Chapter 3
3
L ow
A few things about today are already on my nerves. One, the sun sets early in Rhode Island, but it comes up even earlier. At barely five a.m. a blinding streak of white sunlight had the nerve to wake me up, and I’ve been yawning ever since. Two, my new desk chair has a wonky left wheel that thunks a bit when I try to roll it across the floor, dropping me like I’m sinking into a pothole every three seconds or so. Which means—with the exception of the rich scent of new leather—it’s no better than my grandmother’s old chair. I’d like to blame the delivery driver, but this likely happened when the box fell out of my grandmother’s old pickup on the way back from swiping it off my neighbor’s porch last night.
My resolve to wait to get the chair lasted until Harry and Sally were deep in discussion about pecan pie. I couldn’t take the thought of my packages sitting cold and lonely on that front porch any longer, so I paused the movie and hopped inside the truck. The box was heavy, but I moaned and groaned and hefted it into the back of the truck and eventually made it home.
But the most maddening thing about today is my annoying neighbor. Kind widower or not, he’s been chain sawing his way through something—an electric fence? A pile of firewood? A dead body?—since six o’clock this morning, and the incessant screeching is ruining my job. If this were a one-time thing, I’d overlook it. But the man is constantly rattling something, and today, it’s my nerves.
I’m trying to air a podcast here. The number of times I’ve had to stop talking and start again is giving my index finger a cramp. Overcoming the shame from this choppy episode will be a test of humility, specifically mine. Tomorrow, I’m switching things around to make this room more soundproof, something I hadn’t considered when my grandmother mentioned her house was on a remote and wooded three-acre patch of land. Three acres meant privacy, right? Wrong. Not with Bob the Builder living next door. I miss my Texas apartment with its soundproof barriers more every day.
“I’m so sorry, dear listeners,” I say in my most soothing voice, hard to do while simultaneously wanting to murder someone. My grandmother’s “Live Laugh Love” sign mocks me from its spot above the doorway, and I roll my eyes. I hate inspirational artwork even more than kitschy tattoos. “My neighbor seems determined to build a new house from start to finish, all within the time frame of this hour-long broadcast, and it doesn’t appear to be going well for him. Pretty sure I’ve heard five curse words and two gut-wrenching screams. Maybe he fell off a ladder? You think I should walk over and offer to help? Maybe push him off myself?” I chuckle at my little joke; my listeners are well aware that I don’t know a wrench from a putty knife. Or a nail from a screw, for that matter.
On cue, the comments start flowing on the “live” feed, which is actually just emails sent straight to my iPad that I can watch as I record. It’s a little detail that makes my podcast unique. I take questions and have since the day I started. I read through a few, stifling my smile at some of the clever ones.
Please record it so we can watch.
This time, try not to smash your thumb . (It was a whole thing last year that ended in me needing two stitches near the second knuckle of my middle finger on my left hand. How’s that for poetic justice?)
You should walk over and tell him you like the way he swings his hammer .
Despite said neighbor being an elderly widow, I find myself blushing at that last one. That seems more like a line my grandmother should use, something I’m honestly surprised she hasn’t attempted already. My grandfather died nearly fifteen years ago. When I’ve asked her about dating someone new, she’s always brushed me off, claiming to be uninterested. All well and good until she mentioned her neighbor. A single gentleman living right next door, and there’s never been a middle-of-the-night hookup? If my grandmother wasn’t my grandmother, I would have a hard time believing it. She’s as strait-laced and prudish as they come.
More importantly, she’s loyal through and through. Even to long-gone memories. Even when it might cost her a lifetime of happiness.
“I will not be mentioning his hammer,” I say in direct response to the comment, shaking off my thoughts and adding a little giggle to the end of the sentence to make myself seem softer.
More responses flood my inbox at that comment, so I focus on the camera to avoid them. Rabbit holes and all that. “Anyway, we were talking about the importance of boundaries and how to say no at Christmastime, the time of year that everyone tends to want something from you…”
Something crashes outside my window, and whoops and hollers join in the noisemaking. I stifle a sigh and glare at the window. The guy lives, like, half a mile away. How can I hear this so clearly? Gritting my teeth, I wait a few seconds for more noise to follow, then at the lack of it, forge ahead with my broadcast, remembering how hard I’ve worked to put this piece together and unwilling to let anything or anyone mess it up. My temper is dangerously close to unraveling the whole thing.
I’m a professional podcaster. Have been for three years now. My show is called “The Lowdown with Low Reed”—fitting since Low Reed is my full given name. Just Low. Not short for anything like Laurel or Lucinda or Lolita, only a few of the guesses people have made over the years. I once got a package delivered to Laurance Red, the weirdest thing I’ve been called considering I’m a woman. Laurance Red sounds like a lumberjack, an ironic nod to the hammer and nail thing happening out my window. My parents didn’t even give me a middle name. Plain, old, short and sweet Low.
I’ve been determined to stand tall ever since.
My online following has grown to just under a half million, and my daily eleven o’clock broadcasts have steady two to three hundred thousand listener rates, pretty remarkable considering all the chatter happening in today’s media. It helped that I came to the scene at the relative beginning of the podcast craze. There is no shortage of podcasts to listen to nowadays, so the number of people taking the time to listen to mine is humbling, not something I ever take for granted. The trick is giving them something to tune in for—a hot-button issue that most people struggle with. This is hardly my first time to talk about boundaries, but this week’s broadcast focuses specifically on setting boundaries at Christmastime. Turns out most people don’t know how to set them, much less stick to them, especially during the holidays when opportunities to be pulled in all directions are at their highest. Enter me. I’m more than willing to help get everyone back to center. Because our innermost center is where we find peace, and inner peace is what we all crave the most.
Something bounces against my window hard enough to crack it. Maybe a rock or a branch or an entire Sycamore tree with Zacchaeus sitting on top of it—exactly what it is doesn’t matter. What matters is that this is my grandmother’s house, and I’m not letting some careless Paul Bunyan-type break it, elderly or not.
I glance at the clock and see that it’s time to sign off, drop my voice to a massage therapist’s low whisper, and wrap up with my signature slogan.
“And that concludes today’s Lowdown episode, folks. I’m Low Reed, and I’ll be back tomorrow with the next episode of The Lowdown with…well, me. Have your questions ready and join the discussion, won’t you? Until next time…” The theme music crescendos, an ad for Colgate toothpaste begins to play, and the music fades to nothingness.
And that’s when I slam my laptop shut.
Boundaries, schmoundaries. In the last ten days, the old dude next door has been crossing all of mine. I shrug into a jacket and slide into a worn pair of faded Ugg boots, barely breaking stride in my beeline for the front door.
Not today, Satan.
Not today.
“Excuse me,” I say the words with the smooth patience of a trauma therapist, but no one hears me over all the chain sawing and chopping. “Excuse me!” I yell and feel bad for it, but at least it gets their attention. Two heads swing over at me—one gray-headed and looking nearly exactly the way my grandmother described, all elderly and widow-y and everything. The other decidedly younger and darker—in the tall, dark, brooding, and handsome sort of way. I blink, then look away. Not looking at him is a better idea, for now, considering my temper is still intact. If I stare too long, I might forget why I’m angry and my reason for being here; the way this guy looks, I’m already dangerously close to forgetting my own name.
“Yes?” the elderly gentleman says, setting the chainsaw on the ground next to a large fallen tree. He squints at me through the blinding sunlight and picks up a piece of firewood, clutching it to his chest. There’s a stack of freshly cut wood in the back of an old blue pickup and the remains of a downed tree wedged between two driveways—my neighbor’s and the house technically next to his. “Technically,” since we’re the only three houses out here other than one other up the hill a bit, each on three acres and separated by long, narrow driveways. Why my grandmother chose to live so far out of civilization is beyond me, especially considering she’s single and not exactly young. Plus, I have no idea who mows this massive lawn in the summer. Surely not her. She’s as old as the elderly neighbor still staring at me. Again, I have a hard time believing they don’t have some sort of secret relationship in the works. For his age, he isn’t bad looking.
The firewood in his arms looks heavy, and I want to offer to help, but I don’t. I’m supposed to be angry here. Supposed to be focused on boundaries and how we should respect each other’s quiet hours. It’s odd that I need the reminder. As for the younger guy, his axe is poised mid-air like he wants to either keep working or slice me through the middle. I’ve never met him before, so there’s no real way to tell.
Just because he’s cute doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a psycho. I watched the Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix. Happens all the time, and the women are all so gullible.
I am a strong woman. I’m at the helm of a successful podcast. Gray is my favorite color. I am not gullible.
I’m tempted to add a few more bullet points to that mantra to make it stick, but those should work at least for a few minutes. Long enough for me to say what I came to say and get out of here before I find myself sucked back into tall, dark, and hot dude’s aura again. Thank God he’s just helping chop firewood. After today, I won’t have to see him again.
I force my gaze back to my elderly neighbor as he tosses the firewood into the truck bed. It takes effort to focus. “Um, is there any way you both could keep it down until noon? Starting tomorrow, maybe, seeing as it’s too late for that already today.”
The men just look at me, then eye each other, then look back at me again. The younger one shrugs and swings the axe over his head. I gasp when the log in front of him splits with a thwack like the move was effortless. His shoulders bulge as two halves of wood fall to the ground in opposite directions. My neck begins to sweat. I reach up to raise my hair because why am I suddenly overheating? It’s freezing out here, thirty degrees with a windchill, making it feel at least ten degrees colder. But the guy is covered in perspiration like the wind simply melts the second it hits his skin. Honestly…relatable. Another reason to look away from him.
“Sure,” he says, simple as that. He picks up the two planks of firewood and deposits them in the back of the truck, then reaches for another log like it weighs a couple of pounds and not many, many more. I stare at his movements. I’m all for equality, but this guy is quickly revealing my newly discovered affinity for strong men who can take charge of any situation. Namely, log splitting. Can’t say I’ve ever seen this done in person.
I don’t like it one bit. Except for the part of me that does like it.
A lot.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the older man says. I blink, only now remembering he’s here. “Are we keeping you awake?” He sounds genuinely concerned that I might have just woken up from a nap and haven’t been working my butt off for hours already. I laugh to myself, but it comes out louder than I intended.
“No, sir. I’ve been trying to work all morning, but it’s difficult with all this noise.”
He tilts his head. “What kind of job you got that makes it hard to work around firewood getting chopped a half-acre away?”
Okay, the way he says it makes me sound like the unreasonable one. I try my best to explain. “I’m a podcaster, and I record my episodes from the front office, which is right there on the edge of your property. So, really, it isn’t that far from here. But it was a little difficult to hear myself today, and yesterday, and the day before that, and I know my listeners can hear you because they keep commenting about it. So, I know it’s your house, and you can do what you want, but I’m hoping tomorrow might be…quieter. At least until noon?”
“Huh,” the older man says with a frown. “Well, I don’t have any idea what a podcast is, but this ain’t?—”
“I’m really sorry we messed up your podcast,” the younger guy says in a way that conveys he’s actually not sorry at all. I can almost see the invisible air quotes he put around the word podcast. “This tree fell across Andy’s driveway yesterday, and he couldn’t leave his house all day. This morning, we decided to take care of the problem so he could, you know, not be stuck at home forever. But I promise you, next time his house is trapped under a falling log, I’ll make sure we don’t interrupt your radio show trying to get him out.” He looks up at the sky and rolls his eyes, then seems to think better of it and sighs. “Sorry, that was rude.”
“You weren’t being rude, Nick,” Neighbor Andy says, shaking his head. “You’re just being?—”
“A jerk?” I offer, crossing my arms. I would never want to see an elderly neighbor trapped by a falling tree. I would just like to see him wait until later in the day to do anything about it. Like, say, noon. No one needs to leave the house before noon anyway, right?
“You micromanage everything, Low. Everything. It’s like I can’t even breathe without asking your permission first. You’re like a prison warden for someone who never committed a crime…”
Josh’s words come rushing back to me, along with the anger and shame that followed when he first said them.
Okay, maybe I’m the jerk. I can tell you what I’m not: a micromanager. Starting right now. Today. This second.
“That might have been uncalled for,” I say.
The old man douses my hot temper when he laughs. “Maybe just a little. Nick might be a lot of things, but he’s not a jerk. A Good Samaritan, maybe. A great friend, for sure. Some might even call him a?—”
“Don’t say it,” the guy named Nick groans. “If I never hear that phrase again…”
I frown and look between both men, clearly the outsider in an inside joke.
“Don’t say what?” I ask.
“Nothing,” the younger one says as he swings the axe again. Crack! And just like that, another log splits in half. I stare in awe at his movements, convinced all this chopping would shatter both my shoulders. Assuming it first didn’t impale my skull or some other necessary body part.
“Okay then…” I say, willing my dry throat to work. My voice comes out strained. “As long as we have an understanding. Maybe we can keep it down until noon tomorrow?” See? This time I was polite and asked.
Nick wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand and breathes deeply. “Sure thing, lady. So long as another tree doesn’t fall, you have my word. What about you, Andy? She have your word too?”
The elderly neighbor nods. “She’s got it.” He glances at Nick. “But you might want to tell her about?—”
“No need,” Nick says abruptly. “I’ve got it under control.”
The way the older man laughs about the way Nick says that last sentence makes me uneasy, but I swallow the doubt and leave what seems to be well enough alone. No need to press the men. I got what I came for, and the younger guy isn’t my problem anyway. It isn’t as if he’s my widow-y neighbor. He’s too young for that. After he’s finished with this tree, hopefully, he’ll be gone for good.
“Great.” I give a single nod and turn to leave, but the Nick guy stops me.
“You Loretta’s granddaughter?”
I pause and turn around slowly, an odd, icy, foreboding drumming against my neck.
“You know my grandmother?”
Both men grin, but only Andy speaks. “He ought to, seeing as he lives right here next door to her. Mows her yard every week, too, among other things.” He indicates toward the large house behind us.
“Andy,” Nick admonishes at the same time I say…
“Other things?” My tongue feels thick.
“Takes out her trash, fixes anything broken, drives her to the beauty shop once a week. Those kinds of things.” Andy rattles off a full list like it isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. I force my mouth closed after realizing how far it’s opened. I look at this Nick guy.
“But you’re not old ?” The words come out like a question, the world’s stupidest question, at that. A majorly annoying fact, considering words are supposed to be my thing.
Andy barks out a laugh while Nick just winks at me.
“Well, I just turned thirty, so I suppose ‘old’ is a relative term,” Nick says as he reaches for another log. “Ask any teenager, and they’d tell you I’m practically decrepit.”
There might be many words to describe him, but decrepit is nowhere on the list. Nick would be every high school girl’s favorite teacher; the line clamoring for his class likely stretched out the door and around the block.
“Try being seventy-one,” Andy says, interrupting my thoughts. “Then come complain to me about being old.”
“Nah, you’ve got a lot of years left in you,” Nick says to him, both men embroiled in conversation like I’m not still standing here utterly confused by this strange turn of events. Hot Dude is my neighbor? My grandmother’s neighbor? He’s the widower?
“Wait,” I say again. “You’re my grandmother’s neighbor?” He can’t be. This man cannot live next door to me. I forbid it. How did she leave this part out of his description? Widow, still grieving, a bit lonely, keeps to himself . What about smoking hot and entirely distracting? What about well-built with a wink that could kill a woman, dead on the spot? These are all pretty important points to omit.
“Yep. I have been for almost a year now. Ever since…”
He trails off in favor of chopping another log. He doesn’t pick up the thought again, but he does ask another question.
“So, your name is Low?”
I go warm all over that he already knows who I am. I’m not proud of the reaction; it’s involuntary, like a bout with hives or an onslaught of hiccups or a phobia of tight spaces. I can feel redness creeping up my neck and the threat of a smile trying to break free on my face. My own body is working against me. So much for boundaries.
“Yes, it is. Low Reed. I’ll be staying here for a few months while my grandmother travels.”
“World tour, that’s what Loretta said. You have a cool name, by the way.”
“Thank you,” I say a bit breathlessly. This time, I do smile. It is cool despite the no middle name thing. Plus, I kind of like that they talked about me before I showed up. Knowing my grandmother, she highlighted all my best qualities.
“Well, I’m Nick. Nick Masters. And this is Andy Brown. He lives over there on the hill at the house with the longest and narrowest driveway. So narrow that if a tree falls, he gets stuck.” Nick says the words playfully, poking fun at Andy instead of me this time. “But it’s nice to meet you, Low. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
A lot about me? How much exactly? A traitorous little thrill of curiosity has me wanting to ask, but I don’t.
“Nice to meet you too,” I say, taking a step backward toward my grandmother’s house. As much as I might want to stick around, I have tomorrow’s broadcast to prepare for and an hour’s worth of social media to post. A podcaster’s job is never done. Even after the segment airs, you’re still only halfway finished with the workday. “I guess I’ll see you both around.”
“Yep, you’ll see us,” Nick says, followed by another thwack! as a log splits in two. At this rate, that tree will be cleared by mid-afternoon. I want so much to stay and watch the way his muscles move, but I force my regretful feet to move toward home.
I walk into my grandmother’s house and kick off my shoes to the steady chop and toss of the logs, the sound more comforting than annoying now that I’ve met the men behind the noise.
It’s kind of nice when you might like your neighbors.