A Gigolo for Christmas (4 page)

"I don't really have
anything for you to save them in, so I guess you'll have to just trash them. I
can't leave them up here, and if Mr. Kooper is really going to evict me, they
probably won't be any more popular in my new place."

Anders' face fell. "That's
just sad," he said, "having to trash all of these beautiful
decorations."

"On the bright side,"
Sheila said, "I can always make more next year."

"Yeah, just think of the
size of Christmas tree you could build with a whole year's worth of paper towel
rolls! It would rival the one outside the White House!"

Sheila giggled. "And it
would have the added advantage of never needing water."

She went into the kitchen and
brought back a trash bag and a small plastic container, handing it to Anders.
"Here, you can put all the pushpins in this."

"Thanks."

"While you take down the
Christmas decorations, I'm going to go in my room and see if I can find out
what happened to my bed last night."

"Why, what happened to your
bed last night?"

Sheila shrugged. "I have no
idea, but when I went to get into it, it had gone completely flat. I need to
find the hole and patch it so that I will have a place to sleep tonight."

Sheila retreated to her bedroom,
and began pulling the bed linens off her deflated mattress. She folded each
blanket and sheet neatly before setting it in a pile in the corner of the room.
As she considered completely flattened vinyl bag, she decided the easiest way
to find the whole was to blow the mattress up and see where it was leaking
from.

She straightened the mattress and
placed it fairly close to where she wanted the end of it to be, then retrieved
the small electric pump from the shelf of the closet. She plugged pump in,
opened the port on the end of the bed, and shoved the nozzle of the pump into
the port on the mattress before turning the pump on.

It made its usual noise, which
Sheila considered to be entirely out of proportion to the amount of air pushed
through it. It was louder than a vacuum cleaner, and the vacuum would have
filled the bed considerably faster.

She settled herself comfortably
on the floor, holding the pump securely in place against the mattress. She
would like to have had a regular bed, but this was almost as comfortable, and
only cost fifty dollars compared to the nearly thousand dollars she would have
had to pay for a frame and mattress set of the same size. She was accustomed to
the slow leakage of air, and usually topped her mattress about once a month.
However, she had never had her mattress go completely flat in the course of one
evening.

Sheila watched as the air found
its way through the folds of plastic and began to give shape to the bed. It
bubbled up unevenly, which always made her think of the swamp monster in a
low-budget science fiction movie.

After a couple of minutes, she
heard a hissing sound coming from near the head of the bed. Leaving the pump
turned on, Sheila carefully set it down and moved to the head area, tracking
the sound of the leak. It did not take long to find it. A round hole the size
of a woman's high heel had been punched into the seam between the top and
bottom sections of the bed. Because the hole was at the seam, it would not be
able to be repaired. Her entire mattress would have to be replaced.

Sheila shut off the pump and
returned it to the top shelf of her closet, seething in anger. The damage had
to have been deliberate. The hole was too high off the floor for the shoe to
have caused the damage accidentally. She tried to think which of the women at
the party last night might have been angry enough at her to have destroyed her
bed.

As far as she could recall, it
had been mostly men who had gone into the bedroom to retrieve the wraps. Miss
Jacobson had retrieved her own, since Anders had been busy giving out Christmas
gifts even after the time Miss Jacobson had left the party. She had no proof,
but knew in her heart she had discovered the correct guilty party.

She stalked back into her living
room. She would have to help with the painting before she could go to the store
to replace her bed. As she entered the room, shock froze her place.

Her walls, once a pristine white
in which the tiny holes from the pushpins were barely visible, now sported a
multitude of bright pink polka dots. Anders stood in the corner which had once
held the Christmas tree, happily smearing more pink goo across the wall.

"What on earth are you
doing?"

Anders stuck the plastic spreader
into the tub of goo, and turned to face her.

"Patching all the little
holes in the walls. Isn't that what I was supposed to be doing?"

"The walls were white. Now
they are covered with bright pink polka dots. The apartment looks a lot worse
than it was."

"The patching stuff goes on
pink so you can see where you've put it," Anders explained, "but when
it dries it turns white. That's also so you know when it is dry enough to sand
the edges smooth to the wall so that the patches don't show later."

"You promise the polka dots will
turn white?"

"I promise. And I always
keep my promises. Have you never painted before?"

Sheila shook her head.

"My dad always hired
painters. I lived at home until I went to college, and you're not allowed to
paint your dorm room. After I left college, I moved in here, where you are also
not supposed paint."

"Well, then you need to
learn how to paint. Come over here and I'll teach you the first step, how to
patch small holes."

The patching went fast, and it
was kind of fun smearing the pink stuff all over the walls. Just for good
measure, they also patched every hole in the rest of the walls, even though
Sheila had never stuck any pins in the walls anywhere else.

While Sheila finished the
patching, Anders carried the garbage bags with the party debris down to the
dumpster, making extra trips for the television, its glass, and the destroyed
air mattress.

Once the patching was complete,
Anders suggested that they could go to lunch to give it time to dry.

“That’s the last of the paint,”
Anders said as he tossed the disposable foam brush into the trash can.

“Are we out of paint, or out of
walls?” Sheila asked, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear and looking
around her.

“Both, actually. It’s kind of
strange, really, to run out of both items with the same brush-stroke.” Anders
laughed. “At any rate, your apartment looks great.”

“Great? I wouldn’t call it great.
I will concede that it looks the way it did before we started, and that it’s
ready to rent.”

Anders shrugged. “From a
landlord’s point of view, that means it looks great.”

Sheila finished washing out the
roller tray, turned it upside-down in the draining rack, and dried her hands.
Painting had taken nearly the entire afternoon.

She couldn’t believe how many
different surfaces there had been in her small apartment, and was amazed at the
number of corners that had to be painted by hand. They had taken a lot more
time on what Anders had called ‘the brushwork’ than they had needed for running
the roller over the middle of the walls.

She was exhausted, and knew
Anders must be also. She didn’t even have enough energy to cook herself dinner.
She’d have to go out. She blinked her eyes. Eating out two meals in the same day
was something she’d not done since she left school. As a matter of fact, unless
she counted the school cafeteria as eating out, she hadn’t ever eaten two meals
out in the same day. Unless her memory was faulty.

“I’m too tired to cook,” she
announced. “You bought lunch. Let me buy dinner.”

Anders glanced at his watch and
grimaced.

“I’ll have to take a rain check
on dinner. I’ve got to work tonight, and I have definitely got to go home and
wash all the paint flecks out of my hair before I go.”

“Who’s going to notice a few
paint flecks? Does your boss inspect your hair when you get to work?”

Sheila moved close to him,
inspecting his hair for paint flecks.

“You have a few paint flecks, but
not many, and they’re really not noticeable.”

Anders grinned, showing off his
orphan dimple.

“Believe me, if I show up for
work with white paint flecks in my hair, it will definitely be noticed. I’m off
tomorrow, though. Can I pick you up at six?”

“Six sounds good.”

“Dress?” Anders asked.

“Hmph. You’re the only male I
know who would know or care about asking that. Casual. My budget runs to
Denny’s, especially now while I’m out of work.”

“I’ll see you at six, then,”
Anders said, “and I’ll be dressed for Denny’s, but since your budget is tight,
I have a better idea.”

“What?”

“It’s a surprise. I’ll show you
tomorrow.” He brushed his lips against her cheek, and was gone before she could
decide whether he’d actually kissed her -- and whether she should have turned
her face toward him and kissed him back.

Sheila hurried up the stairs to
her apartment as she dug through her purse for her keys. Finding them, she
jammed them in the lock and swung the door open, closing it securely behind
her. One glance at the clock let her know she was a lot later getting home from
the last interview than she had planned on. It was quarter after five, and she
would have to hurry if she was going to be ready on time for her date with
Anders.

A quick shower later, she was
just pulling her sweater down over her jeans when there was a knock at the
door. He must really be James Bond, or at least a near relative, she mused. How
else was he managing to climb her stairs without making any noise? She’d lived
here nearly a year and still couldn’t manage it.

She grabbed her purse and opened
the door. How on earth could the man make a plain tee shirt and a pair of jeans
look like he had a fashion designer on his personal staff? Guys who looked this
good should be declared illegal -- it was dangerous for any girl who had a
desire to keep breathing to come anywhere near them.

“Ready to go?” Anders asked.
“I’ve got everything in the car.”

Sheila stepped outside and locked
the door behind her.

“I’m ‘dressed for Denny’s’,” she
quipped as she turned to face him. “Will I do?”

Anders laughed. “You look great!”
he said, then kissed her cheek before ushering her to the head of the stairs.
Next
time he does that
, Sheila resolved,
I’m going to turn my head and kiss
him back.

“Where are we going?”

Anders laughed. “You’ll see. It’s
a state secret. I could tell you...”

“But then you’d have to kill me,”
Sheila finished the quote.

“Actually, I was going to say, I
could tell you, but that would spoil the surprise.”

Sheila laughed at her wrong
guess.

The short walk to the parking lot
was followed by a quick drive to the park a few miles down the road.

Anders pulled into the smaller of
the two parking lots and shut the car off.

“We’re here,” he announced.

“The park? In December? Isn’t it
a little cold for a picnic at the park?”

Anders laughed. “You’ll see.”

He got out of the car, walked
around to her door and opened it for her, then opened the trunk and pulled out
a box marked with logos from a prominent paper company.

“Oh, yum!” Sheila teased. “We’re
going to have paper for dinner.”

“Paper is delicious, and so high
in fiber, too,” Anders teased back. “Plus it’s entirely vegetarian, if you’re
into that.”

“I’m a second-hand vegetarian,” Sheila
answered.

“Second-hand vegetarian? I’m not
sure I’ve heard that one before. Vegan, yes, lacto-ovo, but second-hand?” His
face looked troubled. “I wish I had known this when I planned the menu. What
does a second-hand vegetarian eat? More importantly, what does one
not
eat?”

Sheila laughed. “Second-hand
vegetarian. Cows eat grass, I eat cows.”

Anders burst out laughing. “And
chickens and pigs eat grain, so it works there too!”

“Seriously, I will pretty much
eat anything that isn’t nailed down - providing it’s been thoroughly cooked. I
don’t do sushi.”

Balancing the cardboard box on
one shoulder, Anders held his other hand out to Sheila. She took it and allowed
him to lead her across the grass and up a hill to one of the park’s picnic
shelters.

Anders set the box on one end of
the table, then opened it. Sheila tried to peek inside, but Anders deliberately
blocked her view with his body.

He pulled a small blanket from
the box and spread it on the plastic-covered metal grillwork bench, then
indicated Sheila should sit on the blanket.

Once she was seated, the top of
the box was higher than her eyes, and there was no chance she would be able to
see into it. She would just have to wait and see what items he would pull out
of his bag of tricks next.