Window Dressing

“Then perhaps you should leave,” the man suggested. “In fact, that probably would be for the best. Leave, woman,” he intoned like he was playing to the back of the house, “and let your unfortunate daughter get on with earning an honest day’s wages.”

“I’ll thank you to mind your own business,” Bernice said in her best ice-maiden-of-the-’50s fashion.

The man leaned closer to her. “I think the manager is on his way over to see what the commotion is about. If I were you Mama, I’d get my skinny ass out of here. If you get sis here fired, she’s gonna have to move back in with you and that would sort of cramp your style, wouldn’t it, doll face?”

Regal as a queen, my mother turned away from him. “Expect a phone call tonight,” she said to me before she headed for the seafood department.

“You’re my hero,” I said to the man with the mouth. “Have some yogurt.”

“I’ll take the yogurt, Heidi, but I reject the mantle of hero. Those suits they have to wear are always so confining,” he said with a look of distaste and a little shiver. Then he tossed the free carton of yogurt into his cart, hung his cane on the handle and limped out of the dairy department.

“Mother,” I said into the phone later that night, “I swear to you that I have no idea who he was.”

I was in the wingback chair in the living room, my feet in a basin of sudsy hot water, waiting for a cup of tea to steep and listening to my mother tell me for the fifth time how appalled she’d been to find me handing out samples at the supermarket.

“To think that you would settle for being a vendor—a hawker in a ridiculous costume. I have important clients who live in that area, you know.”

My mother didn’t have customers. She had clients. I found the perfect dress for a client during my last buying trip to New York, she’d say. The same women had been keeping her in business for years. And they brought in their friends and their daughters and their daughter’s friends. The boutique, in a converted town-house east of the river on a little street off Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee, was so exclusive you could barely find the sign.

The kind of women who dressed like my mother just seemed to know how to find it. I was sure that if my mother didn’t manage the place, I’d have absolutely no idea where it was.

I wiggled my toes in the satiny water, took a sip of chamomile tea, and let my mother elaborate on all the ways I was a disappointment to her. When I could get in a word, I said, “Mother, I have to start somewhere. Besides, it’s only temporary.” I added a good-night and hung up.

The phone immediately rang. I picked it up.

“The least you could do is let me wish you a good-night,” Bernice said. “And I know you have to start somewhere and I’m proud of the fact that you’ve at least started. But for heaven’s sake when you’re walking around with that basket of yogurt, stand up straight. That slouch just makes you look even more ridiculous. Goodnight, dear.”

CHAPTER 4

“I’m Your Handy Man,” the deep voice on the other end of the line said.

Oh, my, I thought. The name of the company was the reason I’d decided to call it but I hadn’t expected someone with a deeper voice than James Taylor’s to answer the phone.

“Hello?” the deep voiced asked.

“Oh—uh, I need an estimate.”

“For?”

“Some work in my kitchen. A breakfast nook has to come out—”

“I always liked breakfast nooks,” said the voice.

“Oh, me, too. But the house is going up for sale and the Realtor said they weren’t popular anymore, so—”

“Well, that’s just sad.”

Who was this guy? A deep voice and an appreciation for breakfast nooks. Quite a combination.

“I think so, too,” I told him. “But it’s kind of not my decision.”

“Oh. Then what is yours to decide?”

I was left sort of speechless. His voice was so—well, deep—and a little unnerving for it’s lack of inflection. Cave man stuff with a kinder, gentler edge.

“Well, it’s for me to decide who to hire to do the work.”

“Then I suggest you hire me.”

There was a smile in his voice this time that I found hard to resist. “Maybe you should come over so I can have a look—um, I mean so you can have a look at the work I need and then you can um…” What was the word? For the life of me, I couldn’t remember it.

“Give you an estimate?”

“Right,” I said, rolling my eyes at the woodwork.

“Sounds cool. Tomorrow morning? Nine o’clock?”

“Can you make it earlier? I’ve got to be at work at 9:30.” I was scheduled to hawk cereal in a superhero costume at a grocery store on the south side.

“Eight, then. I like my coffee strong and black. I’ll bring the bagels.”

He not only brought bagels, but he brought a carton of cream cheese spread—and a set of shoulders that filled out a softly worn flannel shirt better than any man I’d actually ever seen in person.

He held out the bag. “Your voice told me honey and cream cheese,” he said with a quirk of the corner of his mouth. “Am I right?”

“Actually, you are right. But, come on, how could my voice tell you that?”

“Okay, it wasn’t just your voice. It was a combination of your voice and your fondness for breakfast nooks.”

“Ah,” I said. It made perfect sense to me. After all, I had decided he was one of the good guys because of his voice and his fondness for breakfast nooks. His dark, almond shaped eyes held my gaze for a beat too long. I cleared my throat. “Uh—why don’t you come into the kitchen and meet the doomed booth.”

He treated me to a sudden, lethal grin. “Lead the way,” he said.

“Toasted?” I asked, once we were in the kitchen. It seemed like a good idea to keep my hands occupied.

“Is there any other way?”

I split a bagel and popped it into the toaster then poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him.

He took a sip. “Hmm. Nothing like the first cup of the day.”

Watching him appreciate my coffee was such a pleasure I could barely take my eyes off him. He ran a hand through his hair—dark, parted in the middle and long enough to brush the back of his collar—and it dutifully fell back into place.

“You’re going to join me, aren’t you?” he asked.

I thought about my hand joining his in that silky, straight hair but I had a feeling he meant the coffee.

“Of course,” I said and turned away from him to fill a mug. I turned back to find him studying the breakfast nook. “So,” I said, after I’d taken my first sip of coffee, “what do you think?”