Chapter 5
Chapter Five
T he next morning, I got up early so I could get over to Aunt Catherine’s house before Gary could do any more damage. As soon as I verified that he finished doing what I had paid him to do, my plan was to fire him on the spot.
Since it was on the way, I swung by the real estate office to grab some paperwork. My inbox was swamped with invoices, and my voicemail was packed with messages. One of my clients wanted to lower her asking price, so I had to go in and edit the listing. One of my mortgage brokers had a question about an application, so I had to track down a tax form. The next thing I knew, it was time to order lunch. Someone suggested tacos so, well, obviously I had to stick around for that.
While I was scraping up the last bit of the guacamole with a tortilla chip, Bonnie, one of my coworkers, told me about her trip to Oahu and how she hiked up the side of a volcano. Not to be outdone, Joyce told us about her cruise to Iceland and how she hiked across a glacier. I explained I didn’t have any vacation plans because I spent all my time renovating my dead Aunt Catherine’s house. I left out the part about being broke and alone, although I’m sure they filled in the blanks.
When I finally made it over to the house and pulled in the driveway, I saw Gary’s van parked on the street. I noted his tires weren’t crushing the grass. Good. What I was not pleased to see was the torrent of water gushing down the driveway.
I threw Charlotte into park and immediately saw the source of the flash flooding. It was a hose, spewing water down my driveway, into the gutter, and then parts unknown down the street. There was so much water the neighbor across the street started building an ark. Or he was just fixing a panel on his fence. One of the two.
I jumped out of Charlotte to investigate. There was a bucket beside the running hose filled with brushes and rags. Things a painter might use. I briefly considered dousing myself so I wouldn’t explode. Following the hose, I found Gary hunched over in the backyard, uncoiling it from the reel.
I froze as soon as I saw him, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe. It was like a supervillain zapped me with a freeze ray.
Gary. Wasn’t. Wearing. A. Shirt.
His overalls were dripping from a clothesline behind him. His boots were propped on the grass. The only thing on his body were paint stained cargo shorts and flip-flops. And the cargo shorts were barely on him. They sagged in the front, revealing the elastic band of his underwear. Fruit of the Loom . Above that, lines of hard muscles climbed up his body to his ribs.
While the outside of my body froze, the inside of my body was very much on fire. My lungs shifted into high gear to take in the sudden gulp of oxygen. My veins had to quadruple their capacity to accommodate all the rushing blood. I don’t know how long I was standing there before he noticed me gawking.
“Mary? You okay?”
My brain was still frozen because instead of confronting him about my escalating water bill, what came out of my mouth was, “I forgot your Justin Bieber T-shirt.” Apparently, missing shirts were top of mind.
Gary stood up from where he was bent over the hose, hair dripping, rivulets of water cascading down the hard lines of his chest. “No problem.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Just bring it next time.”
There was no way the man standing in front of me was the same dungeon mastering, chess playing geek from high school. Unless lugging cans of paint and hoisting ladders was the optimal exercise for the pectoral muscles. And the glutes. I had seen Gary’s arms and shoulders packed into the overalls already, but now set free with no encumbrance, they looked sculpted out of marble.
Gary bent over to pick up a dark blue T-shirt draped over one of Aunt Catherine’s pool chairs. His butt was so tight I could have bounced a quarter off it. Which I really, really wanted to do. When he looked back over at me, his jaw twitched. “You want me to bring you a chair so you can sit down or something?”
As much as I could have spent the rest of the day, the rest of my life really, watching Gary carry heavy things, I said, “No, I’m fine, really. I just came over to check on the paint.” Somehow, I kept from slobbering.
Gary smiled, showing off his perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth. Nestled between his perfectly pink, perfectly shaped lips. “Okay then. Follow me.”
As I followed him to the back door, Gary slipped his T-shirt over his head and smoothed it down his muscle lined stomach. It read Yale across the front, right where his nipples would be. I assumed he had found it at a thrift store.
“I just finished so your timing is perfect.”
That’s not all that’s perfect.
Once inside, Gary swept his hand from wall to wall like he was doing a reveal in one of those home improvement shows. “See? Greige. All greige.” I made my way through the house, critically inspecting. True to his word, the entire house was now a blank, greige slate. Not a trace of red, or any other color. It was like we were in an old black and white movie before they invented color film. It was glorious.
“You know, I almost bought a house in this area,” Gary said as I ran my finger along a wall, feeling for any imperfections in the texture.
“You did?” Yeah, sure, I thought. Aunt Catherine’s house was in the good part of town. Within walking distance of the revitalized downtown, where every weekend there was a new wine festival, street fair, or art show. Over the decades, the oak trees had grown as big as buildings, shading the brick lined roads. It was the part of the town where doctors and lawyers lived. Not painters.
“I heard the schools are some of the best in the area. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll be your neighbor.”
“Sure,” I said. When hell freezes over.
Gary waited for me to finish my inspection of the wall paint. “So you really like it?”
Begrudgingly, I nodded. “It’s not horrible.” Despite Gary’s earlier missteps, I had to admit that the walls looked pretty good. Granted, it wasn’t rocket science, but Gary obviously knew how to use a paintbrush. Perhaps I had been wrong about Gary. Maybe hiring him wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
“Shall we take a look at the kitchen now?” I asked. Once I verified Gary had completed his work in the kitchen, we would be able to shake hands, complete our transaction, and then go our separate ways for good.
“So about the kitchen …” Gary started.
Alarm bells began blaring. My dad, like Gary, had been a big Star Trek fan, the original show, with Captain Kirk. We used to watch the reruns together all the time. It was like when the Klingons showed up and the guys in the red shirts started running around, the screech of the red alert echoing throughout the starship.
“What about the kitchen?” My eyes turned the same color red as the wall used to be. And the shirts of the Star Trek guys.
“I was thinking …”
I didn’t let him finish his thought. Nor did I complete any thinking of my own. Instead, my legs started moving toward the kitchen. Naturally, I assumed the worst. He had painted the walls eggplant purple. Or the ceiling was now stenciled with rainbows. Perhaps he painted a mural of unicorns frolicking in a gumdrop forest.
I burst through the kitchen door. To my horror I discovered the kitchen was … still exactly the same as Aunt Catherine left it. Pink cabinets. Formica countertops. Avocado green linoleum. But as bad as each of those things were, the worst of the worst was the wallpaper. Pink rose blossoms and scrolling green vines. It gave off a serious grandma vibe. A grandma’s grandma even. My kitchen guy, Gus, was scheduled to rip the cabinets out with a sledgehammer and a crowbar. But getting rid of the wallpaper was the job of the painter. Gary’s job. A job he had clearly failed to do.
Behind me, I heard Gary say, “I think we should keep the wallpaper.”
“We?” An image of Gary as a hockey player formed in my imagination, weaving and spinning as he skated down the ice in the middle of a frozen pond. After a heat wave in July. With sharks swimming underneath. The ice Gary was skating on wasn’t just wafer thin, it was translucent.
I pointed an accusing finger at Gary’s muscled chest, trying not to look at his muscle-y-ness. Muscle-y-ness that was still very evident beneath his thrifted Yale T-shirt. “Do you always have this many personal opinions about the jobs you’re hired to do?”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” I fired back. “Gus is installing brand new slate grey cabinets at the end of the week. You know what goes great with slate grey?”
“Greige?”
“Greige.”
“You know what does NOT go great with slate grey cabinets?”
Gary bit his lip. “Pink and green flower wallpaper?”
I cocked my finger at his face. “Bingo.” You might say I was about to lose my patience at that point, but that would imply I had any patience to begin with. I took a deep breath. Janet always said that taking a deep breath was calming. It gave you time to think before you said something you’d regret later. As I was breathing deeply, I thought of several things I wanted to say to Gary and I knew I wouldn’t have regretted saying any of them.
“Just hear me out.” Gary pointed to the back wall of the kitchen, a wall covered in pink roses and green vines. “You see that wall over there?”
I decided I needed a few more deep breaths. “Let me guess. It needs a pop of color?”
“Actually no. More of a color … blend.”
“Color blend?”
“Color blend,” Gary confirmed. “A merging of palettes. Sometimes, two colors that don’t seem like they would go together end up complimenting each other nicely.”
I took more breaths. Many more. “Right.” I nodded. It was to acknowledge that I had heard Gary’s words, not to signal agreement.
Gary placed a hand on the wall like he was touching a sacred relic. “It’s just so …”
“Hideous?” I asked.
“Original,” he said.
“Deplorable.”
“Genuine.”
“Gruesome.”
“Unique.”
“Repulsive.”
“They don’t make it like this anymore.”
“Thank God.”
I’m not sure what Gary thought he saw on my face that made him keep talking, but he kept talking. “I found a few colors we could merge. Tie in the pinks and greens from the wallpaper with the slate cabinets and the greige.”
Now I’ve made many bad choices in my life, and there have been many hard lessons that I’ve learned over the years. In the fourth grade, I didn’t fully apply myself in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s English class, which she thoroughly documented in my permanent school record. As a teenager, I snuck out of church in the middle of Pastor Hanson’s sermon to make out with Billy Hanson in the confession booth. In college, Janet and I accidentally joined a cult because the guy handing out the pamphlets was super cute, and there was a promise of donuts. But in hindsight, those were nothing. Hiring Gary Wright was the biggest bad choice of them all.
I took another breath. Not because I was trying to control my emotions. I just had nothing left. I said the only thing left to say at that point. “Gary.”
“Yes?”
“You’re fired.”
Gary tilted his head sideways. For a moment I thought he hadn’t heard me, because his face scrunched up like he was trying to listen to something faint and distant. Finally he said, “What was that?”
“I said you’re fired.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I mean, what’s that noise?”
“It’s the noise of you getting fired.”
“No, the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“Listen.”
At first I heard nothing. Then I did hear it. But I had to hear it a second time before I could wrap my head around what I heard.
Meow
My ceiling was meowing. The sound was faint, but unmistakable. Then I heard more sounds. Scurrying footsteps. Random thumps. The gnawing of tooth and claw on exposed wood.
Meow
A creature had infiltrated Aunt Catherine’s home. Gary returned from his van with a ladder, two flashlights, and a thick pair of gloves.
I had been hoping for a bazooka and a flamethrower. Vagrant vermin haunting the attic were even worse for resale value than ugly kitchen wallpaper and red walls. The beast had to go.
“Where’s the attic?” Gary asked.
I pointed up.
Gary rolled his eyes. “I mean the access door to the attic.”
After a quick search, we found the access door in the hallway ceiling. And by “we”, I mean Gary. He set his ladder underneath.
“Can you hold this for me?” I held on to the ladder with both hands. When he climbed to the top, I got a good view of his butt. I pretended to read one of the warning labels on the ladder step when he looked down at me. “You better take a look.” I have been.
The inside of the attic was dark, hot, and smelled like buffalo. We scanned the darkened corners with our flashlights. The space was tight, so Gary had to get down on all fours to venture deeper. I looked at his butt again.
“A lot of old boxes up here.” Gary’s flashlight illuminated a wall of boxes stacked floor to ceiling. “Was your aunt ever featured on one of those hoarder shows?”
“No,” I said. “But she was a guest one time on a public access show about knitting.”
I hadn’t even known the boxes were there. After the house cleared probate, I did a massive purge, packing anything sentimental into storage, to be given away or thrown away later. I hired an estate company to sell off the rest. The only piece of furniture left was Aunt Catherine’s bed, because apparently no one wanted a dead woman’s old mattress. It was still sitting in the bedroom.
I took a step toward the boxes, planning to investigate.
Creak
“Careful,” Gary warned. “These old houses can be tricky. Make sure you step on the crossbeams so you don’t fall through.”
Sticking to the narrow lengths of wood was easier said than done. You’d have to be an Olympic gymnast and a contortionist to navigate all the rafters and ceiling joists.
“There! I think I saw something!” Gary pointed with his flashlight. I swept my flashlight over, but the only thing I saw were shadows. Whatever critter was lurking here, it must have had extensive ninja training.
I put my hand on a support beam to steady myself and came away with a fistful of spider webs. The place gave me the creeps. I just wanted to find the invader, extract it, then get the heck out.
Meow
The sound was louder now. Like it was close. Like it was watching us. And waiting for the chance to leap out of the darkness and devour us whole. “Sounds like a cat,” Gary said.
“What kind of cat though? Bobcat? Wild cat? Panther?”
We both turned when the sound of scurrying came from the far corner. “Sounds like it’s coming from over there.” Gary aimed his light toward the farthest corner of the attic. The darkness swallowed it whole. “One of us should check it out.” I looked at Gary and he looked at me. Neither one of us moved. Gary sighed. “Fine.”
The roof slanted sharply the deeper we went. Gary had to get down on all fours and belly crawl to get underneath the angled timbers. While Gary played Twister with the support beams, I decided that the best thing for me to do was keep looking at his butt.
Eventually, Gary got tangled up in a crisscross of two by fours. “I can’t get all the way over there,” he said. “I’m too big.” He looked back at me expectantly. As in, expecting me to crawl over and join him.
“Oh no. I don’t like small spaces. Or dark spaces. Or spaces with cats.”
Meow
“We can’t just leave it there,” said Gary. “What if it gets trapped and then starves to death? That would be horrible.”
“Good point,” I admitted. “Dead cat smell is a real turnoff for potential buyers.”
“I meant horrible for the cat.” Clearly Gary had never smelled dead cat before. I hadn’t either, but I caught a whiff of wet cat once and I could only imagine that dead cat was even worse.
“I’ll watch your back,” Gary said. “Promise.” He flashed a smile that was supposed to be reassuring, but instead of being reassuring, I found it disappointing.
I much preferred the idea of watching Gary’s back instead of him watching mine. “Fine.”
We switched positions, playing limbo with a beam. As Gary slid past me, we found ourselves pressed against each other, face to face. With no air circulation up there, his Yale T-shirt was damp with sweat. Maybe he should take that shirt off again.
I was so distracted by the thought of Gary taking his shirt off, I almost missed the flash of fur streaking through the darkness.
Meow
“Grab it!” Gary pointed.
I spun on my heels to snatch it.
Whack
My forehead smashed into a two by four. The world spun. Off balance and dazed, I reeled backward, falling between two of the ceiling joists.
Crunch
When I looked down, I saw my butt had punched through the attic floor, and what I would later learn was Aunt Catherine’s bedroom ceiling. My knees were tucked under my chin in the same position one might end up in after falling through a toilet seat.
“Don’t move.” Gary held up his hands like he was casting a spell of paralysis. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to. My butt was wedged in tight.
Creak
“Here,” Gary leaned forward, keeping his feet perched on the crossbeams. “I’ll pull you up.” I grabbed onto his outstretched hands. “There. I’ve got you.”
As a real estate agent, I’ve had my fair share of handshakes with brawny, able-bodied, man’s men. Carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, electricians. Alpha males who work all day with their hands. Hands that felt like you were shaking a strip of sun baked rawhide coated with sandpaper. Gary's skin was as soft as a baby butt lathered in lotion. What kind of painter hands were those?
“Okay now.” Gary braced his feet. “I’m going to pull you up.” We locked our hands. “On the count of three, okay?” Gary squatted over me, every hard line from his hamstrings and quadriceps standing at attention. I had to close my eyes to avoid looking at his crotch.
Creak
“One. Two. Three!” Gary yanked me up by both arms, forearms rippling from the effort. My butt popped out of the ceiling hole like the cork from a wine bottle.
As I rose from the floor, Gary backpedaled, nimble feet tip-toeing along the beam. I fell into his arms. And for one moment, time stopped. Our eyes met. We both stopped breathing. Our quivering lips poised less than an inch apart.
“I’ve got you.” His voice was breathless.
“I know.” So was mine. He held me like he would never release me. And in that frozen moment, that was perfectly fine with me.
That’s when the frozen moment thawed. And once time started moving again, it moved at the speed of light. With the momentum of my body crashing into his, Gary took one last step back. One irrevocable step in reverse.
Creak … Crack … Crunch
Eyes wide with horror, Gary tipped backward. I tipped with him. I went from horizontal to vertical to horizontal again. All I could do was grab onto Gary’s shoulders and ride him like a toboggan down an ice slicked slope.
Our tangled bodies crashed through the ceiling in Aunt Catherine’s bedroom and landed right in the middle of the king sized bed.
I was still holding onto him as the last remnants of plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The room looked like a blizzard had blown through.
“You okay?” Gary’s face was caked with white powder.
I could feel his heart beating in his chest as I laid on top of him. Mine was beating just as hard. “Physically, I think so. Mentally, I’m not so sure.” For a few moments, I didn’t move. I wasn’t injured. I just didn’t want to get off of him. “You?”
Gently, Gary rolled me onto the bed. He winced as he sat upright. “My spine is broken in at least six places.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “I think I saw an old bandaid in the bathroom.”
Gary plucked a piece of insulation from my hair.
“Is that asbestos?”
“I think so.”
Meow