Ladies' Night (34 page)

“Her?” Grace was lost in thought.

“Sweetie. Remember?”

“Oh, right.” She laughed. “Just come whenever it’s convenient. I’m gonna try to finish ripping up the kitchen floor today, and then I hope to get started painting. It’ll be a late night. So come whenever you like. I’ll be here.”

35

The music boomed through the empty rooms of the old house, echoing off the wooden floors and high ceilings. Grace poured a gallon of white paint into the five-gallon bucket. Yup, too dead white. She pried the lid from the can of black paint and dipped in a plastic measuring spoon. A quarter of a teaspoon to start. It wasn’t scientific, but it was the best she could do. She took the wooden paint paddle and started to swirl the black into the white. Hmm. Not bad.

She dipped her index finger into the paint and smeared a bit of it on her Benjamin Moore paint chip. Not quite enough oomph, for lack of a better word, but not a bad start either. She added another eighth of a teaspoon and repeated her test.

Better. Grace slipped one of her father’s old T-shirts over the tank top she’d worn to the hardware store. Its hem touched the top of her thighs and nearly reached the ragged hem of the faded blue cutoffs she’d picked up at the animal-rescue thrift shop in Bradenton. She hesitated for a moment, then stripped off her bra. It was kinky, she knew, but for some reason, she’d never been able to paint in a bra. She knotted her hair in a ponytail and tied a bandanna over the finished coiffure. She was good to go.

She’d already taped off one wall of the living room and spread out her canvas drop cloth. Now, she dipped a trim brush in the bucket and brushed it onto the wall in a two-foot-wide square. She stood back and checked the effect. It did not suck. She moved her equipment to the long wall opposite the front door and painted a swatch there. Maybe?

She fired up the box fan she’d placed in one of the dining room windows and pried open all the rest of the windows that hadn’t been painted shut. It was still hot in the house, but she was pleasantly surprised when the cross-ventilation at least kept the warm air moving. Grace still wasn’t convinced that the ancient window-air-conditioning units actually worked, and, anyway, the house still needed airing out.

While her test paint swatches dried, Grace went back into the kitchen. She’d managed to pry up most of the harvest-gold vinyl flooring, but what she’d found underneath was a nasty surprise. Plywood sheeting. No heart pine, like the rest of the floors, just plywood. And it was speckled with bits of mastic that had been used to glue down the vinyl. Whatever she did with these floors, she’d have to get rid of all those gobs of goo. It made her back ache just thinking of it.

The first day she’d set up her laptop in the house, she’d been thrilled to discover she could piggyback off a neighbor’s wireless Internet. Now she clicked over to her blog again and read another handful of comments, all positive, except for one from someone calling herself Freebird.

Wow, what happened to that showplace mansion you used to live in? Oh that’s right, your hubsand kicked you out for a real woman. This place is a pigsty and a waist of time. Save the paint and buy a box of matches and a can of gas instead.

She was positive Freebird was really J’Aimee, who couldn’t spell to save her life.

Leaving TrueGrace, she clicked over to Craigslist. She’d done some preliminary shopping and discovered that even the cheapest stoves and refrigerators at the big-box chain stores would put a worrisome dent in her budget. Maybe, she thought, she could find a bargain on Craigslist. Stainless steel would be nice, but she’d be happy with nearly-new good quality white appliances if the price was right.

She typed stoves into the search bar and came up with a list of nearly two hundred possibilities, ranging from the ridiculous—“Free stove, only one burner works, door has to be duct-taped. Must pick up today.” To the sublime: “Viking 48-inch stainless steel pro series dual fuel, six burners, 12-inch steel griddle, simmer plate, convection/gas oven, electric broiler, Like new, $6,000.”

“This is more like it,” she muttered, reading a listing for a, “Like-new GE Profile refrigerator, and electric range, removed from model home, still in warranty, $200 must pick up.” She e-mailed the owner, asking about availability, and then logged off.

Grace walked back and forth between the paint swatches, debating whether or not the white would work. Was it too cold? Too gray? She held the Benjamin Moore paint chips up against the walls for comparison. It wasn’t Farrow & Ball, that was for sure. She would never be able to duplicate the depth of color or matte finish of the English paint, but this color? Yeah. She nodded. It was a happy, clean white, and a huge improvement over the current dirty taupey-pink walls.

She finished taping off all the trim, cranked up the tunes on her iPod, and went to work. Grace had always secretly enjoyed painting and had done a lot of it in her early days as a single career girl and then in the first few houses she and Ben rehabbed.

But at Sand Dollar Lane, she’d happily relinquished the job to the contractor. All those soaring cathedral ceilings and huge window walls and stairwells, not to mention the miles and miles of moldings and the window frames themselves, were too intimidating. Besides, Ben insisted it was time to have everything in the new house “first-class.”

“You’re going to be photographing the house all the time, and we’re gonna shoot videos here, so how will it look to your readers and followers if they see streaky or chipped paint?” he’d said.

Now, she worked quickly, rolling the paint to the beat of the music. Unlike most people, she loved the smell of wet paint, especially mixed with the leftover fumes from all the Pine-Sol she’d used to get rid of the funky white-trash odors the house had absorbed.

She didn’t stop for lunch until after she’d finished the living room and the dining room. Then, she took her sandwich, a bottle of water, and a ripe peach out to the front porch, where she sat in an old aluminum-and-plastic-webbed lawn chair she’d found in the toolshed. Sweetie sat at her feet while she ate, gobbling up whatever crumbs Grace tossed her, then curling up in a sunny spot near the screened door for a nap.

Grace stood up and stretched. She’d considered starting on the paint in the kitchen, but since she still didn’t have a solution for the kitchen floors—and because she dreaded the thought of painting the old cabinet boxes and drawers, she decided to move on to the bedrooms.

It was no good trying not to play the “if I lived here game.” She’d been trying to repress the urge since day one. So while she rolled faux Farrow & Ball on the larger of the two bedrooms, she allowed herself to daydream.

The room had two decent-sized windows that looked out to that big, deep backyard.

If I lived here, I’d replace those windows with a pair of French doors and build a big, wide stoop that ended in a little patio made of old mellow bricks. Maybe I’d have some kind of trellis partially enclosing it for privacy. I’d plant a pink climbing rose on the trellis, and I’d have a pair of lounge chairs out here. Or maybe I’d even have a fabulous outdoor shower, with one of those giant rain-shower heads.

The closet in the bedroom was nowhere near big enough to be a real master-bedroom-sized closet. The closet in the house on Sand Dollar Lane was bigger than this bedroom.

But if I lived here, I wouldn’t need a huge closet. I don’t need a lot of clothes anymore, so that’s a blessing in disguise. Maybe I’d look for a big old armoire or a chifforobe, or even one of those oversized entertainment cupboards that are a dime a dozen now that everybody has a flat-screen. I’d paint it a dusty, weathered gray-blue, and I could look for old leather suitcases at estate sales and thrift shops, and I could store my extra clothes there and stack them on top of the armoire. And I’d find a great bed, maybe use a pair of twin headboards, something rattan or tropical? This house seems to scream for that Old Florida/British Colonial look.

Grace dragged the drop cloth over to a new section of wall. She didn’t really know why she even bothered using one. The wood floors were already spattered with old paint and pockmarked with nail and tack holes from the wall-to-wall carpet she’d ripped up. She’d meant to check on the price of renting a floor sander at the hardware store, but she’d been distracted by figuring out the paint situation.

If I lived here, I’d stain the floors two shades darker, and I’d use a matte-finish poly. With the soft white walls and the sunlight coming in through the French doors, they’d have a deep, natural glow. No carpets underfoot, just maybe a striped cotton runner, or possibly a worn old Oriental in pale, faded greens, blues, and browns.

Planning it all out in her head, listening to the music, Grace found her painting groove again. She was dripping with sweat and spattered head to toe with paint, but it didn’t matter. She was doing just what she wanted to do, how she wanted to do it, with no interference from anyone. It was a very good day.

She was just starting to move into the second bedroom when she heard the screened door open. “Hellllooo?” A male voice echoed.

“Wyatt?” She stripped the bandanna off her head and ducked into the bathroom to survey her appearance. Disastrous. Epic, Titanic-level disastrous. Her face was flecked with white paint, her arms and legs were flecked with white paint, and she had a giant smear of dirt on her right boob.

“Grace?” His footsteps echoed in the living room. “Are you in here?”

“Be right out,” she called, pulling the bathroom door shut. She found an old washcloth in the linen closet, ran the water in the bathroom sink until all traces of rust were gone, and scrubbed her face and arms with it. She sighed. It was the best she could do. Anyway, who was she trying to impress?

*   *   *

When she got out to the living room, Wyatt was walking around, checking her handiwork. And there was a little freckle-faced boy rolling around on the floor with Sweetie, who was engaged in a spirited tug-of-war over what looked like a rag of some sort. Until she got a closer look, and realized they were actually using her discarded bra.

“Sweetie,” Grace called, her face in flames. The dog looked up, with a bra strap clenched between her teeth. Grace scooped her up, disengaged the bra, and stuffed it into the back pocket of her cutoffs.

She cut her eyes over to Wyatt, whose chest was heaving with barely suppressed laughter. He was studiously avoiding meeting her eyes.

“Well, hello,” Grace said, sitting down on the floor next to the child. Sweetie jumped out of her arms and began sniffing the little boy’s shoes. “I bet you’re Bo.”

The child ducked his head. “Yes ma’am.” Sweetie put her front paws on the child’s chest and sniffed his neck, wedging her head under his hand until he was forced to scratch the dog’s head.

“My name’s Grace,” she said, extending her hand. “I hear you’re going to be helping take care of Sweetie.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said. “Does she do any tricks?”

“I don’t know, Bo. I’ve only had her a few days. But I think she’s a pretty smart little thing. Maybe you could teach her some tricks?”

Bo flopped onto his back and Sweetie dutifully stepped onto his chest and began licking his neck and face, which prompted a huge fit of giggles from the child.

Finally, he sat back up and cradled the dog in his arms. “My dad taught Cookie to ride a bike and talk. Maybe we could teach Sweetie to do that.”

Wyatt laughed. “Thanks for that vote of confidence, son, but even though Sweetie is really, really smart and cool, I think bike riding and talking is probably not in her future. How about if we just work on teaching her how to fetch a stick and sit up and bark on command?”

“Cool,” Bo said, tickling Sweetie’s belly. “Can we start tonight?”

“In the morning, maybe,” Wyatt said. He touched a fingertip to one of the newly painted walls. “Man, you work fast. I can’t believe you got this whole place painted in one day.”

“Not all of it,” Grace said. “I was just starting on the second bedroom when you guys showed up. I’ve still got the bathroom and the kitchen to do, not to mention the screened porch. Those are the rooms that are going to take the most work.”

“Still,” Wyatt said, walking into the abbreviated hall and then into the bedroom. “When you said this morning that the place was a mess, I was picturing something much, much worse.”

“You should have seen it the first day I got here,” Grace said, wrinkling her nose. “If my camera had smell-a-vision, I could have totally grossed out everybody on the Internet. It was so, so, nasty. Rotting wall-to-wall carpet, skanky old appliances. Everything was filthy. And that bedroom, where they’d locked Sweetie…” She shuddered.

“Are you ready to knock off for the day?” Wyatt asked.

“I don’t even know how late it is. I kind of lost track of time.”

“It’s nearly six,” Wyatt said. “Bo and I are going for pizza. We were wondering if you’d like to join us?”

“Pizza?”

“There’s a place just over on Holmes Beach,” he said. “Arturo’s. Nothing fancy, but it’s good and it’s cheap, and if we get there reasonably early, we can get a table on the beach and watch the sunset.”

Grace glanced at Sweetie. “What about her?”

“It’s pet-friendly,” Wyatt promised. “As long as we get a table outside.”

She glanced down at her paint-spattered, braless self. “I can’t go like this.”

“Sure you can,” Wyatt said. “Bo and I don’t care. And neither does Sweetie.”

“But I do,” she said gently. “Certain standards must be maintained. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you guys go ahead to Arturo’s. I’ll get cleaned up and meet you over there in thirty minutes.”

“Thirty minutes?” he scoffed. “I’ve never known a woman yet who could shower and change and show up someplace in that little time.”

“Thirty minutes,” Grace swore. “If I’m one minute late, the pizza’s on me.”

*   *   *

At precisely 6:30, Grace hurried through the door at Arturo’s. She was dressed in a pair of white capris, a black tank top, and a pair of gold metallic sandals from Pay-Less. Her hair was still wet from the shower and the only makeup she wore was a bit of coral lipstick. A pair of simple gold-hoop earrings sparkled at her ears, and around her neck she wore a necklace made from a tiny nautilus shell she’d found on the beach, hanging from a long thin gold chain. She walked through the main dining room and through a set of doors onto an expansive veranda, where she spied Wyatt and Bo sitting at a table close to the beach.