Be My Neat-Heart

by Baer, Judy

  He looked up sharply. “Is it Sunday already?” Ben also has difficulty with the calendar.

  “No, silly. It’s Wednesday. There’s a concert.”

  “Wednesday? I have a meeting at the university. Thanks for reminding me.”

  He dished up a piece of cake the size of Rhode Island and put it in front of me. “How did yesterday go?”

  “As well as can be expected, considering my client was born in the late 1930s and had parents who lived through the Depression.”

  Ben nodded sagely. “Couldn’t get her to throw anything out, huh?”

  “She grew up with nothing, and is determined either consciously or subconsciously not to let that happen again. People like Mrs. Fulbright fight scarcity piece by piece, container by container. She’s saved everything. I have to be gentle.”

  Ben leaned forward and chucked me under the chin like I was his favorite Irish setter. “You can’t be anything but gentle, Sammi. You don’t know how.”

  Maybe I don’t know how to be anything but gentle, but by the time I got to Carver Advertising through downtown traffic, two full parking garages, ten miles of skyway, a maze of gate-keepers, a handful of low-level minions and a bossy executive secretary, I was willing to learn.

  What made it even worse was the handsome but fuming, ill-tempered man I rode up with in the elevator. He repeatedly punched the already lit button to the 23rd floor and tapped his toe at what he obviously viewed as an extraordinarily slow closing door. The elevator stopped at several floors, and at each one he scowled ferociously at those who entered. Everyone was able to escape his apparent temper by the 21st floor except me, so he glowered at me as if the entire leisurely elevator ride were my fault.

  Too bad he was such a grouch. He would have been downright gorgeous without the scowl. He had dark hair, a nicely tanned complexion and eyes the color of a violet-blue sea. I didn’t see his smile, of course, but unless he was a real Snagglepuss, he was first rate in the looks department.

  He darted out of the elevator and down the hall even before I got a chance to look at the building directory listing the office number for Carver Advertising.

  Lord, here we are. As always, I ask that I be Your representative as I meet new clients. Let Your light shine in me. Amen.

  I’ve discovered that business is always better with God as a consultant. His services come free of charge, and He’s never wrong. What better advisor could I have than that?

  After a trip to the powder room to spruce up, I entered Suite 2307. A secretary looked me up and down skeptically, clearly wondering what purpose I could serve. People sometimes respond to me that way. It’s probably because I’m blond. Really blond. So blond that others assume those blond jokes were actually written about me. I smiled reassuringly at the receptionist and took a seat.

  When I was a child my hair was nearly white. I was so fair that my parents insist they were forced to spend my inheritance on sunscreen and umbrellas. I blame my Nordic roots, the ones that also gave me rosy cheeks and wintry blue eyes. Much as I hate to admit it, I do look a little…well…Barbie-like, all fluff, no substance. I’ve spent much of my life dispelling that notion.

  The other gift from my ancestors is more useful. I’m tall, long-legged and athletic. I work out a little and look like I work out a lot. And I’ve been skiing since I was five, when my father took me to Buck Hill and got me hooked. Skiing is great for every muscle group I own.

  I sat back in my chair and looked around. Nice digs. A good gig if you could get it. Original artwork on the walls, carpet with a variety of colors cut into it to make the swooping design CA, for Carver Advertising, on the floor.

  There wasn’t a tired, out-of-date magazine, a stray dust mote or a streak on the bank of windows overlooking the city. There was nothing on the secretary’s polished mahogany desk but the mandatory telephone and computer equipment, a few sheets of paper and a fountain pen. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it was these people wanted organized.

  It had been a long day, I realized as I waited for my summons into the inner sanctum of Carver Advertising. I rarely have the opportunity to sit down in a clutter-free environment that’s not of my own making. It’s very relaxing for a person who loves orderliness. I closed my eyes, relishing the tidiness and serenity that cocooned me. Unfortunately it was so relaxing that I nearly dozed off.

  When I heard a man clear his throat and speak my name, I jumped to my full five-foot-nine-inch height—five-eleven if I count the heels—and gave a startled, unfortunately loud squawk.

  Not cool, I thought to myself as I gathered my scattered wits about me.

  “Oh, ah…sorry…it was so calm and quiet in here…too many Cool Whip containers…never mind….” I thrust out my hand. “Samantha Smith, organizational consultant. Let me help you organize your world.”

  The man, his brown hair prematurely shot with gray, looked at me in bemusement. He was clean shaven in the way of men who use straight-edged razors rather than electric ones, and his well-scrubbed apple cheeks gleamed. He was round in a Has-The-Makings-of-a-Santa-Claus-Someday way, and his light green eyes twinkled.

  “Miss Smith, my name is Ethan Carver. Thank you for coming on such short notice.” He eyed me with what was either amusement or indigestion. “I can see that your time must be consumed by many things.”

  Totally embarrassed, I followed him into his office. If I were my dog, Imelda, my tail would have been between my legs. Imelda’s tail is between her legs a lot, mostly because she lives up to her name.

  Imelda, one of those “designer” dogs, a labradoodle, is a cross between a Labrador and a poodle. Imelda loves shoes. Adores them. She will eat as many as she can find. I didn’t discover the depth and breadth of her shoe fetish until I’d had her nearly three months. I simply thought that I was forgetting my heels at the gym after work, and when I went back for them, they’d already walked off. The one place in my house that I do not clean weekly is under my bed. I have moveable storage compartments there, which I move only seasonally when I change my clothes from winter to summer and vice versa. Imagine my shock, then, when I pulled out those containers to discover a horrific shoe cemetery in the space behind my winter clothes.

  It took me days to get over the fact I’d been sleeping over a graveyard—the sad, strange, lonely place my shoes had gone to die.

  Imelda, the heartless fiend, however, was overjoyed to have easier access to the remains of her prey and walked around for the rest of day with an amputated three-and-a-half-inch heel from my one and only pair of Manolo Blahniks in her mouth.

  Once a shoe lover, always a shoe lover, I guess.

  Chapter Three

  Carver’s office was pristine—to the naked eye, at least.

  I sat down awkwardly in a contemporary, geometrically designed chair that had nothing to do with the shape of the human body unless, of course, you were the model for Picasso’s Sitting Woman With the Green Scarf.

  “Now you know my weakness, Mr. Carver. I work too many hours and sleep on the job. How about you?”

  “My Achilles’ heel may not be quite as visible as yours, Ms. Smith, but present and accounted for nonetheless.”

  “I must admit I’m not familiar with Carver Advertising,” I began. Listening is half my job, discovering who people really are and what they’re about.

  “We handle several large sports-related advertising accounts. We’re big into baseball right now.” He studied me carefully. “Now tell me what you do.”

  “I empower people to unburden themselves of life’s excess baggage and to live in freedom, simplicity and order.” The elevator speech rolled off my tongue with ease, the result of a thousand repetitions.

  His eyes widened and I added, “Frankly, sir, as my thirteen-year-old neighbor says rather crassly, I help people ‘get their poop in a group.’ I help them prioritize, organize and sanitize. I help them categorize, systematize and standardize….” Oh, oh, I was on a roll. “I show them how to purify, classify and stupefy�
��.” I pulled myself together before I burst into “the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone….”

  “Sorry, I get carried away putting like things together—even words.”

  Carver grinned, but a disparaging snort from somewhere over my right shoulder made me flinch. I spun around to see the handsome, bad-tempered man from the elevator leaning against a bookcase, a coffee mug in his hand and a withering expression on his features.

  He stared at me as if I were Kafka’s cockroach lounging on the miserably uncomfortable chair, a chair only my Aunt Gertie could love. I squirmed as any self-respecting bug might. “You!” I blurted before my brain was in gear. “From the elevator!”

  “You two have met?” Carver seemed astonished by that.

  “We rode up together in the elevator,” I stammered.

  “The one that stopped at every floor?” Now Carver really looked amused. Then he seemed to remember there were amenities to perform.

  “Ms. Smith, I’d like you to meet my friend, Jared Hamilton. Jared just stopped by to—” he paused to choose his words carefully “—to vent about something concerning his work. I invited him to stay and see what you had to say. Do you mind?”

  I minded a great deal, but I didn’t think it was prudent to say as much. “Anyone you choose to have here is welcome, Mr. Carver.” I turned to face the desk again but had the sense that Hamilton was hovering above me like a bad-tempered bat hanging from the rafters. Granted, a good-looking bat, with chiseled features and broad shoulders, but he alarmed me nonetheless. Too serious. Too cantankerous.

  Carver smiled encouragingly, as if to tell me to ignore the storm cloud lurking in the corner. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met anyone quite like you before, Ms. Smith,” Carver said.

  I didn’t dare consider what he might mean by that, so I decided to take it as an admiring comment. A girl can use all the compliments she can get.

  Unfortunately, I heard a muttered “No kidding?” from behind me.

  “Pay no attention to him,” Carver said, giving Jared Hamilton a dirty look. “He’s had some bad financial news, and he’s being rather loutish at the moment.”

  “Yes…well.” Excessively loutish, if you ask me.

  “Now that we’ve settled that, Mr. Carver, why am I here?” I forced bat-man out of my mind. “What can I do for you? This office doesn’t appear to need a professional organizer.”

  Silently he stood up and moved toward the bank of mahogany doors that lined the wall behind his desk. Without comment, he opened them.

  Why he wasn’t buried in an avalanche of paper as the doors silently slid away, I’ll never know. Shades of those sneaky Pharisees! With Ethan Carver, what you see is not exactly what you get. The cup—or in this case, the closet—had not been cleaned in a very long time.

  “This will be our little secret, Ms. Smith. You do have a confidentiality clause in your contract, don’t you?”

  I made a little zippering motion across my lips. No one would believe it, anyway. The papers looked like they’d been sorted by a wind machine. If there was any sense whatsoever to the mess, I couldn’t fathom it.

  “I’m known in my business as a perfectionist. I have a photographic memory and can retain virtually all of the details of my business up here.” He pointed to his head. “Therefore, I seldom worry about the papers on which information is written and tend to simply toss them in here to be filed some day, but it has…gotten out of hand.

  “My secretary does not deal with anything in my personal office. I prefer to do that myself.” He cleared his throat. “Now it’s to a point where I don’t feel comfortable asking her.” He began to pace a bit, the only sign of how this disturbed him.

  “Because the company has grown, I’ve taken on a partner who will be on site starting next week. I prefer that he not see—” he gestured toward the mounds of floor-to-ceiling papers, files and flotsam and jetsam “—these.”

  I nodded mutely, already mentally shopping for file cabinets and ring-binder notebooks. This was the perfect job for an über-organizer like me.

  Then I realized what he had said. “Next week?” I managed. “So soon?”

  “You can do it, can’t you?”

  “But my other clients, well, I guess…sure.”

  “Good. Do you want to stay this afternoon or come back in the morning? I have appointments so I’ll be out of your way.”

  “It’s not quite that easy, Mr. Carver. You have to be a part of this. Otherwise you’ll have to call me every time you can’t find something because the filing system I’ve used doesn’t make sense to you. And,” I ventured, “unless we figure out why it got this bad and change your habits, it will happen all over again. We’ll have to do some goal setting and prioritizing.”

  “I don’t have the time or need to organize my head, Ms. Smith,” he said pragmatically. “Only my shelves. I have an outside meeting this afternoon that shouldn’t last more than a couple hours. Right, Jared?” He looked into the bat corner. “I’ll just leave you here to begin, Ms. Smith. And please—” he paused at the door “—don’t let my secretary in here. She’d have a coronary.”

  He had that right.

  “But I didn’t schedule any time for this today…and I need you to be involved…there is no point…” My hands flapped helplessly at my sides. “This isn’t my problem to solve alone…”

  “It is now,” Jared Hamilton said, moving into the light. He looked amused for the very first time, which improved his looks but not the state of my quandary.

  “I’ll be back at five. That gives you two hours to evaluate my—” Ethan paused and smiled, already showing his relief at having someone to whom to delegate his problem “—situation. I’ll talk with you then.”

  Hamilton sauntered toward the door with his hands in his pockets, looking entirely too entertained. Carver followed him and they disappeared into the outer office. The door whispered closed behind them, leaving me right where I didn’t want to be.

  As the door closed I heard Hamilton say to Carver, “What are you? Nuts? Craziest thing I’ve ever heard! What’s she going to do for you that you can’t do for yourself? You’re a smart guy. You can figure this out without an ‘organizer.’” He said the word “organizer” the way someone else might say “fleas.”

  Hah! Being smart and having clutter don’t have anything to do with each other. Some of the brightest, most creative people I know can’t get their ducks in a row where their possessions are concerned.

  I didn’t like Jared Hamilton the minute I met him and that comment didn’t improve his status with me one bit. A quick prick to my conscience reminded me that I was being judgmental. Judge not that you not be judged.

  Amen to that.

  Immediately dismissing Hamilton, I stared at the stacks of nine-foot-high shelves with my hands resting on my hips, my shoulders squared. Even I felt intimidated and I’m a professional.

  I took out the throwaway camera I carry in my purse and did what I always do at the beginning of a job. The “Before” pictures. I assure my clients when I hand them over at the end of a job that I didn’t keep negatives and will not use them for blackmailing purposes. Still, I do want them to know just how far they’ve come in the organizing process. And have something to remind them to never go back there again.

  The door opened and I jumped to put my back to the mess and splayed out my arms as if I could even begin to hide this little organizing debacle. But it was Carver again, this time with a boyish grin on his face. “You’re saving me big-time, Smith. Even though my friend Jared says you can’t do it, I believe you can. I owe you one.”

  Indeed he did. I spent the rest of the afternoon designing a workable storage system and imagining what it was I was going to demand in payment.

  I’m a big believer in categories. Like goes with like. Combs go with brushes, nail polish goes with emery boards and pencils do not go with spoons. Therefore, having to start somewhere, I pulled out an armload of paper, careful not to let the whole
stack slide down on me, and started to sort. Prospectuses, financial statements, catalogues filled with golf equipment, personal letters and cartoon books of Calvin and Hobbs were all glommed together in the piles.

  I looked around the pristine office and all its beautiful empty floor space. Perfect. Then I went to the door, peeked out and told the secretary that I didn’t want to be disturbed under any circumstance and locked the door behind me.

  To get in the mood for what I was about to begin, I started to hum. Singing gears me up to dig in to a project that, like this one, is over my head—literally. I make up my own lyrics, usually to something rousing like “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  Mine eyes have seen the messes that have come to me today

  I am trampling out the clutter and the junk where it was stored

  I have given full permission and to the garbage men implore

  Cart this stuff away!

  Gory, gory, it’s an eyesore,

  Gory, gory, it’s an eyesore,

  Gory, gory it’s an eyesore,

  The junk is leaving now.

  I glanced at the door to make sure there was no way Ethan’s secretary could have found a hidden key and slipped in unheard by me. If anyone caught me sitting on the floor singing and shuffling papers like they were playing cards, they’d probably think they had grounds for commitment. Resolutely I began that phase of the project that always dismays my clients—that It-Will-Look-Even-Worse-Before-It-Looks-Better stage.

  At five-fifteen, when Ethan Carver returned, I had every square inch of floor space covered with documents, newspaper clippings, letters and articles.

  “What on earth?” He stared at the vast sea of paper in dismay.