Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

“Yes! Absolutely I am! Run! I beg you to run away from this deal.”

This simply cannot be, so I persist. “What you’re telling me — it’s all fixable. A roof can be replaced. Termites can be killed. Ivy can be trimmed.”

“Mia, the heart of the matter is, you don’t understand what you’re undertaking,” Ann Marie says in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “Yes, you can almost always predict which option the homeowner will choose on House Hunters , and I believe with your taste you’d shine on Design Star .” She quickly amends her statement. “If you were putting together a room for little girls or gay men. What I’m trying to impress upon you is that renovations are long and ugly and demanding. You won’t grasp how invasive it is until you live it. Our powder room remodel took a month. No matter how much we tidied up, it was like every day the contractors came in and shook a five-pound bag of flour all over the house. I worry that this will put undue pressure on your and Mac’s shoulders. I just worry. That’s all.”

I have complete confidence Ann Marie has my best interests at heart and I believe her. . I do. She’s rarely wrong in spirit, but she frequently overestimates the scope of a problem.

Plus, I might just believe in fate a little bit more.

Destiny wouldn’t have led me to Jake Ryan’s house if it weren’t the one for us.

Right?

But just to be safe, I’m going to move my writing room to the library.

Chaos. That’s how I’d describe the situation here. Chaos.

Our closing yesterday was smooth sailing over calm seas. Then I was expecting chaos. I’d heard so many closing horror stories prior to the event, like problems with financing, parties not showing up, or worse — sellers dropping dead and the property going into probate, fights breaking out over Realtor percentages, paperwork snafus that took weeks and thousands to fix, but our closing entailed us signing our full names a bunch of times in blue ink and then receiving a set of keys. Easy peasy.

Start to finish, the whole thing took half an hour. We would have been through sooner if the seller’s attorney and I didn’t spend a few minutes bonding over our mutual distaste for cheesy vampire romances. 69

But after that? Nope, didn’t expect what happened after that.

Our last few minutes of Zen came after we walked out of the real estate office and stepped into the car. “This Is the Day” by The The was playing. With lyrics like, “This is the day / when things fall into place,” Mac and I grinned at each other like a couple of lunatics. Truly, yesterday was the day our lives changed, you know? I’m not sure either of us could have contained ourselves if “If You Were Here” had come on. Hearing that song reinforced my belief that there are always signs when something’s right, which is why I didn’t even bother to tell Mac about Ann Marie’s advice. The universe knows what it’s doing.

We stopped by the new house briefly to make sure the keys worked, then hightailed it back to the city, because we hadn’t come close to boxing up all our belongings for this afternoon’s move. 70

I was unloading the hutch in the living room when I noticed this spinning-rimmed low-rider making loops past our house. At first I was annoyed by the thumping bass but shrugged it off, knowing I was spending my last night in the ’hood. If the hipsters and hoodlums wanted to take ownership of this block, fine by me.

But as they continued to cruise around the house, I paid more attention.A pattern soon emerged — whenever the car full of shavedhead thugs passed our yard, they’d drive extra slow and lean out as though they were trying to get a peek at us.

“Mac!” I called into the intercom. “Mac! ORNESTEGA and his idiot friends keep circling the house. I’m worried they’re going to attempt a drive-by.” Seriously , I thought, if these little punks shoot me on the day I bought Jake Ryan’s house,then. .I guess that really would be the day that my life changed.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mac groused, stomping up the stairs. “These morons have no concept of physics, do they? If they were smart, they’d set up a sniper nest on the roof across the street. They can’t shoot us from a car, you know. Unless you’re a Ranger or a trained assassin or Agent Jack Bauer, 71it’s almost impossible to hit a moving target from a moving target. That’s why you always hear about innocent bystanders getting caught in the cross fire. If these derelicts had any concept of how to work a weapon, they’d all peg one another and social Darwinism would go a long way toward resolving the Cobra/Latin Kings territory dispute.”

“Uh-huh, great. I’ll just go ahead and call the police then.” I herded the pets in front of me so we could all scurry down to the basement. Then I noticed the determined set of his shoulders. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”

“No worries!” he assured me as he dashed up the stairs to the second floor. “My plan is foolproof!”

Well, shit.

I hid in the basement, waiting for the police to arrive and trying desperately to avoid getting a face full of hot lead.

In the interim, Mac went to work. Using a broom handle, a long down coat, and my Fashion Fever Barbie Styling Head, 72Mac made it look like a person was moving around behind our window sheer. I’d have congratulated him for his ingenuity, but considering he got the idea from Home Alone , I gave him only partial credit. And unlike Kevin McCallister, he was trying to lure ORNESTEGA and Co. in, rather than scare them away.

When I heard the hail of gunshots and the subsequent shattering glass, I sprinted upstairs to find Mac standing next to our broken window, tsk - tsk ing and wearing an oddly amused expression.

The forensics experts told us that out of the shots fired, seven bullets went straight into the ground, one hit our neighbor’s satellite dish, two lodged in the mailbox on the corner, four ricocheted back into the trunk of the car, and one grazed the driver’s right thigh.

No one was seriously harmed in the firefight, 73but ORNESTEGA suffered a broken leg and concussion when the injured driver floored the getaway car and bashed into the church across the street.

If that’s not God’s payback for the graffiti, I don’t know what is.

Well played, Lord. Well played.

By the way, the bullets didn’t shatter our window. None even landed on our property. The window broke when one of the spinners flew off the car and bounced into our house after the crash.

Between giving statements and tracking down a windowboarding service, we didn’t have a lot of time to shove stuff in boxes last night. Tracey and Kara brought us dinner and lent a hand, but at that point the evening was shot. 74

First thing this morning we called (begged) for some boxing assistance, and now there’s a team of six ladies making time and a half to Bubble Wrap our unmentionables while ten movers load out what’s already in cartons.

Mac isn’t even here to help supervise this three-ring circus. I figured the most appropriate punishment for, you know, drawing gunfire was to transport two hyperactive dogs and four angry kittens to the new house in his prize Mercedes. He called earlier to tell me that with all the yowling and barking, it was like driving up the expressway with six air-raid sirens.

I told him as soon as I stopped smelling lead dust, I’d be more sympathetic.

As it turns out, the sixteen strangers currently scurrying in and out of my house are not the source of the chaos.

Oh, no.

That honor belongs to Vienna, who’s presently standing in my front door.