By Wednesday, I’ve finished the major repairs on the Titan, and I’m not ashamed to say I’d done a little victory tour before I’d left work, like,Fixed it, bitches!, but, you know. With more professionalism. Still, I pass on Dr. Singh’s offer to join him and the family for dinner at his place, even though Ria makes the best samosas in the history of the universe and even though his two young daughters call me Aunt Kit. I’m too tired, my lower back smarting from standing on hard floors for the last three days, my eyes gritty and fatigued. I text Zoe and Greer that they can forget about spin class, and it’s a mark of how hard I’ve been working that neither of them try to talk me into it.
It’s been miserably hot all week, so humid it feels as if it’s always either about to rain or just has rained, even though we’ve not had a drop. The walk home is a slog, and when I get there, the painter I’ve had in all week for the first floor is still finishing up, and the air conditioners inside are cranked up to Antartica, in hopes it’ll help things dry more quickly. Guess it’s going to be sweating on the porch for a while for me.
I sink down gratefully, take a slug of the glass of water I snagged while inside. I’ve been getting home late all week, so it’s nice to sit here while there’s still daylight, even if I do feel as though someone’s taken a bat to my neck and shoulders. I idly scroll through my phone, pretending I’m not looking for a specific name.
But I completely am.
Since last week, I’ve only heard from Ben once, a voicemail he’d left on Monday when I was in the microscope room. His voice was careful, neutral. He let me know that I might be hearing this week from someone on the metallurgy team at Beaumont, someone who was eager to talk with me about my work, and the projects that Beaumont was working on. At the end of his message, he’d paused and cleared his throat, then said,If you think of it, maybe you could send a picture of the light. My dad’s been asking about it.
If it seems weird that I can remember exactly what he’d said, it will probably seem weirder that I have listened to the message at least eleven times. I’ve never replied, have never sent a picture—the box with my new fixture is still sitting, exactly as Ben packed it, on my dining room table. I feel bad about the way I acted last week, my sharp response to him and subsequent cold shoulder. Even if he was wrong, I miss hanging out with him. Even after a couple of days, I’d gottenusedto him.
I shift on the stoop, uncomfortable, pissed I still haven’t bought chairs for out here. The front door opens behind me and my painter, a short, bald guy who calls himself Packy comes out, thunking his stepladder onto the floorboards.“Probably going to have to come back tomorrow,” he says. “I had to do some extra patching in the powder room, so haven’t primed in there yet.”
“That’s okay.” We settle on an arrival time for tomorrow, talk briefly about whether I’ll eventually want to redo the paint upstairs too, which is almost entirely covered in old wallpaper. It’s a little awkward, actually—I’m trying to get Packy to weigh in, to tell me whathethinks I should do upstairs, but I mean, this guy is my housepainter, not my decorator or my friend, and probably he wants to go home. I feel my face heat and thank him. Maybe all the alone time with the microscope is getting to me.
As he’s settling his gear into his truck, Jeff and Eric come down the street, walking their dog, and they greet Packy as if they’re all old friends, backslapping and laughing, pointing over at their house, which is probably perfectly painted all over. No one is even looking at me up here on the porch, but somehow this makes me feel even more like an intruder, the person at the end of the cafeteria table who no one’s talking to. I fake absorption in my phone, feeling relieved when I hear Packy’s truck start up with a rumble.
“Kit, right?” calls a voice, and Jeff and Eric are still standing on my sidewalk, looking up at me.
“Yeah—yes,” I say, standing and coming down the steps to greet them.“Hi, again.” I open my small gate and bend down to pet their dog, a fat little dachshund who’s panting with delight.
“How’s it coming?” says Jeff, gesturing toward the house.
“Great!” It’s too cheerful, and Jeff and Eric don’t even know me but they are not dummies. My shoulders slouch a little.“I mean, it’s—okay? There’s something new to do all the time, I’m finding.”
“Oh, yeah. These old houses, there’s things you don’t even think of that come up along the way,” Eric says.
“Your house is so beautiful.I stare longingly at it from my front window pretty much every day. I mean, not in a creepy way. If that sounds creepy.”
They both laugh, and Jeff says they’re happy to know it has admirers.“Honestly we worked so hard on it, we show it off whenever we can. Actually, we’re having a few people over tomorrow evening for a little cocktail hour. You should come by! Starting at six.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of you. But I don’t want to intrude on a party you’re having.”
“It’s not an intrusion. We’d love to have you. A couple of the neighbors from the next street over are coming too. So it’s not just Jeff’s boring work friends.”
“I work in banking,” says Jeff, a little dully.
“I work in metals.And most people think that’s really boring too.”Except Ben Tucker, I think, because I can’t seem to keep him out of my head for longer than five minutes at a time.
“You think you can come?” asks Eric.
“Sure.Can I bring anything?”
“Just yourself. Eric does all the food and drink for parties. He says if people bring stuff, they upset the gastronomic balance he’s trying to create.”
“Idon’tsay that,” Eric says, but I have a feeling he does. They’re fun, the way they tease each other, and I figure if all their friends are as easy to get along with, this party will be a nice way to meet new people, especially some new neighbors, which has been a goal of mine since move-in.
We say our goodbyes, and they start to move away, but suddenly I’m struck with a thought, and before I can snatch it back I blurt,“Is it—ah—cocktail attire?”
Eric smiles back at me, looking me over.“We’re not fancy,” he says,“but I think I draw the line at cargo pants.”
I look down at my—yeah. Cargo pants.“Right. Well, I was doing some repair work today. I have other clothes, obviously.” This is true, butwe’re not fancyis really of no help in terms of giving me instructions. I don’t want to seem any more inept than I am though. I’m trying make an impression here, so I wave them away, as though I’m the type to always go to this kind of party. I am not, of course. Even when I go to conferences in my field, I only go to the social gatherings for long enough to make myself a small plate of cheese and olives so I can take it back to my room and watch cable television in my hotel bed.
But hey, this is millionaire Kit now. And millionaire Kit can at least buy a new outfit for making new friends.
* * * *
Of course, millionaire me cannot buy a new outfit alone, because even I know Zoe’s the expert there, and she meets me after work to help me pick out a new pair of skinny-cut, ankle-length black pants and a jewel-green sleeveless top, silky and cut in at the shoulders, which she says makes my arms look great. Also she says the color works because I’m a“winter,” whatever that means. I hate her a little for the shoes—I don’t have a categorical objection to heels or anything, but these are the kind that feel like someone’s replaced your feet with Barbie’s.
