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WORK dragged by. I’d had a restless night, thanks to Kylie, and it was making me clumsy at work. It was a relief when we finally finished for the day.
As a residential electrician, my latest job was re-wiring an old Victorian house the city was fixing up as part of the historical society. Whenever we worked on Saturdays, it seemed like everything went wrong. This Saturday, we managed to find the largest mouse colony in the world.
Now, I didn’t mind mice. I preferred that they were not in my house, but it wasn’t a problem for me to deal with them. My coworker Jack, however, had an irrational fear of mice. When we opened up a wall to tear out the old wiring, three mice leapt out and headed straight for Jack. It took me half an hour to get him to climb out of his service van and come back inside the house.
Needless to say, after work, I headed straight to the shower to get rid of any extra mice residue. Besides, I needed to have time to plot a little revenge—no better place than a long, hot shower. By the time I walked into my kitchen, Kylie’s car was home. She parked on the street, and her garage door was open. She had a pressure washer sitting in the driveway, but she was nowhere to be seen.
It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, so I slipped on a pair of tennis shoes without socks and jogged across the street. I snuck into Kylie’s open garage and made quick work of shutting off the main water valve located next to her water heater. If she was going to set up a sprinkler on my porch, I was going to shut off her water. Turning it back on was as simple as turning the valve, but I wanted to watch when she came outside and turned the hose on. I jogged back across the street and opened my own garage. I’d bought a few more tools this week and they were still sitting in the toolbox on the back of my truck.
As I stood in my garage, organizing new drill bits, I heard a door slam. Kylie marched down her front steps. She was wearing jean shorts, a tank top, and some flip-flops. Not exactly the best pressure-washing outfit. Didn’t she know she could tear her skin off if she accidentally sprayed herself? I’d probably done her a favor by shutting the water off. Not that she would have looked at it that way. She would’ve thought I was out to get her.
Maybe I was. Just not the way she would’ve assumed.
When she soaked me with my own sprinkler last night, I decided I’d jog across the street to have a little conversation with her. She acted like I was sprinting after her with a knife. She practically flew inside her house. Once she was behind the safety of her door, I couldn’t help laughing. It was the kind of laugh that touched the depth of your soul. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed that hard. It felt good.
I stood by my original statement that I was not looking for a girlfriend—but I was looking for a distraction. I’d had too much time by myself in the past couple months. Even I recognized my need to change some things. My mother wanted me to work things out with my ex-girlfriend. My dad wanted me to join the family business. My friend Rick wanted me to start dating again.
And my neighbor didn’t want me to use her garbage can. It was such a tiny issue that it made me smile that we were both making such a big deal about it. Finally, some inconsequential thing I could pour myself into.
I took a drink out of my water bottle and watched Kylie hook the hose to the pressure washer then turn on the water. She headed back to the pressure washer and tried to start it. It took her four pulls before the engine kicked in. She pointed the pressure washer’s nozzle at the driveway and pulled the trigger.
No water came out. She tapped the pressure washer with her foot—classic dad move—then pulled the trigger again.
Still no water.
I grabbed a folding chair from my camping shelf in the garage and set it up in front of my truck. I ran inside and grabbed a Coke before I sat down in the chair. Kylie was still squeezing on the nozzle when I sat down. She finally shut it off and studied the machine.
I sipped the soda and watched for the next five minutes as she tried to take apart the pressure washer, looking for the problem. When she started to unmount the engine, I figured I had better stop her before she did irreparable damage. Dave had complained to me the other day about how she always borrowed his tools, but he liked her too much to tell her no. It was probably his pressure washer.
I set the can of Coke in the cupholder and crossed the driveway. She looked up when I stopped next to her.
“What’re you doing?” I asked her. I clenched my teeth to keep from laughing.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m trying to fix this stupid pressure washer.” She tapped it with the screwdriver in her hand. Her forehead creased as she frowned.
“What seems to be the problem?” I squatted down next to her. She looked at me warily, as if she didn’t trust me.
Smart girl.
“I can’t get the water to come out. The motor turns on, but no water comes out. I think there’s something blocking it.”
“Is the water on?”
She pointed the screwdriver at me. “Of course the water’s on.”
Something in my face must have been suspicious, because she stood up, towering over me where I still squatted down on the concrete. Still, it was hard to be intimidated by someone her size. She was too petite.
“What did you do?” she demanded as she began unscrewing the hose from the pressure washer. She marched back to the faucet, shaking the hose. “There’s no water! Why is there no water?”
She looked like she was in the middle of a seven-year drought with her dramatics. I leaned back and sat my butt on the concrete, draping my arms across my knees. This was better than TV.
“What am I going to do with no water? You!” She stomped over to me and stepped close enough that I could smell her lotion. “You did this!”
I smiled and nodded. The lotion smelled good—almost citrusy. “Yup.”
Her fists balled up at her sides. She probably wanted to turn me into a grease spot that she could spray away with her pressure washer.
“Do you want me to help you?”
She sputtered at me as though I’d just offered to kill her. “No, I don’t. I can take care of it myself.”
“You sure you know what you’re doing?”
She stomped away and pulled out her phone. “Of course I know what I’m doing. I’m an adult; I can take care of these things myself.”
She put her phone to her ear and walked to her porch steps. “Hello, Dad?”
I lost it. I couldn’t help it. It was a deep belly laugh from the depths of my soul. She motioned wildly for me to be quiet.
“No, Dad, that’s just my crazy neighbor. Now, if I wanted to shut off the water to my house, where would I do that?”
Kylie was still holding the end of the hose. Since she was wrapped up in the conversation with her dad, I took the chance to dart into the garage and turn the water back on. Kylie shrieked, and I hurried out of the garage and started back across the street. I glanced back at Kylie who was standing on the porch, holding her phone at arms length and now had the hose pointed away from her. The front of her shirt was soaked. Strands of her wet hair stuck to her face.
“Watch your back, Hagen,” she yelled at me as I ran across the street before she could spray me with the hose. She knew my name. I wondered how she found out. I knew I didn’t tell her. I had a locked mailbox. But then again, I’d introduced myself to our other neighbors, and she could have easily asked them for information.
I shut my garage door and turned on the air conditioner unit. Pulling out the boards I had already cut to size, I began assembling two shelves. As I worked, I noticed my cheeks were hurting. When I reached up to rub them, I found out why: I was smiling.
It was the best kind of hurt.
After I finished with the shelves, I pulled out my sander and worked on more reclaimed barn wood. I had just turned the board over to start on the other side when my sander quit. My lights shut off, and the air conditioner was silent.
I’d lost power, and I was pretty sure it was because of a tornado. A tornado named Kylie.