I nursed my third cup of coffee and picked at Pete’s all-American waffle-strawberries, blueberries, and heaps of powdered sugar-when the truckers finished and came to the counter to settle up. The bearded guy was last to pay. He lingered at the register to talk to Babe after his pals left. He motioned outside to where Caroline had been sitting.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me that pretty lady’s name?”
“Who’s that?” Babe said.
“He means Caroline,” Eyebrow Girl said, trying to be helpful.
“Caroline? That was the woman I was talking to?”
The young girl nodded. She didn’t understand Babe’s hesitation. Who else could he have meant?
“Sure,” Babe said. “She’s Mrs. Caroline I’ve-got-a-big-dog-an-even-bigger-husband-and-a-security-system-the- Pentagon-would-be-proud-of. Who wants to know?”
The trucker held up his hands in mock supplication. “Wow. What are you, her bodyguard? Forget it. No biggie. I’ll catch up with Car-o-line next time.”
He held up two fingers in a peace sign and backed out of the diner with a smile. Once outside, he zipped his jacket, took a last look around, and then strolled past the last of the Main Saint Moms now reloading their kids into their cars. He tipped his hat theatrically and made his way over to his truck, where his buddy was waiting for him.
“I must be slipping,” Babe said, inspecting her reflection in the small fridge behind the counter. “Not to be conceited, but usually they want my number. Maybe it was a mistake sucking up to the velvet headband crowd. Too much competition.”
“Like you’ve ever been worried about competition. You think he was hitting on Caroline?”
“Who knows? If the Paradise can bring two people together, my work is done. I’m not one to stand in the way of either true love or unbridled lust. No judgments here. I was just looking out for her. He could have been a serial killer.”
I’d heard Babe say that a hundred times. As friendly as she was, the first time she met anyone, he was a potential mass murderer until she had evidence to the contrary. Coming from a large city, I tended to agree with her.
“I don’t know,” she said, “baseball hat, long hair, even the peace sign. Sometimes there’s a thin line between cool and creepy. And who wants to be responsible for giving a friend’s name and address to the next Hannibal Lecter? Am I right?”
“You’re getting dangerously close to profiling. What would the Maharishi say?”
“He was before my time, wise guy. I’m just saying the guy looked like he should be on his way to a Grateful Dead reunion, not sniffing around a white-gloved suburban lady, who, by the way, is still happily married as far as I know. If I’m wrong and either of them is interested, it’s their business to pursue, not mine to facilitate. He may be back anyway. I think he was driving for the same company as Retro Joe.”
Retro Joe was hard to miss. Despite the fact that he was over sixty years old and 100 percent gray, he sported an oiled pompadour with a big curl on his forehead that swirled like the inside of a nautilus shell or the top of a soft ice cream cone. In the summer he wore his sleeves rolled up tight on his biceps. Mercifully, it was fall and we were spared the peculiar sight of his ashen skin stretched over surprisingly cut muscles.
“Joe’s here a few times a month. Works for two or three different companies depending on where he feels like driving and where the next Elvis tribute concert was being held. I’ll ask him about his new colleague the next time he’s in.”
I teased her again about betraying her Woodstockian peace, love, and music roots, but Babe was right to be cautious. One town over, an elderly woman brought in her luxury car for a tune-up and wound up dead at the hands of the mechanic’s greedy girlfriend, who bludgeoned her with a tire iron after the older woman thoughtlessly failed to have any jewelry or money to steal.
So much for things being quieter in the suburbs.
Two
The next day, I was home packing for the marathon wedding trip when Gretchen Kennedy called. Gretchen was one of the real estate agents I was counting on to keep me in big breakfasts and soup throughout the long Connecticut winter.
“I didn’t even know they were thinking of selling the company,” she said. I could hear the long, deep exhale of her cigarette smoke. “Two offices are merging, that’s the official story. I’ll still have my properties, but you know how it is. There’s a glut in the market right now. Sellers aren’t selling and buyers aren’t buying. People keep waiting for things to bottom out.”
Hadn’t they bottomed out yet? I tried hard to share her pain but wanted her to get to the point. How would it affect our arrangement? Would there be more work? Finally she blurted it out. “The curb appeal trick won’t work for the new listings I’ve inherited. These are distress sales-condos and townhouses without a Chia Pet, much less a garden. They’re less expensive and I’ve a better chance of moving them before the junior exec minimansions you’ve been helping me with. In this economy…” She took a long drag on her cigarette and babbled on, but I’d stopped listening. I was getting tired of hearing sentences starting with that phrase. And I was tired of delivering them, too. In this economy, landscaping was one of the first things cut when people economized. A lot of people thought they could handle it themselves-and they could do it themselves-if they lived in an apartment with two hanging plants and an air fern. Otherwise it was as lunatic as trying to cut your own hair. Suburban homeowners needed me or someone like me, but it wasn’t always easy to make the case. The women got it, but the men were harder to convince. They thought ten minutes with a flashy power mower was all any home needed until they tried it and gave up halfway through to watch the big game, even if the big game that day was a Norwegian curling competition.
“You’ve had two or three jobs a week for me for the last two months. Are you saying that’s dried up?” She didn’t have to say any more. It was as if a lover had told me he needed his space. I got the message: she’d call me if and when business picked up.
I stopped packing and went online to check my bank account. In the spring and summer, Anna Jurado looked after me. She kept the books, made sure I got paid, made sure I ate, and generally took over the role of older sister and mami from March until October, when she and Hugo went back to Mexico for the winter. It would be four months, maybe five with next to no money coming in, just a few upcoming jobs and outstanding invoices-and they wouldn’t cover one large heating oil delivery. Maybe I should have gone to Mexico and worked for them.
I wasn’t anyone’s idea of a spendthrift but I could economize. I’d turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater in the house, like Mr. Rogers. I’d get a dog to keep me warm at night, one that didn’t eat much. Or three, like the Eskimos. Wasn’t that how the band Three Dog Night got its name? Three dogs would keep you warm on a really cold night. (I’d have to ask Babe.) I’d run my car on waste vegetable oil from the diner…once I learned how to do that.
No I wouldn’t. And I wouldn’t get three dogs either. One, tops.
Grimly, I tallied up what the wedding trip was going to cost. Perhaps I could take home a very large doggie bag for my not yet acquired dog. Why didn’t people elope anymore? It was so colorful and romantic. And so much cheaper for one’s friends. I barely remembered this woman. How had I allowed myself to be roped into going to her wedding?
Caroline Sturgis’s business proposition was starting to sound better. I dialed her home number but the phone rang off the wall.
The next morning before I left I tried again. “At the request of the customer, this number has been temporarily disconnected.”
Three
