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I have a brown belt, buddy. And, according to the Psalms, a few angels camped around me.
Strange Guy stood on the top step and, from what I could see of him through the few inches that separated us, he looked pretty harmless. He was tall but more lanky than muscular.
“Heather, right?”
“Yes.” I drew the word out, not sure how much info to give him as my brain quickly downloaded the Stranger Danger curriculum I’d learned in second grade.
“I’m Ian Dexter.” And you must be paranoid.
I could read it in his eyes. Eyes that were centered behind thick black frames.
“Didn’t Mr. Scott mention I’d be stopping over?”
The handyman. Heather thy name is Stupid. Alex had mentioned that he’d hired Pastor Charles’s nephew, who was staying with them for the summer, to do some general fixer-up type of stuff while I was at the salon during the day. I just didn’t think he’d show up at seven in the morning. And I assumed it would be a teenager, not someone close to my age.
“I guess so. He just forgot to mention you’d be here so early.” Or that you’d be here today.
“I wanted to talk to you before you left for work,” Ian said, injecting a tiny pause between each word in the same tone a person might use if they were talking someone down from a ledge. “If I know your schedule, I won’t get in your way.”
Too late!
I sucked in my bottom lip. “Can you come back in fifteen minutes? I got up late and I’m not exactly…ready for company.”
He stared at me, puzzled. Right away I knew what box to put Ian Dexter in. I’d seen that expression before. He lived in an alternate universe. The alternate universe where moving to the next level is the reason for existence. The world of video games.
“I’m not dressed yet.” I’d learned with this type of guy you just have to spell things out. They were really good at defeating fire-breathing monsters but not so skilled at holding up their end of a conversation. Unless I was a two-dimensional fairy princess. Then maybe.
“Oh. Right.” Ian’s face turned the same shade of scarlet as Bree’s cowboy boots. “I’ll, um, come back then.”
“Ten minutes.”
Ian’s unexpected appearance shaved precious minutes off my dressy versus casual quandary. By the time I remembered my bagel, I found it lodged in the bottom of the toaster, resembling a charred hockey puck. No time for breakfast. No time to linger over the contents of my closet now.
When in doubt, upgrade to suede. In questionable weather, go with leather.
They weren’t exactly pearls of wisdom for modern man, but they had the potential to solve a possible wardrobe malfunction. I decided on a cute skirt—suede, of course—a shirt with a geometric print I’d bought when I was in Paris and a comfortable pair of shoes because I’d be on my feet all day.
The butterflies in my stomach, which had settled briefly while I decided what to wear, came to life and began to perform impressive loops and dives. Maybe it was a blessing I hadn’t eaten that bagel.
Snap wound herself around my feet as I poured myself a glass of juice. “At least one of us has time for breakfast,” I muttered, serving her a dish of fish-shaped kibbles and replenishing her water bowl.
My Bible was on the counter and, while I rummaged in the drawer for a granola bar, I leaned over to skim the page in a search for spiritual sustenance. As devotional times went, this was pretty sad. Especially when I needed God’s strength more than ever to get me through my first day at the Cut and Curl. For some reason, my Bible was open to Haggai, which consisted of a whopping two chapters, easily overlooked between the two Z’s—Zephaniah and Zechariah.
In the interest of time, I couldn’t turn to the Psalms, my devotional favorite. Haggai would have to be it. I skimmed through the verses until one jumped out at me.
Then Haggai, the Lord’s messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: “I am with you,” declares the Lord.
I am with you.
Just the reminder I needed. And humbling. Like going to a potluck dinner empty-handed and leaving with a full tummy. I’d offered God the crumbs of my chaotic morning and He responded with a banquet…
Ian Dexter was at the door again. I studied him without making it obvious I was studying him. Looks-wise, he fell into the same category as my brown leather purse. Not attractive enough to gush over and show off to your friends but not stash-in-the-closet unattractive, either. His short hair was dark brown; his nose was straight and narrow and clearly not up to the task of supporting those heavy glasses. His eyebrows were full but at least there were two of them. He was wearing a pair of paint-spattered blue jeans straight out of a bin from a discount store and a sweatshirt with a faded, peeling logo that I couldn’t decipher. School of Zelda perhaps?
“What did Alex hire you to do?” I didn’t want him changing things too much. As far as I was concerned, the apartment was as close to perfect as you could get.
Instead of answering my question, he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me. Cheat sheets. Why wasn’t I surprised?
“Paint bathroom. Replace faucet in tub and sink. Cabinets in kitchen—rip out and replace or paint. Heather’s choice.” I smiled when I read that. “Varnish floor in living room. Pantry needs shelves. Wow, you’re going to be pretty busy, Ian.”
“Everyone calls me Dex.” He refolded the list carefully and tucked it back into his pocket. “What time are you done with work?”
“Five o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Seven o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Three o’clock on Saturday. Closed on Sunday.” I recited Bernice’s standard hours. She’d told me I could close at five on Tuesdays and Thursdays, too, but I didn’t want to test anyone’s loyalty. My goal was to gain a few new clients by the time Bernice got back from Europe, not lose any of her regulars.
“I’ll make sure I’m gone by then,” Dex said. He wouldn’t look at me. Probably because I wasn’t spinning like a tornado or wielding a sword.
“The cat’s name is Snap.” I grabbed my purse and headed toward the door. “Make sure she doesn’t sneak out on you, okay?”
“Okay.” I could see him process the information. Cat. Outside. No. The tension that had cinched my stomach into a knot when I’d wondered if Alex’s handyman was going to disrupt my peaceful abode unraveled. Unless he was battling for control of the golden key, Dex would simply do the job he was hired to do. No threat. No drama. On the quiet side but seemed like an okay guy.
I sent up a quick prayer that the rest of my day would be as easy as handling Ian Dexter.
Chapter Three
What about womn? (Text message from Tony
Gillespie to Ian Dexter)
Been here 48 hrs. (Dex)
So? Has 2 b grls there. (Tony)
Havent seen any. (Dex)
All work and no play…(Tony)
Gets me to S America fastr. (Dex)
I started brewing the coffee as soon as I let myself in. Bernice had mentioned that people stopped by the Cut and Curl at various times during the day just to grab a free cup of coffee so she always kept the pot full.
There was a loud thump above my head and the light fixture on the ceiling quivered. Great. What was Dex doing up there? Painting or replacing drywall?
“Where’s Bernice?”
I heard the voice and the bells above the door jingle at the same time. It was hard to believe the petite grandmotherly woman tottering toward me was one of Bernice’s high-maintenance clients. The circles of coral powder on her cheeks matched the lipstick that followed a crooked path across her lips. I glanced at the appointment book. “Good morning. You must be Mrs. Kirkwood.”
“No. I’m Lorelei Christy. Florence has a mission circle meeting this morning so we traded appointments. Where’s Bernice?”
Traded appointments. Was this allowed?
“Bernice is on her honeymoon.” I knew Bernice had told all her clients she’d be gone for the summer but if Mrs. Christy had forgotten, I wasn’t going to argue the point. “I’m Heather Lowell and I’m helping Bernice out this summer.”
I scanned the appointment book. Sure enough, Lorelei Christy was supposed to be my four o’clock. The last shall be first and the first shall be last. According to Bernice’s system, that meant she was a “low maintenance.” Which meant that Mrs. Kirkwood, my last appointment for the day…wasn’t.
“All right.” Lorelei slipped off her lavender cardigan and draped it across the back of a chair. “I’m sure if Bernice hired you, we’ll get along just fine. Right, dear?”
As far as I was concerned, Lorelei Christy was the dear.
“What would you like me to do today, Mrs. Christy?”
“Just a shampoo and set. The yellow rollers work the best. And I like the shampoo that smells like coconut. It reminds me of the cruise Edward and I took for our fiftieth wedding anniversary.”
By the time I was finished, I wanted to adopt Mrs. Christy and add her to my grandparent collection. She’d told me all about her family, recited her recipe for rhubarb pie, quizzed me afterward, and filled me in on her plans for the summer—which involved knitting slippers for the upcoming preschool class.
“Oh, I almost forgot your tip.” Mrs. Christy turned back to the counter and reached into her purse. “Here you go.” She handed me a neatly folded dishcloth.
If I shook it, would a five-dollar bill fall out?
“I crochet them myself. If you don’t like pink I have a green one in here somewhere—”
“No. Pink is fine. I love pink.”
“You’re a sweet girl. I’ll see you next week. Four o’clock.”
That wasn’t so bad. One down, four to go.
Five minutes after Mrs. Christy left, a harried-looking mom pulled four-year-old twin girls into the salon. I checked the appointment book. Natalie and Nicole. Adorable. They were even dressed alike. This was one of the times I got that wistful I-wish-I-had-a-sister feeling.
They each picked out a chair by the window but their sweet, identical smiles disappeared as soon as their mother announced she needed to run to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Because she’d only be gone for a few minutes and the girls would be fine without her.
“Who’s first?” I patted the back of the chair.
The girls linked arms in a show of defiant solidarity. A scene from Lady and the Tramp—the one with the Siamese cats—came to mind. No one at cosmetology school had coached me through this scenario.
“One at a time.” Come on, Heather. Don’t let them get the best of you.
Natalie scowled at me. “Where’s the elephant chair?”
“I want the elephant chair, too,” Nicole whined.
Could four-year-olds smell fear?
“Can I have a sucker now?”
Aha. Leverage. “No suckers until after you get your hair cut.”
“Bernice lets us.”
I knew this was a big fat fib. Bernice would never let kids get sticky until they were about to go home. “I’ll get the elephant chair while you two decide who’s going to be first.” There you go, Heather. Pleasant but assertive. Fortunately, I’d paged through a few of Mom’s parenting books over the years!
While my back was turned, I heard their low, candy-sweet voices planning their next move.
Think fast, Heather.
“You girls are lucky today—you get the ten-o’clock special,” I said, pretending I didn’t see Nicole stick her tongue out at me as I turned around.
“What’s that?” Natalie tilted her head and Nicole elbowed her in the side.
“A manicure—and you even get to pick out the nail stickers.” I stared at the clock. “Oh, oh. Only ten minutes left…I don’t know if I’ll have time…”
“I’ll go first!” Natalie bounded over to the elephant chair while her sister crossed her arms and pouted.
Yes! Divide and conquer.
By the time their mother strolled in forty-five minutes later, holding a cup of coffee from Sally’s Café, I was just finishing up Nicole’s manicure. There’d been a tense moment when the girls had tried to talk me into letting them each take home an extra set of stickers but after I’d gently pointed out that other little girls might want them, too, they hadn’t pushed the issue.
I was going to be a wonderful mother someday, I just knew it….
“Look, Mommy! She painted my fingernails. And I have pony stickers.” Nicole spread out her fingers for her mom to admire.
Mom frowned.
“No charge,” I said quickly, and winked at the girls. “The ten-o’clock special.”
“My stickers are better,” Natalie announced. “Mine are kitties.”
“Purple kitties.” Nicole tossed her head. “Kitties aren’t really purple, so mine are better.”
Wait. What was happening here? My brilliant idea was being hijacked by a pair of three-foot-tall divas.
“You didn’t give them the same stickers?” Mom turned accusing eyes on me.
“Ah, I let them pick out the ones they wanted.” What kind of pre-parenting mistake had I just made? I was an only child. Was this something I was supposed to know?
The look she gave me was both pitying and resigned.
“How long do the stickers usually last?”
“About a week.”
She nodded. And sighed.
“You have a pink pony.” The war waged on around us. “There aren’t pink ponies, either!
“Duh! On the merry-go-round.”
“Girls!” In the time it took for Mom to put her cup down, Natalie had launched herself at her sister and they were locked in battle. In the elephant chair. Which began to teeter.
In slow motion, I saw the chair begin its downward descent and I managed to catch Nicole as she pitched out of it. Fortunately Mom must have been working out because she practically vaulted over the counter. It was her oversize purse—which I’d thought looked a bit outdated when I first saw it—that broke Natalie’s fall.
The elephant chair wasn’t as lucky. His trunk snapped off.
“You killed him!” Nicole shrieked.
Natalie burst into tears.
“Here. You can each have another set of stickers. How’s that?” The second the words were out of my mouth, the tears stopped and they politely opened their little palms.
After they left, I slumped in the chair and closed my eyes. I was so ready for lunch. Except I had a broken elephant and another little girl coming in for a first haircut…. But wait, I had a handyman right upstairs, didn’t I?
I collected elephant parts, locked the door and dashed up the back stairs.
“Dex?” I burst in, expecting to find him wrench-deep in home improvement.
He was asleep on the sofa. With Snap wrapped around his neck like a shawl. Was he hungover? And did I have the authority to fire Alex’s un-handyman?
“Rise and shine, you two.”
Dex opened his eyes—he was still wearing his glasses—and stared at me like he’d never seen me before.
“Come on. Wake up. Time to scale the reality wall,” I told him. I only had half an hour to eat lunch and get my elephant fixed and his nap was wasting precious seconds.
“I fell asleep.” He peeled Snap off his neck and sat up.
“Really?” I rolled my eyes. On the inside. I’d been well trained not to do it on the outside. It wasn’t polite. And it had been grounds for an hour of detention at His Light Christian Academy. “Do you think you can fix this?”
“What was it?”
“It is Bernice’s elephant chair. A booster for preschool kids.” I spread the pieces out on the coffee table to give him an idea how they fit together. “And I need it back by one o’clock. If you’re not too busy.”
I couldn’t prevent the tiny bit of sarcasm that oozed into my question. Sorry, Lord!
“Did you try it out or something?” He knelt down to examine the damage and I glowered down at him. Only a guy totally unaware of the statistics on eating disorders would make a comment like that!
“It will go down in history as the place where Nicole and Natalie fought a battle over nail stickers a few minutes ago.”
“You didn’t give both of them a set of stickers?” He picked up the elephant’s trunk and studied it. I couldn’t help but notice that almost every one of his fingers was wrapped in a colorful Band-Aid, like graffiti on an overpass.
“I did give them each a set of stickers but one of them said her ponies were better than kitties because the kitties were purple and everyone knows kitties aren’t really purple….”
Dex tilted his head. He had the same expression on his face that the girls’ mom had had. “You didn’t give them the same stickers?”
“One wanted ponies, the other wanted kitties. I thought I was being nice.”
“You thought you were being nice. What you really were being was deluded. Any bank teller at the drive-up window will tell you that you give a green sucker to every kid in the minivan. It’s known as the same game.” Dex picked up the hammer he must have dropped when he fell asleep and tapped in a loose nail.
I felt the need to defend myself. “How was I supposed to know that?”
His eyebrows disappeared as they dipped behind his glasses. “Brothers and sisters?”
“I’m an only child.”
“Didn’t you babysit to pad your 401(k)?”
He looked serious. I tried not to smile. “No.”
“Can you get me the wood glue in the bucket over there?” Dex rocked back on his heels. “So how did the nail-sticker war end?”
At last I could redeem myself. “I gave them each another set.”
“No kidding.” Dex pushed a nail between his lips, but it looked like he was trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“That was probably their scheme all along.”
“There was no scheme.” I rolled my eyes again. This time on the outside. “They’re four years old! They were upset. Natalie thought she killed the elephant. I wanted them to stop crying. Case closed.” It suddenly occurred to me that those tears had stopped awfully fast when I’d handed them another set of stickers. The stickers they’d wanted earlier but I’d told them they couldn’t have.
Dex nodded the second I became enlightened. “Uhhuh.”
“They set me up.” I’d been scammed. Conned. Taken advantage of.
“I need some more nails.”
Dex had a courtside seat to view my humiliation and it was clear he was hanging out at the concession stand. This was the upside of conversing with someone who lived in an alternate universe.
While Dex pounded on the chair, I worked my way through half a box of crackers and the three pieces of string cheese I’d found in the fridge.
“You’re eating my lunch.” Dex flicked a glance at me as I inched closer to check his progress. I had less than five minutes to get back to the salon.
“I’m sorry.” I shoved the last hunk of string cheese toward him. “Here.”
“It’s all yours.” He leaned away from me and jumped to his feet.
As good as new. Except for the extra fifty nails that formed an uneven line across the back. But I wasn’t going to be picky.
“Thanks.” I wrapped my arms around the elephant and hauled it toward the door. “You saved my life.”
He shrugged. “It’s your first day. Cut yourself some slack.”
“Yeah, you, too.” I couldn’t resist.
He lifted his hands and studied the Band-Aids. “That obvious, huh?”
I mimicked him and shrugged. Then I waited for him to apologize for falling asleep on my couch and beg me to let him keep his job.
“I better get back to work. I didn’t get much done this morning.” That’s all he said.
“You probably should take it easy fighting those kickboxing kangaroos all night,” I muttered.
“Video games?” Dex’s eyes widened behind his glasses. “I never play them.”
Yeah, right.
Chapter Four
not sure I can make dinr. (Me)
whatsup (Bree)
2 wrds. mrs. kirkwood. (Me)
Recovry group at 7. Wear jeans. (Bree)
Mrs. Kirkwood walked in at four o’clock on the dot and there was no way this pleasant-looking woman could be a high-maintenance customer. She had a soft swirl of snow-white hair that reminded me of the meringue on Mom’s banana-cream pie and her cheeks were as round and smooth as a baby’s. If she hadn’t been wearing a pink cotton dress and dainty sandals, she would’ve looked like a storybook drawing of Mrs. Claus.
She hopped up in the chair and her smile was so sweet it should’ve been accompanied by a warning from the American Dental Association. Maybe Bernice had been right to schedule Natalie and Nicole in the morning, but Mrs. Kirkwood must have been a mistake….
“Aren’t you that girl Bernice gave up for adoption?”
I had turned my back for a second to organize my workspace when her sugarcoated missile struck my starboard side.
“I’m Heather Lowell.” My name was the only thing I could come up with when I spun around and found myself caught in the dead center of Mrs. Kirkwood’s lasers…oops, those were her eyes.
“I suppose that movie star is your dad? You have the same nose.” Mrs. Kirkwood patted my hand. “I’m surprised you have to work after falling into all that money.”
Suddenly I knew why Bernice had scheduled Mrs. Kirkwood as my first appointment. She must have known I’d need the entire day to recover. Lorelei Christy—my original four o’clock—was supposed to be the cheerful memory at the end of my first day. To soothe me after Florence Kirkwood—the nightmare at the beginning of it.
“Bernice and Alex aren’t supporting me…” There were several things I was suddenly tempted to do to Mrs. Kirkwood’s hair but I was pretty sure none of them would have been approved by my parents, the faculty at His Light Christian Academy or—and this is the one that saved Mrs. Kirkwood from waking up bald the next morning—God Himself.
“I saw on the news last week that just about anyone can get a degree off the Internet nowadays. But I’m sure you went to school for this. It’s never bad to have family connections, is it?” Her tinkling laugh sounded just like the bells over the door. Internal memo: Remove bells before post-traumatic stress disorder sets in.
“Shampoo chair,” I managed to gasp. Although maybe asking her to put her head into a deep sink wasn’t a very good idea at the moment.
In the six steps it took us to walk across the room, she told me it was too bad that young women today weren’t concerned with modesty and, just out of curiosity, where had I bought my skirt?
It continued downhill from there. By the time the clock on the wall assured me it was closing time, I’d gotten over my initial shock and in one of those weird out-of-body type of experiences, I was a bit awed at the way Florence Kirkwood could simultaneously smile and cut someone off at the knees. It reminded me of a handy little kitchen gadget Mom had affectionately dubbed “the chopper” because it could take a whole onion and reorganize its molecular structure in seconds. When Florence Kirkwood finally left the salon, I knew exactly what that onion felt like.
Fortunately Dex wasn’t asleep on the couch again when I slunk up the back stairs to the apartment. I could melt into a puddle without witnesses.
“Snap!” I wailed. “I need pet therapy.”
Wherever she was hiding, she wouldn’t come out. Right then I renamed her Miss Fickle. All right, if there wasn’t purring, then there could be bubbles. Or chocolate. Or both.
Except there was no longer a faucet in the tub. Someone pretending to be a handyman so he could get some extra sleep during the day had lopped it off.
I dialed Pastor Charles’s number. Dex answered the phone.
“Where is it?” I said.
There was a moment of silence. “I’m…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” I counted to ten. Actually, I skipped five, six and seven because I didn’t think it would make a difference anyway. “How can you lose something that important?”
“It just disappeared. I think it planned to escape.”
“I hate to tell you this, but it’s only in your world that inanimate objects come to life. Faucets can’t plan anything.”
“Faucets? I thought you were talking about your cat.”
I sagged against the wall. “Snap? You let Snap out?”