My Mrs. Brown (12 page)

Florida entered. Santo jumped on the bed and raised his chin for Florida to pet.

“I'd love it,” Florida told Mrs. Brown. “I feel at home already. I promise I won't be a pest—I'll stay out of your kitchen and in my room because I'll have so much studying to do—but Lord knows I'd rather be here so cozy and all and not in some hotel or apartment alone. Solitude is one thing, and very good for you sometimes, but being alone is quite another thing.”

Returning to the kitchen Mrs. Brown put the teakettle on and opened the tin of Scandinavian butter cookies. There were a few left.

Florida, all legs and arms, sat at the kitchen table and stared at the cookies. “For every bite I'll lose a booking,” she said, laughing.

“Booking?”

“A modeling job, they're called bookings,” she explained.

Mrs. Brown nodded.

Florida smiled. She sat back, sipping her tea. The butter cookie she was eating was certainly the most delicious thing she'd ever had, and Santo in her lap the softest, sweetest cat. She felt so comfortable in her own skin tonight, which unfortunately was rare, even for such highly paid skin. The thought of what her friends would say, or the press, if they saw these humble digs, never entered her mind. The little lady with hands callused from manual labor at whose table she sat was kindness and courtesy personified. That is all that mattered.

“About money, Mrs. Brown. How is, say, two hundred and fifty dollars a week for, well, we'd better do the room through the summer term just in case I have to get an extension on my work or anything . . . so that would be—” She looked in her bag for her phone, putting a green leather notebook, folded pieces of paper, a lipstick in a gold case, and a pair of sunglasses on the table until she found her phone. Florida clicked away on the phone's calendar-calculator and counted the weeks—nineteen weeks. “Four thousand and seven hundred and fifty dollars. But let's say an even five thousand dollars, okay?”

It was a tremendous sum and would almost pay for her dress! Mrs. Brown was speechless.

“You're right,” Florida said, misunderstanding her silence. “I'd be paying much more at the Ashville Inn, rooms there are two hundred a night. Seven fifty a week is more accurate.”

“No,” Mrs. Brown exclaimed.

“Five hundred?”

“No, no . . . that isn't what I meant. I mean, even two hundred and fifty is too much. I couldn't accept that.”

Florida laughed. “Oh, Mrs. Brown, but it isn't. Not for what I am getting. And not for what I am used to paying at hotels these days, like the Ritz in Paris, the Four Seasons in New York, the Berkeley and Claridge's in London, the Sunset Tower in L.A.”

Florida continued: “Even bed-and-breakfasts are charging over three hundred dollars a night in places like Vermont or the Sonoma Valley. . . . I'm just so grateful to have met you. There are no coincidences, are there? Isn't life wonderful when you get out of the way and just let it unfold?”

She didn't know what to say. They settled on two hundred and fifty dollars a week. Mrs. Brown wouldn't accept more. “What do you like for breakfast? I will make sure it is in the house,” she said when she had regained her composure.

Florida Noble wrote Mrs. Brown a check in the amount of one thousand dollars as a deposit on the room.

Mrs. Brown said a deposit wasn't necessary.

Florida insisted, saying she wanted to do things the “big city way,” and then left, thanking Mrs. Brown profusely and making her gilded way back to New York, promising to return in five days' time, on Sunday night.

“F
LORIDA NOBLE AND THE
cleaning lady! I mean,
Florida Noble and a cleaning woman!
What's the world coming to? We can't let this happen!” Francie declared the next morning.

It was Cinderella Central at Bonnie's Beauty Salon, and the news of the supermodel taking a room at Emilia Brown's house wasn't going down without envy and comment.

Fortunately, Mrs. Brown was not there to hear this. She was running errands for Bonnie.

“Bonnie, you should pay old Brown cow less while Florida is bunking with her,” Hillie said emphatically. “She is making a fortune thanks to you. It's because of you she met Florida. She owes you some commission. That's how real estate works.”

Bonnie decided she would try to remain neutral. Although she, too, was envious of Mrs. Brown's inexplicable good fortune, she also was shrewd enough to realize that she should stay on her cleaning lady's good side. This would assure that Florida Noble returned to her salon, and often, during her time in Ashville.

“Nice things happen to good people,” Bonnie said, perched at the cash register, counting her receipts. “Mrs. Brown is a hard worker who asks for very little.”

“Oh, please,” Francie said over her shoulder while she washed hair combs in her sink, “she is a manipulative little backstabber. She stole Florida right out from under us. My mother always said, ‘Watch out for those little brown wrens,' course she meant they'd steal your husband, but whatever, she was right. Nowadays, they'll steal your job. And besides, what is she going to do with the money? She doesn't have a family to feed and we do.”

Bonnie shot her a look that said that it was time to change the subject. But Francie continued.

“I give it one night, if she can last that long,” Francie said. “One night in Brown's dull shithole, and that supermodel—honey, I don't care how much charity is on her brain—will be running for the hills. I'd make up your guest room, Bonnie, and be ready.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown, oblivious to the nattering chorus back at the salon, was finishing up Bonnie's shopping—paper towels, lemon-scented dishwashing liquid—and had proceeded to the dry cleaners. After having exchanged pleasantries with the proprietor, Vladimir Brzezinski—Vladimir had been one of Mrs. Brown's classmates at the Ashville High School—she was walking along Main Street with Bonnie's sweaters and pants in plastic wrapping when something new caught her eye.

Off Main Street in Ashville was a string of narrow streets with late-nineteenth-century three- or four-story brick buildings with offices, storefronts, and apartments. In some buildings, there were loft spaces that the more artistic constituency from the nearby college leased for working space.

A white sign with a red striped border got her attention.
FOXBROWN & BROTHERS
, it said and in smaller print, Mrs. Brown couldn't read the smaller print from Main Street so she took a detour and went closer.

FOXBROWN & BROTHERS FINANCIAL ADVISERS
. Mrs. Brown was struck by the name, of course, it being hers and her best friend and neighbor's Mrs. Fox's. Financial advisers, she thought. Is this an omen?

She had missed the article a few weeks ago in the
Ashville Bulletin
about the Foxbrown agency opening here. Three brothers, from New York, who summered at their grandmother's “farm” nearby, had thought they'd leave the Big Apple and try their luck in Rhode Island (where the taxes were so much less than in New York).

So far, only one brother, the youngest, had actually managed to relocate from the city. Inside the office sat Stewart Foxbrown, tall, late thirties, wiry, preppy, a mop of brown hair, club tie, and pink button-down.

There wasn't much business today, or any time so far.

Stewart spent his days playing solitaire on his computer and checking Bloomberg for money's latest news. At night, he was pursuing a love affair with Mr. Jack Daniel's. Rising to refill his coffee mug, he noticed Mrs. Brown at the window.

A live one! He opened the door. “Hello, ma'am,” he said, “need some financial advice?”

“How much?” Mrs. Brown asked.

“How much?” Stewart repeated. “How much for what?”

“For financial advice?” Mrs. Brown asked.

“It's free,” Stewart said. Alas, this wasn't a savvy investor at his door but a novice. Still, business was business, and business was better than boredom. “And if you decide to invest with us, we take commission on what you buy and sell.”

The lady seemed puzzled.

It was chilly with the door open. “Why don't you come in and we can discuss it further,” Stewart said.

Mrs. Brown hesitated. Stewart stepped out into the alley and held the door for her. It would be impolite to decline such a gentlemanly gesture, so she stepped inside.

“I have to get back to the beauty parlor where I work,” Mrs. Brown said, resting Bonnie's dry cleaning and shopping on a wood bench next to the office door.

She noticed that this fellow wasn't wearing a wedding ring. If he was single, she might suggest he come by the beauty parlor to meet some of the beauticians who were unmarried. Just as swiftly as this thought came to her, it was dismissed. What if he was as nice as he seemed on first impression? She'd be doing him a disservice.

Stewart gestured for her to sit in the leather-and-wood chair across from his desk. “What are your financial goals Mrs. . . . ?” He waited for her name.

“Mrs. Brown,” Mrs. Brown answered. “What are my financial goals?” She paused. “To save enough money to buy . . .” She hesitated. Should she confide in this man, who, despite his endearing appearance—the mess of hair, the pink shirt riding up over his belt—was a total stranger, let alone a man?

“It usually helps if I know everything,” Stewart said. This was true, and he also was curious. Except for the clerk at the liquor store, Mrs. Brown might be the only other human he talked to today.

Mrs. Brown told Stewart everything about her dress, about going to New York for the first time ever, that it would be nearly an eight-thousand-dollar event, more money than she had ever imagined spending on anything . . . until she got to the end, saying: “So I have a thousand dollars in my bag. What can you do for me?”

Stewart, who indeed was a man, didn't of course know how best to respond to Mrs. Brown's story. So he offered the basics: “If you invest the money for a year, you might be able to earn five percent, maybe, probably less. But whatever the earning, it will be more than you'd get if you leave it in the bank.”

Mrs. Brown didn't want to wait a year. “What if I give it to you for six months?”

“Well, then, you still will earn more than in a savings account at a bank. We will invest in a diversity of companies,” Stewart said, explaining what that meant.

Her next question was one of the most uncharacteristic things she had ever said: “What about speculating?”

Stewart cleared his throat. “Speculate? With a thousand dollars. Well, let's see . . .”

Needy as he was for both business and something to do, his inherent sense of decency prevailed. “I cannot suggest a stock for you to speculate in, ma'am. I might have some ideas, but I think only if you really have money to burn should you ever gamble on a stock, or on a horse or anything else people gamble on.”

But Mrs. Brown wasn't dissuaded. An instinct, she had: “By any chance is there anything called Santo”—the name of her beloved cat—“I could buy stock in?”

“I don't know, ma'am, let's see,” Stewart said, entering the name in his computer and hoping for Mrs. Brown's sake that nothing was found. But, lo and behold, there was a Santo Eco, selling today for $23.45.

“Seems it has risen about two dollars a day since last week. Why don't we just Google it here and see what the business of Santo Eco is. I always hate it when you find out it isn't good for people, or it makes weapons or something . . .”

Mrs. Brown wouldn't want that either.

“Now, this Santo,” Stewart said, reading professorially from his computer screen, “produces a variety of high-tech sorts of fabrics, including . . . It makes artificial flowers that when put in a vase with regular tap water supposedly can radiate enough heat to warm a room of upwards of three hundred square feet. Wow, that's amazing.”

Actually, it sounded crazy, but Mrs. Brown overlooked that.

“I will take a thousand dollars' worth,” she said, opening her pocketbook.