I work steadily for the rest of the week, tracking down leads and calling in markers and cashing in favors and, most of all, dodging Eve’s incessant and demanding daily phone calls. Finally, on the Friday before Christmas, she shows up at the office. In person – and loaded for bear.
Five minutes later and I would have been gone.
It’s almost like she knows.
“Cole,” she says, frostily, when Merilee reluctantly leads her into my office.
“Merry Christmas,” I say brightly, not because it’s Christmas but because everyone who’s been coming in and out of the office all day has been saying it.
“Not for me it isn’t,” she says, sitting down across from my desk. “Have you been getting my messages?”
I stare at the stack of pink slips on my desk and grin. “I’ve been meaning to get back to you, Eve, but was waiting to call until I had good news.”
“And?” she prods, purse sitting on her lap.
“And, it’s not quite what you wanted but I’ve got you a third floor unit over at Chaucer House that’s to die for. Wood floors, vaulted ceilings, ceiling fans in every room, refurbished kitchen, upstairs loft, and it’s a steal at—”
“Did I ask for Chaucer House, Cole?”
I shake my head, cheeks growing red above my maroon turtleneck collar. “No, Eve, but listen, it’s a no-go at Winchester Arms. I’ve tried everything, there’s just no openings for you very specific requirements.”
She nods, lips thin and tight, staring down at her purse. The room grows so quiet I can hear the Christmas music oozing from the smart phone on Merilee’s desk.
“Are you… absolutely sure?” she asks, quietly, like the wind’s been taken out of her sails.
“Yes,” I blurt, a little too quickly.
I can almost see her wince. “I mean, you’re positive? Maybe, maybe there’s a second floor unit?” She sounds like she’s begging, a tone I’ve yet to hear in her repertoire of expert verbal abuse. Suddenly, I prefer her ranting and raving to this – sad, soft and pathetic.
“Eve, I…” I come up short, as she stares down into her lap. “I tried everything, honestly. There won’t be anything at the Winchester for months. I… I’m sorry.”
She nods and, without another word, stands abruptly, stiffly. Before I can join her she slips from my office, past Merilee, past the giant Christmas tree and out through the clean French doors of Perfection Properties.
By the time I think to follow her, she’s gone. I look left down the street out front, then right, nothing.
“What just happened?” Merilee asks, looking up from her desk with a concerned expression on her face.
“I don’t know,” I say, stomach cold and sour. “But… I think this has more to do than with just an apartment. Do you… do we have contact information for Eve Macy?”
She looks back at me and scowls. “Are you kidding me? It’s on every one of her message slips, Cole.”
I blush and slink back into my office, grabbing the first one I see. I call it, and get the front desk of the Sleep ‘n Stay Motel. “I… I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I may have the wrong number, but… can you connect me with Eve Macy’s room, please?”
“Just a moment,” says the woman as that cold, empty feeling in my stomach grows an inch or two with every ring. After seven or eight she says, “She doesn’t appear to be in right now. Care to leave a message?”
I do. And again on the way home. And once more from my apartment, pacing a hole in the living room carpet. I put the phone down on the flimsy kitchen table, and lean against the back of a matching wooden chair.
I look around the place, cozy in a model home way, probably because all the furniture is still being paid off from the rent to own place downtown. From the pictures on the walls – generic, if classy, black and white prints of mountain streams and sunlit forests – to the plastic Christmas tree in the corner to the matching coffee tables, you can tell I’m a realtor because it all looks staged. Like someone might want to walk in any minute and take a home tour.
I sigh and stare at the phone on the table, empty and cold. The house feels cold and sterile, like my stomach, and through the open porch screen I can hear another high school jazz band kicking into a too funky version of “Jingle Bells.”
I grab my phone and my keys and leave the apartment behind, skipping down the steps and walking across the parking lot to the gate that separates Winchester House from the outside shopping center that is the Noel Galleria.
It’s a pretty convenient setup and most nights I walk over and grab a beer and some wings at the sports bar next to the frame shop, or maybe grab a glass of wine and some pizza at the craft pizzeria place that backs onto the courtyard.
Tonight I just feel like walking, which is a good thing because the Galleria is one big circle around the open air mall with its jewelry stores and movie theater and bookstore and sushi bars.
I’m walking steadily, maneuvering around a cluster of teen girls all bunched up together, when I spot her: Eve Macy. She’s lingering in front of a window, gently licking a mint chocolate chip cone, gazing inside at a burgundy dress. She smiles, mumbles something to herself, and then chuckles.
It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her, and a welcome sight indeed.
My body floods with relief, to see her smiling. I imagine her sharing the holidays with an old friend, but when I walk up, there’s no one standing next to her.
“Eve?” I ask.
She starts, nearly dropping her cone. But then she sees it’s me and, instead of shoving both scoops in my face, smiles again.
“Cole?” She looks behind me, then on either side. “Whatever are you doing here?”
Not wanting to rub it in, I mumble, “Oh, well… I don’t live too far from here, and I had some last minute shopping to do. Are you… are you here with anyone?”
She smirks, an unfamiliar whimsy crossing her face. “Oh, no, I just…” she points her cone at the window. “Window shopping, you know.”
I nod and stand next to her. “Are you hungry?” she asks.
As if on cue, my stomach rumbles. We chuckle and she says, “I feel bad for putting you through the ringer this week. I… it’s not like me, you understand?”
I nod, not wanting to interrupt her confession. “The least I can do is buy you dinner, if you’re not too busy?”
I smile. “No,” I say, following her as she drifts away from the storefront. “No, I’m not too busy and no, you’re not buying me dinner.”
There’s a little bistro sandwiched between the Books ‘N Beans Café and the Juice ‘N Java Smoothie Shoppe and we slip inside. Despite the crowds on the sidewalk it’s fairly empty and the hostess leads us to a table right by the window.
In a flurry of crinkling menus and unfolding napkins and filling water and straightening silverware, we make ourselves at home. It feels a little like a truce after our weeklong war of words. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve,” she says, nodding at me deferentially.
I marvel at the date. December 23rd already. “Gosh, hard to believe it’s almost here.”
She smiles. “I’ve been waiting for this all year,” she says, nodding toward the flickering neon of the Noel 24 movie theater across the parking lot. When she sees my questioning face she explains, “The theater plays Christmas movies all day, and night, on Christmas Eve. Have you ever done it?”
I shrug. “Can’t say I have. I usually have dinner with my Dad and stepmom down in Greensboro. It sounds fun, though.”
“Oh it is,” she says, lightly, almost… girlishly.
The waitress comes and she orders a glass of wine. It’s one I’ve had before, and enjoyed, so I make an executive decision and order a bottle. When the waitress leaves Eve says, “My husband and I, we used to go every year.”
“Used to?” I ask, noting the ring still on her finger.
Her face remains bright, even when she admits, “He’s been gone three Christmases now.”
&nb
sp; I freeze, mouth half open, unable to speak. I never… I never know what to say when someone tells me something like that.
“It’s okay,” she says, reaching over, patting my hand, a completely different woman than the one who stormed out of my office earlier that day. “I’m fine, I just… this place, stupid as it sounds, we came here every weekend. Walked these sidewalks, looked in these windows, ate ice cream cones, saw movies, bought books, drank coffee. I guess, just… being here makes me happy…”
Her voice cracks and she turns away, looking out the window. Crowds of people walk by, red and silver and green and gold bags weighing down their hands.
“It sounds like you loved each other very much,” I finally manage to say.
She nods, then the waitress comes and pours the wine. I order a fondue appetizer and when the waitress leaves, Eve arches one eyebrow. “You’ll love it,” I tell her, and she smiles.
“So that’s why you want a place at the Winchester?” I ask. “So you can look out the window, see all the old familiar places you and your husband used to go?”
She nods. “Sounds silly, doesn’t it?”
I shake my head. “I’ve never lost anyone,” I confess. “So I wouldn’t know what silly feels like in that situation.”
She looks away, back out the window. “No, then… you don’t. And I hope you never do, Cole.”
I sip my wine and put it back down. “Look, Eve, we need to talk.”
“We do?” she asks, turning back to me.
“Are you… why did you give the Sleep ‘N Stay as your return number?”
“That’s where I’m staying, Cole.”
“But... why? I mean, you’re not just visiting, right? You and your husband came here every Sunday, you must have lived here…”
“I do live here, Cole. I live at the Sleep ‘N Stay.”
I look at her, frosted strip of gray in her auburn hair, a red scarf around her green sweater. Handsome, classy, put together, not exactly the target audience for a fleabag hotel. “Why?”
She sighs, and takes a long, slow drag off her wine. When she sets it back down, I refill it. She nods, but doesn’t thank me. “After Albert died, that’s my husband, I kind of… lost it?” She winces, as if reliving the last three Christmases, one by one by one, in real time.
“I couldn’t work, I couldn’t eat, I barely left the house. We’d both been teachers, you see. Comfortable, but far from well off. There were a few insurance policies, small ones, but by the time the dust settled and I came back to myself, a year had passed. I… I knew I could never go back to teaching. I just… I don’t have the concentration for it anymore, you see. I hadn’t worked, in all that time, the bills had piled up, debtors were calling. I… I had to go bankrupt. I am bankrupt.”
I shake my head. “But… how did you think you were going to rent a place if you’d gone bankrupt? I mean, apartment complexes check that kind of thing, you know? It’s the first thing they do, run a credit report…”
“Well, it’s been a year and… I have a job now!” She brightens, pointing out the window.
“At the movie theater?”
She nods, eagerly, as the waitress sets down the fondue pot and several bowls of sliced bread and carrots and cauliflower for dipping. “That way,” she explains, “I can feel closer to Albert every day.”
I nod, shaking my head quietly. “You really loved him.” It’s not a question.
Her eyes moisten, but she doesn’t crack. “I never realized how much until he was gone. I mean, we were happy, but… I never thought losing him would change who I was on such a profound and fundamental level. And now, well, I’m not interested in anything but being happy until I join him.”
“You’re young,” I remind her, dipping a crust of rye bread into the steaming white cheese in its big black bowl.
“Not so young,” she reminds me. “But, you’re right, I have a life to live and I’m trying to do that. I just… want to do it here, right here. Do you understand?”
I nod, smiling, urging her to eat. “More than you’ll ever know,” I tell her.
She seems happy about that, or at least relieved. It’s hard to tell. We eat, and drink the wine, and I insist on paying. She demurs, at last, not wanting to make a scene.
“Are you working at the theater tomorrow night?” I ask her, walking her to her car. It’s an old car, used, like maybe she traded in what she used to drive for a worse model, just to get around town.
“Oh yes,” she says, nodding. “All day, and night. I can’t wait!”
I chuckle, holding the driver’s door open for her. “Maybe I’ll stop by,” I tell her.
“But what about your family?”
I shrug. “Let’s just say my stepmother won’t mind if I bow out of our usual strained Christmas day together.”
She chuckles, the window open, still laughing as she drives away.
* * * * *