Rules of Lying (Jane Dough Series) (5 page)

“You aren’t trying to get out of paying your bill, are you?” He sported a curious grin.

“Certainly not!” I did my very best to sound indignant. In my experience that worked when you wanted people to mind their own business. At least it worked when other people did it to me. He let me go, and I straightened my clothes and myself in an attempt to look like anything other than a woman who had crawled out a second-story window and rolled to the ground. “In fact, I’ll pay them double if they’ll take my name off the roster and forget I was here.”

The grin grew wider.

“I’m serious. And don’t worry about the bill. They’ll get their money. They know where I live.”

I turned on my heel and strode off with as much dignity as I could muster, considering I’d lost one of my shoes. It was my favorite pair of sandals too, but I was so glad to get away without further humiliation that I told myself I didn’t care.

When I got home I went straight to the bathroom, tore off my clothes, and stood under the pulsating shower massage until what seemed like bedtime. I put the unfortunate incident out of my mind. Tomorrow would mark my first full day working my butt off to get my property in conformance, and that meant I needed a good night’s sleep.

As I was getting out of the shower, it hit me that in spite of all I’d been through at the doctor’s office, I hadn’t gotten any blasted medicine for my rash or herpes or whatever it was.

Dang!

I
was jarred awake by an insistent doorbell. I slid out of bed and staggered, sore in places I didn’t know I had. Criminy. How was I going to whip my yard into shape when I was so out of shape myself?

I pulled on clothes that I grabbed off the floor and peeked out the peephole to see my sister Nicole, who’s two years older than me. When we were kids we passed for twins. We had the same dark blond hair and blue eyes, were the same average height and build, and wore the same clothes. While our faces have changed, most physical characteristics still match, except for our hair. My dark blond was a little longer than shoulder length and when not in a ponytail, pretty much hung as it pleased, while Nicole’s, a golden blond, was styled in a becoming, angled bob.

Nicole was wearing a pink rayon two-piece jacket and dress that cut across her knees. Her low-heeled matching pumps and shoulder bag completed the ensemble, making her look every inch the respectable young lady ready for church even though she was headed to her job as project manager for a local technology firm.

I did a quick downward sweep of my own attire. A blue-and-purple-striped pajama top with a mustard stain in the middle. Green and white polka-dotted pajama bottoms that I’d pulled on inside out. No one would mistake us for twins now.

I thought about going back to bed, but Nicole would never let me get away with that. There is an interesting dynamic between us, one that’s been there since my birth. In a family where everyone would rather be dead than say what’s really on their minds, Nicole and I say exactly what we think, but only to each other. I previously thought we spoke freely because we respected each other enough not to lie, but I’ve since changed my mind. We just know each other so well there’s no point in lying. Plus neither of us is willing to spend the extra time it takes to dance around the truth.

The pained, impatient look on Nicole’s face told me I was in for a worthless visit where my conduct was dissected and criticized, followed by advice that would have more to do with what people thought than what I wanted.

I yanked open the door and was smacked in the stomach by a newspaper. Like the whirlwind she usually is, Nicole passed me without stopping. She propelled herself down the hall to the bathroom, entered, and slammed the door. From behind the door she yelled, “Go ahead and explain it. Not that I expect to believe anything you say, but I’d just like to hear it from your mouth. For posterity.”

“Your posterity or mine?” I shouted back. The chances of my having one weren’t looking so good.

I unfolded the paper and shrieked. There I was—or rather, there my
ass
was—hanging over the roof of the medical clinic. I now knew what that ripping sound had been.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a minute to shield myself from the ghastly photo, though of course that didn’t work since I opened them to take a second look. In fact, I couldn’t seem to stop looking, and I finally understood about not being able to turn away from a car crash.

The only thing worse than having your butt caught mooning the world in a thong was to have a large black dot stamped over it as though the sight might emotionally scar the reading public for life. Or maybe that wasn’t worse. At least most of my butt was hidden behind the dot. A rather humungous dot, unfortunately. I wanted to kill the guy who invented the cellphone camera. It had to have been a guy. A woman would never invent something that could record us at moments like this.

Above the picture the headline read,
Romance Writer Shows More Than Guts.
Oh, for Heaven’s sake. I didn’t read the article. I didn’t want to know if the word
herpes
was in there. I didn’t want to have to kill myself.

“What will people think?” Nicole yelled over the flushing of the toilet. “First the husband hunting and now this. I’m not even going to ask what you were doing on that roof. All I want to know is, are you
trying
to destroy our reputations?”

Hmmm.
I
was the one with the butt hanging out for the whole world to see, but did anyone in the family think about me? No! But I was expected to think about them, and worry about what everyone else would think about
them
, thanks to their association with me.

“Gee, Nicole, it seems that you’d be asking some different questions if you cared about me at all. Like, ‘Jane, you aren’t going to have a breakdown over your butt being in front of the whole world, are you?’ Or ‘Jane, you didn’t hurt yourself climbing out of a two-story window and jumping to the ground, did you?’”

Or Jane, you aren’t going to keep eating like a pig when you have a butt like that, are you?

“I don’t know how you can joke at a time like this. Mother is so upset,” Nicole said, striding back to the foyer. “She’s afraid to step outside for fear of running into a reporter.”

“I’d believe that except she’s the one who’s always telling the reporters the embarrassing things about me,” I said. “No one would have bothered taking my picture if I hadn’t already been in the news, thanks to Mom. And I wouldn’t have had to jump out the window at all if everyone hadn’t recognized my name.”

“You know she can’t help it. A reporter started asking all those questions, and you know what happens when Mom gets flustered.”

I certainly did. Whenever Mom’s under stress, she exhibits Tourette’s syndrome without the cussing. No one has a clue what might come out of her mouth, not even Mom. But I didn’t think she should get away with that for an excuse. Considering that
her
mantra was “What isn’t changed is chosen,” it didn’t seem fair to give her a free ride for life.

“And, Jane, please put some other toilet paper in your bathroom. If I hadn’t had tissues with me, I would have had to drip dry. Mom bought that cheap toilet paper with the lotion that you have in there, and it took us two weeks to get over the horrible blistery rash it caused.”

Hmmm,
I thought as I watched Nicole march to her car. Two weeks, eh? Not a worthless visit after all.

*****

I secured my hair in a ponytail and slathered sunscreen on my face, neck, and arms. I swiped on some mascara and added a touch of lipstick. I wouldn’t ordinarily wear make-up when working in the yard, but there was the possibility that Hank Tyler might stroll by. Not that I was looking to boink another one of my neighbors. The situation with Alberto would be a thorn in my side until one of us moved, though I couldn’t blame myself since he hadn’t been a neighbor when he asked me out.

I had just finished pulling on shorts and a tank top when the doorbell rang.

I slid my feet into flip-flops and eyed my visitor through the peephole. He had “husband applicant” written all over him. I really hadn’t expected anyone to show up without calling, but then, maybe he had called. Maybe he was one of the guys I’d put off with that yarn about the appointments being taken. I’d have to run that yarn by this guy again. But wait a minute …

What had Sue said? That one of the guys might be perfect for me?

If so, I doubted it would be this guy. On first peep he didn’t look my type. He was short with pale skin and scraggly white-blond hair. He was a bit over average build in his worn jeans, tight T-shirt, and sneakers. That bit extra didn’t look like muscle; it looked like too much pasta and beer.

I was tempted to pretend I wasn’t home, but I thought again of Sue, so I opened the door. The guy introduced himself to my breasts. Since I hadn’t taught them how to speak, the conversation went downhill from there.

He was just exiting the courtyard when a second guy bounded up the walk. This one was a hundred and eighty degrees from applicant number one. He was tall, tanned, and wearing nice jeans, a company shirt, boots, and a hard hat. He had dark blue eyes and when he removed his hat, his hair was thick, short, and golden brown. I tried to imagine myself married to him. It wasn’t completely off the radar. Maybe Sue was right.

He didn’t spare my breasts a glance. Instead, his gaze went straight to the wall behind me. “Nice crown moulding,” he said, scribbling something on his clipboard. “How new are those wood floors?”

He was eager to see my property, so I spent the next twenty minutes trying to explain what I wanted to do with my land while he kept interrupting me with questions about the age of the sprinkler system, the exterior paint, and the roof. He seemed interested in the age of everything except me; in fact, he didn’t appear to be interested in me at all. If I went into the house and sent out a zombie in my place, he’d never even notice.

“Are you game for helping me turn this land into what I’ve described?” I asked just for the hell of it when we arrived back at my front door.

He blinked and looked around, as though seeing the property for the first time. “It’ll take me about a week to level all this. Then we can sell and get our money out of it.”

Jeez.
Typical man. He hadn’t listened to a word. I shook my head and walked into the house. When I checked the window a couple of minutes later, he was still standing out there, wearing a puzzled look.

Prospect number three showed up as number two pulled out, and I was pretty sure he was homeless, mainly because he was on foot, his clothing was ragged, and he compared everything to food. The stucco reminded him of the fried okra his mother used to make, the red clematis climbing the courtyard wall could have been juicy tomatoes on the vine, and the color of the warm oak floor that he could see from the doorway brought back memories of toasted marshmallows. I fixed him a ham sandwich, which he inhaled, so I fixed him another, which he hid inside his shirt when he thought I wasn’t looking.

He was genuinely distressed when I turned him down with the lie that I’d already found someone for the job. I felt bad as I watched him shuffle down the drive, so I ran after him, brandishing the few dollars of cash I had. After telling him that if he ever needed anything—and really, I meant
food
—he could stop by, I trudged back toward my house.

*****

“Don’t tell me you’re
payin’
men to interview,” came Hank Tyler’s drawl from behind me.

The heat of a blush crawled up my neck as I swung around to face him. He had shaved off his beard, leaving a smooth, square jaw in its place. The corners of his mouth twitched, and his eyes were lit up with a softness that told me he knew exactly what had transpired.

“That’ll fetch him some dinner,” he added.

“I hope so. I hope he won’t end up drinking it.”

“No luck so far?”

I shook my head. “A jerk, a jerk, and a frail, homeless guy.” For the briefest moment I had the urge to tell Hank the truth, that I hadn’t run an ad, that I’d only put the sign in my yard to piss off my family and now was stuck pretending to interview strangers. There was something about his eyes that made me want to trust him. But trusting some guy I’d met only two days earlier would be insane, and like I was constantly trying to convince my mother,
I
wasn’t.

“Did you see the truck the other guy was drivin’?” Hank asked. “Davis Demolition. I’ll bet he was more interested in tearin’ the place down than fixin’ it up.”

“You’d bet right. I told him all my hopes and dreams for this place … he might as well have been wearing ear plugs.”

Hank lifted his cowboy hat and ran his hand over his head. His scalp was suspiciously darker than the last time I saw him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t bald after all.

His gaze swept over my property, and I followed it, trying to guess what he saw. My property consisted of four of the original half-acre lots, sitting side by side. The only other lot on my side of the street was at the other end and it was vacant, without even a house. It had been cleared, though, a few months earlier, except for several large healthy oaks and a small pine grove. The new owner, whom I’d never met, kept the grass mowed and edged. The effect was a yard that was a little too tidy to be natural, but appeared serene nonetheless.

My property was another story. My house sat in the middle of my first and second lots. This was nice for me since my front door didn’t face either Sheila’s house or Alberto’s but looked out instead at the privacy fence that ran between their properties. Running the length of their fence was a neatly landscaped and mulched area that extended out about fifteen feet. The landscaped area was bordered in the back by tall orange-red firecracker plants and in the front by low-creeping blue-green juniper, and filled in with flowering shrubs and tufts of lilies in shades of purplish blue and golden yellow. Red azalea peeked through in the spring, and pansies would pop out in the fall. I adored the view from my house.

I doubted Sheila and Alberto felt the same. My yard was a disaster. An assortment of weeds had replaced what had no doubt been shrubbery around the house. The weeds had grown so profusely, they’d ended up choking each other to death and now stood lifeless and brown against the stucco walls. On the plus side, the house was fawn-colored; I wasn’t crazy about the color—I planned to repaint a pretty yellow or creamy white—but at least the weeds blended into the walls. On the minus side, nobody driving by would waste much time looking at the house when there was a wild tropical jungle around it to gaze upon instead. Or maybe that was another plus.

The plethora of plants was only part of the problem with my property though. The ground in the third lot was too low, and rain collected among the weeds. An army of mosquitoes swarmed there and now, in the middle of summer, it stank something fierce, no doubt from the thickening plant growth that turned the area into a swamp. Scrub brush surrounded the water. It would be a nightmare to clean up.

And then there were the structures—two pergolas, three walking bridges, a gazebo, and several roofed benches had rotted beyond use. In some cases, the only things holding the structures together were the thick vines that covered them.

Still, I loved every inch of my property because I could see the possibilities—if I ignored the swamp. The swamp I could have done without.

I wondered if Hank saw the possibilities or if he only saw the mess. I got my answer when he pulled his gaze away from the scenery to fix it on me, his eyes dark with emotion.