Artfully Yours (9 page)

Glen spoke up from the porch steps. “This place is a fucking gold mine. I’m selling her shit on Craigslist and eBay, and my business plan don’t exactly involve paying for storage. Until it’s all gone and I’ve made enough for a one-way ticket to Hawaii, I ain’t leaving. You girls are shit out of luck.”

Derek, eyes still on Jenny, said, “I’m pretty sure this negotiation isn’t going to pan out.”

“I didn’t call you here to negotiate, Derek.”

“Hmm.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not really into smiting.”

“I know that. I just need you to do what you’re good at. Intimidation.”

Derek studied her for a moment. “I intimidate you?”

Jenny scoffed. “No. Not me. Him. Intimidate him. You’re intimidating in a general sense.”

He looked at Elle questioningly.

“I still think you’re an adorable moppet,” she told him.

He smiled.

“Ack!” Jenny shoved a hand against his chest. He covered it absently. “You’ve got the whole thing going on. Harley, muscles, beard.”

“Bike’s a Triumph, baby.”

“Be menacing. Step it up. Show him you’re a badass. Show him…show him your tattoos or something.” Jenny noticed he was still holding her hand, and yanked.

Sighing, he let her go. “You do know my tattoos don’t come alive or anything, right? And I don’t think everyone else is quite as scared by ink as you are. Some people think ink is cool. Some people think it’s sexy.”

Elle admired the bright dragon that wound around Derek’s tanned biceps and disappeared into the sleeve of his shirt. She realized he was looking at her for confirmation. “Hell yes.”

Jenny waved this away. “Fine. Show him your piercings.”

Derek tilted his head obligingly.

“Not the eyebrow.”

“Oh.” Derek’s hands went to his belt buckle. “Not sure how this is going to get compliance. You want to see it, Jenny, all you had to do was ask.”

“It’ll work,” Jenny said, looking at Thompson. “Bellybutton rings are gross.”

Derek paused. “It isn’t in my bellybutton.”

“Well, where is it?”

Derek glanced at Elle. “You want to tell her or shall I? You know what, never mind. Jenny Finley, you don’t have to ask me to get it out for you twice. Here we go.”

“Jesus, boy, keep your pants on. I don’t want to see no metal where it shouldn’t be,” Glen said.

Derek stilled for a moment, and every trace of good humor vanished. In a swift movement, he closed the gap between him and Thompson, pushed the man against the railing, and kept him there with one hand and a fearsome scowl. “Now don’t you call me that.”

“Wha—”

“Jesus boy. I don’t like people using my religion as an insult. You want to insult me, have a go at my hair or something. Leave any and all deities out of it.”

“What…I…no, there was a comma. You missed it! My mom always said I didn’t speak up but, hey, there was a comma. Jesus, boy. Jesus comma boy.”

Derek lowered his head and bit out, “Don’t like that much better.”

Glen’s eyes went to his beanie. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

Derek took his beanie off, and his crazy hair sprang out, a snarl of blond all different shades.

“Shit,” Glen said. “You ever think about trying one of those man-buns?”

It wouldn’t work, Elle thought as Derek walked Glen into the house with a hand twisted in the back of his shirt. There was no controlling Derek’s hair. Back in her babysitting days, she’d tried it in a miniature bun on more than one occasion when she’d gotten bored. Also pigtails. He’d been a very easygoing kid. He’d seemed like a very easygoing adult right up until Glen had pissed him off.

And as it turned out, a pissed-off Derek was good at intimidation after all, because they heard Glen shouting for about ten seconds, followed by a long stretch of silence.

“What do you think’s going on in there?” Elle asked. “Think Derek showed him his piercing after all, and he fainted?”

“You’re hilarious.”

“Admit it, Jenny. You want to see Derek’s piercing.”

“Keep talking, and I’ll tell him
you
want to see it.”

“Would you? That’d be great. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring it up without making it weird. My baby sister asking is the way to go, no question.”

When Derek walked Glen out half an hour later, the older man had a huge backpack strapped on and the handle of an even larger wheeled suitcase in each hand. Derek carried two more bags. They loaded up Glen’s van, then Glen heaved into the driver’s seat.

Elle poked her head through the front door, gasped, and came running when she heard the van start up. “Wait! What about the rest?”

“What about it?” Glen’s eyes glittered, small and malicious. “I’ve got the good stuff. You can keep the junk.”

“I thought it was a gold mine.”

“Like I said, lady, I got the good stuff. As for the rest, that’s your problem now.” He shot out of the driveway in a reckless reverse that had Derek scooping Jenny up out of the way and Elle dancing back just in time to avoid getting a foot run over. Because that was what they needed, another Finley with broken bones and hobbling in a cast.

Glen leaned on the horn as he sped away, window all the way down to flip them off.

Elle glared after him, turned to Jenny, and grinned when she saw Derek had picked her up, damsel-style. She was pink-cheeked and rigid in his arms.

“I don’t know, Derek.” Elle strode past them. “I think you’re being too subtle. Be brave. Tell her how you really feel.”

He juggled Jenny up and over his shoulder, falling into step beside Elle as they walked into the house. “What are you going to do with all this sh—
Ow
. Jenny, don’t pinch!”

“
PutmedownyouNeanderthal.
”

Derek ignored her. “So?”

Elle stood in the center of the living room and looked around. “Anyone got a flamethrower?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

No one had a flamethrower, so they did it the hard way. It took hours and hours of backbreaking work to clear the kitchen, bathroom, and one bedroom to share. They dragged the junk straight out the back and piled it up in the yard. They shut the doors to all other rooms to clear later. Elle picked Katie up from preschool, then she picked up a couple of gallons of Lysol, rubber gloves, and scrubbing brushes from the hardware store, and the next day they decided to risk moving in. Mostly because the next day, Lila chased Jenny down and pried the keys to her marital home from her clenched fist, gave her a noogie, and promised to chip in with the scouring at the weekend.

It was painfully slow, but they were making progress. They quickly found a good working rhythm. Jenny flagged and sorted what she could with her limited mobility. Elle did the lifting and the shake-it-out-my-hair spider dances and got a fancy collection of bruises on her shins and splinters in her fingers. Derek swung by after work every day to help with the heavier items and carrying stuff down the stairs. Sooner than Elle had hoped, they had gutted the entire house. Of course, they hadn’t solved the problem, just relocated it. The yard resembled a landfill site, and they’d agreed the attic could go ahead and wait for Doomsday but, all in all…not bad.

Until the night Katie skipped into the kitchen, her pink flannel pajama bottoms tucked into a cute pair of yellow wellington boots.

Elle sat at her laptop, checking to see if they’d had any interest in the listings she’d posted on Craigslist of Mrs. Thompson’s junk (no), and Jenny was trying to bring the kitchen countertops back to life with sandpaper and fury, when Katie came in smiling to herself.

“Girl’s got style,” Elle said.

Jenny glanced over her shoulder. “What’s with the boots?”

“I’ve been paddling!”

“That’s nice, honey.” Jenny returned to rubbing the sandpaper over the countertop.

Huh. Elle looked out at the dry yard, then turned to stare at Katie thoughtfully. “Where have you been paddling?”

“Bathroom.”

Jenny dropped the sandpaper and whirled around. “Katie! You’re not allowed to run the bath on your own!”

Katie blinked. “I wasn’t paddling in the bath. I was paddling on the floor.”

Jenny’s gaze found Elle’s, and held.

“Sh—oot,” Elle said and lunged for the stairs, taking them two at a time with Jenny hobbling after her. Elle staggered to a halt in the bathroom doorway.

The toilet was stuck on flush, running and running. Over the rim, over the floor. Gushing. There must have been an inch of water. And it wasn’t all clean water, either.

Jenny bumped into her. “Do something!”

“You do something,” Elle shouted over the noise of the pipes.

“I can’t get my cast wet!”

“You won’t get it wet, you’re on crutches. That’s the foot you don’t put on the floor.”

“
Elle!
”

Argh. She waded in, grabbed the toilet handle, and cranked it up to the three o’clock position it should be at. It fought back, but she managed it. The squeal of pipes and the hiss of rushing water cut off with a clang.

The small room rang with heavy silence, punctuated by the rhythmic splat splat of Katie jumping up and down, admiring the spray she shot up with each landing. “Yay.”

“What she said,” Jenny muttered.

Hands on hips, Elle stared into the bowl. “It’s not going down,” she said, pointing at the water level holding steady at the brim. She bent over cautiously and peered down the U-bend.

“Flush it again.”

Elle put out a reluctant hand but before she made contact, a large groan came from somewhere behind the toilet. She snatched her hand back and exchanged a wide-eyed look with Jenny. The water level dropped in a big gulp. Not to where it should be, but an encouraging amount.

“Go on.” Jenny nodded at her. “Flush it again.”

She did. The pipes began howling, and water cascaded into the bowl.

“Nope,” said Elle. “Bad idea,
bad idea
.” She wrestled with the handle to stop the flush. Every time she got it up, it groaned back down.

“Here,” Jenny said beside her moments later and handed her a piece of string.

Elle held up the string. “Oh, good. Time to MacGyver it.”

“Make a loop and sling it around the handle,” Jenny said, picking at a roll of duct tape to find the beginning. She zipped out a strip and cut it. “Leave a long end.”

Elle did, handing the free end to Jenny.

“Get the handle up and hold it.” Jenny pulled the string taut, taking the strain of the handle. She laid it along the side of the cistern, slapped the piece of duct tape over it to keep it there, zipped off another piece, and made a sturdy silver X.

“Nice,” Elle said. “Very resourceful.”

“Thank you.”

“Think it’ll hold?”

Jenny stuck another couple of pieces of tape onto the string. “Yup.”

“Fantastic. Now all we have to do is unblock it.”

Jenny’s nose wrinkled, her shoulders drooped, and she turned to Katie. “What did you put down there, honey?”

Katie stopped jumping. “Nothing.”

Jenny closed one eye at her and made the other really big.

Katie laughed. “Nothing!”

“Darn it,” Jenny said. “The blockage must be…something else.”

They shuddered. Elle took in Jenny’s pinched white face. “You put Katie to bed—”
protect the eyes of the innocent
, “—and I’ll make a plan.”

Ten minutes later, the plan hadn’t much developed beyond Jenny’s, “Just stick your arm down there.”

“No!”

“You’re a nurse. Bet you’ve had your hand in worse places.”

Sad but true. “And if you don’t get off my case, I’ll tell you about it in extreme and graphic detail. Besides, all those other times I had gloves and scrubs and methods of sterilization and hazardous waste disposal protocols.”

“Then we just try flushing it again. Maybe it simply needs to pass. Like a kidney stone.”

“It’s possible.”

Jenny glared at the toilet. Then she whacked it with her crutch. “I’ve had it!” she whisper-yelled, mindful of her daughter in bed two doors down from the bathroom. “Stupid dumbass motherf—”

The toilet gulped.

“Hey,” Elle said, “that might work. Don’t break it, but give it another tap.”

Jenny smacked it. The surface of the water in the bowl shivered, and something dark surged up from the U-bend.

“
Run!
” Elle shrieked.

They dashed out, slammed the door, and stood with their backs to it, panting.

“The heck was that?” Elle gasped.

Jenny covered her mouth to hold back the giggles.

“Was it a
bird
?” They had tossed a ratty old parrot cage earlier. “Did that thing have wings?”