Unfinished Business (6 page)

Not in any hurry to get behind my desk, I rest my arms on my car door and ask, “Why do you think something’s going on?”

He leans forward as his eyes widen and his wiry, gray eyebrows disappear under the brim of his hat. “Mr. Neville is here.”

Right away I understand what he means. Mr. Neville, The Big Boss as Bob likes to call him, never shows up at North Pointe before noon and usually it’s after two.

Immediately, I imagine Caroline stuffing the framed pictures of her college friends along with her oversized Michigan State diploma into a box as she sniffles and cries about it being unfair.

I smile at Bob. “Do you think it’s something really bad?”

“I hope not.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. No reason to think that really, it’s just the impression I got.”

That picture in my head morphs into Caroline toasting her success at North Pointe because she got a big fat raise.

Now that would be unfair.

“I guess I’ll find out when I get there.”

Mr. Hastings straightens and grins. He smacks the top of the half door by his stool. “I hope it’s good news, Hayley, and I hope it has something to do with you.”

Why can’t all old guys be like Mr. Hastings? All cheerful and encouraging? “Thanks.”

I step lightly on the gas pedal and coast up the tree-lined hill. There’s a nice pool to the left and the whole place is surrounded by pines. There are hundreds of daffodils clumped around the shrubs and sidewalks. The clusters of yellow and white are actually very appealing. Working at North Pointe wouldn’t be so bad. If only I actually understood what my job is supposed to be about. And there was no Caroline.

Did I mention that Mr. Neville is handsome? His first name can throw a person though. Oliver. What were his parents thinking? Do they ever call him Ollie? I snicker as I park my car and get out.

Ollie.
Ollie. Ollie
.

Mr. Neville doesn’t sound so bad. A little smooth and European. He wears these great three-piece suits and is always tan and vital looking. Like some sexy, older guy who just stepped off his yacht and shrugged into his suit and tie.

Not my usual type but for variety I enjoy him. Why not? The only time I see him is at work and I am getting paid to be there. He’s certainly a lot easier on the eyes than Caroline.

Caroline is a pretty sort?

I honestly hadn’t noticed.

I tuck my getting-more-rumpled-each-day copy of
Sex and the Single Girl
into my
glove box and grab my lunch from the back seat, then stroll between the yellow and white up to the pretty French doors of the clubhouse. I slip inside and, after I dig out the second half of a donut I didn’t finish on the way to work, stash my lunch in the cozy kitchenette.

As soon as I cram said donut into one of my desk drawers next to a bag of what may be stale pretzels and between some clusters of wadded paper, Mr. Neville saunters up. Caroline is floating behind him like a half-filled helium balloon that’s been tied to his back too long. By leaning to the right, I’m able to avoid looking at her so I can fill my view with his suited shoulders and aristocratic face.

“Hayley!” he says. “Did you know that as of this May, North Pointe Farms will be celebrating fifteen years of luxurious living?”

Instead of saying the first thing that pops into my mind—
No, I had no idea and why would I care?
I tip my head thoughtfully and say, “No, I didn’t realize…”
And the buildings look so young
—probably not the response he’s wanting.
The plants are still alive
—no that’s not quite right either, is it? I go with a non-committal, “That’s great!”

“It is great.” He folds his arms across his chest and beams.

Caroline pats her glossy black hair. It doesn’t budge. “Oliver and I were just talking about it. It’s so great that our tenants love this place.”

“Especially Mrs. Klonski,” I spurt.

Caroline’s fake smile stiffens but Mr. Neville’s real one broadens. “She’s been here longer than anyone, hasn’t she?”

Loving this delicious moment, I add, “That’s right. She’s been here so long that she’s the only one who’s allowed to have a dog.”

Mr. Neville runs his hand across his smooth jaw. “How old is that dog?”

“Good question.” A low-watt bulb appears over Caroline’s head. “I remember hearing somewhere that those little dogs can live a long time.”

“Much longer than fifteen years?”

The disbelief in his voice makes me assume Mr. Neville and Caroline share a dislike of sweet, loveable creatures.

For a horrifying moment they have the exact same expression loitering on their faces. Sort of a Cruella de Vil meets Bill O’Reilly thing. Trust me, it is not a combination one should have to witness before lunch.

“You ready?” he says, turning to Caroline.

She snaps to attention with a flight attendant smile. “Sure am.”

He nods at her, then at me. “You take care of things here, Hayley. I’ll have Caroline back after lunch.”

After lunch?

Caroline won’t be back until after lunch?

Before I can say
don’t hurry back
, they’re out of the door and on their way to…?

Who cares! They’re gone!

Hmmmmmm…should I eat that half of a donut now?
I decide to enjoy a peaceful, Caroline-free cup of coffee instead.

After I check to be sure that they are really gone, I start the coffee and pull out my phone. Josie answers on the second ring. Between bursts of laughter, she manages to say, “Good morning from Fairlane Fabulous!”

“Can you talk?” I ask.

She keeps laughing for a minute, then finally speaks. “Until my nine-thirty shows up.”

“Caroline’s gone until after lunch.” Because Josie keeps giggling, it’s hard for me to stay excited about being alone in the empty clubhouse while she’s there with a bunch of girls and they’re all having the time of their life. Maybe she can clue me in so I can be laughing and having a grand time too. “What’s so funny?”

She guffaws several more times then says, “You’ll never believe this.”

“Try me.”

“This girl, Veronica, she works here as a shampoo girl, well, her boyfriend works at this pet shop on Woodward and—” She interrupts herself with her own laughter followed by, “Shut up, she won’t tell anyone.”

Friends are supposed to make you feel happy aren’t they? This is not making me feel happy. This is making me feel left out and lonely. “Want me to call back later?”

Josie sucks in a long breath. “No, I’m together now.

“So. I told the girls here about the article my sister is doing and we started going through our dating horror stories, you know, the stuff you think you’ll never want to tell anybody but eventually you figure you might as well tell someone and laugh about it so the whole thing can go away?”

Did she say that all at once?

“So. Anyway. Veronica went to get her boyfriend from work one night after he closed up. He’s some kind of environmentalist weirdo, you know, really into animals and all that natural stuff. He asked her if she’d strip down so he could put a snake on her shoulders so they could do it like that—standing up right there in the shop with the snake crawling all over her. Like she was Courtney Love or something.

“She figured okay, if it gets him turned on, why not? They did it and—” Josie starts laughing again.

For some reason, I’m getting more annoyed by the second. I don’t care about some naked girl with a snake.

Josie takes another deep breath then finishes, “The manager came back because he forgot his phone and when he got there they were running around the shop totally naked—except for their socks—trying to catch the snake. Because it had gotten loose. But because they had their socks on, they were sliding all over the place and falling down.”

When I don’t start laughing she fills in the silence. “Seriously,” she says in a small voice, “it was way funnier when she told it.”

Now I’m starting to feel like the lame cousin from out of town who always ruins the party because she hates to be around other people who are having fun living their lives. I manage a chuckle. “That is pretty funny, I guess. What happened next?”

“Oh, gotta go, my nine-thirty’s here. I’ll call you when I get a break, okay? Might be a while, we’re pretty busy today.”

“Okay, I’ll be here.” What else can I say? Thanks for ruining my good mood by laughing and being so cheerful? How bitchy is that?

By this time the coffee machine is sputtering and spitting the last couple of drops into the glass pot so I go pour myself a cup then shuffle back to my desk.

What to do?

Pick up my phone and stare at it?

Text Nick?

What would I say?
When are you going to put your hand on me again?

I set my phone back down.

There’s a stack of late rent payments on my desk that need to be sorted then left for Caroline to deposit. While that is actual work, it’s pretty easy. The unpleasant part comes when I figure out who still hasn’t paid their rent and have to print out those ‘nice’ reminders.

The other choice is returning calls from people who are apartment hunting and want to see some of our models.
Urgh. Talking to strangers on the phone. Yuck.
That’ll have to wait until after coffee.

I grab the stack of payments as Tony Cattalioni struts in.

For an unfortunate minute his head jerks over his shoulders making him look like a rooster checking out the hen yard. “Where’s Caroline? She around?”

“She went somewhere with Oliver.” Of course I’d never call Mr. Neville that to his face but with Tony it’s fun to pretend Ollie and I are chums.

“When is she coming back?”

I scoot forward and eye him slyly. “Why do you want to know?”

He glances past my shoulder into Caroline’s empty office. “I need to get on the net for a couple minutes.”

I lift one eyebrow.

“To check my mail.”

Why can’t he use his phone like a normal person?

I’d ask, but I’m bored with the whole giving Tony a hard time thing so I fess up. “She won’t be back until after lunch. Go ahead.” I jerk my thumb toward her computer. “I’ll cover for you if she resurfaces unexpectedly.”

When he smiles pleasantly, I reconsider my treatment of North Pointe’s maintenance man. Even in his brown shirt and pants he’s put together better than most other guys. He strolls past with long, quick strides, and a woodsy scent drifts under my nose.

“Hey, Tony,” I hear myself say. “Do you think Caroline is pretty?”

“Caroline?” he chokes out. His mouth twitches and he seems a bit panicky. Like he can’t unscramble the letters on
Wheel of Fortune
. “Why are you asking me?”

I lean back in my chair and shrug innocently. “You’re a guy. You’d know.”

The angst falls from his face onto his feet, which start wiggling.

“She’s okay, I guess.” Looking almost as if he’s going to cry, he shifts to the side, moving two steps closer to Caroline’s sanctuary. “I really gotta get on the net.”

“Yeah. Right.” Embarrassment and shame skim over my arms. How was I supposed to know he was so sensitive? I make a promise to myself not to give him such a hard time any more. “No problem.”

A yucky silence floats into the clubhouse and threatens to squash us. Luckily the phone rings. I pick up the handset and thank the person on the other end for calling North Pointe Farms, where living is luxurious, as Tony dashes off to check that email.

“Hayley?”

My own mother has to double-check it’s me?

“Hi, Mom.”

“Are you too busy to talk?”

What do you know, I’m actually glad my mother has called, so I tell her I can talk.

“What time will you be coming on Saturday?”

My mental calendar refuses to come into focus. “Saturday?” I parrot back at her.

“Next Saturday. For the April Fool’s Dance.”

Oh. That.

The annual April Fool’s Dance at the VFW hall. The one where the farmers get dressed up by donning boots that don’t have cow shit coated to the bottom. Four hours of over-cooked chicken, soggy green beans and lively conversation about 4-H projects.

Last time I went, I was a totally different person.

“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe it’s better if I don’t come.”

There is a long pause then a sigh. “It’s been months, honey. It’ll be fine. He won’t be there.”

Realizing that there is no way out without having a serious conversation about
it
, and that at least there will be free beer, I ask, “What time is good for you and Dad?”

“The dance starts at seven. If you come early you can help your dad with the birds. He’d like that.”

My dad is a machinist, not a farmer like everyone around us, but he’s always had this thing about ‘taking advantage of the fact that we live in the country’ and ‘being part of the country culture’. What do those beliefs have to do with me? A lot. For one thing, we raised chickens and ducks and turkeys and any other bird my dad could order from that little catalog that showed up in the rusty mailbox at the end of our gravel driveway. That thrill of peeling off the top of the cardboard box that the birds were shipped in to find out ‘how many made it’ can’t be duplicated.

For another, in the end, all living in the country got me was a reason to leave it. But nobody wants to talk about that inconvenient truth. Certainly not my mom.

“And we’ll see you around five?” she says, all cherry-like, oblivious as usual to my lingering pain.

A sinking in my stomach tells me I missed some vital bit of conversation. Instead of asking her to playback her words, I agree to the time.

“Your cousin Frankie had an exciting weekend. Did you hear about it?”

Is his news trending on Facebook? Complete with a color picture? Was it on the front page of Reddit? If it was so great, why didn’t he call me?

“You obviously didn’t hear.”

Thrilled to be the one to pass on the latest news, my mom gushes, “He won a contest.”

“Really?”

“First place.”

“No kidding.”

“You’ll never guess what kind of contest it was.”

What a smart lady my mom is. I was trying to do that very thing.