Jen Lancaster - If You Were Here

I clench my fists and rub my eyes with them. “Aw, shit, this is what Ann Marie was worried about when we talked last week. That’s why she wanted me to lock someone in with a contract. Goddamn it.”

“You knew about this?” Mac’s eyes fly open in surprise.

I wave him off. “I thought this was just another one of Ann Marie’s wacky conspiracy theories, like how she thought we had termites and how our home inspector was senile.”

Mac’s lips narrow into a tight white line. “We did have termites, and according to Nick, Mr. Sandhurst has just been admitted to the Alzheimer’s wing of the Abington Cambs Assisted Living Center.”

I slump down the doorway into a heap on the floor. “Oh, my God, now what do we do?”

He sits down next to me. “There’s a solution, but you may not like it.”

“Whatever it is, I’ll like it more than this.” I reach out beside me and grab one of the thousands of handfuls of dust, debris, and broken nails that are free-range all over our floors.

“Nick knows a guy who can fix our house. His name is Vladimir, and he’s not exactly on the up-and-up, but he’s skilled. I guess he does a lot of work out of town, and he’s so under the radar that Vienna’s family probably doesn’t even know about him. Nick said he’d give us his contact information.”

I perk up immediately. “Great! Call him! Let’s go!”

“Yeah, there’s one thing,” Mac says with some hesitation. “We’ve got to do something for Nick in exchange for his sticking his neck out.”

“What does he want? I’ll get him anything — signed first editions, other authors’ books, an introduction to my agent. Whatever.” I glance around the squalor of our living conditions. “I am willing to do anything.”

Mac’s face twists with a wry grin. “Well, then, in exchange for Vlad’s info, your task is to write Nick a sex scene featuring Amos and Miriam.”

Damn you, Vienna.

Damn you .

I thought about finding some erotic fan fiction and trying to pass it off to Nick, but ultimately I couldn’t put my name on something I didn’t write, even if it was under duress.

I decided the most expedient route was to pay homage to the fridge scene from 9½ Weeks , only I changed the setting from the kitchen floor to the ground in the milking barn. Instead of strawberries and whipped cream, Amos feeds Miriam friendship bread and dumplings and the very tip of his thumb. And then. . other stuff happens under the watchful eyes of a barn full of Holsteins and two goats.

I feel dirty and disgusting after I’m done writing.

Then again, that might just be the end result of having our only shower break.

“You got big fucking mess on your hands.”

“Thank you for noticing,” Mac dryly replies.

“No, I’m serious. This is big fucking mess.”

We’ve just conducted the whole-house tour with Vladimir, our new contractor. He’s agreed to take the job, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

Mac seems to have his doubts, though. First, Mac noticed Vlad’s 3AKA3 MO CCCP 131Komandirskie watch. Then, when Vlad nudged the downed cabinet with his toe, Mac whispered that his boots were also Soviet army issue. When Mac tried to find out where exactly Vlad is from, it sounded like “Somewhere-istan.” I assume whatever country he’s from no longer exists, in which case I feel like we shouldn’t bug him about it. Maybe he’s sensitive.

Mac has an inherent distrust of all things Soviet, which he claims comes from his army background, but I’m willing to bet originated when Ivan Drago killed poor Apollo Creed in Rocky IV . Personally, I don’t care about his watch or his boots, and if this guy wants to totter around in Carrie Bradshaw’s Manolos, I’m fine as long as he makes my house more livable.

“Did you bring a contract with you or do we need to wait for you to draw one up?” Mac asks. Nick explained that Vlad won’t do contracts, but Mac tries anyway.

“No contracts, too much paper trail. I like to stay. . how you say. . undetected. Not on grid. Quiet. Is better,” Vlad tells us.

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Mac replies, giving me a plaintive look. I shrug at him in silent response. This isn’t exactly my first choice either, but what else are we supposed to do?

Vlad nods. “I got enemies. Long time back. Is bad situation.”

“I hear that,” I agree.

Vlad suddenly becomes very alert, swiveling his head back and forth over his shoulders. “What do you hear?”

“No, I mean I feel you.” Vlad’s still confused and concerned. “I understand you.” Vlad visibly relaxes and I continue. “I get the whole enemies thing. That’s why no one will work with us.” I briefly recap our issues with Vienna just to make sure he’s cognizant of the whole situation. I don’t want him ripping everything up and then deciding midstream he’s too afraid of the Hyatts to continue. As of now, everything’s an enormous mess, but a lot of the rooms are still functional with actual walls and floors. Once renovations begin, there’s no going back or stopping halfway.

“You got money to pay?” Vlad questions.

“Of course,” I reply.“I can give you a deposit right now if you’d like.”

Vlad coolly appraises me. “Then we got no problem. We got big fucking mess, but we got no problem. Tomorrow we come, begin tear everything down. Is good?”

“Is good.” Oh, crap. I’ve already started to mimic his speech. That used to happen to me all the time when I got sick as a kid. I’d be home alone for a couple of days with Babcia, and by the time I was well enough to go back to school, I’d adopted her cadence, telling my teachers, “Yes, have excuse in bag. Very sick. Better now.”

“Okay, tomorrow,” he says, before marching out the door.

As it shuts behind him, Mac says,“I have a bad feeling about this. I get a real ex-KGB vibe from him.”

“Please don’t start getting squirrely on me now,” I beg. “Do you realize what I had to go through to even get his contact information?” Every time I remember what I wrote about Miriam and Amos. . and the udders. . and the milking stool, I die a little inside. “We agreed we were going to do this. We have no other options.”

“We still have the one,” Mac argues.

Mac volunteered to quit his day job and work on renovating our house full-time. He’s already drafted preliminary plans about how he’d need to upgrade his garage workshop in order to accommodate the project.

If Mac were interviewing for a job, I’d tell him to bring up the meticulous-planning aspect of his personality if asked about his greatest strengths and weaknesses. If Mac’s properly prepared, he can blow through a task in a heartbeat, like when he mounted a shelf for me in college. The installation took ten minutes, zip, zip, zip, done. Buying the tool belt, gathering all the right screws, selecting the most appropriate hammer, and finding the studs and a lever and the right brackets took two weeks, and I was at the point where I was fine with my books living on the floor. Sometimes I need more execution and less planning, you know? Our infrequent fights almost always boil down to me getting on him to move faster, or him reacting to feeling rushed.

What’s ironic is that as much as he plans and readies his tools, he’s terrible at following instructions, because he secretly believes that he can figure out a better way; ergo, blue stew for dinner.

In order to do our renovations himself, Mac said he’d get his buddies to help him on the weekends.

Yeah, that was a selling point, let me tell you. I’m not sure which of those prospects strikes the most terror in my heart. He’s friends with Luke, whom you may have seen on the news last year when he set his garage on fire trying to deep-fry a turducken on Thanksgiving. Then there’s Charlie, who knocked out a Wrigleyville gas main when he attempted to dig out an inground pool with a stolen forklift one night after a Cubs game. How about Phil, who ended up in a body cast after adding a nitrous booster to his riding lawn mower?