LOVER COME HACK

by Diane Vallere

  The day that started the ticking clock of analysis in my life and led to my six-month, decision-free zone.

  I came up with the idea after Hudson asked what I wanted to celebrate my half-century milestone (though in fairness, Hudson hadn’t called it that. Tex, who’d clocked the same mileage a year earlier, had.) Growing anxiety over facing my attraction to a man who had exhibited an entire catalog of behaviors I disliked since we’d met drove me to my breaking point.

  Hudson, who wasn’t exactly surprised by my, “we need to talk,” statement, said he’d give me six months, but that he wasn’t going to remain in limbo forever. I could respect that. He’d called me three times since then and I’d let each call go to voicemail.

  Tex, on the other hand, said the idea was never going to work. I’d sprung it on him right after we signed the contract for his decorating job (I’m no dummy). “I just hired you to decorate my spare bedroom. How do you plan to work in my townhouse without seeing me?”

  “That’s not why you hired me, is it?” I asked innocently. “I thought you knew I’m not the type of woman you pay to get into your bedroom.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “We’ll arrange a schedule. You’ll give me a key. You told me you had no idea how to decorate and wanted me to handle the entire job. I assume you weren’t lying when you said that, correct?”

  He’d mumbled something about unorthodox business practices and left. Come to think of it, that might have been the day I bought the lilac paint.

  But Tex had stuck to the agreement. Yesterday, at the police station, was the first time I’d been in the same room with him since last March. If my vital signs had a say in the matter, the decision might have been made right then and there. But I wasn’t going to let a litter of puppies and a dead body lead me down a path of impulse. This decision required careful thought and the deadline wasn’t here yet.

  I parked in Tex’s two-car garage and let myself in through the back door. Wojciehowicz met Rocky and me on the other side. Rocky, delighted to visit with his friend, strained his leash and then doubled back to me, hopping on his hind legs and begging to be freed so he could play.

  I unclipped the leash. “Be nice to Wojo,” I told Rocky. “And if he offers you brownies, just say no.” Rocky yipped like he understood, and the two dogs took off.

  I changed out of my tweed suit and silk blouse and pulled on a T-shirt with “Be Kind to Animals or I’ll Kill You” printed on it and a pair of white overalls that I’d left hanging in the closet of the room I was decorating. I put my brown crocodile booties in the closet and laced up a pair of old white Keds and then got started.

  I’d already selected the furniture I wanted to bring into the room when it was complete: a walnut Broyhill Spectra Queen-sized bed, nightstands, low dresser, and tall armoire that I’d acquired on my first estate buyout after moving to Dallas. The legs of the furniture showed wear, but nothing a little sanding and stain hadn’t fixed. Effie had gone over the wood with a conditioning oil and the legs looked as good as new. But until I decided on the color of the walls, the furniture would sit in storage. And, based on Tex’s reaction to the lilac, it was going to be a while before I reached the furniture portion of the job.

  I pulled out a clean tray liner and jimmied the lid from a can of Lemon Twist, a soft yellow shade I’d endorsed for the local paint store, and then stirred the paint with an old drumstick. You’d be surprised how many old drumsticks you acquire when you buy out estates. The world, it seemed, was filled with failed percussionists.

  I poured a stream of Lemon Twist into the tray, loaded up a roller, and set about covering the lilac. Despite everything else, Tex was a client. Even if I walked away from the life I’d built in Texas and relocated to Palm Springs, California to be with Hudson and his family, Tex deserved a room he liked. And since yellow was the color-wheel opposite of lilac, he certainly couldn’t complain about my new direction, could he?

  A blob of paint dribbled from the roller and landed on my foot. I glanced around and realized I’d jumped right into painting and had no rags to dampen for cleanup. I set the roller in the tray, pulled canvas booties on top of my sneakers, and left the room for the kitchen.

  I hadn’t anticipated two dogs hovering on the outside of the door waiting to get inside. Wojo nosed past my feet, and Rocky, who seemed instinctively to know he wasn’t supposed to be inside a room that smelled of wet paint, paced back and forth by the door barking at the Shi Chi puppy. I ran into the room after Wojo. He ran right through my paint tray and then made a dash for the door, leaving behind a trail of yellow puppy pawprints to mark his path.

  “Wojciehowicz! Get back here!” I chased the small puppy through the living room and up the stairs.

  Into Tex’s bedroom.

  It was the first time I’d been in Tex’s bedroom. Off and on, I’d wondered if it matched the minimalist aughts bachelor vibe he maintained on the first two levels of the townhouse. But now that I was here, I barely noticed the tangle of sheets, the book on the side table, or the framed Leroy Neiman print on the wall.

  All of which I might have seen if my attention wasn’t otherwise focused on the rose gold earbuds and pile of metallic silver and gold braided ponytail holders sitting on the nightstand next to the bed.

  ELEVEN

  I stepped around the bed to the nightstand and stared at the items like a detective might stare at evidence he’s afraid to corrupt. The pile sat on top of an invoice from Big Brother Security. Across the middle of the invoice, a message had been scrawled in red lipstick: Thanks for last night. Totally worth it. xo, Donna

  My fists balled up and a charge of heat propelled me out of the room and down the stairs. No wonder he’d been so patient with me! Here I was, maintaining professionalism on the job while he invited Nasty back into his boudoir. If I needed a sign to know what kind of a man I was really dealing with, this one was bold and outlined in technicolor neon tubes. Tex had crossed a line.

  You know what? I could cross a line too.

  I marched back into his spare bedroom and yanked the plastic drop cloth up from the floor, pried the lid off the lilac paint can, and dumped the colorful shade directly onto the hardwood floor. I dropped onto my hands and knees and rolled the color out until the entire floor was covered. The lilac clashed with the yellow walls in a manner that would wake up even the most sleep-deprived guest. At least the ones who hadn’t occupied Tex’s bed.

  “Oooooooh!” I exclaimed. Wojo, who had returned to the scene of the crime, turned around and ran back out. I followed him, this time leaving a second trail of paint-covered footprints—these lilac—myself. “Rocky! We’re leaving!” I grabbed my handbag and keys from the kitchen counter and, when Rocky joined me, yanked open the door to the garage.

  I was halfway to my car when a door on the other side of the house opened and shut. “Fair warning. I’m home.”

  Tex’s footsteps scaled the staircase. Did I want to have this confrontation? No. I was done. Except at the fringes of my anger was the increasing awareness that I’d just painted Tex’s hardwood floors lilac and tracked yellow and lilac footprints throughout his townhouse. And while technically it was all Wojo’s fault, I also knew the little puppy’s pawprints would be a dead giveaway to which part of Tex’s house we’d been in, how far it was from the location of the room I’d agreed to decorate, and what I’d discovered while I was there.

  I set Rocky inside the car and cracked the widow. As soon as I opened the garage door, Tex would come looking for me. As I aimed the garage door opener at the ceiling mechanism, I heard his voice behind me. “Nasty! Are you still here?”

  Oooooooh!

  If I had any doubts, Tex had just confirmed them. That was it. If I walked out of this garage now, I’d never come back. I slammed the remote down on the baker’s rack that held tools and rags along the rear of the garage and stomped back into Tex’s townhouse. />
  “We are so done!” I yelled at him.

  “Night? Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay. I will never be okay. This was a mistake. I’ll pay for the damage done by the paint and will compile a list of recommended decorators, but we are through!”

  “Geez, woman. You’re taking your birthday agreement a little far. I left you two messages to tell you I was on my way. Pretend you never saw me. I came home to get something, and I’ll be gone before you know it.”

  “I know exactly what you thought you were going to get when you came home. Don’t take me for a fool, Captain Allen. Neither one of us is that stupid.”

  I whirled around and left.

  The drive home was fueled by anger and humiliation. And if anybody was a fool in this situation, it was me. From the first time I’d met Tex, in his white T-shirt and jeans and straw cowboy hat—what a cliché!—he’d done nothing to make me think he was anything other than a bachelor playboy. When I’d resisted his advances, he’d upped his game. And while a part of me knew what he was all along, I couldn’t help thinking I’d been fooled by his wolf in sheep’s clothing act.

  And talk about clichés. It had happened in more than one classic rom-com and I’d fallen for the stunt all the same. Had I learned nothing from a lifetime of binge watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson?

  I’d had it. I’d had it with everybody. My life had been fine when I was alone. Personal growth was overrated. I was going to go back to being comfortable in my own little world where nothing mattered but my work and my dog.

  My car practically drove itself. I didn’t know where I was headed when I left Tex’s house, but as I drove, my destination became clear. I crossed the highway and turned left on Ross Avenue and followed it to Skillman. At a break in traffic, I turned left and left again, into the parking lot of my old apartment building.

  A For Sale sign was nailed to the exterior. It seemed somehow poetic that this building was on the market. The sale was listed by Kip Bledsoe, and it seemed we were destined to do business together. Did I want to go back in time and reenter those doors after everything that had happened inside?

  I let the engine idle in the narrow driveway and called the number on the sign.

  “This is Madison Night. I need to speak to Kip about the twelve-unit apartment building on Gaston Avenue.”

  “One moment please,” a woman said.

  Seconds later, a man came to the phone. “This is Kip.”

  “This is Madison Night. We spoke yesterday about finding me a vacant apartment building,” I said to jog his memory. “I’m at a complex on Gaston Avenue and it fits my needs perfectly.”

  “Yes, I remember. I contacted the seller and told him someone wanted to rent out the property for a month and he wasn’t interested in anything but a sale. My office is working on finding you another property.”

  “What is his asking price?”

  “I don’t think you understood. He’s not interested.”

  “You just said he’s interested in a sale. I’d like to make an offer. What’s his asking price?”

  Kip gave me the number. It was considerably more than I’d gotten when I’d sold the property, but considering I’d sold it while recovering from one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, I probably hadn’t been at the top of my negotiating game.

  “I’ll take it,” I said.

  He paused. “Don’t you want to conduct a walk-through? See the condition of the building? It’s been vacant for over a year and the former owner tore out a lot of fixtures.”

  “I’m familiar with the property and I’m not concerned by the condition. I’d like to make an anonymous offer. If you feel better about the sale, then you can meet me at the property.”

  “What time?”

  “As soon as you can get here.” I hung up and pulled into the lot behind the building.

  Twelve spaces were painted out on broken concrete under an overhang of rusted, corrugated metal. A dumpster sat to the right of the last space, next to a six-foot-tall wooden fence that separated the property from the alley behind it. A door on the fence was padlocked shut.

  Butted up against the building were visitor spaces. I parked in the one next to the handicapped one and turned off the engine. Rocky, who seemed to recognize where we were, stood on his hind legs with his paws on the inside passenger window and stared outside. He dropped back down to all fours, padded across my lap, did a one-eighty, and went back to the window.

  “I know, Rocky. There are a lot of memories bundled up in there.”

  Unpacking the first box of personal belongings that I’d brought with me when I left Pennsylvania. Setting up the food and water bowls for a wriggly Shih Tzu puppy. Restoring the bathroom fixtures to their original shade of Mamie Eisenhower pink. Having a chenille pillow pressed down on my face by a killer intent on suffocating me.

  I never said the memories were all good.

  But they represented my independence. I’d sold this building to Hudson, who’d been transitioning between the role as my handyman to the role of my boyfriend, and moved into a house involved in the case that brought Tex into my life. I hadn’t moved on. All I’d done was find a new way to tangle things up. If Life had an Undo button, I was about to activate it.

  A silver BMW coupe pulled into the parking lot and eased into the space on the other side of the door. Rocky pawed the window, leaving puppy streaks in the condensation.

  “Let’s go, Rock.” I clipped the orange leash onto him and we got out of the car.

  Real estate, like decorating, was a business of opportunity. On most days, I dressed in vintage attire to be a walking business card for Mad for Mod. When prospective clients entered my studio, I’d know within five seconds if we could work together based on their reaction to my clothes. But I was still wearing the painting clothes I’d changed into at Tex’s, now stained with lilac and yellow paint. I doubted I’d make a strong first impression.

  Kip Bledsoe, on the other hand, was the sort of man who seemed to know at any moment of his day he would be faced with a potential client, and his appearance had been cultivated for that purpose. He wore a camelhair topcoat over a suit and tie, and freshly polished brown wingtip oxfords. His hair, dark blond, was on the longish side for a man, but I secretly guessed the cut was courtesy of a stylist, not laziness. He reached up and smoothed his hair back with one hand, exposing a cleanly shaven face and mischievous hazel eyes.

  “Madison Night?” He asked.

  “Yes.” We shook hands. “Thank you for meeting me, though I assure you, it wasn’t necessary. I’d like to make an offer on the building.”

  “Humor me.”

  Kip fed a key into the back door and pushed it open. Rocky, who’d grown up in this building, pulled me toward the stairs. Until I knew the extent of the damage to the interior, I didn’t want him running around unsupervised, so I held his leash tightly. Kip flipped a switch on the wall and a couple of exposed lightbulbs lit up the hallway.

  “There’s electricity?”

  “With no one living here, the bill’s almost nonexistent. We thought it was better to keep it on for prospective buyers than to shut it off. I come in once a week and check the place, make sure there aren’t any vandals or squatters.”

  I walked down the hallway and surveyed the rooms. Fixtures had been torn out and left mid-replacement. A few electrical wires protruded from a hole in the hallway. Apartment-grade carpeting had been installed throughout. This didn’t look like Hudson’s aesthetic, and it certainly wasn’t left over from when I’d owned the place.

  “I’m surprised by the condition,” I said.

  Kip shrugged. “The owner’s desperate to unload. I can probably get him to come down on the price.”

  “He said he was desperate?”

  “My words.”

  I ran my hand over the wall. The pai
nt in the hallway was flat eggshell. And while I could appreciate the value of every color in the rainbow, I considered the choice of flat eggshell to be uninspired. “Why is the building half finished?

  Kip sighed. “This building is never going to be the moneymaker the owner wanted. He was going to get the units up to code and rent them out, but he ended up pulling his team to work on something bigger.”

  “And he listed it for sale without saying a word. No sentimentality, no nothing. Just like a man.”

  “You say ‘man’ like it’s a curse word.”

  “Today it is.”

  Kip looked to the left and then to the right. “It’s a good thing there aren’t any men around here,” he said with a grin. I didn’t feel much like smiling, but Kip couldn’t know the reasons why. “Madison, I’d feel a lot better about this sale if I knew you walked the building first. I’ll watch your dog if you want.”

  I handed Rocky’s leash to Kip and climbed the back staircase. My old unit was on the second floor and overlooked the parking lot. I turned the knob, bracing myself for whatever memories would come back to me when I entered. But the apartment had been whitewashed like the hallways. The carpet had been torn out and fresh—albeit dusty—padded floor insulation had been exposed in its place. I walked through the apartment, down the hallway, and into the bedroom. The place was like a blank canvas that had a couple of tears here and there. And because of that, because the memories had been painted over in uninspired eggshell, it had even more potential than if it was how I’d left it when I walked away.

  Kip found me in my old bedroom, staring out at the parking lot. “It’s a dump, right? The agency can find you another property. I know of at least five different listings for apartment buildings twice this size.”

  “Draw up the paperwork,” I said softly.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. This building has everything I want—or it will once I make a few modifications.” I walked back to the living room and pushed the toe of my paint-stained sneaker under the foam carpet padding. “It’s the perfect property for what I need.”