Love, Louisa

by Barbara Metzger

  The village clerk told her to talk to the police, the police told her to talk to the code enforcer, the code enforcer was in court being sued for the selective issuance of warrants. Louisa couldn’t figure out if the guy was a Republican ticketing Democrats, or a Democrat going after contributors to the Republican mayor’s friends. She didn’t give a rap, either. Those raucous, disrespectful renters next door had to go.

  A caretaker came by the place twice a week, picking up the stray beer bottles from the lawn on Mondays, and bringing the empty trash cans back from the curb on Thursdays. Louisa made a point of waiting for the fellow after the last weekend, and her last geranium-based fence post became so many toothpicks. He was a dark-haired, tallish guy, without the paunch so prevalent in the handymen she’d been calling for estimates on the roof. In fact, she supposed some women might call him handsome, in a coarse, T-shirt and blue jeans kind of way. Then again, some woman thought the rat-faced roofer she hadn’t hired was handsome, for the jerk boasted of his six kids.

  This house-watcher needed a haircut, a shave, and a lesson in manners. He didn’t bother turning around when Louisa walked over and said, “Excuse me.” Maybe he didn’t understand English, for many of the workers in town seemed to be Spanish-speaking, so Louisa tried “Buenos dias?”

  Nothing. Granted the jerk was fixing the screen on the front door of the rental house, where one of the partyers had likely put his fist through it, but he could have nodded or something.

  “Excuse me,” she said a bit louder. “I need to get a message to the owner of this house. Could you give me his phone number?”

  The man put down a razor-cutter knife and another tool with a rolling wheel in it. Louisa would have liked to ask that one’s purpose, but the man’s scowl, when he turned, did not encourage polite conversation. He straightened up, proving even taller than Louisa had estimated, tanned, kind of weathered-looking. He also looked somewhat familiar to Louisa, but that could have been because she’d been seeing so many of these rough-and-ready sorts of workers. He didn’t take off his sunglasses, and didn’t smile a welcome. In fact, he just stared at her rudely. Or she thought he did, through the dark shades.

  “The owner?” she repeated, almost shouting by now. “I’d like to inform him about the conduct of his tenants. Unless you already have, of course.” She indicated the torn screen. “Precluding the necessity.”

  The man still didn’t speak. Lord, had she used words of too many syllables for the uncouth cretin? She pointed to her broken fence. “His renters are ruining my property. Do you understand?”

  At least the workman looked toward the fallen rails, which were, admittedly, old and rickety. He just tilted his head to the side.

  Louisa took a deep breath and tried again. “Please tell the owner that I would like to speak to him. My name is—”

  “Louisa Waldon.”

  “You, ah, know me?” Perhaps she’d met him all those years ago when she summered here with her grandparents. Or maybe he was one of the garbage men, moonlighting.

  “Vivian Rivera,” was all he said, naming one of her mother’s old friends from summers at Paumonok Harbor. Aunt Vinnie had even been invited to— Oh, God. He knew. Louisa damned herself a million times for the blush she could feel spreading across her cheeks. “Then if you know who I am, I suppose you know about the…the wedding.”

  He nodded slightly. “Damned shame.”

  She tried for a smile and a shrug. “Life goes on.”

  “I meant the Porsche.”

  Chapter Five

  Louisa had to look away. At her flowers, her dog, the weeded drive. Here she was making a new life for herself, finding simple pleasures she never knew existed—and her old life was taking out the trash next door. For a minute she wanted to cry, experiencing the pain and humiliation all over again. Then she wanted to strangle Aunt Vinnie’s scrawny neck. How could her mother’s old friend gossip about Louisa’s utter mortification—and with a handyman, no less! Granted she should have gone to visit Aunt Vinnie when she got here, or when she got a little more settled, but Louisa hadn’t been ready to face anyone who knew her before, to hear their commiseration and see pity in their eyes. But a handyman? If this…this person knew about the wedding, chances were everyone in the town knew. He looked just the type to sit around bars on weekends, laughing about the summer people and the rich renters, while he didn’t return their phone calls, showed up late for appointments, and charged exorbitant fees. Well, this ignorant, arrogant bastard wouldn’t laugh at her.

  Louisa raised her chin. “I prefer not to speak of that matter. In fact, I’d prefer to speak to your employer about the renters and the noise and damage they create.”

  In answer, the redneck removed his sunglasses, finally. She recognized the expression he wore, for she’d seen it at the hardware store and the lumberyard, when the carpenters and plumbers and masons looked at her as if she were too dumb to know which end of the hammer to use. This guy’s eyes were a remarkable shade of blue, though, somewhere between sapphire and summer sky. With his dark hair and the black stubble on his tanned, chiseled cheeks, the man looked like he’d stepped off the cover of one of her mother’s romance novels. Maybe that’s why he still looked familiar, though she was positive she’d remember meeting such a deliciously handsome man. And didn’t the devil just know it, Louisa’d bet. Well, she wasn’t hungry.

  She raised her chin another notch, trying to appear taller. “What do you intend to do about my fence? My sister and her family are coming for Memorial Day weekend and I want the place to look nice. Besides, I need the fence for my dog.”

  The man looked at the fallen fence, the fou-fou dog, and the self-righteous female. He sneered.

  *

  Dante didn’t like fences. All the rich new homeowners were installing gates and high hedges around their properties, as if they were too good to be seen by the common folk. They didn’t care about community or friendliness, only protecting their privacy—as if anyone was going to peep in their windows. Who cared what a bunch of Wall Street Waldos did on weekends? Even low fences ruined the natural look of the neighborhood, besides chopping up the landscape into little boxes.

  He didn’t like trophy dogs, those purebreds with pedigrees longer than their tails that the tourists were all dragging around at the end of their monogrammed leashes. One summer the renters all showed up in Mercedes convertibles; the next they all had SUVs to carry the babies and the dark-skinned nannies. This year they all had Hummers and high-bred dogs. Maybe the dogs ate the babies. Hell, if they lavished as much attention on the kids as they did on the dogs, they wouldn’t need the babysitters. This particular animal was groomed to an inch of its curly coat, with a ridiculous mustache. That’s why the poor mutt barked all the time, Dante supposed, because it was too embarrassed to stand and be stared at.

  Most of all, what Dante Rivera liked least was women like Louisa Waldon. Oh, he knew all about Paumonok Harbor’s newest and most notorious resident. He knew all about the sports car and the aborted wedding, when the bride was too drunk to recognize her own guests. He knew that her wedding dress cost more than his sister spent on three years’ worth of clothes, and he knew that she’d been here nearly a month without calling on Aunt Vinnie. She was a beauty, he’d give her that, if a man liked that brittle, sharp-boned, blond look. In his opinion, the lady looked a lot better now, with some natural color to her cheeks, and her hair gathered back with one of those elastic things, instead of piled on her head in stiff, sprayed sausage curls. And her legs, well, a man could dream at night about those long, smooth tanned legs, rubbing against his, wrapping around him.

  Dream was all a guy could do, Dante knew, taking his eyes off her denim cutoffs and what they cut off. The woman was a man-hater. He’d heard it from Bill at the hardware store, how she wouldn’t give any of the guys the time of day. Okay, maybe she’d been burned, but she wouldn’t go to the PTA Game Night or the fire department’s pancake breakfast, either. They weren’t good enough
for her around here. He put his sunglasses back on so he wouldn’t have to notice the heightened color from his rude staring. Well, no Big City spoiled beauty was good enough for him to waste his time on, either. Even if she did have pretty green eyes and a cute little nose. Why, if the haughty bitch raised that nose in the air any higher, she’d fall over on her cute little ass. He went back to fixing the broken screen.

  Of all the arrogant jackasses, Louisa thought, this one took the prize. For sure he’d never get a job where she was personnel director, no, not even as under-janitor on the night shift. She tapped her foot and cleared her throat.. “About the renters.”

  Dante didn’t like the renters any more than he liked fences and fancy dogs. A friend had called in a favor though and he was stuck with them. “I’ll talk to them,” was all said, his back to the impatient, demanding female.

  “And what about my fence?”

  Damn, she was a persistent broad, kind of like one of those kamikaze mosquitoes. Dante put down his tools, cursing her for the time he was wasting, and looked at the tangle of wire mesh and wood between them. He walked over and picked up a fallen rail, pulled the bent chicken wire off it with the merest tug, and snapped the post in half. “Rotten.”

  Louisa gasped. “But that’s my fence.”

  “Then fix it. The weight of your chicken wire pulled it down, that and all the vines you’ve got growing up it.”

  The runner beans were getting a bit thick, Louisa supposed, but if the visitors next door hadn’t sat on the rail she was sure it wouldn’t have broken, and she told the top lofty laborer so. He just shrugged and kicked at one of the uprights, which promptly uprooted itself and keeled over. “Rotten,” he repeated.

  Louisa bit her lip. There was no way on earth she was going to be able to dig more fence posts. At least twenty she thought, looking around. The mailbox construction had almost killed her. Besides, she couldn’t afford new posts and rails. But she needed that fence. Maybe she could just string the wire up with tomato stakes? She furrowed her brow in concentration.

  Cripes, the woman wasn’t going to cry, was she? Over a lousy fence? Dante hated weepy females more than anything. “I’ll, uh, see what I have lying around.”

  She brightened immediately. “Would you? And I’ll pay you to make the repairs.”

  Louisa knew she’d just told herself the lout was unemployable, but at least he seemed responsible. He showed up on time to gather the empty trash cans back from the curb before they rolled in the street, like hers did the rainy morning she’d put Galahad out in the backyard and gone back to sleep. Gally’s barking at the noise would have woken the neighbors for three blocks away.

  “No, you couldn’t pay me enough.”

  The going rate for carpenters and such was steep, but Louisa guessed she could match Aunt Vinnie’s price. “I’m sure I can pay whatever you get from Mrs. Rivera.”

  “I’m sure you can’t.” The last thing Dante Rivera needed in his life right now was another difficult, demanding woman. He already had his aunt Vinnie, who was forgetting things, and his cousin Francine, whose husband kept forgetting he had an ex-wife and kid waiting for the support checks. He also had an ex-wife of his own who was making outrageous requests for his time and money and— No, he wouldn’t even consider what else Susan wanted from him. He did not need yet another needy woman.

  He’d seen this one struggling with an old wooden ladder. It was a miracle the antique hadn’t collapsed with her on it. And he’d seen her trying to mow the grass with that relic of a mower, when anyone could have told her it needed the blade sharpened. He was not getting involved. He didn’t know what the blonde was trying to prove, but he wasn’t going to encourage her by helping, the way some turkey’d encouraged Susan and her new lover by telling them what good parents they’d be. No, the sooner Ms. Louisa Waldon had her fill of playing house and moved back to the city, back to Bride’s Magazine and the rest of that crap, the better all around. Otherwise, before he knew it, Dante’d be mowing her damn grass and reshingling the roof for her! No, he was not getting involved, not with this ruinous female who had no business being here in the first place. No way. Never.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  *

  “Were we that bad?” Louisa asked her sister.

  Annie poured another glass of iced tea and looked over the rear porch to where her darlings were fighting over who got to throw the ball for Galahad. “Worse. We always wanted to play with the same dolls, at the same time. My two usually have different interests.”

  Yeah, Louisa thought, Alex was into shoving and Lisa was into screeching. Neither of the kids wanted to be here, away from their friends, the malls, their own TV, telephone, and computer-equipped bedrooms. Louisa’s gardens were suffering the consequences, and poor Galahad was faring little better. He’d been waiting ten minutes, his tongue hanging out, for one of the brats to throw the tennis ball already. The kids hadn’t looked twice at all the games and jigsaw puzzles Louisa’d bought for them at yard sales, the games she and Annie had played for hours. Alex only wanted to play games on the computer, and Lisa pleaded to try on makeup. Louisa locked her bedroom door. She only wished she were on the other side of it.

  “Why don’t you tell them to go play in the woods? We spent hours in there, hunting for salamanders.”

  Annie looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “You really don’t like my children, do you? I told Mama you didn’t.”

  “How can you say that? I love your children. They’re my only niece and nephew, aren’t they?”

  “Well, you might as well tell them to go play in traffic, though God knows they’d be safe on this block. But those empty lots are full of ticks carrying a hundred different incurable diseases half the doctors in the world can’t recognize. Besides, who knows what kind of perverts hang out in there?”

  Louisa did not want to hear about lurkers in the woods across the street from her house. “Oh, come on, Annie. The worst that ever happened there was when you pushed the Mahoneys’ grandson in the swamp for trying to steal a kiss.”

  Annie rattled the ice cubes in her glass and smiled. “I wonder what became of old Jimmie.”

  Most likely he was bald and soft-bellied, Louisa speculated, just like Annie’s husband Jeff the insurance salesman, who was watching a car race on TV. A car race, for heaven’s sake, when the beach was two blocks away.

  “Speaking of Jimmie,” Annie said, “what do you hear from Howard? No, don’t get mad. Mama told me to ask.”

  “Why? She asks herself every time she calls. Howard and I are not in communication, if it is any of your business.”

  “Don’t go getting all huffy, Lou, we just worry about you.”

  “You can all stop worrying. I am doing fine.”

  “Yes, but what is it that you are doing out here? I mean, you’re not working, not even sending out résumés, Mama says.”

  “You can’t tell what I’ve been doing? All the flowers and the fixing? I’ve been making the house more presentable for next year’s renters, that’s what I’ve been doing.” She tossed one of the new chair cushions at Annie.

  “You think the place looks better with pigeons on the pillows?”

  “Those are doves, and yes, I do.”

  Annie threw the pillow back. “Well, maybe you could take over for Martha Stewart. But, Lou, you’re out here in the back of beyond. How are you going to meet any men?”

  “I meet lots of men. There’s Bill at the hardware store, and Ralph the mailman. I’m not sure about the bank manager’s name, but he was very nice about transferring my account. The garbage man is my favorite, though. He whistles.”

  Annie made the snorting noise that had always annoyed Louisa. “That is not the kind of man I meant, and you know it. I meant the marriageable kind, educated, refined, successful, not some backwater, blue-collar bozo.”

  Reminded of blue collars—and blue eyes—Louisa asked, “Do you remember how we all laughed when Aunt Vinnie asked if she c
ould bring an escort to the, ah, to the wedding?”

  “We were all guessing how old her companion would be. Aunt Vinnie must be pushing seventy-five.”

  “So who did she bring? I can’t quite recall.”

  “I’m not surprised you can’t remember. I was only surprised you could still stand, after what you drank that night. We all thought Jeff would be driving you to the hospital to have your stomach pumped.”

  “Aunt Vinnie?” Louisa prompted, to get the conversation away from that night.

  “Oh, she had her nephew drive her in so she wouldn’t have to take the train and taxis from the— You slyboots, you. You’ve been seeing Dante Rivera, haven’t you?”

  So he wasn’t just a common laborer, Louisa acknowledged; he was Aunt Vinnie’s nephew, likely one of those locals who never managed to extend their horizons past the county line. “Tall, blue eyes, kind of nice-looking?”

  “Kind of? Are you still in an alcohol fog? It’s no wonder you didn’t see him at the catering hall, ’cause your bridesmaids were stuck to him like mailing labels.” Annie pounded the pillow. “This is perfect! Mama will be thrilled.”

  Oh, lord. “For heaven’s sake, I just met the man, Annie. He’s working at the house next door, and he’s rude and condescending.”

  Annie was grinning. “And divorced, I hear.”

  “Most likely some divorce attorney took him to the cleaners—or the laundromat, in his case—and that’s why the man hates women.”

  “Seemed to me as if he liked them just fine. Jeff and I were making bets as to which of your friends he would have gone home with, if he didn’t have to drive Aunt Vinnie. I picked Sarabelle Delehanty.”