Natalie
nodded. “Oui.”
And Pierre nodded just like her, “Bien.”
The trellis was giving way with agonizing slowness. There was a cracking noise and Pierre hesitantly looked down.
Natalie asked, “And you? Are you all right?”
Pierre, who was hanging now, said in English, “But of course. Couldn’t be better.”
“Bien.” She considered her wristwatch. “You have now thirty-six hours to decide.” She could hear the trellis tearing away from the house one nail at a time as Pierre blithely said, “I am in no rush . . .” She backed away from the window just as the trellis broke free and Pierre pitched out of sight. There was, after a moment’s delay, a crash. Pierre whimpered.
Iona’s window sash was lifted, Edith Piaf’s singing rose in volume, and Iona leaned out on the windowsill. Natalie was posed in exactly the same way in the window next to her. Pierre put on his nothing-hurts face and weakly waved a hand, but for whom it was impossible to say. When they turned and saw each other, both women withdrew into their rooms.
Upstairs inside the house two hallway doors opened slowly. Iona and Natalie cautiously peeked from behind them, saw each other, and ducked back inside. Silence reigned for half a minute. And then a faint groan could be heard in the yard.
18
Sunrise on Friday morning, the hallway doors again opened upstairs and Natalie and Iona politely considered each other and nodded unspoken hellos. Wearing waitress uniforms, both headed for the front staircase, bumped the other’s hip aside, and then worked through a silent and apologetic “After you” pantomime before rumbling down the stairs.
Walking out of the rooming house on their way to the Main Street Café, each separately saw Mrs. Christiansen behind them in the side yard, in her nightcap and nightgown and flowered robe, a hose watering her pansies as she surveyed the trellis damage, and looked up and down the house, mystified.
Iona and Natalie hurried their steps.
Waiting outside the café were Owen, Carlo, Dick, and a seemingly hungover Pierre, still in his green “Harvey” mechanic’s shirt, his forehead bandaged and his sprained wrists wrapped. Carlo stood taller and smiled as the waitresses neared. His teeth seemed to have been tossed in his mouth like jacks.
“Sorry I’m late,” Iona said.
Carlo got jittery and said, “Oh, that’s all right, Iona. We’re just delighted to see ya. Anyways, morning comes awful early. And you need your beauty sleep. Well, actually you don’t need . . .”
Owen gave him the cutthroat sign and Carlo halted in midsentence.
Iona got out the café’s front door key and flashed a grin at Pierre as she opened up. The four men cattled in after her, and Natalie worried over her fiancé’s limp. Carlo was slouching to the kitchen and socking his head with both fists as Owen slid into his booth and said, “Carlo! You’ll want to hear this one.”
Carlo slouched over, hanging a fresh “Kiss the Cook” apron over his neck and tying it around his nothing of a waist, as Dick and Pierre skidded along the booth seat across from Owen.
Owen tilted forward and said, “A guy in a fancy neighborhood answers a knock on the front door and finds this grinning fella standing there. Says he’s out of work, needs some cash, and is there anything he can do around the house. Says he’s quite the handyman.”
“Why don’t you do him as a hairlip?” Carlo said.
“It don’t call for it, Carl,” Dick said.
Pierre slumped as if he were falling asleep.
Owen continued, “The homeowner takes pity on him. Says here’s a brush and some yellow housepaint. I’ll give you twenty dollars to paint my porch. You got it, the guy says, and the homeowner goes back to his baseball game.”
“Which?” Carlo asked.
Owen was unstymied. “Royals versus Rockies. Three to two in the fifth.”
Iona sashayed over with a saucered cup of coffee and put it in front of Pierre. He tilted forward and went for it thirstily. Carlo jerked and fidgeted and went red-faced as he leered at Iona, and behind her was Natalie, sashaying just as she did, and sliding a saucered cup to Dick. She lightly grazed his shoulder with a finger and he smiled as he watched her gracefully walk away.
“Easy on the eyes, aren’t they?” Carlo said.
Owen viewed them with mystery and went on. “Well, by the seventh-inning stretch, the homeowner hears a knock on the front door again, goes to it, and sees his happy-go-lucky handyman. ‘You done with that porch already?’ he asks, and gets out his wallet, hands over the twenty. And the fella says, ‘Wasn’t that hard with a four-inch brush. And by the way, that isn’t a Porsche. It’s a Mercedes.’”
Howling laughter and har-de-hars, Owen giggling first and longest. But Pierre was holding his face an inch from the coffee. Owen asked, “You okay, linebacker?”