snatched up the phone and pressed it to her ear: “Hi Pierina.”
“Nicole?” Pierina asked uncertainly.
“Yeah. It’s me,” she said lightly, catching the receiver between ear and shoulder so that she could free her hand to stabilize the pile she was holding when it began to wobble. Sighing her relief as she got her hand there in time, she asked, “How are things?”
“Well, they’re—are you okay? You sound funny.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Nicole assured her quickly. “I’m just—my hands are full at the moment so I’m holding the phone between neck and shoulder. Maybe it’s making my voice funny.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, set down whatever you’re carrying. I’ll wait,” Pierina said with amused exasperation.
“Uh . . .” Nicole grimaced and then shifted her hand to better hold her pile and turned to walk into her bedroom, taking the phone with her. Thank God for wireless phones, she thought as she carried everything into her walk-in closet and to the hamper waiting there. In the next moment, she was frowning at the hamper, thinking that she really should have taken the dirty dishes to the kitchen first. They were all piled on top of the dirty clothes.
“Nicole?”
“Yeah, one sec,” she said into the phone, then moved up to the dryer and leaned forward a bit to let the dishes slide from her pile to the hard surface. She leaned a bit too much, though, and winced at the clang as a bowl sailed off the pile and nearly shattered a glass that she’d just set down.
“What was that? Did you break something?” Pierina asked with concern.
“No,” Nicole said with relief, dropping the dirty clothes and other items on to the dryer top beside the dishes. Opening the washer lid, she began to throw clothes into it as she took the phone in her other hand and said, “Okay. Hands free now.”
“What on earth are you doing?” Pierina asked on a laugh. “I heard glass clanging, and I can hear you doing
“I’m throwing clothes in the washer,” Nicole explained.
“And the clanging?” Pierina asked.
“Dirty dishes, my makeup bag, curling iron and other stuff I brought up from the studio,” Nicole explained. “Marguerite’s found a cook/housekeeper for me and I’m tidying up a bit before they get here.”
“You’re cleaning up before your new cook/housekeeper gets there?” Pierina asked slowly. “You do realize that’s kind of like pulling your tooth before you go to the dentist, right?”
“It is not,” Nicole protested with a laugh.
“Yeah, it is . . . and it’s so you,” she teased, and then she said gently, “Sweetie, just leave the mess. You work hard. That’s why you need a cook/housekeeper. I’m sure Marguerite has explained all that to the woman.”
“Guy,” Nicole corrected, reaching for the laundry detergent and dumping some in.
“What? Guy? Guy what?” Pierina asked with confusion.
“The cook/housekeeper Marguerite’s bringing is a guy, not a woman,” Nicole explained.
“No way!” Pierina squealed. “Ooooh, you’re going to have some hot, young guy pawing through your panties.”
Nicole froze, and then slowly set the detergent back, and returned to throwing clothes in the washer.
“Nicki?”
Nicole sighed and shook her head. “I think he’s an old guy, not a hot, young guy,” she said finally, but really that didn’t make her feel any better. She didn’t want an old guy pawing through her panties either. Grimacing, she said, “I can do the laundry myself.”
“Nicole,” Pierina said, drawing her name out in complaint. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t hire someone and then do the work yourself. And I was just teasing. I mean, I’m sure he won’t really be pawing through them. If this is what the old guy does, he’s done loads of laundry for tons of people and will hardly be interested in your undies.”
“Right,” Nicole murmured, but thought she was still doing at least her whites herself. Most of her panties and bras were plain white cotton now. Pretty boring, she supposed, but then she’d dumped all the lacy naughties when she’d left Rodolfo. Sex was how he’d caught her—great sex, sweet words, and empty promises spoken in a sexy accent. She kind of had a thing against all that stuff now. The next man she hooked up with, if she ever bothered again, would be a nice, normal, down-to-earth Canadian boy. No accent, no exotic locales to aid in his romancing of her, no sexy negligees and no crazy monkey sex that blew her head off and left her a brainless twit and easy target.
Nicole emphasized that silent point by closing the washing machine door with a flourish. Unfortunately, thanks to that flourish, her elbow hit several of the dishes on the dryer next to the washer and sent them flying off onto the floor in a clattering crash of broken glass.
“Crap,” she muttered, as Pierina began squawking in her ear.
“What was that? Are you okay? What happened?”
“I’m fine,” she assured her on a sigh and then added dryly, “My glassware . . . not so much. I knocked two bowls and three glasses onto the floor. They shattered.”
“Oh, sweetie. See! If you’d left it for the housekeeper this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, but thought it also wouldn’t have happened if she’d dropped them off in the kitchen before coming in here, or if the phone hadn’t rung, or if she’d taken more care. Basically, if she’d used her head. The last point came shooting out of her mind, not in her voice, but a deep one with an Italian accent. Nice, she thought. A year of counseling and Rodolfo’s criticisms were still in her head.
Grinding her teeth, Nicole grabbed the garbage can beside the dryer, knelt in front of the mess, put the phone on speaker and set it on the floor to free her hands to clean up the mess.
“So, to what do I owe this call?” Nicole asked as she began carefully picking up the larger pieces of glass.
“I was just thinking of you . . . and Mom mentioned Marguerite went up there to sort through pictures of Christian and Carolyn to decide which one to use for the portrait and was staying overnight, so I thought I’d see how that is going.
Nicole smiled faintly. “It’s good. We picked a picture and I did a rough sketch,” she said, and then added, “Marguerite’s still trying to convince me I don’t need to stick to the timeline and do Christian and Carolyn right away, but I’d rather get it done and off my list of jobs to do.”
“She knows how busy you are, hon. She’s trying to ease your burden a little,” Pierina said gently.
“Yeah, but working keeps me from thinking too much and that’s a good thing right now. So I don’t mind the crazy schedule I have at the moment. However,” she added quickly as she sensed Pierina winding up for a lecture, “I am refusing a lot of future jobs so that I can get back to a more manageable schedule next year. I figure by then the divorce will be done, I should be over the worst of it, and socializing might come back into view as something I should do at least with female friends.”
“You should move back this way,” Pierina said solemnly. “I miss you and I could be dragging you out to movies and—”
“I might in the future, Pierina,” Nicole interrupted quietly. “But I need at least a year to get my head straight before I make any big decisions.”
“I understand,” Pierina said reluctantly.
“Besides, we should take advantage of my living here,” Nicole suggested. “You could come visit and we can . . .” She grimaced, unsure what they could do. She didn’t have a clue what there was to do in Ottawa. Her life had been pretty sheltered during her marriage. She’d worked and that was about it. “Well, I know there’s skating on the river in the winter,” she said finally, and then rushed on, “But we could do girls’ weekends. We could even have our mothers up for one. And invite Marguerite too, she’s really a sweetie.”
“Yeah, she is,” Pierina agreed. “I always liked Marguerite. She was always so nice to us when we were growing up and Mom brought us to her place.”
“She still is,” Nicole assured her. Finished with the larger pieces of glass, she started carefully on the smaller ones that she thought were still too big for the vacuum. “Marguerite was going to stay at a hotel tonight, but I said that was silly and she should stay here, and then I apologized for the mess and muttered that I need a
