Be My Neat-Heart (2 page)

Imelda, the heartless fiend, however, was overjoyed to have easier access to the remains of her prey and walked around for the rest of day with an amputated three-and-a-half-inch heel from my one and only pair of Manolo Blahniks in her mouth.

Once a shoe lover, always a shoe lover, I guess.

C
arver's office was pristine—to the naked eye, at least.

I sat down awkwardly in a contemporary, geometrically designed chair that had nothing to do with the shape of the human body unless, of course, you were the model for Picasso's
Sitting Woman With the Green Scarf.

“Now you know my weakness, Mr. Carver. I work too many hours and sleep on the job. How about you?”

“My Achilles' heel may not be quite as visible as yours, Ms. Smith, but present and accounted for nonetheless.”

“I must admit I'm not familiar with Carver Advertising,” I began. Listening is half my job, discovering who people really are and what they're about.

“We handle several large sports-related advertising accounts. We're big into baseball right now.” He studied me carefully. “Now tell me what
you
do.”

“I empower people to unburden themselves of life's excess baggage and to live in freedom, simplicity and order.” The elevator speech rolled off my tongue with ease, the result of a thousand repetitions.

His eyes widened and I added, “Frankly, sir, as my thirteen-
year-old neighbor says rather crassly, I help people ‘get their poop in a group.' I help them prioritize, organize and sanitize. I help them categorize, systematize and standardize….” Oh, oh, I was on a roll. “I show them how to purify, classify and stupefy….” I pulled myself together before I burst into “the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone….”

“Sorry, I get carried away putting like things together—even words.”

Carver grinned, but a disparaging snort from somewhere over my right shoulder made me flinch. I spun around to see the handsome, bad-tempered man from the elevator leaning against a bookcase, a coffee mug in his hand and a withering expression on his features.

He stared at me as if I were Kafka's cockroach lounging on the miserably uncomfortable chair, a chair only my Aunt Gertie could love. I squirmed as any self-respecting bug might. “You!” I blurted before my brain was in gear. “From the elevator!”

“You two have met?” Carver seemed astonished by that.

“We rode up together in the elevator,” I stammered.

“The one that stopped at every floor?” Now Carver really looked amused. Then he seemed to remember there were amenities to perform.

“Ms. Smith, I'd like you to meet my friend, Jared Hamilton. Jared just stopped by to—” he paused to choose his words carefully “—to vent about something concerning his work. I invited him to stay and see what you had to say. Do you mind?”

I minded a great deal, but I didn't think it was prudent to say as much. “Anyone you choose to have here is welcome, Mr. Carver.” I turned to face the desk again but had the sense that Hamilton was hovering above me like a bad-tempered bat hanging from the rafters. Granted, a good-looking bat, with chiseled features and broad shoulders, but he alarmed me nonetheless. Too serious. Too cantankerous.

Carver smiled encouragingly, as if to tell me to ignore the storm cloud lurking in the corner. “I don't believe I've ever met anyone quite like you before, Ms. Smith,” Carver said.

I didn't dare consider what he might mean by that, so I decided to take it as an admiring comment. A girl can use all the compliments she can get.

Unfortunately, I heard a muttered “No kidding?” from behind me.

“Pay no attention to him,” Carver said, giving Jared Hamilton a dirty look. “He's had some bad financial news, and he's being rather loutish at the moment.”

“Yes…well.”
Excessively loutish, if you ask me.

“Now that we've settled that, Mr. Carver, why am I here?” I forced bat-man out of my mind. “What can I do for you? This office doesn't appear to need a professional organizer.”

Silently he stood up and moved toward the bank of mahogany doors that lined the wall behind his desk. Without comment, he opened them.

Why he wasn't buried in an avalanche of paper as the doors silently slid away, I'll never know. Shades of those sneaky Pharisees! With Ethan Carver, what you see is not exactly what you get. The cup—or in this case, the closet—had not been cleaned in a very long time.

“This will be our little secret, Ms. Smith. You do have a confidentiality clause in your contract, don't you?”

I made a little zippering motion across my lips. No one would believe it, anyway. The papers looked like they'd been sorted by a wind machine. If there was any sense whatsoever to the mess, I couldn't fathom it.

“I'm known in my business as a perfectionist. I have a photographic memory and can retain virtually all of the details of my business up here.” He pointed to his head. “Therefore, I seldom worry about the papers on which information is
written and tend to simply toss them in here to be filed some day, but it has…gotten out of hand.

“My secretary does not deal with anything in my personal office. I prefer to do that myself.” He cleared his throat. “Now it's to a point where I don't feel comfortable asking her.” He began to pace a bit, the only sign of how this disturbed him.

“Because the company has grown, I've taken on a partner who will be on site starting next week. I prefer that he not see—” he gestured toward the mounds of floor-to-ceiling papers, files and flotsam and jetsam “—these.”

I nodded mutely, already mentally shopping for file cabinets and ring-binder notebooks. This was the perfect job for an über-organizer like me.

Then I realized what he had said. “Next week?” I managed. “So soon?”

“You can do it, can't you?”

“But my other clients, well, I guess…sure.”

“Good. Do you want to stay this afternoon or come back in the morning? I have appointments so I'll be out of your way.”

“It's not quite that easy, Mr. Carver. You have to be a part of this. Otherwise you'll have to call me every time you can't find something because the filing system I've used doesn't make sense to you. And,” I ventured, “unless we figure out
why
it got this bad and change your habits, it will happen all over again. We'll have to do some goal setting and prioritizing.”

“I don't have the time or need to organize my head, Ms. Smith,” he said pragmatically. “Only my shelves. I have an outside meeting this afternoon that shouldn't last more than a couple hours. Right, Jared?” He looked into the bat corner. “I'll just leave you here to begin, Ms. Smith. And please—” he paused at the door “—don't let my secretary in here. She'd have a coronary.”

He had that right.

“But I didn't schedule any time for this today…and I need you to be involved…there is no point…” My hands flapped helplessly at my sides. “This isn't my problem to solve alone…”

“It is now,” Jared Hamilton said, moving into the light. He looked amused for the very first time, which improved his looks but not the state of my quandary.

“I'll be back at five. That gives you two hours to evaluate my—” Ethan paused and smiled, already showing his relief at having someone to whom to delegate his problem “—situation. I'll talk with you then.”

Hamilton sauntered toward the door with his hands in his pockets, looking entirely too entertained. Carver followed him and they disappeared into the outer office. The door whispered closed behind them, leaving me right where I didn't want to be.

As the door closed I heard Hamilton say to Carver, “What are you? Nuts? Craziest thing I've ever heard! What's she going to do for you that you can't do for yourself? You're a smart guy. You can figure this out without an ‘organizer.'” He said the word “organizer” the way someone else might say “fleas.”

Hah! Being smart and having clutter don't have anything to do with each other. Some of the brightest, most creative people I know can't get their ducks in a row where their possessions are concerned.

I didn't like Jared Hamilton the minute I met him and that comment didn't improve his status with me one bit. A quick prick to my conscience reminded me that I was being judgmental.
Judge not that you not be judged.

Amen to that.

Immediately dismissing Hamilton, I stared at the stacks of nine-foot-high shelves with my hands resting on my hips, my shoulders squared. Even I felt intimidated and I'm a professional.

I took out the throwaway camera I carry in my purse and did what I always do at the beginning of a job. The “Before” pictures. I assure my clients when I hand them over at the end of a job that I didn't keep negatives and will not use them for blackmailing purposes. Still, I do want them to know just how far they've come in the organizing process. And have something to remind them to never go back there again.

The door opened and I jumped to put my back to the mess and splayed out my arms as if I could even begin to hide this little organizing debacle. But it was Carver again, this time with a boyish grin on his face. “You're saving me big-time, Smith. Even though my friend Jared says you can't do it, I believe you can. I owe you one.”

Indeed he did. I spent the rest of the afternoon designing a workable storage system and imagining what it was I was going to demand in payment.

I'm a big believer in categories. Like goes with like. Combs go with brushes, nail polish goes with emery boards and pencils do not go with spoons. Therefore, having to start somewhere, I pulled out an armload of paper, careful not to let the whole stack slide down on me, and started to sort. Prospectuses, financial statements, catalogues filled with golf equipment, personal letters and cartoon books of Calvin and Hobbs were all glommed together in the piles.

I looked around the pristine office and all its beautiful empty floor space. Perfect. Then I went to the door, peeked out and told the secretary that I didn't want to be disturbed under any circumstance and locked the door behind me.

To get in the mood for what I was about to begin, I started to hum. Singing gears me up to dig in to a project that, like this one, is over my head—literally. I make up my own lyrics, usually to something rousing like “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Mine eyes have seen the messes that have come to me today

I am trampling out the clutter and the junk where it was stored

I have given full permission and to the garbage men implore

Cart this stuff away!

Gory, gory, it's an eyesore,

Gory, gory, it's an eyesore,

Gory, gory it's an eyesore,

The junk is leaving now.

 

I glanced at the door to make sure there was no way Ethan's secretary could have found a hidden key and slipped in unheard by me. If anyone caught me sitting on the floor singing and shuffling papers like they were playing cards, they'd probably think they had grounds for commitment. Resolutely I began that phase of the project that always dismays my clients—that It-Will-Look-Even-Worse-Before-It-Looks-Better stage.

At five-fifteen, when Ethan Carver returned, I had every square inch of floor space covered with documents, newspaper clippings, letters and articles.

“What on earth?” He stared at the vast sea of paper in dismay.

“No worries,” I assured him cheerfully. “Everything on the floor is sorted by category. Since we didn't have time to talk, I have some questions for you. I want the files to suit you and how you think.”

“We already have a new filing system. My secretary, Lorraine, set it up.”

I picked up a handful of correspondence. “Then where would these go?”

Carver studied the papers. “Correspondence is under the
general heading of Code D-yellow. There are sub-files for each correspondent. For example, vendors would be filed under D-4 yellow. Within that vendor file, each correspondent has a sub-sub file. For example, this one—” he waved a paper in front of my nose “—would be filed under Code D-4-12 yellow. Get it?”

I got it all right, but I didn't want it. Ethan must have read my expression.

“Lorraine worked a long time to set this up for me,” he said defensively.

“And have you used it?”

“I started the day she finished setting it up.”

“And when was the last time you used the system?”

He blushed. “The day she finished setting it up.”

“So how's it been working for you?”

He flushed even more deeply. “It's a royal pain in the neck. Stupid. Who has time for that? Besides, I already know what all those papers say. I just need to store them somewhere.”

“Okay. So for now we'll make a file called ‘Vendors.'” I pointed to a stack of plastic filing crates I'd brought in from my car. “And put it in there. We'll make general categories for everything—golfing information, Calvin and Hobbs, prospectuses, so you have at least a clue where they are and then we'll decide how you actually want to find it if it becomes necessary.”

The relief on his face was palpable. For the next two hours Ethan and I crawled around the floor on our hands and knees thinking up logical categories and filling crates. At seven-thirty, I sat straight-legged on the floor with my back propped against his desk and studied him.

He'd lost the jacket and tie, his shoes and his perfectly coiffed hair. He looked happy and rumpled. Relieved of Lorraine's complex filing system, Ethan Carver was a free man.

I love my job!

Of course, I felt rumpled, too, and it's not one of my better looks. When my lipstick and blush fade I'm pale as a ghost. I'd tied my hair back with a big red rubber band I'd rescued from an unnecessary file and my blouse was falling out of the waistband of my now snagged and paper-crumb-coated black slacks. Clutter can be a dirty business.

“Well, I guess I'd better get going. I didn't mean for us to be here all night but sometimes, when a client and I are making progress, it's just so much
fun
….” I usually don't say that out loud. Most people don't understand how anyone can get a kick out of diving headfirst into someone else's mess.