Objects of My Affection

by Jill Smolinski

  I hang up and reluctantly push him away. “They’re here.”

  “Here here?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He groans, but it’s good-natured. Climbing off the bed, he says, “I suppose you need to deal with this.”

  “Yep.” My brain is already at the front door—letting Marva in and touring her around to show her how much better the house looks—although my body wants to linger. I drag myself up. “Wish me luck.”

  “Luck. You need me?”

  “No, you should probably go. I have no idea how she’s going to react. I need to be ready for anything. In fact, go out the back door, will you?” After Marva so astutely keyed into the past romance I had with Daniel, I don’t want to risk her running into Niko now and picking up on our makeout session.

  Niko brushes crushed Styrofoam dust off my shirt, which is now all over his, too. “I could come back later. Check on things.”

  It’s tempting because I know exactly the things he intends to check on—and they would love a visit, it’s been so long since anybody’s cared to stop by. But I can’t see getting naked with him yet, and that’s where this would be heading. Besides, I hear the slam of the door in the living room, which throws a bucket of cold water on my libido.

  “Thanks,” I say. “But that’s not such a good idea.”

  “Really? Because I think it’s an excellent idea.”

  “How about I take a rain check?”

  He fixes me with a sizzling look that goes all the way to my toes, with a stop or two in between. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  I find Marva with Nelson, standing in the living room. “You,” she says. “Where’s the Escobar?”

  By now, I’m used to this—her naming an art piece by artist’s name only (and addressing me as you). She should also be used to my replying, “The Escobar? What’d it look like?”

  “Metal. Lady.”

  She’s referring to what I call The Angry Governess. “Smitty’s guys moved her into your office.”

  “I preferred it here.”

  Nelson gives me a conspiratorial wink. “C’mon, Miss Marva, you promised me I could have the food that was delivered while you were gone. I’m starving.”

  Marva slides a chair aside and starts digging through a box behind it. She’s mumbling about how the hell is she supposed to find anything now that everything’s been thrown God knows where by God knows whom that was trampling through her house all hours of the God knows when.

  I try again. “We did quite a lot of work while you were away. It’s probably a shock that so much is gone, but of course we only took what you—”

  “What about the Baselitz?”

  “Uh …”

  She snorts impatiently. “Bright colors. Painted upside down. Tremendous use of brushstroke.”

  “About six feet tall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Smitty took it. You said—”

  “Took it where?”

  “For auction. Per your instructions.”

  “Hmmph.”

  She starts up the stairs with a grunt of effort. Nelson says, “Marva, you might want to wait on stairs until you’re—”

  “Are you going to help me, or shall I risk taking a tumble because you’re more concerned about getting free food than assisting your client?”

  “Now, now.” Nelson trots over to escort her up the stairs. “Let’s not take it out on your loyal nurse. You have Lucy here for that.”

  Touring the upstairs goes similarly to how it did in the living room. Marva grouses about what’s missing, though she can’t give specifics because she has no idea what was up there in the first place.

  When we get to the bathroom, she points to the toilet, which is finally visible now. “And what, may I ask, is that?”

  “A toilet?” Is this a trick question?

  “It’s filthy. Get Mei-Hua to clean it.”

  Sure, if she’d ever take off her headphones long enough for me to give her instructions.

  By the time Marva tromps back down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the dining room, I’m a nervous wreck. I’ve managed to dodge every accusation so far, but we’re not through the whole house yet.

  Marva furiously pulls up a chair to the table and stands on it so she can reach the chandelier, from which she has a dozen or so necklaces dangling. Nelson is poised behind her, hands up so as to catch her if she falls. She yanks the necklaces down, hanging them one by one over her arm. “I’d best get these now before they walk off, too.”

  “Nothing walked off, Marva. There’s not even that much gone. It only seems like a lot because you’re not used to having any space to move around.”

  She struggles down off the chair, Nelson’s hands hovering protectively over her but not daring to touch her. Necklaces clang and knock against one another as she sets them on the counter. “I suppose my office has been stripped to the floorboards as well.” Marva bustles past me, limping slightly now but too focused on finding fault to stop and ask for her cane. She’s grumbling under her breath. Although I can’t make out what she’s saying, I do pick up such words as “careless” and “sloppy.”

  I trail after her, keeping up a string of positive banter. My words bounce off her like bullets off an invisible force field. Her agitation builds as we make it through the office and on toward her bedroom.

  Her bedroom. Why didn’t I listen to Niko? How could I ever have thought Marva would react like a rational person and be happy to see her home looking so much better? As it is, it’s still a pigsty, but you’d figure I’d gutted the place, the way she’s carrying on.

  As we approach the room, she stops in the doorway, as if to enter it would be to condone what I’d done.

  “You moved the bed to the middle.”

  “Yes, I thought it—”

  “It should be against the wall.”

  “Nelson and I will be glad to move it back.” I shoot a pleading look in his direction. “But isn’t it pleasant in here now? You can see your TV so much easier, and—”

  “My book,” she says, striding toward the bed. “It was right here. I was looking at Grimm’s Fairy Tales. A very rare edition. Where is it?” She yanks open the nightstand’s one tiny drawer, which I’ve left empty so she can put her personal items in there, and then twists around to face me. “Well?”

  “I … I …” Did I really lose that? So much was going on, what with Smitty here, and Niko’s crew running about, and me making goo-goo eyes at Niko. “You did say whatever wasn’t behind the green chair could go. So if it was on your nightstand, I would have assumed—”

  “You assumed.”

  “But … but you said—” Ugh, could I be any more spineless? I stand straighter. “If it wasn’t behind the green chair, then Niko took it to the collectibles distributor.”

  Marva keeps opening and closing the drawer, as if by magic it will appear. “If. If it’s there.”

  “I’ll check with Niko. Items from this room were only recently dropped off. We can always get it back.”

  She narrows her eyes at me. “Did anything in this room go to the trash?”

  “Only if it was evidently garbage.”

  “What you’re telling me is that the book is gone and you didn’t see it go, so it could have been tossed in the trash.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  My decisive reply seems to push her over the edge she’d been teetering on. She is no longer Marva—she is a billowing storm cloud, and headed my way. “I entrust my precious belongings to you. Yet for all you know, this extremely rare masterpiece of literature is in the trash.”

  “It’s not in the trash.”

  “How can you know? I’ll answer for you: You can’t. Lucy, you are fired.”

  Huh? Fired? Just like that?

  She finally calls me by my name and it’s to tell me I’m fired?

  Surely she doesn’t mean it. “Marva, you don’t understand—”

  “Get out.”

  “But—�
��

  “Out. Of. My. Home.” She points dramatically to the door. “Now.”

  “Look, I’ll go to the warehouse myself and—”

  “Out. And don’t let me see you here again. I’ll have to deal with retrieving the book myself. That is, if in fact it hasn’t been carelessly destroyed.”

  “You’re not even giving me a chance.” I’m in the right here, and darn it, I’m going to defend myself. “If that book was so important, then you should have taken care to put it away properly. Now, I am willing to go—”

  “If you are not off this property in five seconds, I will get my gun.”

  I stop, too stunned for a moment to say or do anything. Even if she’s bluffing, threatening to kill me crosses a line I didn’t know was there.

  As I back myself out the door, the superior smirk on Marva’s face makes me want to get in the last word. “I’m leaving, but not because I’m afraid of getting shot. I don’t believe for a minute you could find your gun in this mess. But good luck. Maybe whatever poor sucker you hire next won’t mind being constantly demeaned and yelled at and bullied. Me? I’m done.”

  Nelson’s eyes are pie plates as I nudge past him and head to the living room to grab my shoes and purse.

  My moment of bravado fizzles as soon as I step out onto the porch.

  I’m homeless.

  Jobless.

  And my feet hurt.

  Still, I’m about to walk defiantly out into the night and never look back when it hits me in a moment of blazing clarity that I’ve got no place else to go.

  I flop down onto a porch step. A few minutes go by—although my mind is so busy spinning it could have been days—then Nelson steps out and sits down next to me. “You’ll survive.” He’s using his nurse voice, and his pity shines a beacon on how pathetic my life is.

  I lean my head against the railing. “I am such a loser.”

  “No, you’re not. You did great. Which is probably why she fired you. If it makes you feel any better, she can’t help it. Hoarding is an illness.”

  “Being a bitch isn’t an illness. But she sure has a walloping case of that.”

  He nods agreeably. “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to put on my shoes.”

  “I mean to fix the situation.”

  “What are you talking about? You were there—she threatened to shoot me.”

  “Big deal. She does that to me every day, and I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “You didn’t lose her precious rare-edition, probably-worth-a-zillion-dollars book.”

  “So go get it back.”

  “What’s the point? It’s not about the book. I’ll spend hours digging through boxes to find it, and then she’ll come up with some other excuse to fire me all over again.”

  “It’s worth a shot, though.” My face must reflect my hopelessness because he says, “Look, she needs to clean out her house, and she can’t do it by herself. She got straight on the phone with that worthless son of hers and told him to call that other place. That … um … what’s it called?”

  “Organize Me, exclamation point,” I reply dully. “And good. Let them put up with Marva’s insanity.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes, I do. If she wants to replace me that fast, let her.” I’m relieved to feel a surge of bitterness—it’s so much more energizing than misery.

  “But where are you going to go? Do you even have a place to live?”

  “Yes.” My mind flashes to Heather’s house, and my bitterness congeals and turns into something murky and awful. I don’t want to stay there again. If I have to drag myself along on hands and knees, I want to keep my life in a forward direction. Sharing a blow-up mattress with Abigail and smiling through dinners with Heather’s perfect family is a one-way ticket to far too many memories of the worst of days after Ash left. I can’t go back. “No. I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Go get the book. Then come crawling back here, tail between your legs, and beg Marva to take you back. Do it before she figures out somebody else can do your job every bit as well as you, and probably better.”

  “Thanks so much. That’s tremendously inspiring.”

  “I’m a nurse—sometimes that means giving people a shot in the ass when they need it.”

  chapter eleven

  It’s raining as I pull into the warehouse parking lot. It’s the next town over on a side street off Chicago Avenue, although it’s not so much a warehouse as what appears to have once been a small business, like a flower shop or dentist’s office. My back gets drenched while I fumble to open an umbrella. Then I scurry to the front door, dodging puddles as I go, and nearly run smack into Daniel, who is standing beneath a narrow awning.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I say. I’d called Daniel to get the address of the warehouse. (I have it in my files—I’m not completely incompetent, contrary to popular opinion—but I wasn’t about to venture back to Marva’s for it.) I’d ended up telling Daniel the whole story. He’d made the appropriate consoling remarks, but at no point did he say he was going to show up.

  “Thought you could use a hand.” He pulls a face. “Bad news, though. They closed at six.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Won’t reopen until Monday morning. I tried calling to see if they had an emergency contact. There was only a recorded message.”

  “It can’t be closed. If I don’t get that book, Marva’s going to hire someone else.” I’d given myself such a pep talk on the drive over that I’d already mentally handed myself the job back, along with a pay raise and a certificate for Employee of the Month—all contingent on finding that book.

  I wriggle the doorknob, senselessly. Of course it’s locked. “Did you try knocking?” I ask. “Maybe someone is still there who can let us in.” I start rapping on the door. When that doesn’t yield a response, I climb around bushes at the front to peer in the window. My feet sink into the mud, and brambles scratch at my calves. “Hello! Anybody there?” I cup my hands over the glass pane so I can see in past the fog I’m creating with my breath. There’s a tiny reception area but nothing more. The merchandise must be housed in the rear. “I’m going to check the back.”

  I strut purposefully around the building, darkness and puddles be damned. I’m at the back door before realizing that Daniel has followed me. He’s wearing a flannel shirt open over a T-shirt, and he’s tugged the flannel up to shield against the rain in a manner that makes him at a glance appear headless. I wave him over so he can crouch under the umbrella with me, and I’m hit with a jolt of nostalgia when I catch the smell of the soap he uses. It makes me want to shove him back out into the rain. How dare he stir up memories when what I need to be doing is finding a way into this building.

  Daniel takes hold of the umbrella as I knock. “Anybody in there?” I call out.

  “It’s a Friday. I’m sure they left the second it hit six o’clock. I do have an idea though. We can just buy an old copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales at a used-book store and fob it off on her.”

  “Marva’s was a very rare edition. Are we going to find one of those?”

  “Oh.” Saying the words rare edition to Daniel is almost like whispering sweet nothings—he shivers from the idea of it. Or it could be the cold. April in Chicago can be mighty brisk.

  I turn back to my knocking, my knuckles tender from the damp and cold. I’m at it for so long I might still have been there banging away at that door come Monday morning only Daniel says, “Nobody’s there, Luce. You might as well give up.”

  He’s right; I hate it but he’s right. I pull my hand away, tucking it in my pocket for warmth, staring at the door. Perhaps I can will it open with the power of my mind. But I suppose for that to work, I shouldn’t be letting myself be distracted by thoughts of Ash getting off a plane at O’Hare, fresh and hale after his successful bout of rehab, then wilting from the news that he has no home.

  I’ve blown it. I’ve got no job, n
o money, and no idea how I’m going to move forward from here. My bag of tricks is empty. I don’t even realize I’m crying until I hear Daniel groan, “Oh, man, don’t do that. I hate it when you cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” I snuffle.

  “It’s not so bad. Tell you what: We’ll come back first thing Monday. We’ll find the book. Then I’ll go with you to Marva’s and I’ll charm the pants off her. She’ll take you back.”

  “I’m afraid you overestimate your charm.”

  It sounds snottier than I meant it, but Daniel gamely says, “That’s only because I usually rein it in. Don’t want to make the ladies faint.” He nudges me with his shoulder, trying to bump the misery out of me.

  “You know what’s pathetic? I’m so stupid I thought my luck was changing. Dumb, huh?”

  “Not dumb.” He rubs my back—it’s an inappropriately intimate gesture, but I let myself sink into the comfort and familiarity of it. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “Unless you’ve got a hidden talent for picking locks, then I’d say it’s over.”

  “I am a man of many talents, but that’s not among them. Although …” He thrusts the umbrella handle toward me. “Hold this a sec.” He tugs his flannel over his head again and hustles to a window that’s partially hidden by a large shrub. The window is about four feet high and a foot and a half wide. It’s a slat window, made of strips of glass that twist open from a lever located—unfortunately for us—on the inside of the building. Daniel lays his palms on one of the glass panes and gives it a shove up—which to my surprise slides it free.

  “Are they kidding me? That’s their idea of security?” I say, aghast. “What kind of slipshod operation are they running here?”

  Daniel easily removes another pane. “You should give them hell when you talk to them. On Monday. In your official position as a gainfully employed representative of Marva Meier Rios.” He pauses to look over at me. “You want to give me a bit of that umbrella action over here? I’m getting soaked.”

  By the time I join him, he’s removed a third pane, and I’m awash with anxiety. “I was only joking about breaking in,” I say, whispering now since I’m an accessory to a criminal act. “We shouldn’t be doing this.” I glance nervously around. The back of the building is secluded enough that we’re not likely to be noticed, but it’s lit by spotlights. I’ve got enough troubles without adding breaking and entering to the list.