True Colors

by Judith Arnold

  Chapter Two

   

  It looked better than he remembered it.

  Staying away for a year had clearly been a good idea. During that year, he’d regained his perspective, his balance, his sanity. He could evaluate the house with detachment. It was no longer the elegant retreat he’d envisioned when he’d bought it for Vanessa, no longer the extravagance he’d lavished upon her. She was gone from his life, and soon this property would be, too.

  He hadn’t remembered that the front walk was paved with bluestone and the front door was flanked by those round bushes with the dark, leathery leaves and voluptuous pink blossoms. He couldn’t remember what they were called; botany was not his area of expertise. Whatever they were, they were in bloom now, vibrant splashes of pink where in his memory he’d visualized only gray clapboard and stark glass. He hadn’t remembered the pine trees, so tall and straight he could imagine the seafarers of an earlier era creating towering masts for their schooners from them. He hadn’t remembered the isolation of the house, perched as it was on a rise with a breathtaking view of the town and the ocean beyond.

  He did remember that the house’s architectural style was modern. He liked modern. He liked the sharp angles and broad planes of the house, the simplicity and geometry of it. He remembered that the first time Vanessa had looked at the place, she’d said, “It’s kind of cold.” Then she’d rethought that opinion and said, “Kind of cool, actually.” He’d thought she was cool for loving it. Eventually, he’d realized she was just cold.

  But he’d bought it for her. And now she was gone, and he would sell it.

  He strode up the walk, trying not to let those gaudy flowering shrubs distract him, and pressed the doorbell. Through the glass sidelight bordering the door, he heard the bell resonate inside the house.

  A few seconds later, he saw movement through the glass, first a shadow and then a woman approaching the door. He hadn’t expected anyone to be home. He’d rung the bell as a courtesy before letting himself inside, but he’d expected his tenant, Monica Reinhart, to be at work at three-forty in the afternoon. According to Andrea Simonetti, the real estate broker who’d set up the rental, Ms. Reinhart worked at that big inn in town, in some sort of management capacity.

  The woman he viewed through the glass did not look like a manager. She was petite, with wild red hair tumbling in curls around her face. She wore a baggy sweater, baggier cargo pants, and canvas sneakers, none of her apparel particularly new or neat. Trailing behind her were two little girls, maybe eight or nine years old, their hair pulled back in ponytails. Both had on oversized men’s tailored shirts, the tails of which fell to their knees.

  As soon as the red-haired woman spotted him, she fell back a step, then turned and said something to the girls. She didn’t open the door.

  Fair enough. She didn’t recognize him, and she was apparently smart enough not to open the door to a stranger. He tried to signal her through the glass, digging his wallet from the hip pocket of his jeans so he could show her his driver’s license, but she took another step backward and then moved the girls and herself out of his line of sight.

  He abandoned his wallet and pulled out his cell phone instead. He’d programmed Monica Reinhart’s phone number into it, even though he’d never had occasion to call her. Andrea had served as a go-between for them, but he’d wanted his tenant’s number, just in case.

  He tapped it, listened to her phone ring twice, and then: “Hey, this is Monica. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message.”

  Oh, come on. She was standing on the other side of the door. Why couldn’t she answer her phone?

  He tapped on the glass. She and the kids refused to move back into view.

  All right. He didn’t want to scare the shit out of her, but he knew he was harmless, even if she didn’t. He slid his phone back into his pocket, removed the front door key, and slid it into the lock. The door swung open.

  He found Monica huddling with the two girls, pressed up against the coat closet door, all three of them pale and wide-eyed. Monica had one girl tucked securely under each arm, and she had her damn cell phone in one hand. “Get out,” she snapped. “I’m dialing 9-1-1.”

  “I’m Max Tarloff,” he said, spreading his hands palm up to show he wasn’t holding any weapons.

  She frowned, as if his name meant nothing to her.

  “Your landlord.”

  “Max Something?”

  “Max Tarloff.”

  Her mouth fell open, then slammed shut. He probably shouldn’t have noticed her lips. They weren’t covered in lipstick, and the light in the entry foyer wasn’t exactly bright, but he could see that those lips settled into a natural pucker, a little too full for her face. Her complexion remained pale, and despite her red hair she had no freckles, at least none that he could see. Sharp cheekbones, though, and a wide forehead, and pretty hazel eyes. Her hair was so thick and long and curly, he could imagine losing small objects in it.

  His key, for instance. He pocketed it so she wouldn’t think he was planning to attack her with it.

  “Tarloff,” she repeated. “Monica could never… Oh, I mean…” She faltered, then loosened her grip on the girls. “I think it’s okay.”

  “He has his own key,” one of the girls said.

  “Well, yes. As the landlord, he would.” She peered up at him. “I thought you were in California.”

  “I was. Now I’m here.”

  “But we—I mean, you’re not going to evict us, are you?”

  Why was she acting as if he were an ogre, planning to boot her into the street, where she could live in a cardboard box? “I thought Andrea explained to you that I plan to sell the house when the lease is up in June.”

  “She told Monica, but… I mean, it’s not June yet.”

  That was the second time the woman referred to Monica. Evidently, she was someone else. Someone who was living in his house, if her comment about being evicted was anything to go by.

  And perhaps he should evict her, because he’d rented this house to Monica Reinhart, not Monica and some other woman, and two little girls. Sure, the house was too big for one person, but he’d rented it only so there would be someone living inside it, making sure the pipes didn’t freeze in the winter and the roof didn’t leak during the spring rains. He’d set a ridiculously low rent because he’d felt Ms. Reinhart was doing him a favor by living here. An empty house was an invitation to mischief. He didn’t want people to think the place was abandoned.

  Anyway, he didn’t need the money. What he’d needed was a quiet, discreet person turning the lights on and off and announcing to the world that the house was occupied.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “She’s our art teacher,” one of the girls announced.

  “You interrupted our class,” the other added.

  A class? An art class? In his house? What the hell? “Who are you?” he asked in a tight voice, not wanting to erupt and frighten the children—or have the woman phone 911. “That’s number one. And number two is, are you running a school in my house?”

  “Not a school, no.” She loosened her grip on the two little girls. “Why don’t you go upstairs and do a little more work on your collages while I talk to Mr.—Tarkoff?” she asked him.

  “Tarloff.” Number three, why don’t you know the name of your landlord?

  “Mr. Tarloff. Go, go, go!” She sent them toward the stairs with a gentle nudge, then turned back to Max. “I’m Emma Glendon. I’m sharing the house with Monica.”

  Max watched the girls as they scampered up the free-floating stairs to the loft. He was a nanometer away from losing his temper, but he didn’t want to explode in front of her students. “Number one, you are not on the lease. The lease offers no subletting provisions. I did not give permission to Ms. Reinhart to open this house up to additional tenants.”

  The woman gazed up at him and he tried to ignore how lush her lips were. But when he steered his gaze away from them,
it settled on her eyes, which were wide-set and fringed in dense lashes a shade darker than her red hair. Her irises contained a multitude of color—green and gray and amber. The way she peered at him gave him the uneasy sense that she could see more than he’d like.

  Not that he had anything to hide. He just felt…unnerved.

  “What was number two again?” she asked when his silence extended beyond a minute.

  Number two? Right. “Number two, this property isn’t licensed for commercial enterprises. It’s not insured for you to be hosting classes with children. You need a permit from the zoning board to do that, and I know you don’t have one, because as the landlord, I’d be the one to have to request it.”

  “It’s not a commercial enterprise,” the woman said. “It’s two little third-graders who come here and make collages.”

  “They called it a class.”

  “I teach them things. Parents teach their children things, too, but that doesn’t make their houses commercial enterprises.”

  He glanced toward the stairs and scowled. “Are they your children?”

  “No.”

  “Are they paying you to teach them whatever the hell it is you’re teaching them?”

  She hesitated long enough for him to know the answer.

  “That makes it a commercial enterprise,” he said. “Most parents don’t charge their kids to teach them how to tie their shoes.” He scraped a hand through his hair in exasperation. He wasn’t sure what he was most upset about: the fact that Monica Reinhart was in breach of her lease, the fact that if something awful had happened—say, a pint-size art student got injured in his house—his insurance wouldn’t cover it and he might just find himself afoul of the law…or the fact that Emma Glendon, with her wild, fiery hair and her paint-spattered clothing, oozed sex appeal.

  He couldn’t figure out why. She was no Vanessa. She was short, unfashionably curvy, and messy. A smear of paint tattooed her left hand. Not his type. Not at all.

  “All right,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “You’re going to have to vacate the premises.”

  “At the end of the lease. I understand.”

  “Now,” he said. As soon as the word emerged, he felt terrible. Since when had he become such a tyrant? It wasn’t as if he was a landlord by profession. If he was in breach of zoning laws, he could hire an army of lawyers to rectify the situation.

  But he wanted this house vacated. He wanted it sold. He wanted to put this part of his life to an end. He couldn’t move on as long as he still owned the place.

  And it was probably going to be more difficult to evict two tenants than it would have been to evict one. Two tenants and a couple of pint-size Picassos in pigtails.

  He was angry. He thought he’d overcome all his anger, his bitterness, his resentment. That was what this year had been about: rebalancing his life. Reclaiming it. Healing. And then moving on.

  The red-haired art teacher standing in his entry hall only complicated matters, making it harder to rebalance, reclaim, heal, move on. Of course he was angry.

  Before he could say anything more, anything that would make him feel even angrier, he yanked open the door and stormed down the bluestone front walk. The fat pink flowers on those shrubs couldn’t possibly be mocking him, but it felt as if they were.