Christmas at the Hummingbird House (11 page)

“It certainly is,” replied Adele, still staring at the other woman.  “You said you were going to cancel your reservation.”

Sheila’s husband slipped his arm around her waist.  “We changed our minds.”  He looked at Will.  “You said you were going to be in Palm Springs.”

“Changed our minds.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Sheila, moving forward.  “Why in the world didn’t you say something?  We could have driven down together!”

The two women embraced, laughing, and the two men shook hands heartily.  “Will Canon, you old so-and-so, every time I see you, you look younger!”

“You keep promising me that round of golf, but somehow you never come through.”

“That’s because I’ve got better sense than to play with somebody who’s got nothing to do but work on his game.  You skunk me every time.”

Adele said to Sheila, “Love your hair!  Who did the highlights?”

And Sheila replied, “David Lee, he’s an absolute genius and charges for it too.  Did you get the pictures I e-mailed you of Glenda and the baby?”

“No, I didn’t.  When did you send them?”

“Never mind, I have them on my phone.”

While Sheila searched through her purse for her phone, Paul and Derrick looked from one to the other of them, baffled. “Well,” Paul said at last, a little weakly.  “Isn’t this nice?”

Adele grinned.  “This must seem odd.  I sent Sheila the link to your website months ago, before we’d even made a reservation.”

“We thought it’d be fun to spend the holidays together,” Sheila went on, “but then we never could get our schedules straight.”

“But it turns out we did!” Adele said, beaming, and added to their hosts, “Sheila’s my younger sister.”

“And Will and I were business partners for twenty-five years,” added Bob, grinning.

“Until Pinnacle Records bought us out,” Will said.  “I stayed on a few years as CEO, but it just wasn’t the same without my old bud.”

“We’re both too damn rich,” agreed Bob.  “Takes all the fun out of working.”

“Just because we married the wrong person the first time around doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends,” said Sheila, thumbing through the pictures on her phone.  “We just don’t get to see each other as much as we’d like.”

“Which is probably why we’re all still friends,” said Adele, laughing.

“Oh, wait, here they are!” Sheila held up the phone and everyone crowded around to see the pictures.

“Well,” Paul said, “Mr. and Mrs. Canon, you’re in the rose room.  Your bags are already there if you’d like to freshen up.  Dinner is in half an hour.”

“I’ll just go check on it,” Derrick said hurriedly.

“I’ll help,” Paul added.  “Please enjoy the refreshments and, um … well, welcome to the Hummingbird House.”

But none of the four laughing people in the foyer even noticed when they were gone.

The snow shower lasted just long enough to add a fresh glisten to the gardens, which were spectacularly lit by pink, blue and white lights that twinkled from the trees and adorned the low shrubs.  Flickering candle luminaries marched along the rock walls and lined the paths that meandered throughout the night garden.  Outdoor heaters blew warm air across the upper patio, and a fire crackled and snapped in the stone fire pit at its center, sending orange and red cinders into the air which exploded against the night sky like miniature fireworks.  It was here that everyone gathered, sipping hot chocolate spiked with Kahlua and rum and slathered with thick whipped cream, while silver-voiced carolers in Dickensonian costumes performed their concert in front of a cascading waterfall fountain where a perfectly animated, multicolored fiber-optic hummingbird fluttered its wings and dipped its head to drink.  Wives leaned their heads contentedly against their husbands’ shoulders or wound their gloved fingers around a loved one’s arm.  Mrs. Hildebrand, securely seated and bundled against the chill, sipped her chocolate and applauded by banging her cane on the stone floor, and even Geoffery Windsor, who had emerged from his room just as everyone was being seated for dinner, could be seen to smile in the glow of the firelight.  The two mopey teenagers, whether by choice or command, did not attend the festivities, and no one, least of all their parents, seemed to mind.

Paul and Derrick, having made certain everyone had a full mug and was enjoying himself, stood toward the back, benignly gazing over the results of all their hard work.  “There were a few close calls,” admitted Derrick beneath the cover of a beautifully rendered a cappella version of “The First Noel.”  “But all in all, I’d say so far, so good.”

“I thought we were done for when Mrs. Hildebrand threw that Bartlett girl’s phone in the punch bowl,” Paul said with a barely repressed groan.

“
I
thought the whole room was going to stand up and applaud,” said Derrick.  “I almost did, myself.”  He sipped his chocolate and added, “To be fair, she didn’t so much throw it as drop it.”

The incident to which they referred had occurred as Paul was ushering everyone to dinner. The two girls, still dressed in their rumpled traveling clothes and with eyes and thumbs still glued to their phones, reluctantly shuffled toward the door.  Their father said something about putting away their phones during the dinner hour, and their mother, who had had several cups of wassail and a glass of wine, waved a dismissing hand.  “Oh, please darling, let sleeping dogs lie.  We’ll all be much happier that way.”

Carl Bartlett frowned.  “It’s rude.”

His wife moved ahead of him toward the dining room without giving any appearance of having heard.  He tried again.  “Pammie, Kelly, we’ve talked about this.  Phones down during dinner.”

To which Pamela only rolled her eyes and Kelly, the youngest one, didn’t even reply.  It was about that time that Mrs. Hildebrand came abreast of the girls and, with a deft backward movement of her cane that caught the cord of Pamela’s earbuds, jerked them out of her ears and the phone out of her hand, sending the phone sailing into the bowl of wassail punch on the table.  Pamela shrieked. Mrs. Hildebrand smiled.  Everyone else, stunned, simply stared.

“You did that on purpose!” Pamela cried, outraged.  She fished the phone out of the bowl with her fingers and cried, “It’s ruined, it’s ruined!” while Paul rushed to mop up with a napkin the wassail that was dripping on the floor.  She whirled on her father. “Did you see that?  She did it on purpose!”

To which Carl Phipps replied mildly, “No, actually, I didn’t see a thing.”  And he, too, moved toward the dining room.

Pamela turned back to Mrs. Hildebrand, her eyes furious and her color high.  “You can’t do that!  You can’t just destroy other people’s private property!  There are laws!  You’ll see!  You can’t do this!”

The older woman smiled and patted Pamela on the arm.  “Of course I can, my dear. I’m old and I’m rich.  I can do just about whatever I want.”

She looked then at Kelly, who quickly jerked the earbuds out of her ears and stuffed her phone in her pocket, then hurried to join her parents in the dining room.  Mrs. Hildebrand followed at a more leisurely pace, an expression of intense satisfaction on her face.

“I’ve heard that placing a cell phone in a bowl of rice will dry it out,” volunteered Derrick now, as the carolers segued into “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

“Yes,” agreed Paul, who knew perfectly well there was a five-pound bag of rice in a canister in the pantry.  “We must remember to ask Purline where she keeps the rice in the morning.”

“We have a new policy, by the way,” said Derrick.

“No children under twenty-one?”

“Right.”

“Can you believe the Mathesons and the Canons?” murmured Paul in a moment, repressing a shudder.  “For a moment I was certain we were in for the War of the Roses.”

“It does look as though one of us might have uncovered the fact that they were related,” admitted Derrick, mildly disturbed.  “Or at least former business partners.”

“We’ll definitely have to be more careful in the future,” agreed Paul.

“Of course, all is well that ends well.”

They listened to the remainder of the carol in contented silence.

“That Geoffery Allen Windsor is an odd duck,” observed Paul when the carolers launched into the upbeat tempo of “Sleigh Ride” that suggested they were nearing the end of the concert.

Derrick shrugged. “All writers are.”

Paul slanted him a mildly offended look.  “I’m a writer.”

“So you are.” Without further clarification, he went on, “At least everything worked out with the massage therapists. Mrs. Hildebrand said her massage was better than anything she’s had in San Francisco or New York, and has booked a reflexology treatment for the morning.”

“They do seem very eager to please,” Paul agreed, “although the language barrier is a problem.  I just wish we could have gotten them to come into the kitchen and eat something.  I don’t like to think of them going hungry when we have all this food just a few steps away.”

“It’s probably a religious thing,” Derrick said, although he, too, looked worried.  “Maybe they’re vegetarians.”

“We have plenty of salad.”

“We should take them some,” decided Derrick.  “Do you suppose they’ll be warm enough in that contraption of theirs?  We’ll take blankets too.”

“Well, mates, what do you say?”  Mick clapped a hand on Paul’s shoulder, his expression cheerful in the firelight and his voice warm.  “Shall I toss on another log to warm the night, or let her fade away like the last notes of that lovely choir?”

Paul said. “Thank you for staying to tend the fire, Mick, but you can let it die now, don’t you think?  Did you get dinner?”

“I did, indeed, and I come bearing gifts.”  He offered a plastic plate wrapped in tinfoil to Derrick. “From our Korean brethren, as a thank you for your hospitality.”

Derrick shuffled his mug to the other hand to accept the plate and carefully peeled back the foil, his eyes widening in delight as he caught the aroma. “What is this?”

“Only the best Korean barbecue it has ever been my pleasure to wrap my mouth around,” replied Mick.

“Oh my,” said Paul appreciatively as Derrick waved the plate beneath his nose.  “And we were worried about what they were having for supper.  Wait,” he said, and looked at Mick.  “You speak Korean?”

“A mite,” admitted Mick.

Derrick said eagerly, “Can you tell them to move their trailer? You see, we have sleighs and window vans coming, and we really need our parking lot back.”

Mick burst into laughter as the carolers began the first round of “Jingle Bells.” “Not a chance, my brothers,” he said, and rested a hand on each of their shoulders in a companionable fashion.  “Not a chance in this world.  Come with me.”

The glow from the parking lot reached them before they even rounded the corner of the building.  The silver trailer and the battered Blazer were still there, only now they were outlined top and bottom in multi-colored Christmas lights.  A dining canopy had been set up outside the trailer and it, too, was draped with red, blue, yellow, white and green lights.  Beneath it was a cooking fire and several pots, from which emanated a variety of enticing aromas, with two lawn chairs drawn up around it. A thick orange extension cord ran from the trailer to an outdoor outlet on the side of the Hummingbird House.

Park Sung and Kim Gi, now back in their casual attire, stood and bowed, grinning broadly, when they saw the three men approach.  Paul and Derrick waved back weakly, their eyes transfixed by the spectacle. “Quite something, isn’t it?” said Mick.

“Yes,” managed Paul.  “It is.”

Most amazing of all, they had somehow managed to outline the mural of the Taj Mahal in tiny white lights so that it looked as though it was alive: the minarets glowed, the reflecting pool shimmered, and the stars seemed to twinkle in the sky.

“Well for heaven’s sake,” murmured someone behind them, “will you look at that?”

Paul glanced over his shoulder to see that the guests had followed them around the building and now stood, as transfixed as they were, by the sight.  Someone else said, “Who needs the tour of lights?  I don’t think anything we’re going to see will outdo this.”

Added another, “You gents don’t leave any stone unturned, do you?”

Derrick and Paul lifted their cups in salute to the smiling and bowing couple at the trailer, and the carolers began, “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

“Like I said,” repeated Derrick, “All’s well that ends well.”

~*~

December 22

Welcome to the Hummingbird House!  Remember if there is anything we can do to make your stay even more delightful, you have but to ask.  Directions to nearby attractions, horseback riding facilities, shopping and hiking trails are available at the front desk.

Your hosts,

Paul and Derrick

6:00–10:00 a.m.
Coffee and pastries available in the dining room

8:30 a.m
. Country breakfast is served in the dining room

1:00 p.m
. A light buffet lunch will be available in the dining room

2:30 p.m.
Reading and book signing by Geoffery Allen Windsor, author of
Miracles for the Modern Age

4:00 p.m.
Cocktails and hors d’oevres served around the Christmas tree in the front parlor

6:00 p.m.
Sleighs begin to load for our gala excursion to the top of Leaning Rock, where you will enjoy an elegant champagne supper and all of nature’s glory beneath a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower

If you have reserved a spa treatment, your appointment time reminder card is enclosed.

~*~