Authors: Claire Cook
I shifted the snifter so the light would catch it, but I still came up clueless. Why hadn’t I kept reading mysteries after I graduated from Nancy Drew?
“A little early, isn’t it?” Josh’s voice said behind me.
The snifter in my hand hit the concrete bar and shattered instantly, stale Kahlúa spattering my favorite denim jacket and white T-shirt like a zillion little freckles. As hip as they are, never ever put in concrete counters if you’re the least bit attached to your glasses and dishes. They’re simply unforgiving.
I started picking up the glass and then decided that, given the circumstances, my outfit was more important.
“Clean cloth and soda water,” I said.
“Aye-aye,” Josh said. He found a cloth behind the bar. When he pushed the button on the soda nozzle, it let out a blast of air. “Shall I try the Sprite?”
“Water,” I said. “Unless that thing has Oxiclean on tap.”
Josh laughed, which I thought was unfair, since I hadn’t intended to be funny. I made sure his fingers didn’t graze mine when he handed me the dampened cloth. I couldn’t even look at him, but out of the corner of my eye I could see he was wearing jeans and a Woodstock T-shirt. I mean, give me a break, he was probably too young to have even been born at Woodstock.
“Is that your mother’s T-shirt?” slipped out of my mouth, possibly a result of overcaffeination.
Josh stopped picking up the shards of glass. “Excuse me?”
I looked him right in the eye. “I saw you. I saw you kissing a woman on the street.”
Josh didn’t look away. “And you’re asking me if it was my mother?”
“Ick.” This guy really was a sicko. “I’m not asking you anything. I’m telling you that I drove by over the weekend and saw you kissing another woman. In broad daylight. On the street. Between two Bradford pear trees.”
He smiled. I wanted to kill him. Or at least ground him.
“They were flowering,” I said randomly, as if this would prove that I’d been there and maybe even wipe that smirk off his face.
“You should have stopped,” Josh said. “That was Melissa. We’ve been friends since college. We wandered around and then picked up pizza for her husband. And three kids.”
I looked for signs of lying, perhaps a small twitch or a higher pitch to his voice. I’d read somewhere that women often lie to make others look good, while men are more likely to lie to make themselves look good. I’d also read that women think they look much worse than they actually do, and men think they look substantially better. I thought these two tidbits might be related, to each other and to this situation, and when I had the time to sit down and meditate about them at length, I hoped to come to some profound conclusion.
In the meantime I’d focus on the most important thing. “You didn’t cheat on Denise with her?”
“Hardly.” Josh took out his cell and flipped open the lid. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask Melissa yourself.”
“That’s okay,” I said quickly.
We looked at each other.
I looked away first. I bunched up the damp cloth and started wiping down the bar. “Don’t tell Denise, okay?” I said. “She’ll kill me.”
Josh smiled. “Don’t give it another thought. She’s lucky to have you for a friend.”
The phone in his hand let out the first few tinny notes of “Stairway to Heaven.”
Josh pushed the Off button.
If you’re ever trying to figure out if someone is lying to you, watch carefully. Are the answers to your questions delayed? Does the face become stiffer, the lips tighter? Are the palms balled into fists? Are the shoulders hunched? Is the potential liar pale? Breathing heavily?
I simply couldn’t tell. But I was watching him.
I’D MET DAN THE HANDYMAN
on the highway on Zebra Day. He showed up on time with a big truck and a couple of beefy sidekicks and got right to work. Josh and I figured out what would stay and what would go, marking the trash with big
X
s made from a roll of orange plastic tape we’d found. When we finished, Josh headed out for sandwiches and coffee while I unpacked the sample paint colors I’d picked up over the weekend.
Chocolate walls were a no-brainer if we were going to call the hotel Hot Chocolate. They’d also give the hotel the feeling of relaxed sophistication I was going for. But it went beyond that. I’d once read that a blind person entering a red room actually feels warmer than when entering a white room. I wanted sightless and sighted visitors alike to feel the warm, decadent, comforting kiss of chocolate when they stayed in this hotel.
For a chocolate lover, there are four basic food groups: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate martinis. My design plan was to hit them all.
I’d use the richest, deepest chocolate for the main public spaces and lighter flavors in the adjacent areas. Benjamin Moore Chocolate Fondue was a real contender, but my gut was that Behr Iced Espresso was going to edge it out. Iced Espresso was a rich, sophisticated chocolate brown with black undertones. Back in the day, you might find a shade like this in a smoking room or a man’s study. Repurposing a traditionally manly color had the added bonus of giving it kind of an illicit feel, the way women must have felt when they first traded in their whalebone corsets and petticoats for the comfort of pantaloons.
I painted large swatches of each color on several walls. I’d let them cure and deepen, and in forty-eight hours I’d know for sure.
I believed in keeping life and color palettes streamlined and simple. Since the life part was a little rocky right now, I’d redeem myself in the color department by sticking to the tried-and-true 60:30:10 rule. I’d use 60 percent of the deepest color, either Chocolate Fondue or Iced Espresso, then 30 percent of a lighter color like Behr’s Cliff Rock or Sherwin-Williams Nomadic Desert on the ceilings and an occasional wall. The 10 percent would be our accent color, maybe a pop of fun turquoise or deep teal or even a spicy red. A warm white chocolate trim would bring it all together if I went with the red or teal. If I went with the turquoise, I’d go with a shade closer to whipped cream or the marshmallows you’d put in hot chocolate.
All these paint names were actually making my stomach growl. Oddly enough, I didn’t really
feel
hungry. Maybe surrounding guests in the color of chocolate would make them feel as satisfied as actually eating it, the way flipping through an occasional cookbook satisfied any residual urge I still had to cook.
Josh kicked the front door open. He put a big white paper bag on the bar and began pulling out sandwiches and coffee.
He handed me a chocolate rose.
I kept my hands at my sides. “What’s that?”
He laughed. “I just thought we should mark the occasion.” He put the rose in the empty snifter on the bar. “Never mind, I got peanut M&M’s, too—all this chocolate talk is killing me.”
I took a quick bite of a turkey sandwich and went back to painting.
“Soup’s on,” Josh yelled to Dan and his posse the next time they passed through.
I kept painting.
“Okay, well,” Josh said. “I’ve got some work to catch up on, so if you don’t need me for anything. . . .”
“Just a check,” I said. I nodded at the three guys inhaling their sandwiches. “And I’ll need a deposit for the electrician and the plumber, too.”
Josh finished chewing a bite of sandwich. “How long do you think the whole thing will take?”
“Not a minute longer than it has to,” I said.
He pointed to a paint sample. “I like that one.”
He had a good eye. He’d picked the perfect contemporary accent for the chocolate walls and white chocolate trim.
“That’s Million Dollar Red,” I said.
“I like the sound of that.” Josh popped a handful of M&M’s in his mouth and held out the bag.
I tried to resist, but somehow I took the bag from him anyway. “Everybody does,” I said. “I think we should use it on the front door, too. It’s good feng shui.”
Josh nodded. “So, what’s next for you?”
My eyes teared up. “I have absolutely no idea.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized he meant the job. I looked up at the ceiling so my tears would drain back into my eyes.
“Paint fumes,” I said, even though we were using zero-VOC paint so there really weren’t any.
He didn’t say anything.
I popped an M&M into my mouth. “Shopping. Shopping’s next. What I meant was I’m not sure which store to start with, but I’ll make a quick loop to see what’s out there before the electrician and plumber get here.”
I carefully counted out three more M&M’s and handed the bag back to Josh.
“Want some company?” he said.
“I thought you had work to do.”
“I can do it later.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I’m driving.”
Before we left I wrapped up the remaining half of my turkey sandwich and grabbed the chocolate rose off the bar.
Josh wrinkled his forehead. “I think there’s still a bag of chips left.”
I found them at the bottom of the big white bag.
“Is your daughter not feeding you?” Josh asked.
“I’ll meet you outside,” I said. I jogged the half block and dropped off lunch for the homeless woman. Her eyes were closed, so I just put the rose on her lap and the sandwich beside her.
I thought I heard her say thank you, but I was jogging away too quickly to be sure.
The hotel and restaurant surplus outlet was a huge flat-roofed mint green building in what appeared to be a sketchy part of the city.
“I don’t know about this,” Josh said. “I’m not sure we should even get out of the car here.”
“Relax,” I said. “I haven’t lost a client yet.”
“By the way,” Josh said. “You’re allowed to park in the hotel parking lot.”
I took the keys out of the ignition. “As soon as I find it, I’m planning to.”
The minute we got inside, I was in bargain-hunter’s heaven. I found the padded and tufted chocolate Ultrasuede headboards first.
“I don’t know,” Josh said. “Are you sure they’re even new?”
“At that price, of course they’re not new,” I said. “They’re rejects from a five-star hotel somewhere. But what do we care? They’re in great shape, and they’ll take up most of the wall and make a huge statement.”
Josh tilted his head. “They do sort of look like big Hershey bars.”
The hotel had forty rooms, and there were exactly forty-one king-size headboards. “One for good luck,” I said.
Josh still didn’t look convinced. “Shouldn’t we put two beds in some of the rooms?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “If we’re targeting solo female travelers, they’re not going to be sharing a room. And I’m not sure we should even make that an option. We want to put a guest in each room, not pack ’em in like sardines.”
“What do we do with the headboards we already have?”
“Sell them,” I said. “I’m hoping we can get this place to load up what we don’t want on the delivery truck.”
Josh nodded. “Good thinking. Do you want me to do the negotiating?”
“Just smile and look pretty,” I said. “I’ll do the talking.”
I found folding luggage racks for the suitcases to sit on. There were only twelve with animal print strapping, but there were lots with solid tan strapping, which would be almost as good. Nothing says boutique hotel room like folding luggage racks.
Everything else that looked good was in smaller lots, but in some ways, that was more fun. Five butterscotch leather chairs, four funky night tables, plenty of mismatched lamps. We’d keep the little desks and chairs we already had and replace the clunky armoires with more streamlined consoles.
“What about this?” Josh held up a crackle finish lamp that looked like a snowman wearing a lampshade.
“Good find,” I said, partly because he looked so excited and partly because there was only one of them.
“It’s like a scavenger hunt,” he said. “I had no idea shopping could be fun.”
“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe you’ve just found your next profession.”
He put the lamp down next to the headboard. I’d brought the roll of orange tape, and we were marking all our stuff with
X
s so nobody else walked off with it.
Josh ran a hand through his hair and smiled his Johnny Depp smile. “I don’t think so. It’s the novelty I like—that’s why I jump from project to project. I’m great in the beginning, but I suck at maintenance. I get bored easily. Always have.”
He held out this flaw like a prize, or maybe a challenge. Once upon a time, I knew the thrill of the chase with guys like this.
What if you were the one who could change him? What if he never got bored with
you
?
“S
O,” I SAID
.
“So,” Chance said.
Thus far, that was one of the high points of our conversation.
I’d thought about stopping to pick up something to assemble for dinner on the way home, but I didn’t want to set a precedent. I mean, assembling a meal wasn’t something I did for just anyone, and I wasn’t sure a son-in-law with two perfectly good arms of his own qualified. Generations of women had fought hard for the right not to cook. The weight of their slaving over the stove was on my shoulders, so I didn’t plan on entering into this decision lightly.
Chance’s reasons for not throwing his hat into the dinner-making ring were his own. In any case, I’d just pulled into the driveway when my son-in-law rolled his white BMW SUV up beside me. It was dusted with an inch of yellow pollen like the rest of the cars in springtime Atlanta, so that made it a bit less pretentious. But it was still too flashy for my taste, and the fact that describing it required a double dip of acronyms really bugged me.
“Here we go,” I said to the GPS as I unplugged it.
I stepped out of the comfort of my air-conditioned car and into the blazing Atlanta heat.
“Hot one,” Chance and I said at the exact same time.
“Owe me a Coke,” I said.
“Sure will,” Chance said. “I think we might could have some. I’m a sweet tea man myself.”
“Never mind,” I said.
I waited for him to unlock the side door. He held it open and let me walk in first. After that the choreography fell apart, and we were like dance partners without a leader.