Savannah Breeze (14 page)

“Your manager's sitting
in a bar all day, while you're over here killing yourself fixing the place up?” Daniel asked, polishing off the last piece of pizza. “BeBe, if anybody at Guale even thought about pulling a stunt like that, you'd fire their asses. So it's simple, right? If he won't work for you, fire him, and kick his ass out of here.”

“It's not quite that easy,” I said. “I can't fire him. I owe him money.”

“How?” Daniel and Weezie asked, almost in unison.

“He's been working here for six months, paying for materials out of his own pocket, and he hasn't been paid in all that time. This morning, he presented me with a bill for $4,800, which I don't have.”

“Damn,” Daniel said.

“Exactly,” I agreed. “I can't get this place fixed up, and ready to reopen by St. Patrick's Day by myself, and I can't afford to hire somebody else. So I'm screwed.”

“We'll help,” Weezie said quickly. “I can paint and sand. And I owe you, after all the help you gave me, fixing up the carriage house for Maisie's Daisy.”

“I know,” I told her, giving her a quick hug. “And I appreciate that. But you and I can't do plumbing. Or wiring. For that, unfortunately, we need Harry Sorrentino.”

“But you just said he's basically a barfly,” Weezie said.

“He is,” I agreed. I did a couple of deep-knee bends, and then, groaning, stood up straight again. “But I found out today that he's in a bad way financially too. He doesn't know I know it, but I found out
Harry Sorrentino needs money to get his fishing boat out of hock. Some marina repossessed it because he owes them money for dock fees and ice and fuel. So I'm going to make him a simple business proposition. The sooner he helps me get the motel open, and turning a profit, the sooner I can start paying him the money he's owed.”

Daniel shook his head. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

“Can I stop you?”

“I don't know Harry Sorrentino,” Daniel said. “But I know how I'd feel if I was in his position. So don't throw the boat thing in the man's face,” Daniel said. “Think about how that must feel. The guy lost his livelihood.” He gave me a meaningful look. “Kinda like the way you lost yours. It's humiliating, right?”

I sighed. “I hate it when you're right. Okay, I won't bring up the boat thing. I'll just use my incredible charm and persuasive powers to bend him to my will.”

“You mean you'll nag him nearly to death,” Daniel said.

“And speaking of nagging,” I said, picking up the paintbrush I'd left in the sink.

They followed me back to unit two.

“Oh, wow,” Weezie said, peeking inside. “I can't believe it's the same place.”

“Really? You don't think it was sacrilege to paint all that pine paneling?”

“Had to be done,” Weezie said briskly, putting a tentative finger to the painted floor. “This is dry. And I don't think it really needs a second coat.”

“But you can see the grain of the wood underneath,” I said. “And the places where the floor was patched.”

“Doesn't matter,” Weezie said, slipping out of her shoes and walking into the middle of the room. “This is Tybee, not the Telfair Museum. The look we're going for here is funky, cottagey. You want the wood grain to show. Anyway, the furniture will cover up the patched places. Trust me, this place is going to be adorable.”

“I'd settle for livable, or even sanitary. Anyway, you haven't seen the bathroom,” I warned, as she headed in that direction. “Not even paint can fix that.”

“But the bathroom's awesome,” Weezie called, her voice echoing in the empty room. “Come look.”

I poked my head around the doorway and into the bathroom.

The place had been transformed. The grungy black-and-white mosaic-tile floor sparkled. An old-fashioned brass light-fixture I'd never seen before hung from the ceiling, the walls had a fresh coat of white paint, and the sink, although still a dull grayish color, had been fitted with pitted but polished brass faucets. Gleaming brass towel bars had taken the place of the cheap plastic ones I'd seen earlier in the day, and the wooden medicine cabinet had been painted glossy black. Even its glass shelves had been cleaned.

“I had no idea,” I said slowly. “I mean, Harry was working in here all morning. I knew he put in a new hot-water heater, and installed the toilet and all, but I was busy in the living room, pulling up the old linoleum and carpet. I had no idea he'd done all this.”

Weezie knelt down to get a closer look at the claw-foot tub. “Looks like he took some kind of commercial cleaner to this. When you get a little money ahead, we can have the tub and the sink reglazed, babe. It'll only cost a couple hundred bucks, and when it's done, it'll be fabulous.”

Now Daniel stuck his head in the doorway too. “I thought you said the guy was a barfly. This bathroom looks pretty cool. I wouldn't mind checking in here myself.”

Weezie punched him in the arm. “Forget it, lover boy. It's almost midnight. We're going to get her furniture unloaded and set up, and then we're headed for your place.”

Daniel caught her hand and kissed it, waggling his eyebrows at both of us. “See how it is? She can't get enough of me.”

Under Weezie's direction, Daniel and I began unloading the truck.

“Get the rug first,” she ordered, and he dutifully carried in a long, paper-wrapped cylinder and set it down in the sleeping nook. When he unrolled the rug, I stared down at it dubiously, trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The rug was an ancient oriental, its nap worn down almost to nothing, its colors faded to soft pinks, greens, and blues. One end of it looked as if it had been attacked by a horde of angry moths, leaving the edges ragged in places.

“Now flip it over,” Weezie instructed.

“Huh? Wrong side up?” But Daniel did as he was told. The colors on the reverse side of the rug were even softer, leaving the pattern with a smudged, Impressionist look.

“Perfect,” Weezie said, clapping her hands with delight. “I'd almost forgotten I had this thing. My ex would never let me put it in my house. It was shoved way back in the attic of the town house.”

Daniel said. “What do you want to do with that iron-frame bed in the truck?”

“Set it up,” Weezie said. “The mattress is brand new, and I've had that rug cleaned, moth-proofed, and sanitized. So there's absolutely no danger of cooties besmirching your precious little tootsies.”

“As if,” I mumbled. But then I trudged out to the truck to get the rest of the furniture. Because Weezie was right. This wasn't a mansion, and I wasn't Lady Astor.

“Bring in the wicker rocker and the nightstands and the lamps next,” Weezie called after me from the doorway.

By the time we got the nightstands, lamps, and wicker chair inside, Weezie had the bed made up with clean sheets and a plump comforter. The bed, as promised, covered up the rattiest part of the rug, which actually looked amazing on the white-enameled floor. The black iron tracery of the headboard stood out from the white walls, and with the stack of crisp white pillows, and the Tiffany-blue comforter, I had to admit the little sleeping nook suddenly looked very tempting.

“Very pretty,” I said, fingering the white eyelet lace edge of the pillowcases.

“Thank God for Target,” Weezie said, giving it the phony French pronunciation of Tar-zhay. “The sheets are actually pretty high thread-count cotton. And I found the comforter on clearance at the end of the summer, $9.99. You probably don't remember, but I had it on a display bed in the shop, with a little feed-sack quilt folded on top of it.”

“You're a genius,” I said. “And I'm a spoiled brat.”

“Agreed,” she said, smiling. She picked up a pebbly white lamp with a shade with pom-pom trim, placed it on the little three-legged pine table on the right side of the bed, and plugged in the cord. A peeling, dark green, square bamboo-looking table was on the left, and she put the other lamp on top, then turned on both lamps.

“The lamps are milk glass,” Weezie told me. “They're not all that terribly old. Sixties, I'd say. I think Meemaw probably bought them with S and H green stamps.” She placed the rocker at an angle to the bed and frowned. Then she took a piece of wildly flowered green, red, and yellow nubbly fabric from the empty Target shopping bag and covered the cracked red-leather seat cushion with it.

“Works,” she said, nodding her approval. “I've been saving that piece of bark cloth for ages. I had Tacky Jacky re-cover an armchair with the rest of it, but there wasn't enough left to do much with. We still need a reading lamp here, but I've got one in the shop that will work.”

By unspoken agreement, we both stepped back from the sleeping nook to take it in. I gave my best friend a hug, but she shrugged out of it and returned to her I'm-in-charge-here-take-no-prisoners mode.

“Go get the stack of pictures on the front seat of the truck,” she ordered. “And tell Daniel to bring in the love seat and armchair.”

“Love seat?” I asked. “Where are you gonna put something that big?”

“It's a little two-seater settee. So you just keep moving,” Weezie said imperiously. “I'll figure out where things go.”

“Hey,” I said, when Daniel carried in the turquoise-painted wrought-iron settee. “Isn't that one of the pieces you brought back from your last buying trip to Florida?”

“So?” Weezie said, deliberately turning her back to me. “Put it right against this wall,” she said, patting the window opposite my bed. “And then the chair goes right here,” she continued. “And the little glass-topped table goes in between them.”

“The point is, that's not just old junk from your attic, it's merchandise from the shop. I can't take good stuff you were intending to sell.”

“I will sell it,” Weezie said, fussing with the cushions on the settee. “To you, or somebody else, eventually. In the meantime, I brought back a whole truckload of furniture from Florida, and I don't have room for all of it in the shop right now, so you're providing me with cheap storage. Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” I said meekly. “What were you saying about that stack of pictures?”

“Bring 'em on in, and then get me a tack hammer and a yardstick,” she said.

I didn't dare voice any more objections to Weezie's contributions. Maybe I flinched a little, though, when I saw the pair of gaudy pictures, one a heron, the other a flamingo, that she'd chosen to go above the bed.

Of course she saw right through me. “I
know
these are not what you're used to,” she lectured. “These are just old fifties paint-by-number pictures. They're not exactly Maybelle Johns. But think of it like this—they're cute, they work, and,” she added ominously, “the price is right. Besides, paint by numbers is still very hot. These babies bring fifty bucks apiece in the shop.”

“You don't have a velveteen
Last Supper
in that stack, do you?” I asked.

“No velveteen,” she said firmly.

Daniel came in then, carrying a rectangular table on his head.

“Over there, in the kitchen,” Weezie said before following him out to the truck to bring in the last of the load.

When they came back, they were each carrying a pair of aluminum-frame chairs with aqua vinyl upholstered seats whose color matched the Formica tabletop.

“Do you love it?” she asked, walking around and around the table. “Tell me you love it, or I'll have to kill you.”

“I do love it,” I laughingly admitted. “It makes me smile. I haven't seen a Formica dinette set like this in years.”

“Thirty dollars!” she crowed. “At the Bon Wille' on Sallie Mood.”

“Bon Wille'?” Daniel asked. “Where's that?”

“That's Franglais for Goodwill,” I said, catching on. “It's perfect, Weezie. It's all perfect.”

“I know,” she said smugly. “I have the gift, the junking gene.” She tugged at Daniel's arm. “Let's go, sport. Our work here is done.”

I trailed out behind them to the parking lot. “Seriously,” I said. “I can't thank you guys enough. As soon as I get some money ahead, I'll pay you back for everything.”

“Not necessary,” Weezie said, hanging her head out the passenger-side window. “This is just the start. As soon as those other units are ready, I'm gonna junkify them too. And we'll put my business cards in each room, saying the furnishings came from Maisie's Daisy. This will be my own private showroom.”

“You're crazy,” I yelled at the truck's red taillights.

“Like a fox,” she called back

I crossed my fingers
and turned the hot-water faucet in the bathtub. Tea-colored water trickled out at first, but cleared up after a moment, and after another moment or two, scalding-hot water gushed from the tap.

I'd taken a stack of clean bath towels and soap from the laundry room in the manager's unit, and had even found a miniature bottle of bubble bath, so old that the paper label was yellowed with age. I dumped in the whole bottle, and sank deep into the hot froth, willing my aching muscles to relax.

Tomorrow, I thought sleepily, I would have to start all over again on the other thirteen units. More scraping, scrubbing, stripping, and sanding. But, I vowed, I would not be working alone. Harry Sorrentino, by God, worked for me, and by God, he would work with me too.

Finally, when the water had gone tepid and my knees weak with exhaustion, I toweled off and stumbled to bed, where I fell instantly to sleep.

 

Dazzling sunlight flooded into the room, nearly blinding me with its intensity. I yawned, stretched, and glanced at my watch. Six-thirty! Somehow, I would have to rig up some kind of curtains at the windows facing my bed.

Before my feet could even hit the floor, there was a soft knocking, and a more insistent scratching, then barking.

“Yeah?” I said groggily.

Harry opened the door and poked his head inside. “You didn't lock up last night,” he said accusingly. “I came home and the place was wide open.”

I blinked. “Is anything missing?”

“No. But that's not the point, damnit. You left the office open too. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Aware that I'd gone to bed wearing nothing more than panties and an oversize T-shirt, I wrapped the comforter around me and stood up, trying to summon my dignity.

“We didn't finish working here until after midnight. I was tired. I haven't had any sleep. So yes, I did forget to lock up. For which I apologize. But maybe if you'd come back at a reasonable hour, you could have given me a hand and I wouldn't have been so absolutely sick with exhaustion.”

“I put in an eight-hour day of work here, yesterday, in case you didn't notice,” Harry began.

“Yippee for you,” I snapped. “I put in sixteen hours. I'm likely to put in at least that today too. Not that you care.”

Jeeves let out a low, guttural growl. Harry gave me the human, visual equivalent of a growl.

“Just lock up, okay? I can't get anything done if my power tools go missing.”

“Fine,” I said, hurrying toward the bathroom, and slamming the door hard behind me.

He apparently didn't realize he'd been dismissed. I could hear Jeeves's nails clipping as he trotted around my living quarters, followed by Harry's heavy footsteps.

“Place looks pretty good,” Harry called to me.

“No thanks to you,” I mumbled to myself, assessing my looks in the wavy glass of the mirror. I still had flecks of white paint in my hair, which badly needed washing. I looked down at my hands. My knuckles were scraped raw, and the nail on my right forefinger was
black and swollen from where Weezie had hit it with the tack hammer.

“I like the white floors,” he said. “You gonna do that in all the units? It'll cut down on maintenance. We won't have to vacuum, or worry about carpet stains, and sand won't show on these white floors.”

“Yeah,” I called back. “I thought about that already.” What I didn't tell him was that I had plenty of cheap paint, but no money for carpets anyway, or a vacuum cleaner, or somebody to run said vacuum.

“Where'd you get all the furniture?” he asked. “There's some beds and dressers out in the storage shed, but nothing this nice.”

“It's on loan from a friend.”

Why didn't he leave already? I needed to pee, but I didn't want him out there, listening to me.

“See you in a little bit,” I called, hoping he'd get the hint.

“You got any coffee?” he called back, still oblivious.

“No. No coffee, no coffeemaker, no mugs, no spoons,” I said.

“Oh. Well, I guess I could make us some.”

“You do that,” I said, turning on the bathtub faucets to drown out any embarrassing sounds.

“Okay.”

When I'd dressed in my work clothes, with my hair covered with the stocking cap again, I marched myself over to the office, where Harry was sitting at the table, sipping coffee and regarding a heap of metal parts in front of him.

“What's that?” I asked, pouring myself a mug.

“The motor for the clothes dryer,” he said, poking at it with a screwdriver.

“Shit,” I said, sitting opposite him. “Can it be fixed?”

“Maybe. No promises.”

“We've only got the one dryer, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it's got to be fixed. I can't afford to replace it.”

He took a pair of glasses from his breast pocket and perched them on the end of his nose, leaning in closer to examine the motor. “I know,” he said. “I know all about your little problem.”

I felt my scalp prickle, and my hands started shaking so badly I had to set the mug of coffee down on the table to keep from spilling it all over myself.

“Which little problem is that?”

He sighed. “Tybee's not Siberia, you know. People talk. They even talk about you. You're a pretty hot topic over at Doc's Bar.”

I grimaced. “Swell. So what's the Doc's Bar version of my little problem?”

Harry reached for a tin pie pan that contained a heap of nuts and bolts. He found the one he wanted, and carefully inserted it in a minuscule hole in the motor.

“Let's see if I got it straight. You had yourself a little boy toy, some rich guy from Charleston with a yacht and a fancy car. Only he wasn't really rich, or from Charleston, and the yacht wasn't his either. And when the smoke cleared, the boyfriend was gone, and so was all your money. He sold your house, and everything in it, cleaned out your bank accounts, and blew town.”

He reached for his coffee mug and took a sip. “That about the size of it?”

There was no use in lying to him. Maybe it was time to put my cards on the table. “That's about right. I wouldn't exactly call Reddy a boy toy, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty, yeah, he cleaned me out.”

“And now you've had to close your restaurant. And you're broke.”

“Dead broke,” I said glumly.

“And basically homeless,” Harry said, ever helpful.

“Not anymore. I own this place. It's oceanfront property. Extremely valuable oceanfront property that I own outright. I'm back in the game.”

“Nuh-uh,” Harry said. “Sandcastle Realty Associates has an option on the Breeze. Your lawyer's fighting it, but in the meantime, you can't do squat. You're screwed, sweetheart.”

“Don't call me sweetheart,” I said sharply. “I don't know what all you've heard from the sages over there at Doc's. But they don't know me. And you don't know me.”

“Don't I?” He picked up the motor and went into the utility room, where he dropped down onto the floor in front of the disemboweled dryer.

I followed right behind him. “You think I'm just some bubbleheaded downtown ditz playing Motel Barbie, right?”

He had his back to me, so all I heard was a grunt.

“It doesn't bother me what you think,” I said. “And I don't care what a bunch of winos and losers think of me either. But here's the deal, Harry. St. Patrick's Day falls on a Monday, which means we'll get a four-day weekend of guests who will basically pay anything to stay anywhere within a twenty-mile radius of Savannah. I've checked the rates at the B and Bs in town. The Gastonian, the Ballastone, the Planter's Inn? They're all booked. Have been since before Christmas. They all charge at least $350 a night at St. Patrick's Day. For three nights minimum. We can make around a thousand bucks apiece, for fourteen units. That's $14,000 for our opening weekend. So, you see, Harry, the Breeze is going to be open and fully booked by then.”

He laughed. “Lady, this ain't the Gastonian. It ain't even the Motel Six. Nobody will pay those prices to stay on Tybee Island. And especially at the Breeze Inn. I'm telling you, it can't be done.” He rolled over onto his back to look up at me. “You saw what your unit looked like. And that was the nicest one. The rest of 'em are ten times worse. It's not just a matter of time, either. I need materials. Roofing shingles, commodes, Sheetrock, lumber. Three of the units have rotted-out doors. None of that stuff comes cheap.”

“Let me worry about the money part. I've still got credit cards.
You just make a list,” I told him. “I'll borrow a truck, and meet you over at Home Depot in an hour.”

“Sure,” he said, going back to work.

“And there's one more thing,” I added.

“I can't wait to hear it.”

“No more taking off at three o'clock to go drown your sorrows at Doc's Bar. I know you've got your troubles, but drinking isn't going to solve them. And anyway, I need you here. All day. Every day.”

“Fuuuckkk.” He said it long and low.

He sat up. “You were checking up on me at Doc's? Is that what this is all about? Well, fuck you, lady. What I do when I'm off the clock is my own damn business. And as soon as you pay me what you owe me, you can find somebody else to order around.”

“I'm aware of how much money I owe you,” I said calmly. “And you'll get it back. Every dime. I swear. The police have a lead on my uh, Reddy's, whereabouts. When they find him, I'm going to get my money back. And my house and my rental properties. My lawyer is very optimistic about that. And we're working on resolving this Sandcastle Realty issue too. But in the meantime I can't pay you anything until this place is up and running.”

“You're living in a dream world,” he said. He put the front panel back on the dryer, stood up, wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans, and mashed the button on the dryer's control panel. We both bent down at the same time to look inside the glass door. Whompa-whompa-whompa. The big steel drum started its slow rotation. It worked. At least one dream had come true for the day.

“My hero,” I said, patting him on the back.