?

  I stared at the nothingness of a pitch-black ceiling in a pitch-black room. Who was I? What did I want my life to be? What was my postmom mission?

  CHAPTER 31

  HER NAME WAS NAOMI. it seemed like the wrong name for a homeless woman, but maybe any name at all would have felt that way to me. Once she had a name, I couldn’t look away.

  I handed her a breakfast sandwich and a whole milk latte. I sipped my nonfat latte and watched the people passing by while she ate.

  “WTF,” I said finally. “How the hell did a nice woman like you end up in a place like this?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What I meant is that I’d like to help you.”

  She seemed startlingly normal. But there was still a part of me that wondered if she might be bipolar, or psychotic, or even just plain old crazy. I mean, how else could she have ended up like this?

  We found a vacant bench in a little park down the street. I wondered if anyone had ever spent the night sleeping on it. Maybe there was a waiting list for park benches, too.

  I threw my empty latte cup into a trash barrel and then sat down on one side of the bench. Naomi sat on the other side. She squeezed her garbage bag firmly between her feet.

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  One thin, ring-less hand fluttered up to cover her mouth again. “My husband got sick. We were self-employed and our insurance company dropped him.”

  Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it over the sounds of the traffic and the birds.

  “So we refinanced our bed-and-breakfast. And he didn’t get better. The mortgage rate readjusted, and our payment tripled. The economy tanked, and suddenly I was running a sickroom instead of a business. We couldn’t afford hospice. He died. Then the car died. The bank foreclosed a few months later. And I lived happily ever after.”

  “I am so, so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  We sat some more. I don’t know what she was thinking about, but I was racking my brain for a plan. I mean, what the hell was I going to do with her?

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go shopping.”

  We put her garbage bag in the trunk of the rental car. I unlocked the car and held the passenger door open for her.

  I climbed into the driver’s side and checked my watch. “I’ll be right back,” I said. “I’m in the middle of a job, and I just have to get the painters going.”

  I thought for a moment, then I put my key into the ignition. I reached into my shoulder bag and took out the GPS and plugged her in. I picked up the unopened bottle of water that was sitting in the console cup holder and handed it to Naomi. Then I put the root beer readers with the tortoise highlights on the dashboard. I wrestled with my inner hoarder for a moment, then I exchanged them for Ponytail Guy’s glasses.

  A part of me might have been testing her trustworthiness. But another part could have been saying, Hey, after all you’ve been through, if you’ve got somewhere to go and need to steal my rental car to get there, just do it. My GPS will keep an eye on you. I’d wait forty-eight hours to report the car. No idea, I’d say to the cops. Last time I saw it, it was just sitting in the parking lot, minding its own business. Denise would help me come up with a good explanation for the fact that I no longer had the car keys.

  I’d hired the painting contractor with the middle bid, the best references, and the biggest crew. Behr’s Iced Espresso had turned out to be a keeper, so we were ready to rock.

  Of course, Josh was nowhere to be found, so I let the painters in myself.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” H
arold the Painter said. “Looks like it’s going to be a hot one.”

  In the South, even if you have a homeless woman sitting outside in your rental car, you can’t just get down to business like you can in the North. You have to make small talk first.

  “Sure does,” I said. “How’re you all doing today?”

  The men all nodded and said witty things like “just fine, how about you, ma’am?”

  I showed them the coffeepot on the bar and told them to help themselves. I’d given Harold the color numbers over the phone and marked the color I wanted on each wall with a big X, so this wasn’t going to be rocket science.

  “You sure about all this brown paint, ma’am?” Harold asked. “I only had ’em mix up five gallons at the paint store, just to be on the safe side.”

  I’d yet to meet a painter, North or South, who didn’t think s/he was also a designer. You just had to nip it in the bud.

  “The client’s paying me to love it,” I said. “So, yeah, I’m sure.”

  The crew snickered. “No worries,” Harold said. “We’ve painted worse. And if the client shows, we’ll back you up a hundred and ten percent.”

  “Thanks, guys,” I said as I headed for the door. “Be back in a few.”

  “Still here, huh?” I said to Naomi when I got back to the car.

  “If I had someplace to go, I’d already be there,” she said.

  On our way out to the highway we passed a group of homeless men milling around a street corner. I glanced over at Naomi out of the corner of my eye, but she was staring straight ahead.

  She reached for her water and unscrewed the top. “So what kind of a job is it?”

  “What?”

  “You said you had to let the painters in. I was just wondering what kind of work you do.” She lowered her voice. “But I don’t need to know.”

  “In point two miles, take ramp on right onto Route 285,” the GPS said.

  I leaned over and turned the volume down. “Don’t be silly. I just wasn’t following you. I’m a home stager.”

  “I’ve always wondered how that works.”

  My shoulders were so stiff from yesterday’s heavy lifting that I could barely shrug. “Well, basically, you look at the big picture first. And next you clear away the unsightly parts. And then you focus on the things that get you the most bang for your buck.”

  When we got to Marshalls, we headed straight for the clearance rack. In my defense, I would have checked there first, even if I were shopping for myself.

  “What size are you anyway?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know anymore.”

  I flipped through a section of the rack I’d never fit into. “The good news/bad news, I guess.”

  Naomi put her hand in front of her mouth. “When my best friend was on her umpteenth round of chemo, everyone kept telling her how good she looked because she’d dropped so much weight. She said it was oddly flattering. ‘Oddly flattering’—those were her exact words. Once when she was having a good day, I took her shopping, and she bought a whole new wardrobe.”

  “Did she make it?” I asked.

  Naomi shook her head.

  “Shit,” I said. “Before or after your husband?”

  “Before. She died just before he went into stage four.”

  I grabbed a nice pair of jeans, a pair of capris, and some T-shirts off the rack. “Here, try these on.”

  Naomi’s hands were shaking. “Can we just get them? I don’t think I can handle looking at myself.”

  She did try on a pair of Skechers, though. I grabbed some flip-flops and made her pick out a week’s worth of underwear, a decent rolling suitcase, and a shoulder bag that doubled as a backpack.

  “Okay,” I said when we were back in the car. “Tell me the rest.”

  Naomi shrunk into her side of the seat, as if it could swallow her whole. “I met this guy online. It was a message board for people dealing with terminal illness. I had all these long hours to fill when my husband was dying, and he was such a good listener.”

  She pressed her cracked lips together. I handed her the bottle of water.

  She took a small sip, maybe trying to make it last. “When everything fell apart, he was my lifeline. He’d check in maybe three, four times a day, and I’d tell him everything. When he found out I was losing the house, he asked me to move in with him. It seemed like a godsend. I didn’t know what else to do. My kids flipped out—”

  “Wait. You have kids?”

  “Two. But they’re just starting out, and they’re both struggling financially, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them about the house. I don’t know, I just thought I’d found the answer. And if it didn’t work out, I’d get back on my feet and then figure out something.”

  “And your kids thought it was too soon, that you were betraying their dad?”

  Naomi nodded. “They stopped talking to me.”

  “And the guy?”

  Naomi was rocking softly now, like a mother trying to put a baby to sleep. “A total sicko. He had about eight different profiles, and he wanted me to cook for him while he spent all day reeling in women. It got worse and worse, and one day he asked me to do something I wouldn’t, and he beat the shit out of me. Then he threw me out and locked all the doors. I hid in the woods behind the garage all night, and the minute he went out, I broke in and stole what I could.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “Did you call your kids?”

  “I didn’t want them to see me like this,” Naomi said.

  She moved her hand away from her mouth and showed me what was left of her two front teeth.

  CHAPTER 32

  HERE’S THE THING. If most of your two front teeth are missing, it’s not so easy to get a job. And if you don’t have a place to live, you probably can’t get one either. I mean, it’s not like you can list the space between two Dumpsters as your mailing address.

  We stopped at Atlanta Bread for sandwiches and so Naomi could change into some of her new clothes in the restroom.

  I washed a bite of my Chicken Waldorf sandwich down with some seltzer. “Maybe we should give Dress for Success a call,” I said when she came back. “They can give you some interview tips and help you get your skills up to speed. How comfortable are you on the computer?”

  Naomi put her soupspoon down and covered her mouth. “I know Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook, plus Photoshop and Quicken. Oh, and Easy InnKeeping.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Okay, so maybe they could hire you.”

  The GPS helped us find a walk-in dental clinic.

  “Please don’t tell them,” Naomi said before we went inside.

  Up until that second I’d planned on it. I’d go in, give the receptionist the whole song and dance, and get them to do the work for free. Or at least at a big discount.

  “I’ll pay you back,” Naomi whispered.

  “Damn right you will,” I said. “I’ve wanted veneers for years.”

  It was a long wait, but even the temporary crowns made all the difference. “Smile,” the dentist, who looked about twelve, said.

  Naomi smiled.

  “Wow,” I said. “You’re dazzling.” And I wasn’t even exaggerating.

  I remembered Shannon mentioning that one of the hot bargains in Atlanta was New Talents, on West Paces Ferry, and that they had same-day service and did a great job. So that was our next stop.

  “Don’t worry,” I said as the GPS and I searched for the address. “I’ll go in with you and make sure they know what they’re doing, but then I’m going to have to take off and check on the painters again while you’re getting your color.”

  “A shampoo and a cut would be plenty,” Naomi said. “More than enough.”

  “No way,” I said. “After you get your life together, you can go gray if you want to. I might even do it with you. But there’s enough ageism out there without putting up a gray flag, so for now, let’s not take any chances.”

  “You’re the expert.” She was smiling like
a pro now, as if she’d never stopped. “So tell me, is staging a person like staging a house?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, look at the big picture, clear away the unsightly parts. Oh, and focus on the things that will get you the most bang for your buck?”

  “Ha,” I said. “You might have something there. Maybe I’ll start a little side business.”

  Naomi turned Ponytail Guy’s glasses over in her hands. “I can’t decide whether I’m more grateful for the teeth or the reading glasses.”

  “Really?”

  “You can’t fill out a job application if you can’t read it,” she whispered.

  As I drove, Naomi’s words played over and over in my head. Without reading glasses, I’d be lost. Without a home, I’d be whatever was beyond lost. Homeless? Were there levels of homelessness, like Dante’s levels of hell? Maybe Naomi didn’t even think of herself as homeless so much as temporarily homeless. Were most of us only a paycheck or two and a couple of bad breaks away from being in the same boat?

  BY THE TIME I got back to the hotel, some mysterious part of my brain had come up with an answer.

  “You have reached your destination,” the GPS said.

  “Let’s hope,” I said.

  The painters were still going at it, and Josh had actually materialized.

  “Are you sure about these walls?” he said. Behind his back, Harold the Painter rolled his eyes.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Have a seat. I’ve got some good news for you.”

  Josh chose a seat a few seats away from me at the bar, maybe wondering if it might be a trick.

  “Coffee?” I said. “I keep forgetting to buy milk, but I have to tell you I found this amazing stuff called Truwhip. It’s like Cool Whip for purists. I’m thinking we combine hot chocolate, Kahlúa, and vodka. Then we wipe the rim of a martini glass with Kahlúa and dip it in grated chocolate, we top it with Truwhip, and, woilà, we have our signature drink: Hot Chocolate Is the New Hotlanta.”