“So I was under the impression that he was a painter—you know, an art-class, has-shown-in-galleries, looks-up-to-Leonardo-da-Vinci kind of painter,” Jeannette says. “But when I get to the bar, I discover that he’s a house painter.” She uses the spatula she’s holding to mimic painting a wall, and Randy, who’s dicing onions across the kitchen, collapses into hysterics.
“Remember The Karate Kid?” he says. “‘Up, dowwwwn! Up, dowwwwwn!’”
“Wait, it gets better,” Jeannette says. “He was dressed like a house painter, too.”
“What, like paint splattered?” I say.
“To say the least,” Jeannette says. “Unfortunately, the splatters were not an homage to eighties fashion. He was wearing a full painter’s uniform: white carpenter pants, white T-shirt, paint under his fingernails.”
“Nooooo!” Randy moans.
“He came to our date straight from painting a dentist’s office across town. I don’t think he’d even bothered to wash up beforehand. There were little dots of paint on his cheeks and forehead.”
“Was he wearing one of those paper hats they give you for free at the paint store?” I laugh.
Jeannette giggles. “No, thank God. You know, it’s not that I have any problem with house painters. It would be nice to date someone who could do some work around the house, actually. But I just assumed that when he said he was a painter…”
“He was an artist,” I finish her thought.
“Well, it could have been worse,” Randy jokes. “He could have been dressed like the little Dutch boy on the paint can.”
I look up just as Larry turns the corner from the front of the shop into the kitchen. It’s been weeks since he’s popped in for a visit and I’m surprised to see him—particularly on a weekday, when he should be at work, in the city, thirty minutes away. I check the old metal schoolhouse clock on the wall that I bought on eBay—11:25. I know I should be pleased to see him, but things have been flowing nicely all morning and it’s about to be our busiest time of day. I’m not in the mood to stop working to chat.
“Hey, Larry,” Jeannette and Randy sing in unison.
When he reaches me, he bends sideways from his waist to plant a kiss on my cheek.
“What are you doing here?” I say, mixing the salad with my hands. I look up and see Donovan, a twentysomething with dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder, practically spinning a heavy tray of mini quiches with one hand. “Donovan! Buddy!” I yell. “We worked on those all damn morning! Could you be more careful?”
I shake my head. I don’t like to reprimand my staff—it’s not my job to play den mother, as far as I’m concerned—but I haven’t slept all week and I know that it’s wearing on my mood.
“That salad looks good,” Larry says, nearly resting his head on my shoulder from where he stands looking over me.
I roll my shoulder, worming away from him. “Larry, stop,” I say, looking up at the clock again. “You know how crazy it gets in here around lunchtime.”
He takes a step back and considers me, his head cocking to the side.
I stop, sigh, and wipe my hands on my wooby. “What is it?” I say wearily.
“Uh, just thought it would be nice to stop by and say hello,” he says, clearly disappointed by the way I’ve greeted him. I can’t really blame him.
The past few days have not exactly been idyllic. I am admittedly obsessing about Amy’s injury, and every time I bring it up, I feel like Larry brushes me off. He keeps saying, as he always says, that I worry too much, and it’s starting to make me feel like he just doesn’t take me seriously. In fact, I think it’s a little demeaning. Of course, instead of doing the mature thing and actually telling him this, I hold it in, and my irritation has percolated to the point that I’ve now decided that he’s just unsupportive, period. I know logically that this is not true—Larry is actually incredibly supportive—but his reaction (or nonreaction) to this whole Amy thing is pissing me off. For the past forty-eight hours, I’ve effectively ignored him. Last night, I busied myself ironing the pile of clothes that’s been waiting patiently in a basket in the back of my closet since before Thanksgiving. The night before, I spent two hours combing through back issues of food magazines I’ve been meaning to read. I know that it’s irrational for me to blame Larry for our problems when I’m the one who won’t communicate. And given his new issues at work, I shouldn’t fault him for not putting my problems first, especially when he plain doesn’t know about the stress I’m under. I just wish he would…I don’t know what I wish. I just wish he wasn’t here right now.
“Hey? Waverly?” Larry waves a hand in front of my face. “Where did you go?”
“Oh, sorry,” I say. I begin drizzling vinaigrette over the salad and then move it to the “ready table” for Donovan to take out to the bakery case in the front of the store.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Larry shuffling his feet, waiting for me to stop and acknowledge him. I feel the tiniest pang of guilt for acting like a thirteen-year-old. I know that I should talk to him about what’s wrong, but I can’t. I just can’t. It is so unfair to him, but it feels physically impossible to play the doting girlfriend right now. I head to one of the refrigerators and pull out a tray of bacon to start frying for sandwiches.
“So, you’re busy,” he says pointedly from across the room, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Yeah,” I say. “What are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
Larry laughs. “Nice, Waverly,” he says sarcastically.
“What?” I say, feigning innocence. He could ask me how Amy is doing, I think. He could offer to help me figure out how to deal with her. He could try asking me about how things are going at my job. Why is he just standing there?
“Since you asked, everything at work is fine,” he says flatly. “I had a dentist appointment this morning. I thought it might be nice to stop here afterward and grab some lunch.”
“Looking for free food?” I say.
“Waverly, what the—?” He looks over at Jeannette, who is quietly sprinkling pecan pieces over a tray of carrot-cake cupcakes—and not missing a word of this, I’m sure. Most of my employees know Larry practically as well as they know me, but I don’t need them all witnessing our spat.
I start toward the griddle to begin frying bacon, and just then, because things couldn’t possibly get any better, Randy pops his head in to the kitchen from the front of the bakery. “Uhhhh, Wave? You have a visitor,” he says. His tone of voice and the expression on his face can mean only one thing: My landlord is here. Fuck. My rent was due more than three weeks ago and he’s been calling incessantly. Of course, nobody knows this but me—not my employees, and certainly not Larry, who’s loitering beside me and apparently not in a hurry to get anywhere.
Before I can think of a reason to rush everyone out of the kitchen, Alec, my landlord, saunters into the room, dipping his finger into the bowl of frosting next to Jeannette’s cupcakes as he passes by. There is nothing I like about this person. He became my landlord last year, precisely one month after he graduated from Virginia Tech, when his grandfather, the sweet Irishman who was my landlord, made the unfortunate decision to gift him the building. Alec has the kind of brash, bigheaded attitude that only a twenty-two-year-old can have. From what I’ve seen, he spends most of his time either at the gym or listening to Howard Stern. The bumper sticker on the back of his bright blue souped-up pickup truck is one of those absurd “Calvin pissing” stickers. He doesn’t even need my money—I know for a fact that his grandfather paid off the mortgage years ago. My best guess is that my rent goes toward cases of beer and lap dances.
“Waverly Brown!” he announces to the room when he sees me. Oh God, I hate this prick. He’s wearing a Hokies sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, one leg of which he has pushed up to his knee, a look I’m apparently too old to understand. “What’s up?” he says to Larry. He’s never met Alec but he’s heard me describe him enough that I’m sure he
knows who this is.
“So you know why I’m here,” Alec says, much louder than necessary.
“I do,” I say. “Let’s just go back to my office…” I motion with my head for him to come with me. I really don’t want to write a check in front of my staff and Larry, and God knows what Alec’s capable of saying.
“Oh, sure,” Alec jokes. “Make me wait a little longer for your check, Waverly. Have you not been getting my messages?”
I ignore him as I walk back to the converted closet that is my office. I got his messages, which I confess I have a tendency to delete before I listen to them in full. Can you blame me when he leaves them at all hours of the day and night, with one of his idiot friends and/or thumping house music blaring in the background?
“Um, Wave-er-ly!” I hear Alec shout teasingly from the kitchen. “Don’t forget the late fee, okay? And last month’s late fee, too. You forgot it last time.”
I clutch my pen tighter. It kills me to have to write his name on the payee line.
“Here,” I say after I walk back out and hand him his money. Jeannette is busy at work, or pretending to be. Larry, unfortunately, is standing in the same spot where I left him, watching all of this.
“You can’t keep paying me so late,” Alec barks, punctuating every word with a hand gesture.
“I know, Alec.”
“It’s gotta stop, man. It’s not cool,” he says.
“I know.”
“Do you?” he says. He puts his hands out to his sides and raises his palms to the air. He’s trying to either intimidate me or show off his pecs or both. I know for a fact that the kid grew up in the Watergate building, where the neighbors were Bob and Liddy Dole, so I don’t know how he thinks he’s getting away with the street-tough act.
A platter of tomato and mozzarella salad catches his eye. “What’s that?” he says, pointing at it.
“Caprese salad.”
“I want some,” he says.
“You want to pay for it?” I say.
He laughs, wipes his mouth, and holds the check up to eye level. “Really?”
I sigh. “Donovan?” I say as he passes by me with a broom. “Put that down and get Alec here a pint of the Caprese, please.”
“Thank you.” Alec smiles, winking at me.
I walk back toward Larry, ignoring Alec when he shouts, “On time next month!” as he leaves.
“Your rent was late?” Larry says. I appreciate the discreet volume of his voice but can’t bear to look at the concerned expression on his face, so I turn back to my food prep.
“I’ve got it under control,” I mutter, knowing that what I’ve just said couldn’t be further from the truth. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from bursting into tears.
Last night, before I left the bakery, I spent two hours going over my financial stuff. Despite the decent Valentine’s sales, I don’t have enough to cover my business expenses, the rent for the bakery, and my house loan payment. Now that I’ve handed Alec a check, I’m going to have to default on the house loan. There’s no way around it.
“Waverly, are you sure you’re all right?” he says, placing a hand on my shoulder.
“Larry!” I snap. “Shouldn’t you be at work, making sure your job is safe, instead of worrying about mine? I mean, the longer you’re gone, the more they might realize how much they don’t need you.”
He steps back. “Wow.”
I glance at Jeannette and Donovan as they hurry out of the kitchen.
“What is going on with you, Wave?” Larry says.
I suppose that I could tell him now—about everything that’s happening with work and my money, about how I wish he could share my concern about my girlfriend, about how irritated I am by the fact that he can’t just read my mind and anticipate what I need from him so that I wouldn’t have to actually ask for help. I want him to be my boyfriend, though I know it’s my fault for not letting him be.
I swallow hard. “I’m fine,” I say. “I just spaced out on the rent this month. I went to Florida, then everything with Amy…I just forgot. Am I not allowed to forget something every once in a while?”
He just shakes his head. He’s had it with me, I can tell.
“You going to be home later?” he says as he starts for the door.
“No, I have dinner with the girls,” I reply.
“Right,” he said, twirling his keys in one hand. “Okay, then.”
The minute he’s gone, remorse floods over me. I want to sort this out, but there is so much I have to confess and so much that I’m worried he won’t understand. I know that he is just the innocent bystander to all of my crap, and it’s not fair for me to treat him like this. I peek out into the front of the store and watch him and Donovan exchange a casual “See ya, man.” I say good-bye under my breath.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
You would not believe this fucking day,” Kate says. She throws her bag down onto the vinyl banquette and slides in next to me.
“I’ll take that for you,” Amy says after Kate wiggles out of her blazer. I watch her reach across the table for Kate’s jacket and then neatly fold and place it on top of her things. We haven’t been waiting for more than ten minutes, but I am as relieved to see Kate as if Amy was some tedious, onion-breathed stranger I’d just met at a cocktail party.
I’ve been listening to Amy tell me about her day. Well, listening is probably a strong word, because I couldn’t tell you what she told me if you paid me. My mind keeps flashing back to being at her house. This is the first time we’ve seen each other since, and neither of us has said a word about it. In fact, Amy seems to be overcompensating to make up for the odd mood she displayed during my visit. When we met in the parking lot, she gripped me like we were long-lost siblings reuniting on daytime TV. Then, inside the restaurant, she nodded at the table the hostess had chosen for us as if it had views of the Manhattan skyline. Amy’s enthusiasm has always seemed genuine, but now I don’t know. I’m starting to wonder more and more about the distant, sullen woman I discovered at her house.
“So you had a bad day?” Amy says sympathetically to Kate, pushing her bottom lip out. I slide a menu across the table.
Kate reaches for it and exhales loudly, her cheeks puffing up like she’s blowing out candles on a cake. “Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” she finally says, shaking her head like she’s shaking off the day. “I told myself on the drive over here that I wasn’t going to complain.”
A laugh escapes through my mouthful of bread.
“Waverly, come on.” Kate scowls wearily. She raises her hand to get a waiter’s attention. “The service has always sucked here,” she says, waving her finger in the air. “I don’t know why you two insist that we keep coming back.”
Finelli’s is a neighborhood Italian place in an old cinderblock building a few miles from the bakery. It has been a fixture in Maple Hill since the 1950s and is wedged into a nondescript corner between the Best Buy and Target that have sprung up on either side of it. The walls are wood paneled, there are predictable red-and-white checkered tablecloths on the tables, and the elderly waitstaff appears to have worked here since opening day. Our waiter shuffles over to our table, glowering at us as he pulls a notepad out of his waistband and waits for Kate to look over the menu.
“I guess just the house red,” she says after scanning it, shaking her head as if it’s written in Sanskrit. “I’ve never seen any of these wines before,” she says, adding under her breath, “Hardly surprising.” The waiter raises his eyebrows and writes the order on his pad, as slowly as if he’s just learning his letters. My parents and I started coming here for Sunday night family dinners when I was in middle school, and then Kate began to tag along after I met her. She pretends to hate it, but I’ve never once seen her leave anything on her plate.
“So I haven’t seen you since Florida,” she says, turning to Amy.
“I know!” Amy says, touching Kate’s forearm. “I hope you got my email about Brendan’s lunch. I’m so sorry
I missed it.”
“Did you send me an email?” Kate furrows her brow. “I don’t remember.”
“Waverly said that there was a huge turnout,” Amy says.
Kate shrugs. “I guess.”
I reach for the cruet of olive oil on the table and pour a pool of it onto my bread plate.
“So guess what happened today,” Kate says, pulling her hair into a ponytail and then letting it fall. “As I said, it was nuts, but it’s for a good reason, actually. Brendan’s been getting a lot of good feedback since Meet the Press the other Sunday.”
“Oh, yeah!” Amy squeals, putting her hand to her forehead. “Kate, I’m so sorry! I totally forgot to watch it! How was it?”
Kate looks across the table at her like she’s a child who’s just interrupted two adults talking. I want to kick her under the table to tell her to give Amy a break, but I don’t want to hit the wrong foot. It’s one thing for her to treat me like this, but when she does it to Amy, I take it personally. She knows damn well that Amy is just being nice, and I especially don’t want to see Kate’s mean-girl act when I’m convinced that Amy’s cheerfulness is a cover-up for something awful.
“Well, like I said.” She clears her throat. “He did really well.”
It was true. When Larry and I watched, I’d actually forgotten that the guy on the screen was the same Brendan I know. He’d convinced me at the luncheon that he could give a good speech, but the interview proved to me that he actually knows his stuff. He even seemed like he cared about it.
“The point is,” Kate says, pausing for a moment as our waiter sets her glass on the table, “it’s huge for him to get this kind of national attention during his first major campaign, especially when the race is pretty much his.”
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