Cursing himself for not having taken the time to program his cell phone, Zack pulled over before he reached the rental house so that he could try Zina's number again. This time she answered, breathless.
"I just ducked in to change, Zack. I'm on my way to the shelter—there's been a huge crisis, a fire in a house where a man had two dozen cats. A bunch of them died, some are at the vet's, and we're taking the others. I've
got
to go!"
He may as well have been talking to a volunteer fireman after a three-alarm bell. Inappropriately relieved, considering the cause, Zack said, "I'll stop by late to see that everything is, you know, okay."
"Sure, fine, late. Gotta go!"
So that was that, at least for the moment. Next crisis.
It was Wendy who answered the door. It should have been a disappointment to Zack, who had planned to relish the freaked-out look on Jim's face. But he wasn't disappointed at all; he was pleased.
And self-conscious. He felt as if he were on a blind date as he said, "I hear you've
got a problem with your plumbin
g.
"
"Oh! I
—you're
not Pete."
She sounded nearly as awkward as he felt; it made for a good equalizer, somehow. He explained that Pete had another commitment—leaving it for Pete to say he'd gone a-bowling—and said, "If you like, I could give it a shot."
He was surprised and oddly satisfied to see how embarrassed she became over his offer. Her cheeks turned a very pretty pink and her eyelids fluttered down in distress. "I can't ask you to do that," she said, looking back up at him. "Pete is one thing; but you're—"
"Just the help?"
"Well
... yes," she said, forthrightly enough. "Plumbers get sixty dollars an hour. Considering the quote he gave us for the addition, I somehow doubt that Pete's paying you quite that much," she said dryly.
Before he could come up with anything snappy, she said, "I know! I'll pay you what I'd pay a real plumber. At least then I wouldn't feel guilty."
The only guilt Zack could sense was settling itself nicely over his shoulders. Damn it! Why did she have to be so scrupulous? So candid? So damned attractive?
He said, "Thanks, but that's not necessary. Consider this a return for the lemonade. Besides—you don't know if I can fix it."
"I've seen you hold a hammer," she said simply. "You can fix it."
What the connection was, Zack didn't know. But he felt unaccountably pleased that she'd watched him work and approved of what she saw.
"I've called every plumber in the book," she said, leading him up a beautifully detailed stairwell. "They say you can tell a boom is over when a contractor starts returning your calls. All I can say to that is: we ain't in no recession
, despite what people say
."
"You're right about that," Zack said with a laugh. Good thing, too; the
skilled-
labor shortage had forced Pete to hire him sight unseen—and, of course, had put Zack in a position to destroy Wendy's life. How fascinated she'd be to know that, he thought, depressed.
They walked past a closed door that muted the sounds of a video game being played on the other side of it.
“
Tyler
, this is a five-minute warning. You've been at it for over an hour," she said, pausing briefly before showing Zack the bathroom at the far end of the hall.
"This is the guest bath," she told Zack. "The owner obviously had a lot of work besides painting done right before we moved in; the tiles look brand-new. I think even the toilet is new."
It was a nice but not insanely expensive makeover, the kind of thing an owner does to freshen up a place before he puts it on the market: new white
subway
tiles, pale
gray
walls, pedestal sink, and white mosaic floor.
Classic in its simplicity.
"See where the water is in the toilet—how high?"
It was an odd place for Zack to be, staring down the bowl of a toilet with the woman who had usurped his sister's lawful place in a marriage—but there they were. "When did you notice this? After you flushed?"
"No,
Tyler
told me about it. I was in the basement when he yelled down. I was down there because I'd heard a really weird glug-glug sound—I think, from the laundry sink. After I found out about the toilet, that was it; I headed straight for the phone."
That was bad, bad news. It meant the toilet wasn't plugged, but the sewer line was. So much for pulling the fixture and clearing it. Zack said, "Let me just check something."
Either she heard it in his voice, or she saw it on his face: the repair was not going to be simple. Tagging along after him down the stairs to the basement, she began ticking off her sins: "I did four loads of laundry. We all showered. I did dishes. I took a
bath.
The tub is huge; it was irresistible," she explained.
He tried not to picture her in it.
"Was it too much?" she asked meekly. "Is the plumbing too old for so much consumption?"
He was running water into the laundry sink, but it wasn't going anywhere. "This isn't anything you did. There's something stopping the water from draining. Maybe tree roots have invaded the sewer line; that's usually the reason. I think you need to call a rooter-guy for this."
Relieved that it wasn't their fault, but upset that the solution wasn't easy, Wendy explained that she was having a big party the next day for her mother's sixty-fifth birthday.
"I can't believe it. We're here less than two days, and the place is going to be as torn up as our lot on
Sheldon Street
. Maybe it's us," she moaned good-naturedly as she pulled out the Yellow Pages.
He waited, although he had no reason to, while she called the few listings and, needless to say, had to end up leaving messages with each of their voice mails. Either trees were attacking drainpipes all over town, or all of the contractors were out bowling.
Her smile was resigned. "Well
... I appreciate your sticking around this long, Zack. But you really shouldn't waste any more of your time. Eventually one of them will call back. Worst case, we can always go back to our house."
"Yeah, okay," he said. But something was nagging at the back of his mind.
In the meantime, she was glancing at the front door with a puzzled frown. "I can't imagine where Jim got lost today."
Zack could. It couldn't be easy, stealing that kind of change from your wife. Your alleged wife. He might be going through financial somersaults even as Wendy was fretting about him.
"Will they have to tear up the bricks?" she asked. "Because that would be a disaster. I guess I should call the real estate agent and warn her," she said, going to the refrigerator to read a business card on it.
"Hold it. Wait a minute." The nagging little something at the back of Zack's mind stepped forward and formed a hunch. "Something like this happened on a house rehab I was involved in. It's a long shot, but: it could be that someone got sloppy during the upgrade of the guest bath and flushed some construction debris that made it as far as the trap and then got stuck. Drywall, a piece of lath, who knows? Yeah; it's possible."
Zack trotted down the stairs again, wondering why in God's name he was trying so hard to ace some guy from Roto-Rooter, until he realized that it was Wendy he was trying to score points with. If she ever found out what he was up to—if things didn't go well in his high-risk plan—he wanted Wendy Hodene to know that at least once, he'd been willing to move hell and high water for her. Literally.
She stood right behind him, all ears as he explained where the main sewer drain could be tapped into and examined. "I'm going to have to uncap the grease trap. You might want to close the basement door behind you when you go upstairs," he warned her in an understatement. "It's not going to smell real great down here."
"I'm not going anywhere," she said steadfastly. "You're going to operate? Then you'll need a nurse."
"Hand me the bucket, would you?"
"Yessir."
"And the flashlight, please. Shine it right
... there; yeah, like that. Good."
Wendy had changed her share of diapers in life, but she was definitely breathing through her mouth on this one. She wanted this exploration over with
so
much.
She watched as Zack poked around the trap with a long screwdriver, thinking,
this guy's a definite hero, whether or not he manages to pull this off
. She felt incredibly grateful to him for his effort.
"This is the single nicest thing that anyone has ever done for me," she said as she stood above him with the flashlight. Laughing softly, she added, "Does that make me weird, or what?"
He didn't answer except to say, "I think I feel something."
Oh, please, let it be so.
"How are you going to—"
"Breadbag, please."
She stepped back and fetched him the outer plastic wrapper that she'd filched off her Pepperidge Farm bread. He slipped the bag over his hand
—
her rubber gloves had been far too small for him
—
and
plunged it into the trap. After a poke here and a stab there, he grabbed at something and worked it out of the hole.
"
Ta-dah," he said in a deadpan voice. He dumped a blackened strip of what looked like a very large splinter of wood into the bucket, then peeled off the wet bread wrapper and dropped it in the bucket as well.
"Believe it not, this isn't that unusual an occurrence. You generally give the newest kids the demolition work, and sometimes they don't know to close the lid on the toilet before they go knocking down the wall behind it. The toilet gets flushed, the wood jams the trap, and the backup starts."
"That explains it. Kids. Why does that not surprise me?" she said, watching him walk over to the basement sink holding up his hands like a surgeon in pre-op.
Taking the obvious cue, she jumped to turn on the water for him and then pumped half a bottle of liquid soap into the upturned palms of his hands. God only knew what germs were assaulting him.
In fact, he was filthy. It must have been bad enough to have sweated in the heat all day, but to top it off on your knees in a dank, spider-filled basement clearing out a sewer line...
.
"I feel so bad for you," she blurted. "You must feel so
... yech."
He was soaping his sinewy arms all the way up to his biceps, proof enough that she'd got it right. He turned to her and winked. "All in a day's work," he said with a barely there but wonderful smile.
It was the oddest thing. Something inside of her took a tiny little hop, like a sparrow that's been scratching for food. She smiled back, but very shyly, and said, "Do you live close, at least?"
"Uh, no," he said, rinsing one arm, then the other, under the high-spout faucet. "
Worcester
."
"That's a long drive. Do you want a blanket—a towel or something—to throw over the seat of your truck?"
"Because—"
"Of germs! People get cholera doing what you did. I'd feel terrible if—"
"I got cholera? I don't think you need to worry about that, Wendy."
She was acutely, surprisingly aware that he'd never called her by her name before. Somehow, whenever he had looked at or said something to her, the word "ma'am" seemed to be hovering unspoken.
"You know what I think?" she began.
There were times in her life when she went entirely by instinct, and this turned out to be one of them. "I think you should shower here first before you drive all the way back. Really. I'd feel so much less guilty if you did."
"No, that's nice of you, but—"
"Please"
she said over his protests. "If Jim were home, I know he'd insist on it. That was such a generous thing you did—and your deductions, I think, were brilliant. I'm so impressed. The only thing is, your clothes. I don't have anything in the house that would fit you. You're broader than Jim and maybe
... smaller around the, the
..." She whirled a finger in a little circle. "Middle," she finished up, embarrassed to be sizing him up like some tailor.
"For that matter, I carry a change of clothes in the truck," he said after considering her offer.
She had watched the look on his face progress from "Dumb idea" to "Why not?" as her own feelings went from misgivings to relief. It was the obvious, the civil, the only thing to do.
"Good! Then that's that. I'll bring you fresh towels;
Tyler
's are undoubtedly—well,
Tyler
's," she said lamely, unused to having guests. "And you can test the water flow, so you'd be doing me a favor, when you get right down to it."
He laughed and said, "Anything to oblige."
She washed in a hurry and they went upstairs together, and while Zack went out for his duffel, she grabbed an armful of towels for him. On the second floor they were intercepted by a very curious Tyler, who stared at Zack, looked at his mother, glanced at the towels, and said, "Can I use the toilet yet? Otherwise I'm gonna have to go to somebody's house."