“No way. She’d probably listen in on the kitchen extension. I’ve got a better idea. You just show up here and follow my lead. And did I mention the wine part?”
At six on the dot, he rang the doorbell. Daniel has his own key, of course, but we were still trying to keep up proprieties, for my mother’s sake.
“I’ll get it, Mama,” I said, meeting him on the front stoop. I gave him a long, hard, passionate kiss, with a playful little groin pat as a lagniappe.
“Don’t.” He groaned, pressing me closer. “I’m not a man to be toyed with.”
“Later,” I promised. “Did you bring the wine?”
He held up a brown-paper shopping bag. “Don’t I always?”
“Hi, Mrs. Foley,” Daniel said, going inside and giving my mother a dutiful peck on the cheek. “Mmm. What smells so delicious?”
She patted Daniel on the top of his head, as she always did. “Oh, stop. It’s just my plain old tuna-noodle casserole. Although I did sprinkle crushed-up salt-and-vinegar potato chips on top, this time, for a little extra crunch.”
“Can’t wait,” he said, swallowing hard.
After Mama said grace, we both made a valiant effort at pushing the casserole around on our plates, in between copious helpings of tossed salad and French bread.
“So, Daniel,” Mama said, sliding a second huge spoonful of casserole onto his plate, “How is the restaurant business going?”
I gave him a warning kick under the table. He put his hand on my thigh.
“A little slow right now,” he said, hiding a clump of food under a lettuce leaf. “We’re uh, doing some remodeling at the restaurant, so we’re temporarily closed.”
“You’re out of work?” She clutched her throat with a look of abject horror.
“It’s all right, Mama,” I assured her. “It’s just a temporary thing. Daniel already has a bunch of catering jobs lined up. He’ll be fine.”
She shook her head and tsk-tsked. “I remember, one time, when you were just a baby, Weezie, your father had plantar’s warts, and he couldn’t walk his route for weeks. But the post office paid him, just the same. That’s the thing about a good government job,” she added, nodding her head in a meaningful way. “You can always depend on it.”
“Daniel has more job offers than he can take,” I said. “Skilled chefs are always in demand. He’s even had job offers from Jacksonville and Charleston and Atlanta.”
“I suppose,” she said airily. “Now, Daniel, if things don’t look up, you should give Weezie’s daddy a call. He still has a lot of pull with the postal service. Anyway, the benefits for a family man are the best around. Medical, dental. And all those federal holidays too! And no night work. You could be home with your wife and babies by five o’clock every day, like Weezie’s daddy always was.”
“Mama!” I said. “Stop that right this minute.”
“What?” she said, acting all innocent. “I spoiled something?”
Daniel, bless him, reached across the table, took my hand in his, and squeezed it. He also squeezed my thigh, while he was at it. “Well, thanks. I’ll keep all that in mind, Mrs. Foley, in case things don’t pan out with the restaurant business.”
“Oh, call me Marian,” Mama said. “We’re practically family.”
“I couldn’t,” Daniel said.
“Mama Marian, then,” she said, beaming first at him, and then at me.
I decided to change the topic of conversation, and quickly.
“By the way, Daniel, I talked to BeBe today,” I said, hopping up and scraping the leftovers into the garbage disposal. “She needs me to take a load of furniture out to the Breeze Inn for her. She’s just about got the first unit ready to move into.”
I sliced up the Mississippi mud pie Daniel had brought, and carried it and three jadeite dessert plates to the table.
“Daniel made this pie himself,” I told Mama proudly. “It’s his own recipe. They sell this in the restaurant for eight dollars a slice.”
“Hmm,” Mama said.
Daniel slid the pieces of pie onto the plates and passed them around. “It sounds like she’s really whipping that motel into shape. If anybody can do it, it’s BeBe.”
“Daniel,” Mama said, pausing between bites of pie, “did you know that Joseph and I honeymooned at the Breeze Inn?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said. “What year was that?”
“Nineteen-sixty,” she said promptly. “But I got a terrible yeast infection that week, so Joseph had to take me to the doctor after only three days, and we’d already paid ahead of time for the whole week, twelve dollars a night too! And that nasty manager, I forget his name, wouldn’t give us a refund, so then we left on Thursday.”
“Mama, stop!” I cried. “You’re grossing us out!”
“What?” she said. “Daniel’s a grown man. He needs to understand that these things happen to a woman once she starts having intimate relations.”
Daniel choked so hard I had to get up and pound him on the back.
“It’s the pie,” Mama said sympathetically, handing him a glass of wine. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that crust was just a little on the dry side. Next time, maybe you could pick up one of those good Mrs. Smith’s chocolate-cream pies.”
“Mrs. Smith’s,” he managed to croak. “I’ll make a note of it.”
Mama begrudgingly allowed us to clean up the kitchen, so while she went off to watch Wheel of Fortune, we dumped the rest of the tuna casserole into the trash, double-bagged it, and finished cleaning up the dishes.
“What’s all this about taking furniture to BeBe?” Daniel asked.
“She really does need furniture for her unit at the motel,” I said. “But I figure, if we take it out there tonight, I can just tell Mama that by the time we finished unloading, I was too tired to drive home, so I just spent the night with BeBe.”
“BeBe? Why would you do that?”
“Idiot! It’s all a ruse. I’ll be checking into the Stipanek Sheraton.”
“I like it,” he said, a slow grin developing. “Just you and me and the moonlight.”
“As soon as we take the furniture over to BeBe’s. And set it up. And see if she needs any help.”
“Help?”
“The place is a disaster, Daniel. I can’t just abandon her. She needs me.”
“I need you,” he said, nuzzling my neck.
“But in a different way. Be an angel now, and help me load up.”
At seven-thirty, we pulled into the parking lot at the Breeze Inn. Although BeBe’s Lexus was the only car in the lot, the NO VACANCY sign was blinking off and on. Unit two’s doors and windows were wide open and ablaze with lights.
I honked the horn, and a minute later, BeBe appeared in the doorway. Her appearance was shocking, to say the least. Her blond curls peeked out from beneath a red stocking cap, and she wore faded blue overalls covered with white paint splatters. There were dark circles under her eyes, and I realized with a start that it was the first time—ever, in all our years of friendship—that I’d seen her without makeup. Still, she gave a jaunty wave of her long-handled paint roller when she saw us.
“Hey!” she called out. “Did y’all bring your paintbrushes?”
“Better,” I said, hopping out from the passenger side of the truck. “Wait till you see the darling dinette set—”
“And pizza,” Daniel added, bringing out the cardboard box from Vinnie VanGo’s, and waving it under her nose. “And wine. We brought you a really big bottle of wine.”
“My angels,” BeBe said fervently. “But about those paintbrushes—”
“Later,” Daniel said. “First we eat.”
“But I thought Weezie’s mama was cooking dinner tonight,” BeBe said.
“Exactly,” Daniel said. “Which is why we stopped at Vinnie’s. Here. You hold the pizza while I get your dining-room table. Where’s it going?”
“Nowhere, just yet,” BeBe said, grimacing. “I’m in paint hell. The walls are done, and
the first coat is dry on the floors, but it’s going to take at least three coats.”
“Looks like the manager’s office, then,” I said, glancing around the parking lot. “And where is the manager, pray tell? I thought he was supposed to be helping you fix up the place.”
“Mr. Sorrentino is very busy right now,” BeBe said. “Warming a stool over at Doc’s Bar.”
23
“Your manager’s sitting in a bar all day, while you’re over here killing yourself fixing the place up?” Daniel asked, polishing off the last piece of pizza. “BeBe, if anybody at Guale even thought about pulling a stunt like that, you’d fire their asses. So it’s simple, right? If he won’t work for you, fire him, and kick his ass out of here.”
“It’s not quite that easy,” I said. “I can’t fire him. I owe him money.”
“How?” Daniel and Weezie asked, almost in unison.
“He’s been working here for six months, paying for materials out of his own pocket, and he hasn’t been paid in all that time. This morning, he presented me with a bill for $4,800, which I don’t have.”
“Damn,” Daniel said.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “I can’t get this place fixed up, and ready to reopen by St. Patrick’s Day by myself, and I can’t afford to hire somebody else. So I’m screwed.”
“We’ll help,” Weezie said quickly. “I can paint and sand. And I owe you, after all the help you gave me, fixing up the carriage house for Maisie’s Daisy.”
“I know,” I told her, giving her a quick hug. “And I appreciate that. But you and I can’t do plumbing. Or wiring. For that, unfortunately, we need Harry Sorrentino.”
“But you just said he’s basically a barfly,” Weezie said.
“He is,” I agreed. I did a couple of deep-knee bends, and then, groaning, stood up straight again. “But I found out today that he’s in a bad way financially too. He doesn’t know I know it, but I found out Harry Sorrentino needs money to get his fishing boat out of hock. Some marina repossessed it because he owes them money for dock fees and ice and fuel. So I’m going to make him a simple business proposition. The sooner he helps me get the motel open, and turning a profit, the sooner I can start paying him the money he’s owed.”
Daniel shook his head. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”
“Can I stop you?”
“I don’t know Harry Sorrentino,” Daniel said. “But I know how I’d feel if I was in his position. So don’t throw the boat thing in the man’s face,” Daniel said. “Think about how that must feel. The guy lost his livelihood.” He gave me a meaningful look. “Kinda like the way you lost yours. It’s humiliating, right?”
I sighed. “I hate it when you’re right. Okay, I won’t bring up the boat thing. I’ll just use my incredible charm and persuasive powers to bend him to my will.”
“You mean you’ll nag him nearly to death,” Daniel said.
“And speaking of nagging,” I said, picking up the paintbrush I’d left in the sink.
They followed me back to unit two.
“Oh, wow,” Weezie said, peeking inside. “I can’t believe it’s the same place.”
“Really? You don’t think it was sacrilege to paint all that pine paneling?”
“Had to be done,” Weezie said briskly, putting a tentative finger to the painted floor. “This is dry. And I don’t think it really needs a second coat.”
“But you can see the grain of the wood underneath,” I said. “And the places where the floor was patched.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Weezie said, slipping out of her shoes and walking into the middle of the room. “This is Tybee, not the Telfair Museum. The look we’re going for here is funky, cottagey. You want the wood grain to show. Anyway, the furniture will cover up the patched places. Trust me, this place is going to be adorable.”
“I’d settle for livable, or even sanitary. Anyway, you haven’t seen the bathroom,” I warned, as she headed in that direction. “Not even paint can fix that.”
“But the bathroom’s awesome,” Weezie called, her voice echoing in the empty room. “Come look.”
I poked my head around the doorway and into the bathroom.
The place had been transformed. The grungy black-and-white mosaic-tile floor sparkled. An old-fashioned brass light-fixture I’d never seen before hung from the ceiling, the walls had a fresh coat of white paint, and the sink, although still a dull grayish color, had been fitted with pitted but polished brass faucets. Gleaming brass towel bars had taken the place of the cheap plastic ones I’d seen earlier in the day, and the wooden medicine cabinet had been painted glossy black. Even its glass shelves had been cleaned.
“I had no idea,” I said slowly. “I mean, Harry was working in here all morning. I knew he put in a new hot-water heater, and installed the toilet and all, but I was busy in the living room, pulling up the old linoleum and carpet. I had no idea he’d done all this.”
Weezie knelt down to get a closer look at the claw-foot tub. “Looks like he took some kind of commercial cleaner to this. When you get a little money ahead, we can have the tub and the sink reglazed, babe. It’ll only cost a couple hundred bucks, and when it’s done, it’ll be fabulous.”
Now Daniel stuck his head in the doorway too. “I thought you said the guy was a barfly. This bathroom looks pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind checking in here myself.”
Weezie punched him in the arm. “Forget it, lover boy. It’s almost midnight. We’re going to get her furniture unloaded and set up, and then we’re headed for your place.”
Daniel caught her hand and kissed it, waggling his eyebrows at both of us. “See how it is? She can’t get enough of me.”
Under Weezie’s direction, Daniel and I began unloading the truck.
“Get the rug first,” she ordered, and he dutifully carried in a long, paper-wrapped cylinder and set it down in the sleeping nook. When he unrolled the rug, I stared down at it dubiously, trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
The rug was an ancient oriental, its nap worn down almost to nothing, its colors faded to soft pinks, greens, and blues. One end of it looked as if it had been attacked by a horde of angry moths, leaving the edges ragged in places.
“Now flip it over,” Weezie instructed.
“Huh? Wrong side up?” But Daniel did as he was told. The colors on the reverse side of the rug were even softer, leaving the pattern with a smudged, Impressionist look.
“Perfect,” Weezie said, clapping her hands with delight. “I’d almost forgotten I had this thing. My ex would never let me put it in my house. It was shoved way back in the attic of the town house.”
Daniel said. “What do you want to do with that iron-frame bed in the truck?”
“Set it up,” Weezie said. “The mattress is brand new, and I’ve had that rug cleaned, moth-proofed, and sanitized. So there’s absolutely no danger of cooties besmirching your precious little tootsies.”
“As if,” I mumbled. But then I trudged out to the truck to get the rest of the furniture. Because Weezie was right. This wasn’t a mansion, and I wasn’t Lady Astor.
“Bring in the wicker rocker and the nightstands and the lamps next,” Weezie called after me from the doorway.
By the time we got the nightstands, lamps, and wicker chair inside, Weezie had the bed made up with clean sheets and a plump comforter. The bed, as promised, covered up the rattiest part of the rug, which actually looked amazing on the white-enameled floor. The black iron tracery of the headboard stood out from the white walls, and with the stack of crisp white pillows, and the Tiffany-blue comforter, I had to admit the little sleeping nook suddenly looked very tempting.
“Very pretty,” I said, fingering the white eyelet lace edge of the pillowcases.
“Thank God for Target,” Weezie said, giving it the phony French pronunciation of Tar-zhay. “The sheets are actually pretty high thread-count cotton. And I found the comforter on clearance at the end of the summer, $9.99. You probably don’t remember, but I had it on a
display bed in the shop, with a little feed-sack quilt folded on top of it.”
“You’re a genius,” I said. “And I’m a spoiled brat.”
“Agreed,” she said, smiling. She picked up a pebbly white lamp with a shade with pom-pom trim, placed it on the little three-legged pine table on the right side of the bed, and plugged in the cord. A peeling, dark green, square bamboo-looking table was on the left, and she put the other lamp on top, then turned on both lamps.
“The lamps are milk glass,” Weezie told me. “They’re not all that terribly old. Sixties, I’d say. I think Meemaw probably bought them with S and H green stamps.” She placed the rocker at an angle to the bed and frowned. Then she took a piece of wildly flowered green, red, and yellow nubbly fabric from the empty Target shopping bag and covered the cracked red-leather seat cushion with it.
“Works,” she said, nodding her approval. “I’ve been saving that piece of bark cloth for ages. I had Tacky Jacky re-cover an armchair with the rest of it, but there wasn’t enough left to do much with. We still need a reading lamp here, but I’ve got one in the shop that will work.”
By unspoken agreement, we both stepped back from the sleeping nook to take it in. I gave my best friend a hug, but she shrugged out of it and returned to her I’m-in-charge-here-take-no-prisoners mode.
“Go get the stack of pictures on the front seat of the truck,” she ordered. “And tell Daniel to bring in the love seat and armchair.”
“Love seat?” I asked. “Where are you gonna put something that big?”
“It’s a little two-seater settee. So you just keep moving,” Weezie said imperiously. “I’ll figure out where things go.”
“Hey,” I said, when Daniel carried in the turquoise-painted wrought-iron settee. “Isn’t that one of the pieces you brought back from your last buying trip to Florida?”
“So?” Weezie said, deliberately turning her back to me. “Put it right against this wall,” she said, patting the window opposite my bed. “And then the chair goes right here,” she continued. “And the little glass-topped table goes in between them.”
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