by Wendy Wax
The angry part of her wanted to inform her friend that she’d assumed wrong; that every word was a battle and every moment spent in front of her computer a hard-won victory. And that she couldn’t even remember why she hadn’t called the husband who worshipped her to tell him she’d arrived safely.
But Kendall was smiling for the first time since Mallory had arrived and seemed to be contemplating the Home Depot with the same reverence and excitement with which Mallory approached the couture departments of Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. The part of her that had come out of friendship tamped down on the hurt and kept those truths to herself.
“Do you smell that, Mallory?” Kendall asked as they halted inside the store. “That’s the smell of possibility.”
Mallory drew in a breath but got only a whiff of wood chips, insect spray, and an underlying hint of fertilizer. The place was a hotbed of activity though; clearly an outing to the new Home Depot was a “do not miss” up here.
Mallory had her doubts that a home repair of any kind was going to make Kendall feel appreciably better about her life, but she was not about to say so now. Nor was she going to unburden herself. Kendall was right; she was in an envi able position. No one wanted to hear how hard it had become to maintain it. Or that no matter how much she had she couldn’t block out the memory of what it would feel like to lose it.
Mallory took a step forward, trying to shrug off her ill humor. Kendall reached out a hand to stop her. “I am so sorry for attacking you,” she said. “I had no right to do that. You’re a fabulous writer and you work hard and you deserve what’s happened to you.” She smiled wistfully. “I don’t normally envy you. It’s just hard for me to be positive right now, you know? It’s not just that I think the grass is greener on your side of the fence, Mal. I’m deathly afraid all the grass is brown.” She squeezed Mallory’s hand and then let go. “Do you forgive me?”
Mallory felt some of the tension seep out of her. “Yeah,” she said. “And if there was ever proof of how much I value our friendship, being here is it.”
Mallory waved a hand at the endless aisles of power tools and widgets and who knew what else. “We gutted and renovated a five-thousand-square-foot brownstone, and I never once set foot in a place like this.” She’d left all of that, like most everything to do with the day-to-day running of their lives, to Chris. “I’m in foreign territory. And I don’t speak the language. What do we do first?”
“Good question.” Kendall pulled her list from her purse and perused it like a tourist trying to place his location on a map.
“You ladies look a little lost. Can I help you find something?”
The deep male voice took them both by surprise. Their rescuer was of average height and build with hair that was more salt than pepper. His face was smooth and angular, his eyes a faded blue, as if they’d seen all kinds of things and gotten a bit washed out in the process.
Kendall looked down at her list, then at him. Then she just handed the slip of paper to him with an apologetic smile.
“Let’s see now,” he said as he perused the list. “Fix toilet thingy. Replace rotted plank. Install motion detector. Somebody’s got her work cut out for her. Are you planning to do these things yourself or did your husband send you down to pick up supplies?”
Mallory looked up, surprised at the question beneath the question. Then she stole a peek at their rescuer’s ring finger. There was no wedding band although there was a light circle as if he’d worn one for a long time. His name badge said his name was James.
“I’m it,” Kendall said, not quite meeting his eye. “And I’d, um, like to do these things myself.”
“Well, good for you,” James said.
Mallory glanced up again, looking for any sign of calculation. His features appeared as sincere as his tone.
“But we’re going to have to define ‘thingy’ a little more precisely.” He smiled at Kendall. “If you come with me, I’ll take you over to the plumbing department and we’ll try to figure it out.”
He got a cart and escorted them first to plumbing, where with great patience and what seemed like a hundred questions, he determined that the thingy on Kendall’s list was actually a “flapper,” which was not, he said with his quiet smile, to be confused with the dancer of the 1920s.
This was followed by a trip to the lighting and lumber departments where he made sure she had the tools and supplies that she needed to complete her tasks. Near the checkout area, he plucked a big orange book, titled Home Improvement 1-2-3, from a shelf and placed it in the cart. “This should get you through just about anything you might need to do.” Then he pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and pressed it into Kendall’s hand. “I give a do-it-yourself workshop on Saturday mornings if you ever have the time. And even if you don’t, you can call me if you get stuck or have a question.” He cleared his throat and scribbled an additional number at the bottom of the card. “Here’s my, um, cell phone number. I’d be glad to help in any way I can.”
“Thank you,” Kendall said. “Thank you so much for everything.”
“My pleasure, ma’am.” He smiled again at Kendall then tipped his head to Mallory.
They watched him walk away.
“Wow,” Mallory said, as they wheeled the cart into the checkout line. “That’s what I call personal attention. I didn’t think anybody made a house call anymore.”
Kendall blushed, but her gaze stayed on James’s retreating back. “He was nice, wasn’t he? But I’m sure they do that for everyone.”
“Right,” Mallory said as they wheeled through checkout. “I’m sure that’s why he asked whether there was a husband involved. And gave you his cell phone number.”
Kendall blushed again, but Mallory noticed that her friend’s shoulders seemed slightly less rigid and her step appeared noticeably lighter as they pushed the cart through the parking lot then loaded her purchases into the back of the SUV.
Mallory glanced down at her watch and was surprised to see that it was already close to one o’clock. By the time they hit the grocery store, made it back up to Kendall’s, and took the hike she’d already suggested, it was going to be awfully late in the day to sit down and get to work. And, of course, Kendall was probably going to want to actually use some of the things that the sweet-smiling James had just sold her.
She hunched down in her seat casting about for the willpower she needed to get both herself and Kendall on task.
But the truth was she didn’t feel like writing or pushing Kendall. Come to think of it, she’d rather rip out a toilet with her bare hands and read Home Improvement 1-2-3 from cover to cover than do either of those things. Which didn’t bode well for either of them.
12
For those who can do it and who keep their nerve, writing for a living still beats most real, grown-up jobs hands down.
—TERENCE BLACKER
“Lacy!” Jane Jensen didn’t bother with the phone or intercom, but simply shouted from her office on the other side of the hall. “Bring me that cover the art department sent down.”
Lacy stopped what she’d been doing for the tenth time that morning and picked up the large manila envelope that had been delivered earlier.
As she carried it into her boss’s office, she realized that she was bracing herself much like a puppy faced with a rolled-up newspaper. It was just that she never knew which Jane she was going to be dealing with: the calm, yet condescending Jane, or the whacked-out, off-the-wall Jane. Lacy had discovered it was best to be prepared for the whack job and then rejoice when presented with the seminormal version.
In the corner office, Lacy handed her boss the envelope and turned to leave.
“Wait a minute.” Jane extracted the cover mock-up from the envelope and held it out toward Lacy. “What do you think of this for Kendall Aims’s next book. . . . What’s it called again?”
“The working title is Sticks and Stones.”
Jane frowned, the lines etched on either side of her mouth cre
asing deeper. “I thought it was about a writer or a group of writers.”
“It is,” Lacy said, taking the cover and cautioning herself to be careful not to appear to be correcting or disagreeing with Jane. “You know, as in ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me’?”
“Oh, right.” Jane’s facial expressions seemed flat today, her body movements slow. Lacy suspected the catty comments about medication were more than just gossip.
“I think the title’s really catchy,” Lacy said, unable to hide her enthusiasm completely. “But it foreshadows at the same time, telling us there’ll be problems, too, you know?”
When Jane didn’t comment, Lacy dropped her gaze to the cover and studied it carefully. She could feel Jane’s gaze on her, and her discomfort grew as she struggled to conceal her true reaction. The cover was attractive enough. It was cherry red, with a glossy sheen. A black line drawing of a tall, curvy woman in a miniskirt and stilettos drew the eye. A briefcase sat at her high-heeled feet.
For a long moment, Lacy debated her response. She knew what Jane wanted her to say, but a writer’s career was at stake here—her writer’s career. “But this is Carolyn Sinclair’s cover,” she said, stating the obvious since Sinclair’s name took up the top third of the page. “I thought it was designed for her next book.”
Jane settled back in her chair, but her body remained stiff and unyielding, just like her stare. “She rejected it. The art department’s working on something else for her. But we can stick Kendall’s title on the top and fit her name on the bottom just under the briefcase. It’s a good clean women’s fiction look.” Her jaw tightened further. “We spent quite a lot of money on it.”
Lacy swallowed as she once again felt compelled to point out what to her was even more obvious. “But it has nothing at all to do with writing or . . . or anything. Given Kendall Aims’s situation, shouldn’t we be trying to come up with something really strong to try to help sell the book?”
Jane considered the cover. “It’s got a woman and a briefcase on it. We could maybe add a manuscript page sticking out of the top of the briefcase or something.” She shrugged as if it couldn’t have mattered less. “There’s no reason to throw away a perfectly good cover when we can recycle it. One cover isn’t going to salvage Kendall Aims’s career.”
“But if we just write her off she has no chance. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wouldn’t it be in everybody’s best interest to try to sell more of her books?”
Lacy braced herself for the smack of the newspaper, but Jane remained strangely benign. “How did I end up with such a Pollyanna?” Jane tsk’d and dropped the cover on her desk. “Publishing 101,” she said to Lacy. “You have to know when to cut your losses. Kendall Aims’s numbers suck. We’re not going back to contract with her. All we have to do is put the book out there. We have no obligation to throw good money after bad.”
“But . . .”
“Trust me on this, Polly,” Jane said, with a bit more edge.
And that was the end of the conversation.
Steven Truett stood at the podium in the bright spill of a spotlight. His face flushed with emotion, his eyes aglow, his voice rang throughout the hotel ballroom as he exhorted his well-heeled audience to do better, to be more.
“God didn’t create us in order to live our lives on the sidelines. He doesn’t want us on the bench, afraid to get into the game.”
There was a hush in the room and yet there was a buzz, an almost electric energy that gathered the crowd in its embrace and turned the air thick with hope and possibility.
“Don’t fall into the negative. Don’t take the easy way out. God is in control, he’s there for us, but he lets us choose.”
Had it been a different crowd, there might have been a chorus of amens, some heartfelt hallelujahs.
Faye scanned the tables of ten that filled the massive room. This audience wore ball gowns and thousand-dollar suits. They’d paid $250 apiece, all of which would go directly to the Rainbow House Shelter for abused women and children and its new after-school program, to hear Pastor Steve’s message.
Rainbow House was Faye’s passion, a safe place for women and children fleeing abuse. She’d begun raising funds for it ten years ago, when Steve’s ministry had become self-supporting and all three kids were finally out of college.
She’d drafted church members as volunteers and hired a trained staff to run it. She worked intake there once a week and in lean times she kept it afloat with her own earnings. These twice-yearly fund-raisers allowed them to add services and programs and garnered attention outside of the Clearview congregation. Sometimes they brought in outside keynote speakers, but Steve was always their biggest draw.
All eyes were on Pastor Steve as he preached his message of wonder and possibility. He made them feel good about doing good and reassured them that God was there for the affluent as well as the poor.
There were those that dismissed his message as “gospel lite” and Steven as a spiritual rock star, albeit an aging one. But Faye knew that his message came directly from his heart and a deep abiding faith and that despite the twelve thousand plus who came to church services each Sunday, the eighty countries that watched him on television, the money that poured in, unsolicited, from all over the globe, his goal remained the same: to inspire and help.
“Men and women of God are full of strength and wisdom; they are full of can-do power. There is nothing in your future, your life, that you cannot accomplish.”
Faye felt her husband’s certainty and conviction well up from that place inside him and infect the audience. Even these people who had achieved worldly success wanted to hear his message, needed something larger than themselves to believe in.
She told herself that his polish didn’t diminish the importance of his message. That he was the same person he’d always been. She was proud of all that he’d achieved and of her role in his success, but dismayed by it at the same time. It had become so much bigger than she’d ever imagined.
She looked down at the remains of the dessert on her plate and then once again into the faces of his audience. The men nodded occasionally in agreement, comfortable with the message and themselves. But there was a special edge in the women’s eyes, a wanting, a hint of worship that she had to look away from. That kind of adoration carried its own danger.
She thought, not for the first time, how easily that emotion could be turned against the recipient. How much pleasure some felt at watching the mighty fall. How little it would take to destroy all that had been built.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat and turned her gaze back to her husband. Once there had been nothing about one that the other did not know. But that had ended when Faye had decided that nothing was more important than keeping her family and her husband’s dreams afloat.
She didn’t know what detours along their joint journey Steven might have taken. But Faye had set her feet down a path many years ago out of a necessity that would be close to impossible to explain today and which, if exposed, could threaten the very foundations of the church that Steven had built.
Her husband stilled for a moment and then raised his arms in benediction. “God knows what is in our hearts and souls,” he said gently. “He understands our motivations. And no matter how far we may stray from His path, He loves us anyway.”
The applause was instant and deafening as the audience sprang to its feet. Faye rose with them, love and pride propelling her.
Steven bowed his head as if receiving a benediction in return. But as the applause thundered throughout the ballroom, Faye felt a now familiar stirring of unease. Bowing her own head, she prayed that Steven’s concluding remarks were true and that God was, in fact, all-knowing and all-loving. Because she no longer knew whether Steve’s love for her was as unconditional. Or whether he would pick her over his pulpit if he were ever forced to choose.
The Liberty Laundromat was quiet in the early part of the afternoon. Wash-and-fold customers
usually dropped off their dirty clothes in the morning on their way in to work then picked up around 5:00 or 6:00 P.M. on their way home. Do-it- yourselfers drifted in and out throughout the day but came in bigger numbers in the early evening after dinner. Tanya did the drop-off loads all afternoon and stayed until most everything had been picked up at 6:30 P.M.
During the afternoons Tanya worked on her manuscript between loads. The steady tumble of the dryers and swish of the washing machines served as a gentle sort of background noise to her forays into her own fictional worlds. The buzz that signaled the end of a drying cycle or the bell that jangled when the front door opened pulled her back to reality as needed.
At the moment she was struggling over how to keep her heroine, Doreen, out of bed with her older brother’s friend for at least another twenty pages. She’d built their sexual tension to a point where it was going to have to happen soon, though she didn’t know exactly how or where. At this point of her life, the sex, just like everything else in the story, would be a product of her imagination; she had absolutely nothing in recent memory to draw from. Three jobs, two children, and a difficult mother didn’t leave much time to look for a relationship. Or the energy to do anything physical if she had one.
The cursor blinked at the start of a new page and she closed her eyes, trying to insert herself into the scene. The front doorbell jangled when she was almost there.
“Hey, sweet thing.” There was a louder ding, this time of the bell that sat in front of her on the counter. “Belle told me you worked here, and I have to say you’re a mite easier on the eyes than old Juan Carlo over at the Washaroo. You got some quarters for these dollar bills?”
Her eyelids sprang open at the bell and the familiar voice. Sure enough there stood Brett Adams, aspiring speed cooker, with a shit-eating grin on his face and a bulging duffel bag in his hand.