The Blonde Theory

by Kristin Harmel

  I could call Meg and have her send Paul over, but by the time he got here from Brooklyn, I’d already be floating away in a sea of toilet water. I’d be better off spending my time building an ark. I could call Jill, but I had the gut feeling that Alec was conspicuously missing the home-repair gene. And even if he did know how to fix a toilet, he’d no doubt make excuses about how he had to go into work instead. I couldn’t imagine him dirtying his hands with toilet water. I could just hear his nasal voice: Harper, I save lives. I don’t have time to fix toilets. Okay then.

  That left me one choice. Sad as it was, I’d just have to call a plumber. I felt like an idiot; it would cost me hundreds of dollars to have some guy come over and do something that an independent woman like me should be able to do myself.

  “Idiot, idiot, idiot,” I cursed myself aloud. But I didn’t have a choice. I grabbed the yellow pages from the drawer below the phone and skimmed through the plumbing section quickly until I found a location close to me. Handymen on Call: The 24-Hour Answer to All Your Plumbing, Electrical, and Household Problems, the entry read. I immediately dialed the number. It rang three times before a gruff voice answered, growling the business’s name into the receiver.

  “Um, yes,” I said, feeling like a complete fool. “I live on Seventy-fourth and Third. My toilet is overflowing, and I can’t get it to stop. I need someone to come over and help me as soon as possible, please.”

  The guy snorted.

  “Our minumum charge for a house call is seventy-five dollars,” he growled, sounding amused. “And since it’s before ten am, that’s an extra twenty-five. And that’s before you add on our hourly rate.”

  “Fine, fine,” I said hurriedly. Whatever. I didn’t care. I just wanted to solve the problem quickly, and if I had to throw money at the problem to make it go away in a timely fashion, then so be it.

  “All right, ma’am,” the guy said. “I’ll have Sean there in fifteen minutes. He’s the closest to you right now. Let me have your credit card number.”

  I read it to him hastily, then I gave him my exact address, hung up, and waited for the handyman to arrive.

  Less than ten minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I waded back out from the bathroom, where I had been standing, peering into the toilet and trying to figure out its mysterious ways. Of course I hadn’t bothered to use the time to brush my teeth, run a comb through my hair, or put on any makeup, which I immediately regretted, despite myself, when I opened the door to find a sandy-haired guy about my age standing outside.

  He was looking down at a notepad in his hands when I opened the door, and when he looked up and grinned pleasantly at me, his blue eyes wide and sharp, I felt momentarily self-conscious about my matted hair, makeup-free face, and braless tank top.

  “Um, Mrs. Roberts?” he asked, glancing back down at his notepad, his deep voice thick with an accent I couldn’t immediately identify.

  “Yes,” I said. “Miss Roberts,” I corrected, not sure why I’d felt like I needed to clarify that. “But please, call me Harper.”

  The handyman, dressed in faded jeans and a collared pale blue shirt that said handymen on call over the left breast pocket in red stitching, smiled at me and extended a hand.

  “I’m Sean O’Sullivan,” he said. Okay, so that solved the mystery of his accent’s origins. He was obviously Irish. I took his hand and he shook mine firmly. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Harper Roberts. You say you have a toilet overflowing, so?”

  “Um, yes,” I said, self-consciously. “Right this way, please. Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  “That’s what we do, ma’am,” he said cheerfully, shutting the door and following me down the hall toward my bedroom. Of course I’d hadn’t made the bed or picked up last night’s outfit from the floor. I hurried ahead to the bathroom, hoping he wouldn’t notice my bra and panties lying in a heap beside the corner of my bed. Not that it mattered; he was the handyman, not some potential date. I guess my senses were just going haywire because it had been so long since I’d actually had any kind of man in my bedroom at all. We rounded the corner toward the bathroom, and when he saw the pool of water extending out into my bedroom, he groaned.

  “Ah no, you have a bit of a mess ’ere, eh?” he said, shaking his head.

  “It happened while I was sleeping,” I said, a bit defensive. After all, it wasn’t like I had clogged the toilet myself. “I just woke up and found it like this, and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off.”

  Sean turned and grinned at me again, then stepped into the bathroom, wading through several inches of water. He bent down beside the toilet and in one twist of his left wrist turned off a knob behind the toilet that I hadn’t even noticed when I was fishing around inside the toilet. The water immediately stopped.

  “Well, this will stop the water for now, then,” he said, standing back up and looking at me with an amused expression.

  “I feel like an idiot,” I mumbled, shifting from foot to foot and looking at the ground. “I didn’t even notice that knob there. You mean I could have fixed this myself?”

  “Not to worry, miss,” he said cheerfully in his thick Irish brogue. “You’d be surprised how many calls we get like this. If you’ve never had an overflow, you don’t even think to look for the faucet handle. Now let me have a look inside the belly o’ the beast ’ere.” He bent at the waist to look inside the back of the toilet. After a few seconds, he reached in a hand, fished around for a second, looked down, and twisted something inside.

  “That should do it, now,” he said, straightening up. “Let’s just see what happens when we turn ’er on, right then?” He bent down and turned the faucet handle back to the left. We both listened for a moment. No more running water. He flushed the toilet, and we both stood in silence as it went through its normal cycle and then shut off, as it always had in the past.

  “It’s fixed?” I asked incredulously. “Just like that?”

  The handyman turned around to face me and nodded. “Yeah, it’s back to right normal, so,” he said. “Now we just have a bit of a mess to worry about ’ere.”

  “Wow,” I said, blinking hard. “That took you like two seconds. I could have done that myself.”

  “Like I said, happens all the time. Those toilets are tricky little bastards. Excuse the language, ma’am.”

  Damn it. He’d ma’amed me. Again. I hated that. Come to think of it, he did actually look a few years younger than me—maybe twenty-nine or thirty—and without my makeup, I’m sure I looked like quite the old bat to him. Not that it mattered anyhow. He was just the handyman whom I’d never see again. I was thankful for that, because I didn’t want word to leak out that I was such a hopeless idiot, I couldn’t even fix my own toilet. Although that kind of rumor would certainly do wonders for my dumb-blonde image.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Anyhow, thanks. I appreciate it. I’ll let you out.” I started to head into my bedroom, where I hoped to find a ten-dollar bill in my wallet to tip him for his time. Of course, this was in addition to the hundred-dollar up-front fee and the hourly charge that would appear on my credit card for a job I could have done in under a minute if I’d known how.

  “Hold on a second, ma’am,” the handyman said, following me into the bedroom, which made me blush, just a bit, for no apparent reason. I guess it was that whole unfamiliar-cute-male-in-the-vicinity-of-my-bed thing again. I was more than a bit rusty. “Let’s get some towels first and try to salvage this floor.”

  I looked at him, surprised and a bit confused.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head and peering at him carefully. “Thanks for your help. But this I know how to do.”

  “I’m sure you do, ma’am,” he said with a polite nod. “No disrespect intended. It’s just that you’re paying the company for an hour of my time anyhow, so. I might as well help you while I’m here.”

  I hesitated.

  “Are you sure?” I asked finally. It sure looked like it would take a lot o
f effort to sop up all the water by myself. Not exactly my idea of an ideal way to spend a morning. And I suspected I’d be nearly as hopeless at sopping up water as I had been at stopping the leak in the first place. I had been blessed with neither the home-repair nor the home-maintenance gene.

  “Ay, I’m sure,” Sean the handyman said with a grin. “I’ve got nothin’ else to do at the moment. I’m happy to help ya out. Just point me in the direction of your towels and we’ll get to work right away.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled finally, embarrassed to need a stranger’s help and surprised that he was offering it. “Thank you.” I grabbed my entire stack of spare towels from the linen closet in the bathroom and handed him half. We lay them down on the wet floor in silence and watched as they sopped up less than a third of the standing water. We wrung the towels out in the tub and went back to try again, but they were already saturated and barely picked up more water.

  “You’re going to need more dry towels than this, it looks like,” he said, looking concerned, once we had thoroughly used up my admittedly meager stack of towels. “I’ll go get some more from my apartment, okay? I just live about five minutes away.”

  “You do?” I asked, surprised, before realizing that the question had probably sounded immensely rude. I knew he could read in my face exactly what I was thinking: How does a handyman afford the Upper East Side? I instantly felt like a snob and blushed again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...” My voice trailed off as he shook his head.

  “Not to worry,” he said, looking rather amused. “No offense taken. It’s actually not my place anyhow. I just moved here from Ireland a few weeks ago and one of the lads from back home is being kind enough to let me stay on his couch till I get on my feet.” He smiled at me. “That’s the great thing about we Irish. We stick together. He came over here three years ago and has made it as a big-shot banker. So his couch is a bit nicer than you might expect.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling terrible for inadvertently insulting him. But he didn’t seem bothered.

  “Anyhow, I’ll be back with some towels in ten minutes, all right?” He started toward the door, his stride long and purposeful.

  “But you don’t have to...,” I began.

  “I know I don’t,” he interrupted firmly. “But I’m happy to help. Seems crazy for you to pay the company for an hour when I’m only doing five minutes of work. Besides, what kind of a gentleman would I be if I let ya drown in a pool of yer own toilet water? Me ma would kill me. So unless you have an objection, I’ll let myself out and see you in a few minutes.”

  I stared after him as he walked down my front hall and disappeared out my front door, closing it gently behind him. I looked down and realized he’d left his toolbox here. He really was planning to come back. I wasn’t exactly sure why that made my stomach swim uneasily.

  Ten minutes later, I had thrown my discarded undergarments and dirty clothes into the hamper, quickly made the bed, changed into a Newcastle T-shirt (with a bra underneath, thank you very much) and jeans, and had combed my hair back into a ponytail and applied some mascara, a bit of pink Tarte lip gloss, and some concealer to hide the ubiquitous dark circles under my eyes. Not that I cared what some random handyman thought of me. I just didn’t want to look like a total mess. The doorbell rang and I hurried out in the hall to answer it.

  “Newcastle is shite,” the handyman said by way of greeting when I opened the door. His arms were piled so high with folded towels that I could barely see his face.

  “What?” I asked blankly. Clearly I was not the only one who appeared to have gone insane this morning. Then he nodded toward my chest, his chin squishing into the top of the towel stack as he did so.

  “Your shirt, Newcastle beer. It’s shite.”

  “It is not,” I said, vaguely insulted and more indignant than I should have been. “It happens to be my favorite beer.”

  “Then ya clearly haven’t tried enough beers,” he said simply. He grinned at me and I rolled my eyes.

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me that Guinness is the only way to go,” I said, placing my hands obstinately on my hips.

  He shook his head. “No, Guinness is shite too,” he said. “I’m a Murphy’s man. You haven’t had a beer till you’ve had a Murphy’s.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” I said sourly.

  “Well then, you can’t call yourself a beer drinker,” he said promptly. “Murphy’s is the best. I’ll be drinkin’ it all the way to the grave, I will. Anyhow, are you goin’ to invite me in? Or do you want me to just stand here with my arms full o’ towels?”

  “Oh,” I said, stepping aside and trying to conceal the flush that had once again spread up my cheeks for no apparent reason. “Sorry. Thanks for bringing the towels over.”

  “Not a problem,” he said. I shut the door and followed him down the hall. “I’m not sure the lad whose couch I’m sleepin’ on would be so thrilled that I’m using his towels this way. But if we get ’em washed and dried, he’ll never know the difference, will he?”

  I shook my head, and he passed me half the towels. Silently, we each went to work, me sopping up the water that had spilled into the bedroom, the handyman concentrating on the water pooled on the bathroom floor. Feeling guilty for needing his help, I struggled to think of something to talk about while we sopped.

  “So what brought you over to the States?” I asked. The handyman looked up and smiled, his well-defined cheekbones rising as he did so and his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “Ay, you want to know my story, do ya?” he asked. “Well, here’s the condensed version, then.” He bent and put down more towels, scrubbing and sopping up water as he spoke, his back turned to me. “I’m from Cork, in the southwest of Ireland, the second largest city in our great nation, third largest if you count Belfast, which I do. After I finished with school, I stayed there in town and supported me ma. I’m all she had.” He was looking at the floor, sopping as he spoke.

  “It was a decent life,” he continued. I worked slowly while I listened to him. “All me mates were there. I had lots of friends, lots of good times, lots of great nights at the pubs. But I was never really happy, you know? I had never traveled much. I couldn’t afford to, not with me ma to support there, you know.”

  “Wow,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. Sean shrugged and continued, his back still to me.

  “Anyhow, me ma got real sick last year,” he said, his shoulders slumping a bit. “Cancer, you know. I had to sell the house to help pay for her care. And when she passed away this spring, I couldn’t stay there. Too many memories, and no kin, no ties keepin’ me in Ireland. I wanted to see the world. So a couple o’ months ago, I bought a one-way ticket to the States. And here I am.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” I murmured, straightening and looking in his direction.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders and continued sopping the water up. “?’Tis all right,” he said. “?’Tis the natural course of life. I miss her, but she’s not in pain anymore. And she’s with me every day, in my heart at least. You know, I wasn’t happy in Cork. Not with my job there, not with my life there. I’d realized that some time ago. But the time was never right to leave until after she was gone. I know me ma would want me to be happy. I’m trying to find that happiness now.”

  “As a handyman?” I asked before I could stop myself. I clamped my hand over my mouth the moment the words were out, fearing that I had offended him again. But he just laughed.

  “Not really,” he said. He turned to me, and his face looked friendly. “This is the means to an end, so.”

  I nodded, chastised. I was afraid to ask more, because apparently I had lost all control of my manners. What was wrong with me? Talk about putting my foot in my mouth. I’d basically just inserted it up to my shin.

  “I really am sorry about your mother,” I said softly.

  “And I appreciate that,” Sean said with a smile before turning back to the towels and the ba
throom floor, which was finally looking drier. “So what’s your story, then? You live by yourself in this big apartment?”

  I hesitated, not sure what to say. Of course, common sense dictated that a single woman wasn’t supposed to tell a man she didn’t know that she lived alone. But there was something that stopped me from lying to Sean.

  “Yes,” I said simply. “I do.”

  “Ay, that’s class!” he exclaimed. “Good for you, then. What is it you do that lets you afford such a place?”

  I sighed. Here we go. If stockbrokers and doctors freaked out as soon as they heard what I did, revealing the truth would probably have Sean the handyman racing out the door in record time. Even though sopping up toilet water before 10 am didn’t exactly constitute anything remotely resembling a date. Not that I could ever imagine myself dating the guy who came to fix broken toilets. Even though he was gorgeous.

  “I’m an attorney,” I sighed finally, turning off the crazy voice in my head and bracing myself for whatever response was to come.

  “Oh, class!” Sean exclaimed immediately. I turned to stare at him, shocked. “Good for you, then! You must be good at what you do. I love the law, you know. Fascinatin’ field.”

  I couldn’t believe it, but my words hadn’t scared him off. He didn’t seem to notice my gaping mouth and impolite stare. He stood up, his arms full of wet towels.

  “Well, I’m just about done in your bathroom,” he said. He heaped the towels into the bathtub, then stepped out into the bedroom. “All the water’s come up. How’re you doin’ in the bedroom, then?”

  “Um, okay,” I stammered. He joined me on the hardwood floor and helped me sop up the rest of the moisture. Then he bent to look closely at the floor, lying on his stomach and looking at the hardwood at eye level.

  “Not to worry,” he said finally, straightening back up. “I don’t think the water was there long enough to cause significant damage. Let it dry a day or two and then layer on some Thompson’s Water Seal, and you should be as good as new.”