Regina’s Song

“I don’t want to be offensive,” I said carefully, “but aren’t you a bit old to be a student? You are a student, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “I’m a late bloomer—I was thirty-five before I got started. My name’s James Forester,” he introduced himself, holding out his hand.

“Mark Austin,” I responded, shaking hands with him.

“What’s your field, Mark?”

“English.”

“Grad student?”

I nodded. “Ph.D. candidate. What’s your area?”

“Philosophy and comparative religion.”

“How many people do the Erdlund girls plan to cram into the house?”

“We’ve got two empty rooms on the second floor. There are a couple of cubicles in the attic and several more in the basement, but they’re hardly fit for human habitation. Auntie Grace used to rent them out—el cheapo—to assorted indigents who always had trouble paying the rent, maybe because they routinely spent the rent money on booze or dope. That’s where most of the noise was coming from, so Trish and Erika decided to leave them empty and concentrate on finding quiet, useful people to live in the regular rooms.”

“Useful?”

“There are some domestic chores involved in the arrangement. I’ve got a fair degree of familiarity with plumbing, and I can usually hook wires together without blowing too many fuses. The house has been seriously neglected for the past dozen or so years, so it falls into the ‘fixer-upper’ category. Have you had any experience in any of the building trades?”

“I know a little bit about carpentry,” I replied. “I’ve spent a few years working in a door factory up in Everett. Let’s say I know enough to back off when I’m out of my depth.”

“That should be enough, really. The girls aren’t planning any major remodeling. Replacing wallboard that’s had holes kicked in it is probably about as far as it’ll go.”

“No problem, then.”

“I think you and I could get along, Mark, and I’m definitely outnumbered right now. It’s very trying to be the only man in the house with three ladies.”

“Who’s the third girl?”

“Our Sylvia. She’s in abnormal psych—which is either her field of study or a clinical description of Sylvia herself. She’s an Italian girl, cute as a button, but very excitable.”

“You’re all alone here with two Swedes and an Italian? You definitely need help, brother.”

“Amen to that.” He paused. “Do you happen to know anything about auto mechanics?” he asked me then.

“Not so’s you’d notice it. I can change a flat or replace spark plugs if I have to, but that’s about as far as it goes. My solution to any other mechanical problem is to reach for a bigger hammer. Does somebody have a sick car?”

“All three girls do—or think they do. Auto mechanics seem to turn into rip-off artists when a girl drives into their shop. That’s why these three want to have an in-house mechanic. Last winter, Sylvia was ready to sue General Motors because her car wasn’t getting the kind of mileage GM promised. I tried to explain that warming the car up for an hour every morning might have had something to do with it, but she kept insisting that as long as the car wasn’t moving, it shouldn’t make any difference.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Oh, yes. Sylvia has absolutely no idea at all about what’s going on under the hood of her car. She seems to think that warming the car up to get the heater running has no connection at all with putting it in gear and driving it down the block. Every time I tried to explain it, I ran into a solid wall of invincible ignorance.” He shook his head sadly. “Now that you’re aware of some of our peculiarities, are you at all interested in our arrangement?”

“I wasn’t really thinking about a room and board kind of situation,” I replied dubiously. “I keep irregular hours, and I’ve been living on Big Macs for the past few years.”

“Erika’s likely to tell you that a steady diet of Big Macs is the highway to heart surgery, Mark. The girls tend to overmother everybody in the vicinity. And they scold—a lot. You get used to that after a while. Nobody here is really rolling in money, so the room and board’s quite reasonable. The food’s good, and the girls take care of the laundry. To get the benefits, though, you lose your Saturdays. Saturday is national fix-up day around here. If you’re interested, I can show you around the place.”

“Aren’t the ladies here?”

“No. They’re all off visiting before classes begin.”

“I might as well have a look,” I agreed.

“Come along, then,” he said, starting toward the antique front door with its small, ornate glass inserts.

“Are there any other house rules I should know about?” I asked when we reached the porch.

“They aren’t too restrictive. No dope sort of fits in with the no booze policy, and the no loud music stipulation doesn’t really bother me.”

“I can definitely agree with that one. Any others?”

“No in-house hanky-panky is the only other restriction. The girls aren’t particularly prudish, but they’ve encountered problems in that area in the past.”

“That’s been going around lately,” I agreed, as we went on into the entryway.

“The rule runs both ways,” he continued. “The girls are off-limits, but the boys are, too. We’re not supposed to make passes at them, and they’re not supposed to make passes at us. No physical stuff on the premises.”

“It makes sense,” I agreed. “Emotional involvement can get noisy.” I looked around. The entryway had a pre-World War II feel about it. A wide staircase of dark wood led up to the second floor, and an archway opened into a living room that was quite a bit larger than the ones in more contemporary houses.

“The downstairs is girl territory,” James told me. “Boy country’s upstairs.” He led me on into the living room. The ceilings were high, the windows all seemed tall and narrow, and the woodwork was dark. “Elegant,” I noted.

“Shabbily elegant,” James corrected. “It’s a bit run-down, but it’s got a homey feel. The dining room’s through those sliding doors, and the kitchen’s at the back. It’s got a breakfast nook, where the girls and I’ve been taking most of our meals. Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll show you the bedrooms.”

We went up the wide staircase to the second floor. “My place is at the end of the hall,” he told me, “and the bathroom’s right next to it. The two at this end are vacant.” He opened the door on the right.

The room had the sloped ceiling you encounter on the second floor of older houses, and it’d obviously seen some hard use over the years. It was quite a bit larger than I’d expected, and the contemporary furniture looked dwarfed by the generous size of the room.

“The fellow who lived here before prohibition came into effect was a drunken slob,” James told me, “and he was hard on furniture. He wanted to get physical when Trish kicked him out after the third time she caught him sneaking whiskey in here, but I reasoned with him and persuaded him not to.”

“Persuaded?”

“I threw him down the stairs, then tossed all his stuff out the window.”

“That gets right to the point, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve had a fair amount of success with it—one of the advantages of being bigger than a freight truck. The rest of the party boys who lived here got the point, and they were all very polite to Trish after that. What do you think about the place, Mark? Would you like to take a stab at it?”

“I think I might give it a try. A quiet place to study sort of lights my fire. When are the girls likely to come home?”

“Tomorrow—or so they told me. I’ll give you the phone number, and you can check before you come by. I’ll put in a good word for you with the ladies. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble getting admitted.”

“Thanks, James. I’ll keep in touch.” We shook hands, and then I went out to my car. James had a “Big Daddy” quality that I liked. I was sure he and I could get along. The girls, of course, might sour the deal, but I decided to keep an open mind until I met them. The overall arrangement seemed almost too good to be true, but I wasn’t about to buy into some kind of absolute dictatorship where I’d be low man on the totem pole. I was going to have to wait until tomorrow to find out exactly which way the wind blew.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_05f765de-896a-521b-b99d-7e4b7441d16f)