My Own Mr. Darcy (23 page)

I finished eating my salad
and put my notebook in my bag.

“I guess I’ll head back to
work,” I said.

“Sounds good,” Matt said
without looking up.

I put my hand on his
shoulder, hoping to soften things before I left. “Thanks for lunch.”

“No problem.” He kept his
gaze on his desk.

I walked out of the
bookstore, confusion mixed with relief. Confused by Matt’s reaction to my
plans; relief that Meg was nowhere to be seen and I wouldn’t have to expend the
energy to dress my face in a fake smile.

The weeks before the
Kellers left were busy. Mrs. Keller sold or gave away some of the nicer things
from the living room and dining room and then hired a moving company to haul
everything else to Goodwill.

“I need a vacation after
emptying out these rooms,” Mrs. Keller said as we walked through the now-empty
space.

“It looks so much bigger,”
I said.

“I thought the same thing.
I just had too much stuffed in here.” Mrs. Keller clasped her hands. “I’m so
excited about this. I’m so sorry you’re using vacation time for this but I’m
thrilled to have it finished sooner.”

“I really don’t mind. My
dad used to say ‘a change is as good as a vacation.’ This change is going to be
fun for me.”

While I was there I hung
large plastic sheets over the doorways to the rest of the house to keep the
mess and dust to a minimum. The living room had no light fixtures and felt dark
and forbidding. I couldn’t wait to see the room with the new light fixture and
wall sconces. I made a note to bring a couple of lamps from home to use until
the lights were in.

“I’m going now,” I told
Mrs. Keller.

“Here’s the key and I
wrote the code to the garage down in case you need to get into the garage for
anything. There’s not a lot of food here, but you’re welcome to whatever you
can find and you’re welcome to use the kitchen.”

“Thank you. I guess I’ll
see you in two weeks. Enjoy the warm weather.”

I squealed with excitement
as I drove away from the Keller’s. After work tomorrow, I’d begin stripping
wallpaper. I offered a little prayer in my heart that everyone I had lined up
over the next ten days would be prompt and responsible.

Please let tomorrow speed
by. I was ready to leave my bank clothes behind and be a real interior
designer.

“Matt’s in a meeting with
Dave and Ally,” Meg said when I walked into the bookstore the next day.

“Oh, he didn’t mention we
weren’t having lunch today,” I said.

“I don’t know what Matt’s
plans were. I’ll check.”

Meg called Matt and a couple
of minutes later, he and two of his employees emerged from the office.

“If you’re in the middle
of something, we don’t have to do lunch today,” I said.

“We’re finished.” He
kissed me lightly on the lips. I hated it when he kissed me in front of Meg. I
could feel her eyes boring into me. “Let’s walk over to Bardo’s and get a
sandwich.”

“Are they all set for next
week?” Meg asked Matt.

“All set,” Matt said and held
the door open for me to walk through.

“What’s happening next
week?” I asked as we walked the block to Bardo’s.

“I’m heading up to
Seattle. With Meg.”

“Oh.” I was surprised this
was the first I was hearing about it.

“We’re closing on the
house Monday and then spending the week getting the renovations set up. Too bad
you have a job already. You could have been our designer.”

I stopped in the middle of
the sidewalk and turned to Matt. “Would you have actually hired me for the
job?”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell if you’re
serious, Matt. Would you really have let me do that?”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t
know if I’d have turned the whole thing over to you. I mean, you don’t have any
real experience. But I’d have let you work with a designer. But it doesn’t
matter. You have your other job.”

Matt continued walking and
it took a moment for me to catch up to him. My chest felt tight and I was no
longer hungry. Matt opened the door to Bardo’s. I folded my arms tightly and
tried to control my anger as I walked by him.

Matt wouldn’t have hired
me. He just wanted me to feel bad that I was doing a job for Chad’s parents.
And he was going to Seattle for a week and hadn’t said a word. And he was going
with Meg, who didn’t like me. And she’d probably say rude things about me.
She’d probably try to make him even more uncomfortable with my job and she’d
probably make fun of my tights.

“I’m going to have a veggie
burger,” Matt said. “What would you like?”

I looked over the menu
board. “I’ll have an order of onion rings and a chocolate shake.”

Matt arched his eyebrows.
“Really?” he asked. He sounded like he was talking to a naughty child. I
nodded.

“That’s what I want,” I
said. “And make that a large order of onion rings.”

Lunch was long and the
little conversation we had was stilted, but my onion rings tasted delicious and
my chocolate shake was perfect.

IN THE BANK
bathroom after
work, I traded in my skirt and blouse for an old pair of sweatpants and a
T-shirt. I drove through Subway and bought a turkey sandwich and lemonade. I
was so excited to get started it was difficult not to speed as I drove to the
Keller’s. 

The house was dark and
quiet when I pulled into the driveway. It felt strange to let myself in the
front door. Hopefully the neighbors had been brought up to speed about my
coming and going for the next ten days. I didn’t relish the thought of dealing
with curious neighbors.

I put my sandwich in the
refrigerator and unloaded supplies from the back of my car. I hauled in a stepladder
from the garage and two lamps. Within an hour I was in the dining room,
steaming the rose-covered wallpaper.

When I had the corner steamed,
I scraped the edge back with a putty knife until there was a section of paper
large enough for me to grip. I took a deep breath. This step would tell me how
long I’d be at the Keller’s tonight. If the wallpaper peeled away in large
pieces, this job would go pretty quickly. If it tore away in tiny shreds, I’d
be in for a long night.

I pulled the paper back
gently and evenly. Barely an inch had come free from the wall before it broke
down into a wimpy scrap of paper in my hand. I reapplied the steam, careful not
to leave it long enough to damage the sheetrock beneath it and tried again. It
tore into little shreds almost immediately.

“Dang!” I said aloud. I
looked at the three walls of wallpaper. Hundreds of pink rose bouquets waited
to be removed. I sighed. It would be a long night.

I had most of the first
wall finished and my shoulders were aching when my phone rang. I placed the
steamer on the ladder tray and pulled my phone from my pocket. It was Matt.

“Hey, there,” he said. His
voice sounded artificially chipper and reminded me of a game show host.

“Hi Matt.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the Keller’s house.
Working.” It annoyed me that he asked. He knew where I was.

There was a pause. “So,
Elizabeth, I’ve decided I’m leaving for Seattle tomorrow instead of Monday. I
just wanted to let you know.”

“Oh. Well thanks for telling
me.”

“I figured you’d be busy
there anyway, so it wouldn’t really matter,” he said. “Listen. About today.” He
paused and I waited. “I could tell you were upset. I just don’t understand why.”

“Really? You don’t?”

I didn’t want to have this
conversation. I had a ton of wallpaper to get off the walls. I needed to have
both rooms primed and painted by Monday so the floors could be put in. And it
bothered me that he didn’t know what was wrong. He was a smart guy. He should
be able to figure this out. It wasn’t molecular biology to know that taunting
me about this job was mean. And dangling the renovations of his bookstore in my
face when he never had any intention of letting me do it was even worse.

“Listen Elizabeth. Don’t
make me guess. Just tell me what you’re upset about.”

“I honestly can’t believe
you don’t know,” I said.

Matt laughed. “Well I
don’t. So let’s just eliminate the guessing game and tell me.”

“It isn’t just one little
thing, Matt,” I said.

“Uh oh. I must really be
in trouble.” Matt laughed again but I didn’t. “Elizabeth, I can’t fix anything
if you don’t tell me.”

“All right, fine. If you
really want to know, I’ll tell you.” I stepped off the ladder and went to the
kitchen to get my sandwich. “I don’t like that I can’t even talk to you about
this job because if I do, you get all weird and moody about it.”

“But Elizabeth, you have
to admit, the job is a little unusual. And it’s an old boyfriend who arranged
it. Any guy would be bothered.”

“I don’t think that’s true
and it doesn’t matter who arranged it. This is important to me and it would be
nice if you were supportive about it.”

“Okay, I’ll do my best to
give you my support.”

“And I don’t like that you
pretended you’d give me a job helping design your bookstore when you wouldn’t
trust me to do it anyway. You just wanted to make a dig about me doing this
job.”

“Come on, Elizabeth. None
of these things are a big deal. Surely you understand why I’d want to have a
professional work with you. That wasn’t meant to hurt your feelings. I’d think
you’d like the experience of working with someone else. Besides, you’re already
tied up so this is a moot point anyway.”

“No it isn’t, Matt. I
graduated from college in this. I know what I’m doing. The Kellers are trusting
me and they’re not insisting a professional hold my hand through the whole
thing.” I did air quotation marks with my fingers when I said professional, even
though he couldn’t see them over the phone.

“Yeah, well, the Kellers
may be paying you for this but it isn’t exactly a regular job is it? You
wouldn’t have this job if that guy hadn’t set it up for you. Am I right?”

I could hardly speak. If
Matt had called to try to make peace, he was doing a bang up job. I shoved the
sandwich away from me. “
That guy
is my friend. And he has a name. All Chad
did was set up an appointment for me. It was never a sure thing. I had to put
together a proposal they liked and it was handled like a real job. They hired
me because they liked my ideas and they trusted me.”