chapter
Thirteen
Tuli was small and dark-haired with smooth, tawny skin and friendly eyes. She was the very definition of cute. “Isaac, my God, look at you!” she said, grinning up at him. “You look like some sexy, bougie banker. Such a difference from your trademark worn jeans and V-neck tees.”
Trademark what now?
Dear image of Isaac dressed down: get out of my head, please and thank you.
Tuli’s features were Indian, from the almond shape of her eyes to her patrician nose, but her lips were full, and she wore her hair in intricately braided dreads that were fastened at her nape. A bright fuchsia tank peeked out from white, paint-splattered overalls cuffed midcalf.
“C’mon, girl, you seen me looking professional before. And at church back in the day. Quit playin’.” His lips pressed tight, he crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels. He was embarrassed at her frank declaration that he was hot, while his dialect and posture were more relaxed than I’d ever witnessed. The Isaac Maat I knew was clearly not the Isaac Maat Tuli knew.
“You never filled out a dress shirt and slacks like this in high school or I’da taken notice, church or no church. Mmm. Mmm.”
Isaac shook his head and sighed, charmingly self-conscious. Who was this man?
“Tuli Bell, this is my coworker, Erin McIntyre. Erin, Tuli.”
She turned her smile to me, not the slightest bit repentant for disconcerting him in front of a stranger. “It’s great to meet you, Erin.” She pushed the door shut behind us with her foot. “I’d shake your hand, but you might come away with a bit of clay. I’ll just go wash up real quick. BRB.” Her ballet flats moved silently across the wood floors and canvas drop cloths.
“Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” I said, my heels clacking with each step into the room.
Artwork of assorted types and stages perched, leaned, and hung everywhere. A newly begun painting waited on an easel by one window and a hand-thrown bowl sat on a pottery wheel. Sharp smells of drying paint and solvents mixed with wet clay and fresh-cut flowers.
The main room was one long space encompassing the entire depth of the house, front to back. At the opposite end of the room, a half-light door flanked by two large windows showcased flowers and fruit trees in the backyard. Tuli disappeared through a doorway on the left, likely the kitchen. A short hall leading to a bedroom was visible through a doorway on the right. I was used to soaring ceilings, so hers felt low, but the effect was snug, not oppressive. This was the atmosphere JMCH couldn’t replicate. Cozy. Comfortable. Homey.
She came back, drying her hands on a tea towel.
“Your home is lovely,” I said, wishing I were here alone so I could explore every nook and cranny.
She laughed. “I’ve seen what y’all do—on the internet, anyway. This little house is my favorite place in the world, but it can’t compete with the luxury materials and square footage you’re used to working with.”
“Oh, you’re so wrong. I just matched up a client with a specific decorator a couple of weeks ago because this is the sort of vibe she wanted. A home that feels like a welcoming, peaceful space apart from the world instead of a hotel lobby. To get that kind of ambiance in the gigantic house she bought from us, they’ll have to fake it. This is the real thing.”
She beamed. “Well, thank you.”
I glanced at Isaac, who stood silently observing me with his dark, enigmatic eyes.
“Let me show you our predicament,” he said to her, his eyes still on mine for two heartbeats before he pulled up the photos of the Andersons’ ruined great wall, then handed over the iPad. “We’re hoping you can dream up a miracle.”
• • • • • • • • • •
An hour later, we left Tuli’s studio with numerous sketches of her ideas and images of completed projects scanned into Isaac’s iPad. Initially, she’d needed several minutes to recover from her immediate recognition of the artist’s work and the fact that my donkeyhead of a brother hadn’t taken basic precautions to safeguard a piece of irreplaceable artwork instead of battering right through it.
“I think it would be best if I never met whoever did this,” she’d said, glowering at the wall’s “after” pic in horror. “I am not a violent person, but I might end up in jail. Seriously. This is sickening.”
She had also needed time to adjust to the idea of collaborating—after the fact—with this same world-renowned artist, but once her brain began firing off potential solutions, she started sketching design concepts. Marching past her initial reverence and trepidation, she began to draft bold ideas I never would have conceived.
“Da Vinci’s Last Supper required restoration to preserve it, and if someone can man up to do that, I can do this,” she’d mumbled to herself.
In the face of her confidence, my not-unreasonable fears about the Anderson project receded from the edge of certain loss, and I began to feel optimistic for the first time.
“What now?” I asked Isaac, attempting to outrun the voice in my head telling me how together Tuli’s life was. How unfettered and creative and beautiful. I found myself in a peculiar mental space. Still jealous, but optimistic and grateful.
“Now we convince Sheila Anderson,” he answered.
“Okay.” I released a pent up breath and clicked my seatbelt into place. “How?”
The motor hummed to life and the AC blasted warm air that turned blessedly cool in seconds.
Facing me, Isaac quirked a brow. “That is your job, Ms. McIntyre.”
Well, damn.
As we reached the end of the picturesque street, he asked, “Would you like to grab lunch before we go back? It’s a little early, but we could beat the crowd here.”
“Sure. There’s actually a new taco place on 7th I haven’t tried yet—”
“Velvet Taco.”
“Yeah—that’s it. The one in Austin was good. You’ve been?”
“I live across the street from it.” He laughed. “I probably go too often.”
“Oh, well, we can go somewhere else. So wait—you do this commute every day?”
“I could eat tacos on the daily. And yeah, the commute is why I got this overpriced car. Figured if I was going to be on the road that long every day, I should be comfortable. I should have better considered the gas mileage though.”
“Be jealous—my Prius gets like fifty miles to the gallon. It always surprises me when I need gas because I never need gas. I wanted something more earth-friendly.”
“Admirable.” He smiled at me and thankfully looked back out to the road, because Christ on a porch swing, my face was warming up—literally—for a full-on blush. From a compliment about my environmentalism.
When was the last time Erin McIntyre had a real live crush on a boy? Middle school? Kindergarten? I did not crush; I was crushed on. I pointed the AC vent right at my face like I’d seen Mom do when she was going through The Change, as she called it.
Over spicy tikka chicken tacos and creamy cups of elote, Isaac restarted the faux interview, asking me to cite skills I possessed that would recommend me for the job.
“Wow, you were for hella real about conducting an after-the-fact interview.” I wiped my lips and considered the best way to answer. “Well, I’m a likable people person, evidenced by my election to sorority leadership—I was recruitment chair. I have ample customer service skills as shown in my success as a host. I’ve also been professionally trained to analyze, diagnose, and treat behavioral deviations and abnormalities, which will help me locate the root problems of our clients and resolve them.”
He took his time replying, as usual. “You aren’t worried about overstepping? Getting too personal? JMCH is a business, not a therapy office.”
A week ago I would have taken offense, but today I was basking in the glow of thwarting Leo. Also, I already had the job. “There’s a reason for that old adage Home is where the heart is. Our product is a home. Where a person sleeps, eats, spends time with family, friends, and pets—it’s inherently personal. How they feel about that place is crucial to their happiness.”
After another lengthy pause for reflection (fifteen seconds, like the wait for the crotchety elevator; yes, I counted) he said, “Our marketing department could use your help, I think.”
“You trying to get rid of me Maat? Sales wants me, too, you know.”
His eyes flashed. Oops.
“I said no.”
I counted to fifteen, but this time he made no reply.
As we were sorting our lunch containers into the trash and recycling bins, he asked, “So what do you believe your time at JMCH will do for you? My theory is that good workers make better employees when they gain as much—in the form of new skills, stronger confidence, clarity about where their career is ultimately going—as they contribute in labor.”
He unlocked the car, which had already returned to cookie-baking temperature. With no shade like the trees on Tuli’s street provided, the seats were too hot for bare skin. I slid my sunglasses on and closed my eyes. I had no idea what I would get from working at JMCH except a deferral from making a decision about my future, which stretched out before me like a barren landscape, devoid of solutions or even indistinct clues.
“We can stop if you want,” he said.
“Can we find a Starbucks while I formulate my unbelievably clever answer? I need caffeine. Bad.”
“Sure.”
My tormented night of insufficient sleep was taking its toll. Between the excitement of the first half of the day, a full tummy, and the warmth of the car, I was struggling to stay awake. I wanted to volley another astute answer back to him even if it was half-fudged. I wanted him to think he might have hired me himself if given the chance. I wanted him to like me.
A whole-body jolt made me realize I’d fallen asleep for a few seconds.
“You sure you’re feeling okay?” He looked concerned. “You’ve been asleep the past several miles.”
Oh. My. God. Several miles? What if Isaac had said something and I didn’t hear him? What if I snored like Daddy? Or drooled? I touched a finger to my chin, which was thank-you-Jesus dry. “Yeah, fine—I had a rough night. Didn’t get much sleep.”
Swoop. There went that quizzical eyebrow of his, and my belated realization of what I’d just said.
“Um, I mean, I had some bizarre dreams. Probably just surplus stress from this whole wrecked-wall situation—failing at life, Daddy in an uproar, the desire to commit a wee bit of fratricide, the usual.” My heart clenched at the lie, but there was no way I could tell him the truth—that I couldn’t come to terms with my ex-boyfriend’s death. Not when I’d caused him so much pain in the last months of his life, even if it was unintentional.
“Your father just wants the problem resolved. And your brother? I can’t be an accessory, but I’d testify for the defense. You have a sound case for justifiable homicide.”
I laughed. “Don’t start planning for your deposition just yet. If Tuli comes through, Leo will survive to ruin other people’s lives. Hopefully I will be far, far away from his next disaster.”
We got drive-through coffee, and just when I’d assumed he’d forgotten all about the interview, he reminded me of his last question: What would working for my father’s company do for me and for my career?
I wanted to release a dramatic, angst-filled groan, but I pulled myself together and went for broke. “If I was going to be honest, I guess I’d have to admit that landing this job would give me the opportunity to regroup and decide what I want to do next.”
“The ‘I need to find myself’ rationale? That sounds more like a gap year than career ambition.”
“Yeah, well, I said, ‘If I was going to be honest,’ didn’t I?” I sighed and dropped my empty cup into the cupholder between us. “Yes, I took the job because I didn’t know what else to do with my life right now. I can’t be the first person in the history of employment to do that, whether or not I bypassed having to tell pretty lies during a real interview to land the position.”
He sipped his coffee, stared out the windshield with an indecipherable expression, and said nothing.
“What about you? You said once that you took the job you could get because of the recession.” I’d circled back around to his weeks-ago reproach that my father had handed me a position created just for me and his indirect admission that working for JMCH wasn’t exactly his dream job either.
“And?”
I pressed on despite the vein pulsing at his temple. “And that doesn’t sound like someone who’s doing exactly what he wants to do with his life either. But neither of us is lolling around on a beach drinking mai tais or hiking up the Pacific Crest Trail. We both have our reasons for being there. So what if we didn’t disclose every motive for needing or accepting a job? That doesn’t mean the work we’re doing now is worthless.”
This time there was no lengthy pause and then another question, just uncomfortable silence but for the murmur of talk radio, the volume too low to catch more than a word here or there. Whether due to the caffeine or the abruptly ended conversation, I was fully awake for the remainder of the trip back.
As we entered the lobby, he said, “I’ll upload the scanned images to our folder and let you use your analytical expertise and congeniality to convince Mrs. Anderson of our proposed repair of her wall. Keep me informed. If she doesn’t go for it, I’ll have to come up with another angle.”
“She’ll go for it,” I said. I had no idea if she would go for it.
He nodded once with the most fleeting eye contact ever, turned, and jogged up the staircase to the second floor. I could have booked it up those stairs after him, stilettos be damned. By the time I was eighteen, I was accomplished at moving through the world in heels. But he couldn’t have made his desire to get away from me clearer. I followed more slowly, and his office door was closed by the time I passed it. The images were in our cloud file, as promised, minutes later, and I wasted no time in calling Sheila Anderson and asking her when she could meet me on-site.
“This will work,” I told myself, staring at the images on my giant desktop screen. I wanted to fix this for the Andersons. I wanted to fix it for Daddy. I wanted to rub Leo’s face in his failure to spoil everything for everyone. But most of all, I wanted to fix this for Isaac, because only his approval would fix it for me.