Love and Joy

by Linda Seed

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It means, this place doesn’t have a regular toilet. It’s off the grid. Which means no flushing. Ergo, the sawdust.”

  Amber burst into laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Joy demanded.

  “I’m just imagining it, that’s all. You, your shoe collection, and the sawdust.”

  “My shoe collection! That’s another thing. He mocked my shoes.”

  “Who did?”

  “The landlord. He held up one of my Louboutins and said I wouldn’t have much call for it out here in the middle of nowhere. Which I won’t, I suppose, but the asshole was smirking!”

  “Oh, boy. He dared to diss your shoes. Did you hand him his ass?”

  She wanted to say yes, but in fact, she hadn’t handed him his ass so much as she’d enjoyed looking at it. Nix Landry, she had to admit, wasn’t hard on the eyes. That hair? God. Joy had nice hair, but she’d have paid thousands to have his, with its rich color and its glorious waves. And his eyes were … magnetic. Even as he was mocking her shoes, she’d felt this curious urge to get lost in those eyes.

  “Joy?” Amber brought her back from her reverie. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “So, the landlord’s a jerk. Is that going to be a problem, do you think?”

  “Oh … probably not. The bigger issue is that there’s no place to put my things. I brought the bare minimum, Amber! The absolute bare minimum! And it looks like half of it is going to have to go. Shit. The ad said there was plenty of storage space. Maybe that’s true if you have three outfits, four books, and a coffee mug. But I have things! How am I supposed to live without my things?”

  “You know,” Amber said, “what you’ve described is the perfect scenario.”

  “How? How is it perfect?” Joy threw her free hand into the air in exasperation.

  “Your project wouldn’t amount to much if it were a seamless transition, would it? Wild wouldn’t have been a very interesting book if Cheryl Strayed had been prepared and had a good time. ‘I had a nice walk.’ The end.”

  Joy allowed herself a wry smile. “I guess.”

  She knew Amber was right. This was supposed to be a fish-out-of-water story, wasn’t it? It wouldn’t be of much value if Joy had been moving into an environment similar to the one she’d left.

  “It’s just … I feel like I’ve failed, Amber. And this? All of this? It’s evidence of my failure.”

  “You didn’t move to the tiny house because you couldn’t afford your condo anymore,” Amber said.

  “I didn’t?”

  “No, you didn’t. You moved there for an adventure, so you could write a blog and build it into a book deal. That’s why you’re there, and the place sounds absolutely perfect for that purpose. So everything is going swimmingly.”

  What would Joy do without Amber? How would she ever cope without her friend within close reach?

  “I miss you already,” Joy said.

  “I miss you, too. But I can’t wait to see the place. I can’t wait to take a crap on sawdust.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  Once Nix got Joy settled in the house, he went back to the market for the closing shift. He clocked in, tied an apron around his waist, pinned on his name tag, and began stacking bags of organic quinoa on the shelves.

  “So, how’s the renter?”

  Nix looked up from where he was kneeling on the floor to see Louise looming over him, her pierced eyebrows high in expectation.

  “A disaster, probably.”

  “Really? Do tell.”

  He paused with a bag of quinoa in his hand. “Blond. Manicured. A big fan of four-inch heels. She won’t last a month.”

  Louise let out a boisterous laugh. “At least you can ruthlessly judge and berate her while you’re waiting for her to flame out.”

  “Yeah, there’s that.”

  He didn’t really want her to flame out, though. When he’d built the house, he’d felt something special in it—something with the ability to soothe souls and unite restless people with the land. That’s what the place had done for him, anyway. And he sensed in Joy the need for a soothed soul.

  It wasn’t Nix’s job to fix anyone, and it wasn’t his house’s job to do that, either. But was it so wrong that he kind of hoped it would work out that way?

  “She didn’t like the place.” He didn’t mean to sulk, but Joy’s obvious distaste over the house he’d built had hurt his feelings.

  “Are you kidding? That place is amazing. I’d live there in a heartbeat.”

  He could tell she meant it, and that mollified him somewhat.

  “I hope it wasn’t a mistake to rent it out,” he said. “That house … It’s more than just a house to me.”

  “I know it is. Well, you can always kick her out on her ass if she doesn’t come around.”

  He couldn’t, really—there was a lease—but that hardly seemed like the point.

  “She’s even prettier in person than she is on Instagram,” he said, though the observation was irrelevant and probably sexist.

  “Oh ho!” Louise clapped in delight. “Are you smitten, then? Are you enchanted, Nix?”

  He wouldn’t say that. But he could admit that the way Joy Maxwell looked would make dealing with any bullshit from her a little bit easier.

  It didn’t take long for Joy to unpack.

  The house had come with kitchen essentials—dishes, pots, and pans—linens, and furnishings, such as they were. That meant all she had to do was put away her clothes, books, laptop, and random personal items, and she was done.

  The hard part was deciding what to keep in the house and what to box up and put back in the SUV so she could take it to the storage unit.

  Sadly, she had to admit Nix had been right about the shoes—four-inch heels weren’t exactly appropriate for her current surroundings. She kept one pair of Louboutins—who knew? She might at some point end up at an upscale restaurant—and regretfully returned the rest to the box she’d brought them in. She supplemented those with a pair of running shoes and a practical pair of low-heeled boots, and that was all she had room for on the floor of the minuscule clothes closet.

  The situation with her clothes was even more dire.

  She decided which items got priority for the tiny hanger space as though she were triaging accident victims. Long-sleeved white silk shirt? Yes. Wool Valentino fit-and-flare dress? Sadly, no. Little black Escada sheath dress? Probably impractical, but she couldn’t bring herself to put it in storage, so yes. Quilted Moncler coat? She was probably going to need that.

  Once the closet space was full, she folded her more practical items—jeans, T-shirts, sweaters—and placed them in the storage space beneath the sofa. Underthings, pajamas, swimsuits, and other miscellaneous items went into a covered basket on a shelf in the living area.

  She arranged her books on the same shelf, keeping the four she had room for and returning the rest to their box. Then she arranged her laptop, journal, pens and pencils, and other work-related items on a tiny built-in desk just off the kitchen.

  When she was done, the SUV was nearly as full of boxes as it had been when she’d arrived. She loaded one of her suitcases—now empty—into the car as well, as she didn’t expect to need it, and put the other in the space under the bed in case she needed to flee to civilization.

  With all of that taken care of, it was time to go to work. She made a video of the house, highlighting the most interesting—and in this case, interesting meant horrifying—features.

  She spent a good deal of time on the composting toilet—naturally—and the outdoor bathtub, emphasizing the concept that she had somehow left the twenty-first century and found herself in some rugged earlier time without traditional plumbing.

  And, okay, she hammed it up a little in the video. If she was slightly unsettled by the plumbing situation, she portrayed herself as mortified. If she found the tight space a bit challenging, she play
ed it in the video as though she had committed to living inside a hamster cage.

  She rewatched it, edited it, and then uploaded it to YouTube. Then she wrote an accompanying blog post and published it to her site.

  She also needed to post a photo to Instagram—something incorporating the outdoor tub, maybe—but that could wait until tomorrow. She’d accomplished a lot today, and she congratulated herself on it as she stripped off her clothes and stepped under the hot spray in the tiny shower.

  Maybe she’d have to try that outdoor tub sooner rather than later.

  Chapter 6

  Nix had the day off from the market the following day, so he applied himself to the job of renovating the master bathroom at Otter Bluff.

  He needed to replace everything: the vanity, the toilet, the tub and shower enclosure, and of course, the flooring. Then the room would need new lighting, a coat of paint, and some decorative towel racks, and he’d be done.

  Easy.

  He’d need some help with the demo, though—he was only one person, and carrying a bathtub out of the house and into the Dumpster he’d arranged for was more than he could manage on his own.

  Louise’s brother needed work, so Nix had arranged to hire him for the day at Evan’s expense. Together, they removed the bathtub, carried it outside, and heaved it over the side of the Dumpster with a satisfying crash. Then they did the same with the vanity—a horrific relic of the seventies with a pink faux marble countertop—and the toilet, which they might have kept, he guessed, if he hadn’t planned to upgrade to a more water-efficient model.

  They also took down the ugly light fixture and trashed that, and they worked together to pry up the old linoleum flooring.

  At the end of the day, Nix felt sore and tired, but in a good way—in a way that gave him the satisfaction of hard work done well. He paid Leon, then offered him a cold beer to celebrate the end of the workday.

  They were both sweaty, dusty, and tired as they settled into the Adirondack chairs on the back patio, each with a cold beer in his hand, the waves crashing against the bluffs below the house. Nix had kept his hair tied back while he worked to keep it out of his way, but now it was loose and ruffling in the ocean breeze.

  “So. Lou tells me you rented out your place.” Leon looked out at the water. A sailboat near the horizon headed south toward Morro Bay.

  “I did.” Nix nodded and took a deep swig of beer.

  “Wish you’d told me. I’d have taken it.”

  Nix took a moment to savor the idea of Leon in a tiny house. The guy was six foot three and went at least 220 pounds. The shower would fit him like an ACE bandage. Still, he’d have paid the rent on time—if he didn’t, his sister would kick his ass.

  “Wish I had,” Nix said mildly as he looked out at the water. “I’m not sure about the renter.” He told Leon the relevant details about Joy Maxwell, ranging from her shoe collection to her online profile. “I mean, if she’s interested in the Central Coast, she should be down at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara.”

  “Huh. Why isn’t she?”

  “The mysteries of women elude me,” Nix said.

  He’d never uttered a truer sentiment.

  The mystery of this particular woman—at least, the one regarding her choice of living arrangements—became clear to Nix later that night as he relaxed on the Otter Bluff sofa with his laptop open in front of him.

  When he Googled Joy Maxwell, thinking to check out her YouTube channel, he found a video she’d just posted along with a link to her blog.

  He played the video out of curiosity—then almost dropped the laptop onto the floor as he realized what he was seeing.

  It was his house—and she was making fun of it.

  There she was, leading the viewer on a tour of the home Nix had built with his own sweat, his own love and determination. In each space, she offered commentary about the absurdity of tiny houses in general and his own in particular, portraying his home as only slightly better than, say, a medieval dungeon or a Turkish prison.

  There she was with her perky nose and her silky hair, making faces at the camera to indicate her distaste.

  Because Nix was, apparently, a masochist, he moved on to the blog when the video was done. She made the same points there, for the most part, except that the blog allowed her to go into more detail. She contrasted the condo she’d come from—a spacious two-bedroom in Santa Monica—with the place where she now found herself. Barely more than a cardboard box on the side of the road, to hear her tell it.

  Nix was so outraged he couldn’t stay seated, so he put his laptop aside and stood up, running his hands through his hair. Then he sat down again. Then he stood up.

  Shit. Shit. Could he still throw her out? Not likely. There was nothing in the lease agreement that said she couldn’t slander his house on social media.

  He could offer to let her out of the lease, though. He could even suggest it in strong terms.

  Which was exactly what he did moments later when he had her on the phone.

  “I saw your YouTube video,” he said after a perfunctory hello. “And I read your blog. I guess you should have come up to take a look at the place before you signed the lease. It’s fine, though. I’ll let you out of it. You can have your up-front money back, and I’ll prorate the rent. Let’s just pretend the whole thing never happened. And if you could take down the video and the blog, that would be great.”

  He was trying to sound reasonable, but it was a challenge to keep the anger out of his voice.

  “Take them down?” she said. “But … I’ve already gotten more views than for my last four videos combined.”

  “That’s nice, I guess. But it’s insulting, and it’s humiliating. I’m hoping to develop a career designing tiny houses, and seeing you trash-talk the one I built isn’t going to help.”

  “Oh. I didn’t realize—”

  “So, anyway. It’s not for you. I get it. When can you pack up and go?”

  “There must be some mistake,” she said. “I’m not leaving. The place is perfect.”

  The cognitive dissonance made Nix’s head hurt. He rubbed his eyes with his free hand and tried again. “It’s perfect?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “But the whole video was about how much you hated it.”

  “I explained what I was doing on my blog. You said you read it.”

  Nix was starting to think he was missing an important piece of information. “I read it, yeah. It was all about the horrors of the composting toilet and the lack of closet space.”

  “Not that one. The one before it.”

  He sat on the sofa, opened his laptop again, and called up her blog. He found the post about the house, then navigated his way to the one preceding it. He skimmed it while she waited.

  “Wait,” he said when he was done. “This is some kind of stunt, then?”

  “Not a stunt. A … a concept. A project. I’m thinking of calling it Downsized. Or maybe From Tony to Tiny. I kind of like that last one, personally.”

  “You’re writing a memoir.” Suddenly, things were becoming clearer.

  “Yes, but not just that. It’s a whole multimedia project. YouTube, the blog, social media. Pinterest. Then the eventual book.” She sounded damned proud of herself.

  “What, like Orange Is the New Black but without the jumpsuits?”

  She laughed. “That’s funny.”

  He didn’t feel much humor in it, himself.

  “Big-city girl moves to the country and goes minimalist, with entertaining results. Well, hopefully the results will be entertaining,” she said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “What, you don’t like it?” she asked.

  Objectively, he could admit that the idea had merit. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t offended.

  “That’s all fine,” he said. “I mean, I can see how it might work. But it’s based on you ridiculing my place, something I spent countless hours of work building. It means something to me, and you’re just �
� you’re pretending it’s the Amityville Horror house. Only smaller.”

  “Oh, come on.” She sounded as exasperated as he felt. “It’s business. It’s entertainment. It’s not personal.”

  “Except, you know what? It kind of is.”

  Joy got off the phone feeling profoundly misunderstood. Was he really so sensitive that he couldn’t see she was creating a product? Couldn’t he see she was acting? Well, mostly. She really had been horrified by the composting toilet and the size of the shower.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to like what she was doing. He wasn’t her target audience, and anyway, they’d both signed the lease. It wasn’t like he could kick her out if he didn’t enjoy her videos.

  That night, Amber called to check in and to tell Joy she’d seen the first video—the one giving a tour of the tiny house.

  “Oh my God, it was great. The look on your face when you showed the outdoor tub! And that thing about the Beverly Hillbillies in reverse? It was funny, Joy. I think you’re onto something here.”

  “I hope so.” Now that Amber was recounting all that Joy had said on the video, Joy started to feel bad about it. She started to see what had upset Nix.

  “You don’t sound too upbeat about it,” Amber said. “Your views are up. That’s good, right?”

  “Yeah, it’s good.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “There’s no problem,” Joy insisted. She was sitting on the sofa in the living area of the tiny house, and she was so close to the kitchen she could practically reach out and touch the refrigerator.

  “Bullshit,” Amber said. “I’ve known you since we were in middle school. I know your voices. There’s something wrong.”

  “It’s just … he saw the video. The landlord.”

  Amber giggled. “That must have been awkward.”

  “It was. Especially since he built the place.”

  “Oh.” Amber wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “Was I an ass?” Joy asked. “In the video, and on my blog. Did I come off as some entitled princess?”

  “Well, yes,” Amber said. “But that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? Entitled princess goes minimalist? Riches to rags?”