Olivia smiled. Roni clearly liked Jason very much. Olivia hoped she liked him enough to find excuses to return to South Carolina as soon as possible and frequently and that Jason would remain available. It was a lot to hope for.
“I looked at both of them. They just want records. Keep copies for us and send the originals over to our accountants. Tell the accountants to give them whatever information they want. We don’t have anything to hide.”
“Right. I know we don’t. It’s just unnerving. And it generates expenses we don’t need.”
“That’s the real issue. And it makes me nervous. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve ever shown a loss.”
“Yeah, well, you know I always say better days are coming.”
“They’d better get here soon.”
“Do you want me to call all our vendors to send swatches and samples here?”
“Yes, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before now.”
“Because your head is still in Manhattan. “
“What’s the matter with you and Nick? Don’t you know it’s rude to read other people’s minds?”
“Whatever. I’ll send you a duplicate of your portfolio too. In fact, I’ll send it in PowerPoint as well.”
Her book was all she really needed to acquire projects. Once a prospective client saw the before-and-after photographs of other living spaces she had renovated or redesigned, she was always given the job. Unless money was an issue.
“I think I’m going to try to rustle up a few new clients around here. We need a safety net. I mean, heaven forbid Maritza gets hit by a truck. We’d be out of business. What time is your flight?”
“Two this afternoon.”
It was getting on to noon.
“You’d better get going. The rental car contract is in the glove compartment.”
“Got it!” Roni said. She took the last sip of her tea and stood.
“Roni? I really appreciate you driving the car down to us and all. Well, thanks for everything.”
“It was actually fun and I’m glad I could help! Heck! You can’t do anything without me.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about. That and the IRS.”
“And money. Good thing I keep our invoice template on my laptop. I printed up a basic contract this morning. At least it’s something to start with.” Roni handed Olivia a manila envelope. “Just fill it out.”
“Well, it’s on my laptop too, should I need it.”
“I know it’s there. Who do you think put it on there? Ha!”
Olivia wished Roni a safe trip and stood at the top of her steps, watching Roni drive out of the yard and through the gate. She knew it was selfish and immature to feel petulant and abandoned, but she couldn’t help it. Then she wondered for the hundredth time how long it was going to take to get used to her new life.
That afternoon, after a lonely egg salad sandwich and a glass of iced tea, Olivia went back to work on her lists and made some phone calls. Nick came home and changed his clothes to go surf fishing.
“How was the historical society?”
“I’m just going to quickly change because the tide is just right for the old man and the sea. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”
“Of course!”
A few minutes passed and Nick came to the dining room to let Olivia know he was off.
“I’ve dreamed about doing just this over and over. I mean literal dreams. Did I tell you I had a dream I was fishing right out there with my father? We were so happy, just casting and reeling in nothing and casting again.”
Olivia looked up from her laptop and burst into a huge grin. “Well! Look at you!” Olivia said. “That’s some getup, bubba!”
“Whom may I ask are you addressing as bubba?”
“Isn’t that a term of endearment?”
“It can be,” Nick said.
“Well, I meant it to be,” Olivia said, realizing she was once again on the receiving end of another lesson in southernisms and their correct usage.
“Then it is one. This is not the correct hat,” he said. “There should be a brim all around to protect my neck from the sun. We talked about me investing in a fishing hat, didn’t we?”
Nick was dressed in wrinkled khaki cargo shorts, a T-shirt commemorating the 2011 New York Marathon, an old chambray shirt, surf shoes, and a baseball hat. He was Oscar Madison in full bloom, practically bubbling with anticipation.
“Yes, but you look adorable just like this!” Olivia would investigate and ask who sold proper fishing hats in the area. Then she would surprise Nick with the nicest one she could find.
Nick smiled like a young man would. “I’ll bring us home a nice fat fish for dinner!”
“And if you don’t catch anything?”
Nick whispered behind his hand. “I’ll buy one over at Mount Pleasant Seafood, but don’t tell anybody.”
“Well, use the Force, Nick! Go get us a fish! And say hello to Danny for me.”
Nick laughed and kissed her on the cheek.
“I will. God! I feel like a boy again!” he said, and all but ran down the steps toward the beach.
Olivia watched him zip down the walkway and through the gate and was heartened to think that just throwing a hook in the water could bring Nick so much joy. And he had dreamed about fishing in this very part of the beach, not once but many times. How passionate was his yearning to come home to Sullivans Island? How much had he missed this place? Olivia missed New York, but thus far she had truly missed only the conveniences of it. Nick’s heartbeat was synchronized with the Lowcountry in a way she had never felt attached to any particular geography.
She suspected that her upbringing was the culprit. Her parents, long gone, were serious people who rarely showed affection for her or for each other. They were atheists. Her father was a high school chemistry teacher and her mother was a part-time bookkeeper. They lived in a brownstone in Chelsea, quietly and unassumingly, reading nineteenth-century literature, watching the thermostat like hawks in the winter, piggybacking slivers of soap onto new bars and pressure cooking with onions whatever was on its last leg and discounted at the grocery store. They were peevish people and accused her of being impractical, of always having her head in the clouds. They never understood Olivia’s desire for what was to them an ostentatious life. In fact they were embarrassed by her flashy success and never forgave her for it.
What they didn’t realize was that she romanticized their excessive deprivation. As a young girl she would pretend to be a Russian peasant teenager, freezing on the tundra gathering sticks for the fire, living on cold soup, with holes in her shoes. At the same time, she absorbed every beautiful thing she saw in all the museums in New York from the illuminated manuscripts at the Morgan Library to the great works and artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her parents took her to Carnegie Hall concerts and occasionally to the ballet, but never to Rumplemeyer’s for ice cream, as the parents of her school friends did. In spite of them, she came away from her childhood with a keen eye for excellence and a great appreciation of how art and music and literature reflected not only history but the human condition of longing for truth and beauty. The city gave her what her parents could not. A big city could enrich the life of an impressionable little girl.
Nick’s parents also lived a modest island life, but they gave him a world of things to feel passionate about and to love. Passion and love were highly encouraged. His mother took her sons to church every Sunday and injected the fear of God into the marrow of their bones. She made lovely dinners, cooking with abundance, and set a table where anyone who was hungry was welcome. Nick or his brother was always being told to go find another chair for the unexpected guest. She taught both boys beautiful manners: how to be kind and forgiving and why they should not judge others. His father brought home dogs, cats, and all manner of pets to delight Nick and his brother and teach them to be responsible. He taught both sons to fish, to love women, to always be loyal to each other, to lov
e the island itself, and to be proud of our nation’s history. Perhaps most important, both of his parents showed Nick how valuable and useful a good sense of humor could be. His childhood home could barely contain the copious laughter and warmth.
Olivia’s parents gave her none of those values. She never even had a guppy to call her own. It was no wonder that Nicholas Seymour swept her right off her feet. In his soul was the endless banquet she was starving for, and she didn’t even know how hungry she was until the day they met.
From the very start he was fascinated by her meticulous and feverish need to be creative and how she hung on to things. And she was beautiful to him. That a young woman so smart, so talented, and so beautiful would love a crusty old professor like him nearly brought him to tears.
She watched Nick until he passed the bend of the beach and was out of her line of sight.
No surprise I adore him, she thought. He’s more alive than ten men. His heart is filled with so much love, enough to go around.
Nick had come back to the Lowcountry and slipped right back into his boyhood life, never missing a beat. Olivia, on the other hand, was adapting slowly, and her heart carried some gloom she was desperately trying to squelch. In any case, she came with him to live on the island because she loved him so very much. She was determined to rise above the feeling that she was the proverbial fish out of water.
She needed to cheer herself up. She decided she’d make a salad to go with the catch that Nick hoped to land and maybe they’d share a baguette and some fruit for dessert. When Nick got back they’d go to the store. That sounded like a good idea, so she made a short list of the things they would need—lettuce, obviously, a lemon or two, some fresh thyme. They could decide together on the fruit. She put that list to the side. Then she gasped.
“Oh, no!” she said to the empty room. “We’re about to become one of those old couples that grocery-shops together. He pushes the cart and they argue over the cost of Honeycrisp apples and what the doctor said they shouldn’t have. And what’s healthy and what isn’t! I can’t let this happen. Coupons. We’re going to start using coupons.”
She was just slightly north of fifty, but she got a good glimpse of where life could lead if she wasn’t diligent. Depends, Metamucil, and bickering over who brought the coupons or left them on the kitchen counter. Then she laughed.
“Nonsense,” she said to the empty house.
Just for the heck of it, Olivia went online to Overstock.com, looking for office furniture at a good price. She had not bought office furniture for herself in ages, but she seemed to remember that Overstock had great values. So did Ikea, but she and Nick were not about to buy anything that had to be assembled. And, when she bought office furniture for her clients, she usually went to Kentshire looking for nineteenth-century English partner’s desks. But for herself? She only wanted a look at a price.
Her prospective office was actually half the size of Nick’s study, but she felt like he deserved the better room because he would spend untold hours there reading and futzing around. If she got terribly busy, she could rent an office somewhere. Although her space had water views, between two to four in the afternoon the direct sun heated the room like a kiln, raising the temperature so much that she would leave the old Venetian blinds in place until she could make the time to replace them. Window coverings were not high on her list of priorities.
After much surfing back and forth between Jonathan Adler’s website and Overstock, she finally ordered a desk and a credenza finished in white laminate, thinking she’d have an all-white office to blend with the rest of the house. And she ordered two chairs in white leather and chrome, two chrome lamps, and a heavy acrylic wastebasket. She used a twenty percent off coupon that popped up in the margin of a website and she beamed, knowing Roni would applaud her thrift. You see? she thought. I’m not completely coupon-averse!
She decided she’d keep all the office supplies out of the direct sun for obvious reasons and in the bedroom closet adjacent to her workspace. Where was she going to find clients? she thought. Where, indeed? Maritza’s current job offering, in Nantucket, if it panned out, would be over in six months. They would need a new source of cash flow after that.
The thought of this brought about another great sigh. She was resigned to her fate, but moving here meant she was back at square one and starting all over again. Her old clients were not going to call her. They probably thought she retired if they thought about her at all. Except Maritza. At some point she would send out a mailing, adding her new address to her old one. But just like every mailing she had ever received from anyone else, the subliminal message would still read out of the game.
She knew she would have to find new clients the same way she always had—word of mouth. She would join something: the Gibbes Museum of Art, the Charleston Symphony, Spoleto Festival, the Charleston Library Society. She was sure there were many others in a city like Charleston. How much would that cost? She visited their websites, making notes of membership fees and volunteer opportunities.
All of those organizations had boards, and those board members were her target audience. Boards of trustees existed because they were able to offer the organization oversight, social and professional connections, and yes, money. Usually board members were people of a certain means. People of a certain means used interior designers. And if joining a few nonprofits at an upper level of membership didn’t bring her a few clients, she would hire a public relations firm, one who would see to it that she attended the right benefit galas, who would be sure she was photographed for the right newspapers, and who would perhaps help her place a feature article in the right magazines—like Charleston Home + Design, Coastal Living, or Garden & Gun. She wasn’t in the kind of business where she could open a storefront and hang out a shingle. Although there was always the pipe dream that a retail business that sold her private label of home furnishings might be fun. Whenever she toyed with the idea, Roni would immediately talk her out of it.
“Really? You want to stand on your feet ten hours a day and fight with little old ladies over how long your candles retain the scent? You want to deal with shoplifters and credit card companies? And inventory? You want to work on weekends and holidays?”
Olivia laughed then to think of Roni and how she expunged any poetic notion Olivia may have had about working retail right out of her head. It was another reason Roni was so important to her. She kept Olivia’s chickens in the vicinity of the coop.
It was nearly five o’clock when Nick returned. Actually, Olivia heard water running, and unsure of what this sound meant, she followed the sound to its source outside. When she leaned over the porch railing, there was Nick rinsing his feet with a hose. He was sunburned and as salty as any sailor could be.
“Somebody left us a hose!”
“Well, good! How was the fishing?” she asked and wondered, Are we going to start bathing in the yard? This was exactly why we need a footbath, she thought.
“Come down here, woman, and look in the bucket! Look in the bucket!”
Olivia descended the steps, excited to find out what her Nick had captured from the sea. In the bottom of what would become known as Nick’s Fishing Bucket, were two small fish, flopping around in the muddy salt water, begging for mercy. They could not have fed supper to a medium-sized housecat.
“Is this dinner, sweetheart? Or supper?”
Nick began to laugh and laugh. His belly was bouncing slightly and his eyes were tearing.
“Oh my God in His beautiful heavens! No! It’s bait! Real sportsmen catch their own bait.”
“Oh!”
“I’m just going to cut them up and throw them in the freezer. If we weren’t going to Nantucket tomorrow, I’d go back out there and use these little babies to get my big fish. How was your afternoon?”
“Well, I think it was productive.” More productive than yours, she thought but did not say.
As long as he came home happy, she didn’t care if he caught anything at all.
>
“Good!”
He rinsed his hands, dried them with the hem of his very stinky shirt, and pulled her to him. He smelled like man sweat and the ocean. She was unaccustomed to the odor and resisted his embrace like the damsel fights the evil duke’s advances in a bodice-ripping novel.
“Nick! Jeez!”
“Too manly for you?”
“Wasn’t last night enough?”
“It’s never enough!”
She broke free and shuddered from head to toe. “Baby boy? You need a shower!”
Nick gave a rowdy laugh and Olivia hurried back inside, hoping he’d take her out to dinner. She didn’t feel like shopping, then cooking, and then cleaning up when they had to pack for Nantucket as well. And they had to get up in the morning at an ungodly hour.
“I’m just warning you, sweetheart,” Olivia said later, taking a bite of her crab cake at the Long Island Café. “Maritza is obsessively fretting over Colette coming to the wedding. You’re going to get an earful.”
“If she torments me with her incessant nattering, I shall break into the conversation and give her a lecture on the most obscure battles of the Civil War.”
“That should take care of the problem.”
Armed with a plan of resistance, they flew to Newark the next morning on the six a.m. flight. Nick wiped down the germy spots around his seat, buckled his seat belt, and promptly went to sleep. Olivia realized then that they should always fly at the crack of dawn because Nick wasn’t alert enough at that hour to get nervous. She dozed off and on, and when she heard the pilot announce their beginning descent she gently nudged Nick.
“Wake up, sweetheart,” she said softly.
“What?”
“We’re landing,” she said.
When they touched down, Olivia texted Maritza.
Landed! On our way to Teterboro. Can’t wait to see you!
A moment or two later, Olivia’s cell phone pinged.