Aggie says, “So, Teddy will have his studio. Do you have a goal, Ruthie?”
The question is asked in that slow kind way that people ask kindergartners what they want to be when they grow up. As a kid, I had an improvised veterinarian uniform made out of my father’s old white shirts, plus a toy ginger-striped cat with bald front legs from my rebandaging. Aggie’s just being polite, and this interview is not about me, but I find I want to answer anyway.
“I’m hopefully going to— ” I’m about to explain about Sylvia’s retirement and my more realistic office manager aspirations when Renata speaks right over the top of me like I don’t exist.
“Now, time for the practical component of your interview.”
“Okay,” Teddy says, looking reflexively to me.
Renata snaps, “You’re on your own. No clues, no hints. This is why young men have always infuriated me. They stopgap their inadequacies with competent young women.” She’s getting very angry now. “Early in our careers, we were like donkeys that the men in our offices loaded up with work. No more, never again. You’re the donkey now.”
“Of course. Sorry.” He is suitably chastened. “Hee-haw.”
“Here is three hundred dollars. Go and buy me a white shirt. Let’s see how clever you are, little donkey. You have one hour, starting now.” The money is slapped down. “Ruthie, sixty minutes, if you please.”
“She hasn’t done this one in a long time,” Aggie says to me. I go to their oven and set a timer. Just looking at how late we are in the afternoon, I don’t think he’s going to make it. Panic and glee are rising inside me.
If Teddy is surprised by this task, he hides it well. “Am I allowed to ask any questions about what sort of shirt?” He’s looking at the timer and setting his own on his phone.
Aggie shakes her head at his attempt. “Of course not, young man. Do your best.” Her eyes gleam with deep amusement, and for a split second I think she’s every bit the puppeteer that her sister is. “All you can do is your best.”
He looks outside across the manicured lawns. His father technically owns everything framed outside that window. It’s a degrading task for someone with the surname Prescott. He’s going to tell her to shove it. He’ll find another job.
“Easy,” he says. As his running footsteps depart, Renata lets out a howl of pure elation and we all grin at one another. It is luscious to make a young man run for his life. And just like that, no matter what he brings back, I am absolutely certain that Teddy got the job.
CHAPTER SIX
No one would guess my penchant for evening nudity by looking at me in my daytime wool knits.
My usual evening routine is to close all the drapes, take off my clothes, and walk around my cottage for a few minutes before my bath. It didn’t start in any kind of deviant way. Six months after I moved into this cottage, I had to walk out naked into the living room to find a towel in the laundry basket. It was the exact moment that I realized I have my own house and can do whatever I want, and now I’m addicted to that air sensation all over. But for however long Teddy hangs around here, I’m going to have to remain buttoned up.
It’s amazing how life works. You can wake up in your current existence and then go to bed with everything changed.
After a kitchen fire in the mid-1980s, this large cottage was converted into a dual occupancy dwelling, with a wall put right down the middle. I can hear my new neighbor shuffling around in his new home. There’s a sneeze, a banging cupboard door, a barked expletive, gentle fake sobbing.
I am gallantly committed to keeping to my routine. I’ll do the same thing I do every night, just with this new shimmer in my stomach. I preheat the oven. I go into the bathroom and light the row of candles on the back ledge. I drop in a blob of bubble bath and release my hair from its bun prison.
I’m exhausted from the email I sent to Sylvia. It was an impossible tone to achieve: Hi, how are you mixed with don’t panic but and a smattering of I have a bad feeling. A three-paragraph email took me almost an hour of redrafting and arguing with myself. I’ve never needed a bath more. I put one hand on the top button of my blouse and there’s a tap on the door.
“Sorry to bother you,” Teddy says when I open my door.
I’m still holding the button in a half in/half out purgatory and it’s pretty obvious I was about to undress. For a moment, my heart is in my throat. I don’t know him, and in this low light he’s positively vampiric, with sharp-looking teeth and an interested gleam in his eye.
He reads me and steps back, facing away. “I can come back.”
“No, it’s fine. What’s up?” I redo the button. And the one above it for good measure. I’m tortoising.
“Where’s the hot-water unit?”
“We share one. Sorry, I didn’t think.” I walk a few yards inside and he isn’t following me. It occurs to me that vampires need to be invited in. “Uh, enter.”
He comes in and looks around slowly. “I love your wallpaper. It’s a repro Morris pattern, right?”
He really is into design. “Yes, it’s called Blackthorn. I hung it myself.” I bought one roll per paycheck for an entire year. Sylvia cackled at my folly, decorating something that isn’t even mine. I’ve enclosed myself in this dark, flowered forest and I’m glad I did. Especially right now.
Teddy takes out his phone and begins to pick out details and sections to photograph. “It reminds me of the endpapers of a fairy-tale book.” Now he strokes down the wall, and I swear, I feel his palm down my back. “You did a perfect job, Ruthie. The pattern’s lined up so well.”
His fingers marked GIVE find the line between the sheets and slide up. Forgotten parts of my body tighten in response.
Wallpaper gets more action than me. “Thanks. Do you like flowers?”
“The guys at the studio give me shit, but I’ve got a real thing for flowers. I love doing them on clients.” He exhales, dramatic and shivery. “Can I put your walls all over me?”
I wonder what it’s like to just say whatever outrageous thing is in your head. My voice is tight with frustration at myself when all I manage to parry back is, “Go right ahead.”
He mistakes my tone for censure. “Sorry. I always seem to say the stupidest stuff to you.” Now the moment is over and he’s in my linen closet. “I knew you’d have a label maker. So what am I looking for here? I can’t see it.”
“The hot-water unit.”
“Where?”
It is an ancient metal drum, it takes up half the space, and is taller than me. I’m looking up to check if he’s a very unobservant person when I see his eyes are sparkling with fun. He says, “Oh, there it is. Ruthie, why didn’t you label it?”
A joke where I’m the punch line. My favorite kind. “There’s a big lever on the back of it. I’ll get it— ”
I haven’t finished my sentence when he’s knelt down, reached back, and said, “There.”
“Oh. Wasn’t it hard?”
“Nah,” he says, back on his feet, wiping his palm on his knee. Having biceps and strong hands must be nice.