Annabelle
10
The remainder of the week passed without my breaking any more of “the rules.” I didn’t see Jackson again, but I did meet the groundskeeper, Mr. Guzman. He was trimming the trees along the drive as I dashed out the door, late again, and ran by, jumping over his extension cord as I went. To my surprise, he began to sing in a deep baritone, “And the race is on . . .”
I hit my brakes hard, skidding to a stop. I whipped around to look at him. He was on a ladder so he seemed very tall. He had a thick head of gray hair and a bristly mustache, the kind I’d only ever seen during Movember, mustache-growing month, or on old seventies and eighties television shows.
Winking at me, he continued, “And here comes pride up the backstretch.”
“Heartaches are goin’ to the inside,” I chimed in and his bushy eyebrows rose. Together we sang out the rest of the chorus, ending with, “And the winner loses all.”
“You know George Jones?” he asked.
“My dad’s a fan of old-school country.” I shrugged. “After a while it sticks.”
He laughed. “So true.”
“I’m Annabelle Martin,” I said. “I’m staying in the guest house.”
“I know.” His brown eyes twinkled, and his mustache curved up on the ends when he smiled. “I’m Juan Guzman, groundskeeper, handyman, and driver.”
“That’s quite a résumé.”
“My wife, Lupita, is the cook and housekeeper,” he said. “You’ll meet her, I’m sure.”
“That also seems like an awful lot of work for one person,” I said.
“Mr. Daire is just one man, so it’s not so much,” he said. “We couldn’t believe it when he said he was renting out the guest house. That place has been empty since he bought the estate.”
I supposed that explained the lack of art. Maybe Daire just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Curiosity got the better of me. Shocker, I know.
“What’s Mr. Daire like?” I asked.
And just like that, our friendly chat was over. Mr. Guzman turned his back to me and began clipping the tree. Over the motor of the trimmer, he yelled, “I’d best get back to work. Lots to do today.”
I nodded, waved, and continued on my way. It was clear I’d crossed a line—the “do not ask questions about the boss” line. Huh. No problem. This was exactly why the Internet existed.
I had another meeting with my chief graphic designers, Christian and Luz, where we tweaked the print ad we were confirming with a client that afternoon. It was exhilarating to be working with other people again when the ideas started popping. Before I knew it, I was eating a peanut butter and strawberry jelly Uncrustable—don’t judge, those frozen sandwiches might be made for kids but they are yummy—at my desk while opening the Internet to do a deep dive on my landlord.
I started wide with a search engine using his name and city of residence. Nick Daire and Phoenix. Nothing came up, so I tried variations of Nick, like Nicholas and Nicolai, still nothing. I opted to be more specific and pulled up the website for the local paper, but there was nothing.
That seemed weird. Wealthy old guy in a premier neighborhood in Phoenix, and there was no mention of him. Hmm.
I opened up the social media apps and started searching those. Not surprisingly, there were no listings for Nick Daire in Phoenix. While every generation seemed to have an app that reflected their demographic, like Facebook for oldsters, Instagram for middles, and Snapchat for youth, it was possible that my landlord, given his decidedly introverted tendencies and being of an advanced age that required around-the-clock care, wasn’t interested in any of those or in social media at all. Good for him. Bad for me.
I doubled back to the newspaper. Not to have any articles about him seemed so strange. Had he never been married? Divorced? Had children? Had he done nothing noteworthy in the community all these years? Maybe he was a typical Midwestern transplant, who retired to Arizona after a full life in Iowa. Maybe I had to search out of state. Great. Which state? I had so many questions. How did a person live in this world and leave no cyber footprint? It boggled.
All too soon, my lunch hour was over and I had gotten nowhere in my quest for information. With great reluctance, I closed my browser and went to the large meeting room to prep for our presentation to a local brewery, who wanted to revamp their brand. This was one of those meetings where I needed to assess the real ask. What did they want? Sales? Recognition? What problem were they looking to solve? This was my favorite part of the work, second to the designing, figuring out how we could help our client achieve their goals. Plus, I was very interested in watching my team perform.
Not to be all braggy, but we crushed it. My designers wowed our client, who it turned out was looking for a boost in sales, with their new packaging and we were happily signing an agreement, which was handled by Nyah and Trent, just before I walked our client out the door. It felt good to have a win under my belt, even if I’d only been operating in an advisory capacity this week. My team was ecstatic, and I was surprised by how gratifying it was to share a victory with others. I was so used to working alone, I usually just celebrated a new client’s acceptance of a finished project by having a drink with Jeremy.
Jeremy. Ugh. I’d been so busy trying to acclimate to my new life that I hadn’t really thought about him. I guessed that more than anything proved that he was not husband material, at least not for me. I felt an odd mixture of relief that I’d been right to end things and move away and guilt for the exact same reason. I wondered if Jeremy would ever speak to me again, but I honestly didn’t know. I supposed I should have been more upset. After all, he’d been my closest friend in Boston, but I just wasn’t.
Needless to say, it was a cheerful group that left work and tromped our way to happy hour. We happened to pick a place that specialized in burgers and beer and trivia. Luz, Shanna, and I grabbed a table while Booker and Christian ordered several pitchers of beer. Trent did buffet recon while Nyah went to sign us up as a team for trivia. If the questions were art history or pop culture, I was golden. Too bad we didn’t have an in-house librarian; those bookish ones knew their stuff.
We scored an extra-long picnic table just as the pitchers arrived. Trent followed with a tray full of chicken wings with a disproportionately low number of celery and carrot sticks. The trivia match had just begun, and Nyah logged us in as Team V2. The first category was movie quotes, and Trent knew them all.
It made sense. Whoever had come up with this subject hadn’t moved the needle out of the eighties, which was when Trent had been a teen. There was an overload of John Hughes references, and he got every one.
Four teams were active in the bar. As the subject moved to sports, Booker became our guy with some backup from Shanna. Nyah brought it home with music, and at the end of round three, we were solidly in the lead in answers and beer consumption. My head was getting fuzzy in the best possible way.
When Christian locked down the answer to a classic television sitcom, he put us over the top. High fives were exchanged, but as I reached up to slap Luz’s hand, I saw her smile dim. She was staring at the door but quickly turned her head away as if she was trying to avoid making eye contact. I glanced at the doorway, and my gaze was caught by Carson West. Mother of pearl, what was he doing here?
I reached for my beer. I had no idea what his relationship was with the staff of Vasquez Squared, but I knew how I felt about him. I didn’t trust him. I glanced back at Luz, because she certainly hadn’t seemed thrilled to see him either and I wondered if there was some history there.
Luz Dominguez, who was the assistant art director, had large brown eyes and thick black hair, which she wore in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She was dressed in a cute floral dress and a pair of pink and aqua Fluevogs with a sassy bow that tied in front. She appeared to be on the older side of twenty-five, and I had the feeling that Carson West could destroy her with one mean comment. Maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit, since she reported directly to him, but as he strode across the bar toward our table, she looked like she wanted to run. Interesting.
“Luz, would you do me a favor?” I asked. She glanced at me, looking like she hoped I was going to send her home. Not quite. “I think I’ve had too much beer and I’m feeling wobbly. Could you go to the bar and get us a couple of pitchers of water with ice and lemons, lots of lemons?”
It was not a total lie, I hadn’t hit wobbly yet, but it was coming. The look of relief on her face told me all I needed to know. There was most definitely some bad blood there. I glanced back at Carson. He seemed completely oblivious to Luz as she slid off her seat and slipped away. Shanna, who was one of our best graphic designers, excused herself to go help Luz. Solidarity. I liked it.
“Well, hey, kids, imagine finding you here,” Carson said. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and sat down.
Nyah turned his way with a warm and friendly smile. Trent raised a fist, while still holding a chicken wing, for a bump, to which Carson obliged. Booker tipped his chin at Carson in acknowledgment while Christian was so fixated on the trivia board, which was gearing up for the next round, that he gave him a distracted wave.
Nyah leaned across the table and said, “You never join us for happy hour. What brings you by tonight?”
“FOMO,” he said. He spread his arms wide. “I don’t want to be left out of the water cooler gossip on Monday.”
“What gossip?” Trent asked through a mouthful of chicken wing. He paused to swallow and lick the sauce off his thumb. “I mean other than V2 kicking ass at the trivia match.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Carson said. He helped himself to a clean glass and filled it from one of the pitchers. “I hear Boston girls party pretty hard. I didn’t want to miss it if the new creative director started dancing on tables. Sophie told us it’s been known to happen.”
If it had been anyone else, I would have laughed it off as a joke, but somehow, I got the feeling Carson wasn’t teasing me so much as he was trying to get the others to see me in a less than flattering light.
I met his stare and forced my lips to curve up even though I didn’t find him amusing at all. “It’s a wasted trip for you then,” I said. I fought to keep my voice light and casual. “My table-dancing days ended my freshman year in college, you know, ten years ago.”
“Did they?” he asked. His eyebrows shot up in feigned surprise. “That disappoints. I bet you could give it the old college try, you know, if you really wanted to. Heck, you might even score us some free beer if you work it hard enough, flash some cleavage, or hike up your skirt a bit. Don’t be shy, Annabelle.”
His voice was low and calculating. Did he actually think I was going to take the bait, climb up on the table, and shake what my mama gave me to prove something to him? The man was mental. I glanced around the table to see Nyah, Trent, Booker, and Christian, who had finally turned away from the trivia board, watching us as if they sensed they were in the midst of a power play but were uncertain of how they’d gotten here and why it was happening.
I picked up my beer and took a sip. There were a variety of ways I could react. I could bristle, toss my beer at him, and call him out for being a sexist pig. No, that would likely make my new coworkers think I was oversensitive and had a temper. I could laugh, as if he were funny, which he wasn’t, and pretend it was all a big joke. Nope, I was not that good of an actress. I figured my best strategy was to take the passive offensive. Bullies hate that.
“Wow, as I mentioned, those days are long over for me, but you seem to know an awful lot about table dancing, Carson,” I said. My voice came out a little higher than normal, and I added a hair toss and a beaming smile to my next words, you know, to keep it friendly, when I added, “Why don’t you show us how it’s done.”
I spread my arms wide, indicating that the table was all his. I glanced at our coworkers and with a hearty laugh asked, “Who wants to see Carson twerk for his beer?”
Trent and Christian hooted and slapped the table. Nyah laughed and clapped, and said, “Yeah, come on, that would be hilarious!”
My gaze held Carson’s. I had outmaneuvered him and he knew it. He glowered. I batted my eyelashes. He tossed back his beer in one gulp and stood. Forcing his mouth into a toothless smile, he pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, peeled off a ten, and tossed it on the table.
“Maybe next time,” he said. “I’ve gotta bounce.”
The others booed good-naturedly as he left, but I didn’t, and when I scanned the table, I noticed Booker didn’t either. Instead, he held up his beer to me and said, “Well played.”
I clinked my glass with his, and as my gaze held his, I knew I wasn’t the only one who got a hinky feeling from Carson West.
Luz and Shanna returned with the water. Shanna didn’t seem to notice that Carson had already departed, but I watched Luz survey the area and visibly relax. When her gaze met Booker’s, he jerked his head toward the door. I suspected he was letting her know that Carson had left. Interesting.
I switched over to water. It helped until someone ordered a round of shots, more beer, and more appetizers. It was only ten o’clock when I left happy hour but it felt like midnight. Nyah had a ride share picking everyone up, and she insisted I join them.
On the way home, Trent began to sing “Danny Boy” because Saint Patrick’s Day was coming up fast, and he felt the need to practice. Not surprisingly, the rest of us joined in, much to the amusement, at least I hope it was amusement, of our driver. When he pulled up to the gate, the chorus had reached its apex, and I climbed out of the car and paused to conduct them through the last notes of the song.
I punched in the code and disappeared through the gate with a wave. On the walk up the drive to my house, I began to sing it from the top. “Danny Boy” was a favorite, after all. We’d sung it in my high school choir, and I remembered Mrs. Bodwell conducting us with her big grin and her blond bob bouncing as she kept time tapping her foot, which was impressive because being on the petite side, she always wore spiky four-inch heels.
A feeling of victory swept over me as I climbed the steps to my house. I’d wowed a client, gotten rid of Carson at the bar, and survived my first week at a regular job. Feeling relieved that I had two days to recover before it started all over again, I sang the last line at full volume. “Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you sooooooo.”
I held the last note as long as I could. It felt as if it echoed in the trees above me and shot up into the sky and bounced back down from the stars to echo long after I had stopped singing. Heaving a sigh of contentment, I went inside to brush my teeth and pass out.
I am not a morning person. While I love a good sunrise as much as the next person, I was rarely in a position to see one as I like to sleep through the dawn, rising at the more reasonable hour of seven or, if possible, nine.
Given that the guest house had come furnished, I had to tip my hat to whoever had bought the furniture and the bedding. The sheets were buttery soft, and the comforter was like being wrapped in a fluffy warm cloud. Because I didn’t close my drapes, the relentless sun kept poking me in the eyeballs and I had to pull the blanket over my head and shut out the light. This worked for another hour before my restlessness roused me.
I had decided that today’s mission was to go out and hit all the thrift stores until I found some art to hang on the walls. I didn’t care if it was portraits of scary clowns. I needed something to look at besides a vast expanse of Swiss Coffee–painted walls.
I’m not sure why the creamy color was called that. It seemed like a misnomer since there wasn’t even a hint of brown in it, but I’d always envied whoever it was who had the sweet job of naming the colors of paint or nail polish or lipstick. In another life, that would be my dream job. Imagine spending all day coming up with new and different names for all the shades of red that have nothing to do with the color red, like I Can’t Even, which could be an orange red or Sorry Not Sorry, a bluish red. Those were my favorite reds, the blue-toned ones.
Shaking off my contemplation of color hues and their names, I strode to the kitchen to make my coffee. Once I had frothed the milk and poured in the coffee, I decided to take my cup out to the front of my house to enjoy the sounds of the birds chirping, the crisp breeze, and the warm sun. I would have sat on the back patio, but I was overly conscious of the fact that I could be seen from the big house, and having been chastised about the hot tub, I didn’t really want to put myself out there in my morning attire, which was not the stuff of runways. Heck, it wasn’t even fit for an emergency grocery run.
I opened the front door and stopped short. Taped across both doors was another envelope. So this was going to be a fun Saturday.
I wondered if it had been Jackson who’d stuck it there. I seriously doubted it was Mr. Daire himself. I snagged the note and sat on the top step, letting the sun heat my shoulders while pondering the sealed missive. Like the others, it was business-size, white, with my name, Ms. Martin, written in the same blocky, exacting handwriting.
Had I taken my trash to the curb? Yes. Had I brought the bin back up? Yes. Had I used the pool or the hot tub? No. I tried to remember the list of rules. As far as I could remember, I hadn’t broken any of them. Heck, I hadn’t even been here much as I’d put in long days all week, getting acclimated to office life and such.
I sipped my coffee then tapped my chin with the envelope. To open or not to open, that was the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of my anxiety or open the damned thing and remove all doubt. Shakespeare would be proud, I know.
I decided to go with removing all doubt and opened the letter. It was one sheet, neatly folded into thirds. I snapped it open and read.
Dear Ms. Martin [It started cheerfully enough]:
Per the rules that were delivered to you by our mutual acquaintance, Miguel Vasquez, it was stated quite clearly on page four, paragraph two, line twelve that there was to be no noise past the hour of nine o’clock at night. And yet, at approximately ten fifteen last night, a lone voice was heard to be belting out the old Irish favorite “Danny Boy.”
And just like that, my stomach bottomed out. I cringed, remembering that beer-infused moment when I had been convinced I was singing with the trees and the stars. I wondered how badly I had butchered the song and if this was grounds enough to get me ousted out of my house. I had become quite fond of it over the past week and didn’t really want to have to pack and move again. I glanced at the note and braced myself because there was more. Of course there was.
Because I and my staff were all accounted for at that precise hour and because you were seen on the gate’s security camera, singing the same song with a carful of people, I feel it is a safe assumption that the source of the noise was you.
I paused to stare down the drive at the gate. Was that the only security camera on the grounds? I mean, it made sense, you want to see who is swiping your packages these days, but it made me wonder what else was on camera around here and perhaps I needed to rethink not pulling my drapes closed. Hmm.
In the future, please refrain from singing after the hour of nine. In fact, if you could curb the need to sing at all, that would be much appreciated.
—Gratefully yours,
Daire
Well, that last line was just insulting. Granted, I was no Beyoncé, but I wasn’t exactly an alley cat sitting on a fence either. I sipped my coffee and pondered my response, because of course there needed to be a response. I couldn’t let his aspersions upon my singing go unchallenged.
I stood and stretched. I supposed I should be grateful that he hadn’t evicted me. I knew if I could just meet the old coot, I could probably win him over. I was a very good listener and I genuinely liked people. Surely the old guy and I could find some common ground. I just needed an introduction.
I ducked back into the house, and while eating my yogurt and granola, I found a fresh piece of paper and an envelope. I doodled on this one just like last time, but instead of cactus flowers and koi fish, I decided to go with a brilliant sunset over a purple mountain range, much like the sunset I’d seen upon my arrival. It took up the entire page, and only when I was finished and my fingers were cramping from holding my colored pencils did I realize I hadn’t left much room for a note.
The only available space was the very narrow margin I’d left all around the paper, so I wrote in the allotted space, turning the page as I went.
Dear Mr. Daire [I, too, can be cordial]:
Please excuse my excessive celebration upon the completion of my first week at work. I was unaware of the time, clearly, but must point out that the rules state no loud “noise” after nine o’clock. I do not consider my singing to be noise but understand that this is a subjective opinion. I will refrain from any further displays of overt happiness.
Yours in silence,
Annabelle Martin
I found a fresh envelope and stuffed my note inside. Then I quickly showered and dressed. I went for a casual Saturday look, a navy blue and cream floral dress with a loosely crocheted shrug in ecru and a pair of cloth flats in dark blue. I brushed my hair into a ponytail and tied it with a cream-colored scarf, letting the ends hang down over my shoulders. I completed the look with mascara and pink lipstick. I was going for cute, because when I marched my note up to the house, I was determined to meet Mr. Daire once and for all, and I needed all the ingénue in my arsenal queued up and ready.
Locking the door behind me, I trekked the path to the big house. The sun was warm but the air was still cool. The enormous olive trees whispered overhead as a soft breeze rippled through them. I could hear the birds singing, and the smell of spring was on the air. It was impossible to feel low, given the beauty of the day.
The house looked as solemn as ever with all the drapes drawn. I debated taping my note onto the front door and running but decided that if I wanted to meet Daire, I needed to ring the bell and insist upon hand-delivering my letter.
I rang the doorbell. The double glass doors looked exactly like mine, except bigger, and were framed by the same planters with asparagus ferns and lavender. I could smell the pungent herb and remembered it was noted for being calming. I was unaccountably nervous and took a big inhale to see if it helped. A little. Maybe. That or I’d been holding my breath and my brain was suddenly getting oxygen again.
Not hearing any response, I rang the bell again. I wondered if this was going to get me in trouble with another note. Did Daire have rules about how many times a person could ring the doorbell or how long exactly a person should wait between each pressing of the button? Probably.
I debated ringing again when the door was pulled open. I was expecting Jackson or perhaps the crotchety old man himself. What I got was a pretty, middle-aged woman. She had to be Juan’s wife, Lupita. She was softly rounded with big brown eyes, shoulder-length dark hair styled in a long bob, and a wide smile.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Hi, I’m Annabelle Martin,” I said.
“I know,” she answered. She glanced me over from head to toe and her smile deepened. “I’m Lupita Guzman. I heard you met my husband.”
“I did,” I said. “He has excellent taste in classic country music.”
“He said the same about you.” Her eyes twinkled.
I glanced past her, trying to see into the dark house. Was Mr. Daire standing behind her? Could he see me? Should I call out a greeting? Would she invite me in?
It was impossible to see anything. I decided to go for it. “Is Mr. Daire in? I have a note for him.”
Her smile dimmed. Much like the moment I mentioned Mr. Daire to her husband, the lightness went out of the conversation. Was the guy that bad? Maybe he was a miserable boss, and the Guzmans didn’t know how to break away from him.
“I can deliver the note,” she said. She held out her hand, but I didn’t give it to her.
“I’d rather take it to him in person.”
Her eyebrows rose in surprise. Her smile made a flickering return, and she said, “I’ll go see if he’s available.”
“Thank you.”
She closed the door, and I waited on the front stoop. I felt like a door-to-door salesperson, trying to unload my thirty-two-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica in a world where everyone just wanted to ask Siri or Alexa. I mean, who hand-delivered letters anymore? How very last century this was.
I realized that I liked that about Daire’s notes, even though they were sort of grumpy. The fact that he was committing thoughts, okay, directives to paper and delivering them, or having them delivered, was so delightfully old school of him, I was charmed in spite of myself.
I wandered around the front terrace. I glanced up at the windows, wondering which room Mr. Daire was in. I tried to look friendly and nonthreatening on the chance that he glanced out the window. Had that drapery just moved? I couldn’t tell. I tried to look casual and pretended to be studying the lavender. It was an effort.
In minutes, Lupita returned. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look as if she’d just been chewed out either. It was more a look of disapproval, and if I wasn’t mistaken, it wasn’t directed at me, which meant she was miffy with the boss man. Interesting.
“He isn’t available,” she said.
“For the moment or the entire day?” I asked. “Because I can come back later.”
She sighed. “For the duration of your stay, I’m afraid.”
My eyes went wide. “He said that?”
She nodded.
“But my lease is for six months!”
Again, she nodded.
“He’s really planning to avoid me for six months,” I said. “Does that even seem possible?”
“Mr. Daire can be very . . . determined,” she said. I sensed she’d revised on the fly what she really wanted to say.
I met her gaze. “So can I.”
A slow smile curved her lips and made her eyes sparkle. “That’s what I was hoping. I think you might be just what he needs.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but I handed her my response and asked, “Would you please give him this message?”
“Of course,” she said. “Happy to. It’ll give him something else to think about.”
“Thanks,” I said. I stepped back and glanced up at the large windows on the second floor. The drapes twitched back into place.
That did it. Mr. Daire could try to avoid me for the entirety of my stay, but I was going to meet him one way or another. I waved to Mrs. Guzman as I walked down the steps and set out in the direction of the guest house.
Questions. I had so many questions, it felt as if my brain were on fire. Was it just me? Or was Daire like this with everyone? I wanted to ask Miguel and Sophie, but given their insistence that I keep my distance, I didn’t want them to know that Daire and I were having issues and were struggling to communicate.
Well, I was struggling. He seemed just fine with the chastising notes and such. Me, not so much. I simply had to meet him, break through his self-imposed isolation, and make him be my friend. Newly determined, I glanced over my shoulder back at the house one more time.
This time I saw a man in the window, watching me. Surprised, I stumbled to a halt. Staring at me from the second-story window was the most breathtakingly beautiful man I’d ever seen.