10. Our Prime Purpose
Roman
I was a persuasive man. People tended to do what I said. Except now.
Which is to say that, once I’d worked my slow way up the hill, dragging my rubbish bag with me, to find Summer still swiping at the ground with her rake, but so slowly, as if she were about to drop, and I said, “Lunch. Let’s go,” she answered, “I don’t need lunch yet. I’ll just?—”
“No,” I said. “Lunch. Many cups of tea. Cheese sandwiches. Possibly soup, if I’ve got a packet in the fridge.”
“I’m filthy,” she said. “If I go inside, I’ll have to take another shower just to get dirty all over again. Delilah’s head was hurting pretty badly, so I sent her back to the house for a nap. She might want lunch anyway, though. You could bring me a sandwich, if you don’t mind, and I?—”
I said, “Keep talking, and I’m picking you up again.”
She went stiff and said, her voice absolutely level, “Do not put your hands on my body.”
I held up my hands. “OK. I deserved that. And you deserve to hear that you’re being unreasonable. You’re tired and hurting, and there’s no reason you need to do all this now.”
She didn’t stop with the rake. “There is if we’re going to get out of here today. I still need to clean out your car and help you mop your house, too, and?—”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking, imagining we’d find everything today. No reason for you not to stay another night.”
She looked at me, steady on despite her white face and the shadows under her eyes, the stiff way she was moving her legs. Those knees had to hurt like fury. “Whatever you think is going to happen,” she said, “it’s not.”
“I know. Delilah shared.”
“What?”
“About the motel owner with the free rent. And the exec with the business card, when you were at university. And Barbie at the bachelor party. No worries, I’m up to speed.”
Her mouth opened, and for a moment, nothing came out. “When?” she finally asked. “When did Delilah share all this?”
“Earlier.”
“She had no right.”
“You told me her story,” I pointed out. “Last night.”
“Not the personal parts!” She looked more agitated than she had since she’d been trying to get Delilah out of the van. “I’ll kill her. I’ll?—”
“You probably won’t,” I said, “but you can tell her, if you come up and have lunch with us.”
She did come up with me, and she took a shower and ate some lunch—she wanted to make it, though—and let me re-bandage her hand and knee, which she hadn’t done any favors to with all that work. She didn’t take a nap afterward, either. She headed straight back out there again in the muddy clothes, this time wearing the rescued gumboots and accompanied by Delilah. I said, “I’ll be out in a minute,” and Summer, of course, said, “You don’t have to. You have your house to take care of,” and left without me.
When they’d gone, I thumbed a button on my phone.
“No,” Esther said when I explained.
“I told you, it’s just for a?—”
“No,” she said again. “I’ll get a hotel room for them if you like, and handle anything else you need. But they’re not staying here.”
“They need a place,” I said. “For a week or two. Three at maximum. Help to get back on their feet. To get sorted with a new car and all. Jobs. Once they’ve recovered, because they aren’t in any shape to start on that now. You’re the best at those details, and you’ll see to it that they don’t do too much.”
She didn’t say, You own three homes. She said, “They may well need a place, but it’s not going to be my place.”
“Look. I’d ask them to stay with me, but Summer doesn’t entirely trust my motives.”
“Your motives,” Esther said flatly.
“My sexual motives,” I admitted. Was this a squirm-worthy conversation to have with my assistant? Yes. She’d found my divorce attorney. She’d also arranged for him to come back the next time. She’d collected and delivered paperwork without, apparently, even glancing at it. She’d never asked a single question.
She didn’t answer, and I realized how that had sounded. “Not because she has any reason to question them,” I said. “Perfect gentleman.”
Esther said, “This isn’t my business, but I’ll say it. It sounds to me like you don’t want her getting ideas about your money and how it might become hers, and that’s why you’re looking to offload this. I’ve assumed you’re careful about that, that that’s why you never have them move in unless you’re marrying them.”
The woman knew too much. I said, “She’s not interested in my money. Or me.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes,” I said. “Look, she’s extremely beautiful. Extraordinarily beautiful. If she wanted a rich bloke to shower her with luxury, she could have it. She doesn’t want it, and I reckon she has reason not to trust men. That’s why I thought a woman?—”
“Have I ever shared my personal life with you?” Esther asked.
“No.”
“And I’m not doing it now. Or my personal space. Would you like me to book a hotel room for them? Hire a car? It’s done. Just give me a price range.”
“Never mind. I’ll take care of it.”
“Good,” Esther said. “Anything else?”
I thought about asking her to hire cleaners for the house. Equipment. Whatever. If I didn’t get the water out of it pretty smartly, I’d get mold. I could practically feel the spores growing now.
I didn’t ask, because I’d had another idea. A mad one. I said, “One thing.”
Once I’d explained, she said, “I’ll see you on Monday, then. Dunedin all week?”
“Probably. And get Dane sorted, please. Office, salary, all that. I’ll send you the details.”
“Already begun,” she said, and rang off.
Summer
“No,” I said.
Roman said, “Would women please stop telling me no?” Looking big, dark, muddy, and exasperated.
“I don’t know,” I said, keeping on with the rake. “I won’t, anyway.” My hand and knees throbbed, I had a headache, my legs were going a little shaky, and my body felt in general like it had been stuffed in a sack and beaten with hammers. You can rest tonight, I told myself. You’ll have a hotel room tonight, now that you have your wallet back. And kept on raking. I’d found a good half of the clothes, and Delilah’s phone, too, once I’d had the bright idea to ask Roman to ring her number. Unfortunately, that hadn’t worked with mine. Delilah’s still worked. Waterproof. Mine, apparently …
Well, we could manage with one phone. I was also missing one trainer, and I needed the other one. One more shoe, and my phone if I could find it, just in case it was salvageable, and I’d quit. I’d …
Clean Roman’s car. Mop his floors.
You can always do more than you think. One step at a time. But it felt like I’d been stepping so long.
Stop whining. You can do this. It’s one day.
Oh. Roman. Still glowering. I said carefully, “Look. It’s a very kind offer. I just don’t think?—”
“It’s not a bloody kind offer!” He’d raised his voice, and I hauled myself upright and glared at him. He lowered his voice, though his face didn’t look any less thunderous. “It’s a perfectly reasonable exchange, and I won’t even be here. I’ve got things to see to in Dunedin, and in the North Island, too. I can’t do this, and I don’t have time to supervise it.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “A perfectly reasonable exchange for living in your house, which would rent for a thousand dollars a night minimum.”
“How do you know?”
“I know about fancy houses, and there isn’t enough cleaning in the world to pay for that.”
“Nobody’s paying a thousand dollars in the state it’s in now,” he said. “And the longer it stays like this, the worse it’ll get. We haven’t even discussed the outside, because it’s a right mess out here. I don’t care so much about the hillside, but I like my walkways tidy.”
“Tell me you don’t have a gardening service,” I said. “Or the money to pay them to do that. And to pay for a cleaning crew in which everybody has two good hands and no concussion. Besides, we don’t have a car, and you need so much equipment that you’re not going to find outside Dunedin. A shop vac. Dehumidifiers, plural. Many fans. Leather cleaner, and all sorts of supplies. Bleach. Gloves. Everything. Possibly a vehicle to take those rugs in for cleaning, if you can’t get them picked up. Tools, too, because somebody needs to take off the baseboards and dry them out before putting them back on, or you’ll get mold underneath. It’s lucky your floors are concrete, but?—”
“See,” he said, “you know what to do. Where d’you imagine I’m going to find this industrial-level cleaning crew in the bloody Catlins, with everybody in the same boat all the way to Queenstown? And I’ll have a car here for you.”
“You will, huh.” Did the man think I was stupid?
“I have a … a runabout I use down here. A ute.” He was so clearly improvising. Whatever he’d made his money in, it wasn’t acting. “It’s at the mechanic’s just now, having a service done, but I’ll go collect it today. Maybe Delilah would like to come with me, and you can take a nap. No rush to finish here, is there? Open the windows for now, then get those dehumidifiers and all tomorrow and dry the place out, because that’s what matters, and do the rest as you can. It was my section you rolled down,” he added, because I’m sure I looked pretty skeptical. “I’m responsible.”
“You are not responsible. And I’m supposed to believe you have another car that happens not to be here?”
“All right,” he said, frowning like mad, which made his face even craggier. “I don’t. Delilah mentioned a car to me, and I told her that I’d help her find one. Cheaply. A cheap car. I’ll buy it, and you can pay me back as you can. That payment plan for the trees? Do it for the car instead.”
“That is ridiculous. You are in no way responsible for what happened to us. That was my fault all the way. Also, I don’t have the money in the bank or the credit limit to buy everything you need even if you’d reimburse me, so that’s another fail right there. And just to get this out of the way—if it’s about sex, somehow, that I’m supposed to be grateful to you, I?—”
He had his hand in his hair now. Since his hand was clad in a mud-covered leather work glove, that made him look less tamed than ever. “I do not want to have sex with you,” he said through his teeth. “I want to help you. ‘Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.’ The Dalai Lama.”
“Like you helped the other seventy-two refugees living in your house?” I asked. “Oh, wait. It’s just us. And do not quote the Dalai Lama at me. You’re not the Dalai Lama.”
He growled. Actually growled. What, did nobody ever tell the guy no? “Why can’t I just drive you to that hotel like I promised,” he asked, “and wash my hands of you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why can’t you?”
“It’s a mystery to me too, no worries. By the way, I’m a brilliant negotiator. I read it in a magazine, so it must be true.”
I laughed in surprise. “Yeah, right.” He grinned, showing me those parentheses around his eyes, and I asked, “How’s that working out for you?”
“Not brilliantly,” he said. “Look. Do me a favor. My conscience is twanging away like mad here, and as I’m allergic to commitment, that means something. You could also consider that you may be up yourself a bit. All this insistence that I want your body. I’m pretty rich, did you notice?”
“Yes,” I said. It was hard to stay as stiff as I ought to be. I was tired, and he was too appealing. I’d bet he did win all the time, which was yet another reason to say no. “It’s fairly obvious. Rich, powerful, and good-looking.”
“Not that good-looking.”
“Well, it’s working for me, and it usually doesn’t. The tough thing.” Whoops. Blame the fatigue. “Not that I care,” I hurried to add.
“It seems to work all right in general,” he said. “Like I said, if I want to have sex, I’m fairly sure I can find somebody to have it with, just like you can. Will she be as beautiful as you? Probably not. But she’ll do.”
“I’ve gained weight,” I said.
He blinked. “Pardon?”
“My body’s not that great anymore. I’ve gained seven kilograms, and my stomach isn’t nearly as flat as it used to be.”
“Trust me,” he said, “you’re still perfect.”
“And yet …”
“And yet.” He pulled off his right glove and put out his hand. “Two weeks. Three at the outside. Until Delilah’s concussion is gone and you’re healed as well, and all that work is done. Hopefully, your being here will mean the black mold hasn’t taken over, and I won’t have to burn the place down.”
“And you’ll find a cheap car for us,” I said. “And realize that I can only pay maybe half down, and the rest will be a loan. And Delilah isn’t paying for any of it. And you do not have an allergy to commitment. The guy who drove us all the way to the hospital and then stayed with us? Yeah, right.”
“Temporary insanity,” he said. “And I pay for the gas when the errand is for me. Keep track.”
“All right,” I said. Not because he’d worn me down. Because otherwise, I couldn’t figure out how I was going to make it. “It can’t cost more than ten thousand, though. I mean ten thousand New Zealand.”
“That’s not much.”
“No. It’ll be another bad car, and I’ll need to buy us a tent, because we’re really going to be camping now. I accept that.” I pulled off my own glove and put out my hand, then hesitated before it touched his. “I’ll want to know exactly how much it costs, too. I’ll want proof.”
He took my hand in his. Gently, because it was the one with the stitched palm. “I would expect nothing less. And one more thing.”
Oh, boy. “What?”
“Go take a nap. You’re killing me here.”