Jake stared into the darkness. Gonna take some work to dig myself out of this one, he thought.


Slam!

Berry awoke with a jolt and sat up in her sleeping bag.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

Jake opened one eye and looked at Berry. “We have elephants upstairs? The circus come into town last night while I was asleep?”

“I think the ladies are up.”

Jake looked at his watch. “It’s five-twenty.”

The lights flashed on upstairs, and footsteps sounded on the stairs.

Jake groaned, crawled out of his sleeping bag, and stepped into the clothes he’d dropped on the floor the night before. He flipped the light switch, and Mrs. Fitz stood blinking at them.

She wore her new flannel nightgown and pink furry slippers, and her hair stood straight out from her head.

“Lord,” Jake whispered to Berry, “she looks like she’s been electrocuted.”

Berry bit her lip. “Something wrong, Mrs. Fitz?”

“I need tea.” And she shuffled off toward the kitchen.

Next, Mrs. Dugan stomped down the stairs, gave Berry and Jake a cursory glance, and huffed after Mrs. Fitz. There was a flurry of banging pots and clattering silverware from the kitchen. A few minutes later Miss Gaspich joined them.

“Where’s the tea bags?” Mrs. Fitz called. “I can’t find nothing in this kitchen.”

Jake grinned at Berry. “The ladies didn’t have a good night.”

He sauntered out to the kitchen, and soon soothing sounds drifted in to Berry. Jake was telling Mrs. Fitz how nice she looked in the morning… full of energy. Mrs. Dugan and Miss Gaspich were similarly pacified.

Berry joined the group, and a tablecloth was discovered and spread over the round oak table. A blue teapot appeared. Packing crates were drawn up to serve as chairs. Mrs. Fitz looked like she was beginning to come around, but Miss Gaspich looked like death. Her red-rimmed eyes sagged in her face, and her mouth crinkled into a small furrow in pasty cheeks.

“Miss Gaspich, do you feel all right?” Berry asked.

Miss Gaspich slumped against the table, staring glassy-eyed at her teacup. “Couldn’t sleep all night. Didn’t sleep a wink.”

Mrs. Fitz looked disgusted. “You snored all night, you old bat. And you hogged the pillow.”

Mrs. Dugan leaned across the table. “You! You were the one who hogged the pillow. Tossing and turning and complaining. Mildred was the perfect bed partner compared to you.”

Jake deposited a steaming mug of coffee in front of Berry. “Looks like we have a problem here.”

“Possible multiple homicides.”

“I think I’ll go out and get some beds today.”

He slouched over Berry, draping his bare arm across her collarbone, and whispered in her ear. “I only have four bedrooms. Guess that means two of us will have to double up.”

Mrs. Dugan glared at him. “I heard that. You men. You only have one thing on your mind. Sex. Sex. Sex.”

Mrs. Fitz winked at Jake. “Don’t pay no attention to her. She’s cranky because she’s always got sex on her mind, too, but she can’t remember what you’re supposed to do about it. Last man Mrs. Dugan knew was old Criswald, and he couldn’t remember what to do about it, either.”

Miss Gaspich giggled. Mrs. Dugan looked scandalized. And Mrs. Fitz looked like she was enjoying their reactions.

“I tell you what,” Mrs. Fitz said, smiling broadly. “How about when Jake goes out to get us some beds, he gets us some handsome men to go with them?”

Sarah Dugan pursed her lips. “That’s disgusting.”

“Yeah. But it made Mildred giggle. It’s bringing some color to her cheeks.”

Berry sipped at her coffee and thought she wouldn’t want to underestimate Mrs. Fitz. Her methods were a bit unorthodox for a little old lady but she knew how to rally the troops.

Jake finished his coffee. “It’s Saturday. What time does the Pizza Place open on Saturday?”

“Ten.”

“I guess we can get ourselves together by ten.”

“First breakfast,” Mrs. Dugan said.

Mrs. Fitz drained her cup of tea. “Then the laundry. If we don’t do the laundry we’ll have to work in our nighties.”

Jake set his cup on the table and lazily stretched behind Berry. “I’ll take a quick shower, and then we can check out the apartment.”


Berry was having a difficult time not bursting into tears. The apartment was even worse than she’d remembered. The soot was everywhere. It had infiltrated every drawer, it clung to the walls, and it blackened the windows.

Jake put his arms around Berry and rested his chin on the top of her head. “It could be worse. No one was hurt.”

“Yes, but everything is ruined.”

“Not everything.”

Berry looked down at the rug. “The rug is ruined.”

“Mmmm.” His voice rumbled in her ear.

Berry was having a difficult time concentrating on the rug. She was being distracted by his hands inching their way down her spine.

“And the couch is ruined,” she said.

“Mmmm. The couch.”

The hands squeezed her ever so slightly, and his thumbs massaged little circles into her back just above the waistband of her jeans.

“And… um.” She couldn’t think what else was ruined. It was right on the tip of her tongue, but she was being rendered senseless by his thumbs.

“The curlers were faulty and the company will be responsible for damages, including cleanup,” Jake said. “I think we should gather up the clothes and linens and take them all back to my house to be washed. The rest of this you can leave to the professionals.”

Berry squeezed her eyes shut and a tear popped out. “It makes me sad to see it like this.”

“Me too,” Jake said.

“I think I’d feel better if I cleaned it a little.”

Jake held her a little tighter. “Me too.”

“Really?”

“No,” he said, “but I’ll do anything to prevent another tear from sliding down your cheek.” He turned and rummaged through the drawers by the sink. “Where are your big garbage bags?”

“One drawer down.”

He located the bags and tossed them to her. “Here you go. Stuff the clothes and linens in these. I’m going to get the rug up before it ruins the floor.”

Berry filled the station wagon with the bagged laundry and looked up at her open windows. Jake was stuffing part of the waterlogged rug through one of them. “Bombs away,” he called, catapulting the rug onto the sidewalk below.

“Jake?”

He leaned out the window and grinned. His shirtsleeves were rolled to above the elbow, and a black smudge slanted across his cheek.

“Thanks,” Berry called up to him.

“Are you looking for a way to show gratitude?” he asked.

Berry smiled in spite of herself. She had to admire his tenacity.

An hour later Berry returned with Mrs. Fitz and Miss Gaspich. She unlocked the door to the Pizza Place and was relieved to see only a few water stains creeping down the walls.

“Just as good as new,” Mrs. Fitz commented.

Miss Gaspich set a bunch of wildflowers on the counter. “I picked these this morning in the woods behind Jake’s house. Don’t they look nice?”

Berry smelled the flowers. “They look great.”

Mrs. Fitz wrapped a snow-white apron around her middle. “We can handle this. You go on upstairs and help Jake with the apartment. Sounds like he’s having a party up there.”

Berry looked at the ceiling. It did sound like a party upstairs. There was music blaring from a radio and the sound of at least a dozen feet scuffing around. She took the stairs two at a time and found her apartment filled with people. Mrs. Giovanni stood at the sink, up to her elbows in soapsuds. Several adult Lings were scrubbing walls and scouring floors. Ling children ran from bedroom to living room in a game of tag. A tall, rawboned man turned from a sparkling-clean front window. He held a bottle of glass cleaner and looked pleased. “They’re pretty clean, now. Now you can see Mama Giovanni’s geraniums when they bloom, and down the street my Caribe Restaurant.”

Berry caught Jake by the arm as he hauled a load of trash to the stairs. “What are all these people doing here?”

“They just showed up, one by one. You were right. This is a nice neighborhood.”

“They came to help me?”

“Mrs. Ling said you were the reason her daughter won her class spelling bee last month. Said you tutored her free for weeks before the contest. Mrs. Giovanni tells me you drove her to the hospital every day for almost a month this winter when her husband had a heart attack.”

“The tall man cleaning the windows,” she whispered. “I’ve never met him.”

“Apparently you’ve befriended his wife.”

Berry looked confused.

“Anne Marie.”

Berry’s eyes opened wide. “Anne Marie?” She burst out laughing. “Anne Marie is a six-foot-tall platinum blond who only speaks French. She gets lonely when her husband is at work, so she visits me. I speak English and make pizzas, and she sits on the stool, knitting and speaking French. Neither of us can understand anything the other says.”

Jake shook his head. “How can you find time to do all these things, run a business, and go to school?”

“I’ve eliminated sleeping and only eat once a day.”

Jake was serious. “What about time for Berry?”

“I like my life.”

“I think you’re running on empty. When you say you haven’t got time for naked men-you’re right.”

“Naked men do not play an important role in my life.”

Jake grinned down at her. “I intend to change that.”

“Good thing for you Mrs. Dugan stayed home to do the laundry. I’d tell her you were talking dirty to me.”

“That isn’t talking dirty.” He leaned forward and whispered some of his future intentions in her ear. He stepped back, grinning, enjoying the look of flustered embarrassment on her face. “Now that’s talking dirty.”

Mrs. Giovanni bustled past with a bottle of detergent in her hand. She shook her finger at Berry. “You got a nice young man there. You’re lucky to have a man like that to take care of you.”