Chapter 13 #2
“Oh, man. This is what denial looks like. I’ve been putting this off for way too long.
I started Wordsmith while my father was very ill and it took all my energy to do the work and take care of dad.
So bookkeeping came a very distant third.
” She tilted the boxes so Ellen could see inside.
There was a wild tangle of bills and check stubs and invoices.
It looked like weasels had nested in there.
Nicole peered again into the box and back at Ellen. “This is really bad. Sorry.”
Ellen looked around at the tiny little office. Small as it was, it was gorgeous, decorated with a few antiques and lovely watercolors and pretty knickknacks. It was like being inside a little jewel box and smelled of potpourri. Just being here made her feel good.
“I can’t imagine anything I’ll like more than repaying your kindness by doing something I enjoy doing. So no thanks necessary.”
Nicole’s beautiful cobalt-blue eyes widened. “You like keeping accounts?” she asked, in the same tone as you’d say You like genital herpes?
“I do, yes. Strange as that sounds. So, Nicole, you’ve made me a very happy woman. Tell me how your system works.”
“System.” Nicole thought while tapping on the lid of one of the boxes with a manicured pink-tipped nail.
“Ahm, I don’t really have much of a system besides Throw the Piece of Paper into the Box.
On that laptop you’ll find chronological files of work as it came in and the quotes I put out.
Then you’ll have to match those to the bills.
I do translations myself and bill those directly, but a much bigger part of my business is matching clients with translators and I take a fifteen percent commission for that.
So there are two different sets of accounts.
” She looked worried. “It’s really complicated. Maybe I should—“
Ellen put her arm around Nicole’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. This is what I do, so let me do it.”
“I thought you sang.”
“Yeah, and keep books.” Nicole just looked at her, shrugged, and sat down at her desk. She slid in a portable hard drive into the processor and fired up her desktop. Inside of a minute, she was lost to the world, tapping away at the keyboard, totally absorbed in whatever it was she was translating.
Ellen understood completely. Numbers did for her what languages did for Nicole. She loved them, trusted them. They loved her back and had never, ever let her down. Numbers just—they just always made sense. When the people around her had never made sense, numbers had.
When she had math homework she could forget about her mom’s latest loser boyfriend, about the rent her mom hadn’t paid that month, the cigarette cough that wouldn’t quit. Her mom getting thinner and thinner…
It all went away, thanks to the beauty of math.
Her love for numbers naturally flowed into accounting. She wasn’t a genius mathematician. She was just good with numbers, and accounting was great for that. Money in, money out. When more money came in than went out, you were doing fine. When more money went out than came in, you were in trouble.
So simple. So easy.
She dove right into Nicole’s messy files and inside a minute, she was gone, too.
Nicole had a…creative filing system, which was code for no filing system at all. So the first thing Ellen did was put things in piles--invoices, rent payments, utilities, deductible bills. After that, she started to get a handle on Nicole’s business.
Nicole was doing well, so she must be good at what she did.
There had been a period in which the company hadn’t been doing so well and it coincided with when Harry said her father had been dying.
So that was understandable. Now it was thriving.
No doubt, once the baby was born, it would be put a little on the back burner.
This was exactly as it should be.
Work is important. Family is more important.
Not that she’d know that first hand. Her own family had been highly dysfunctional, the next best thing to not being there.
But Ellen had eyes and she could see. Family was something she’d never had and now, considering what was awaiting her, possibly never would have, but she could see its power in others.
Sam’s love and concern every time he looked at his wife, every time he touched her, was clear. And Nicole’s love just shone in her eyes when she looked at Sam. There was no doubt that the little girl Nicole was expecting was very much wanted.
At 11 the office doorbell rang. Nicole opened the door to a giant of a man with a slab for a face and basketballs for biceps, holding a big cardboard box with the luscious smell of coffee and cinnamon tea wafting from it.
Every line of his huge, muscled body spelled trouble.
Ellen tensed for a second until she saw how untroubled Nicole was.
“Thanks so much, Barney.” She took the box, placed it on her desk and gave him a blinding smile. Ellen was standing to the side and she was nearly blown over by the force of the smile. “That’s really sweet of you. How’s Zip? The vet figure out what was wrong?”
Slab—evidently called Barney and if ever a man was misnamed it was this man—blushed red all over his rough face. He’d have tugged a forelock if he’d had hair instead of a shaved, tattooed skull.
“Doc says Zip’s gonna be okay, thanks for asking, ma’am. Kidney trouble. Gave me medicine.” He wound down and just stood there, a huge hunk of a man, standing in the door jamb, almost as big as the door frame.
“That’s great,” Nicole said gently. “Thanks again for the coffee and tea, we appreciate it.” She smiled as she slowly closed the door in his face.
“Wow. Your own personal gorilla.” Ellen lifted up her cup, pried open the lid and sniffed deeply, appreciatively. Was there anything better than cinnamon chai? “Who’s Zip?”
“His pet iguana. Three feet long. He loves that animal more than his motorcycle and that’s saying a lot.” She laughed. “Sam employs some colourful characters, but they seem to get the job done.” She took a sip of her decaf. “Gets great coffee, too.”
They both dove back in their work, Nicole tapping away at the keyboard, Ellen finishing up classifying Nicole’s paperwork.
At noon, Nicole’s cellphone rang. Distracted, she picked it up, saw who was the caller and sighed.
She spoke quickly, all in one long sentence.
“Hello, darling, no, I’m not working, I’m lying down on the couch with my feet up, just like you told me to, as a matter of fact I was taking a nap, no that’s okay, I needed to wake up anyway, I don’t feel tired, I feel just great, so don’t worry, see you soon. ”
Ellen looked, startled, at the little couch where Nicole definitely was not resting. She was at her desk, working hard.
“I love you too,” Nicole said, blew a kiss into the receiver, disconnected and sighed. “If I don’t tell him I’m resting, he comes over and stands there with his arms crossed looking like Neptune on steroids on a bad day. Lying to him is easier.”
“He loves you,” Ellen said.
“Yes,” Nicole sighed. “And I love him. But he needs to back off a little. He was bad enough before but he’s gone overboard ever since I told him about the baby.” She smiled and rubbed her belly.
“Must be nice,” Ellen said without thinking. “To be loved like that.”
Nicole turned her deep blue gaze on Ellen and looked at her thoughtfully. It was like being hit by blue spotlights. She simply looked at Ellen for a while, assessing her.
“What?” Ellen gave a half laugh. “Did the foam leave a moustache? Do I have lettuce in my teeth or hay in my hair?”
“You’re loved like that. By Harry. You can’t see it because you don’t know Harry that well. Like Sam and like Mike, he doesn’t express his emotions well. But to someone who knows him, what he feels for you is right there.”
“I-ah. Um.” Ellen’s tongue flapped uselessly in her mouth. “He, ahm, he doesn’t love me. He can’t. We’ve only known each other—what? Five days? Six? And I was unconscious a lot of the time.”
“Sam asked me to marry him the fifth day after we met.” A memory that made Nicole smile crossed her beautiful face. “It was a terrible proposal, very badly botched, but I accepted anyway. I’ve never regretted it.”
No, Ellen could see that she didn’t.
Whoa. All of a sudden, Ellen realized that she could pump Nicole for information on Harry.
He was so damned close-mouthed. They were lovers, yes, but she knew so little about him.
Now that she thought about it, he always deflected personal questions.
Often with a kiss, which always worked. He could kiss her through a nuclear detonation and she wouldn’t even notice.
“You say all three men have problems expressing their emotions. Is there a reason?”
“You mean besides having a Y chromosome?” Nicole rolled her eyes.
Then her face turned serious. “Yes, there’s definitely a reason they’re more close-mouthed than most men.
All three of them had a terrible childhood and adolescence.
They became friends—more like brothers, actually, and they think of themselves as brothers—in a brutal foster home.
Sam says that they would have died if they hadn’t had each other’s back. ”
Ellen shivered. “How awful,” she breathed.
Nicole nodded. “Yes, I think it truly was awful. Sam rarely speaks of it, but you can see the effects of it. The tight bond he has with Harry and Mike and their dedication to helping women in trouble. All three of them have seen a lot of cruelty to women and children.” She caught Ellen’s eyes.
“Harry in particular. He’s never actually told me the story, Sam has.
He told me that when Harry was twelve years old, he was living with his mother and baby sister in a hovel in the Barrio.
His mom was a junkie and had men coming in and out of the house, sometimes violent men.
Sam says Harry throws up if he gets too close to the house where it happened. ”