Page 16 of Happy After All

“She thought I could fix it,” Nathan says. “Because I’m a man.”

“What happened to gender inclusivity?” I direct the question to Wilma.

“I’m eighty-four,” she says, waving her hand in the air. “It comes and goes.”

I look up at Nathan. “Sorry about this. Obviously, you don’t have to fix the washing machine.”

“He said he might know how,” Wilma says.

“Oh, did he?” I ask.

I definitely smell a rat. A rat in gold lamé.

“I’ll get some towels, and I’ll start to clean this up. But I’ll call a repairman.”

“I’m sure you don’t need to do that,” Wilma says.

“I’m not,” I say. “No offense to Nathan’s undoubtedly handy skills, but I’m going to need some evidence that he actually knows how to fix something.”

“I’ll just be right back,” Wilma says, and then she leaves. Sweeps right out of the little laundry area, leaving me in this enclosed pink box with the man himself.

“No offense,” I say. “But you’re a writer, I’m a writer, and there’s no evidence that either of us can fix this.”

“Does this seem odd to you?” he asks.

Just then, Lydia comes in, with Wilma close behind. Lydia in her pastel-blue tank top, her hair all curled up, her blue eyes wide and innocent. “I thought perhaps you might need these,” she says, dropping a handful of flat metal circles on top of the washing machine. “I must’ve accidentally taken them by mistake.”

I stare at the pile of hardware. “You took bolts and washers by mistake.”

Wilma looks between Nathan and me, and then the two of them melt out of the room again.

I shake my head.

“If she sabotaged the washing machine, putting it back together shouldn’t be that difficult,” he says.

“I don’t know that she sabotaged the washing machine,” I say.

“I think so. I think it’s the same thing they were doing when they had me adjust the lights last summer. Oh, and when there was that minor disaster with the necklace in the pool drain. And just maybe they had something to do with the power strip.”

“No,” I say. “I can’t believe it.” I can believe it, but that many incidents ... It feels over the top, even for them.

“You don’t believe that they’re ...”

“I don’t believe they’re that committed to ogling you.”

“I don’t think they’re ogling me. I think they’re trying to throw the two of us together.”

Him saying it like that, outright and too plain, makes me feel warm. He took the quiet thing and said it out loud. He’s looking at me with those electric-green eyes, and I’m just standing here in a laundry room. Dressed in ... I didn’t even give my clothes a second thought.

I’m wearing a short pink sundress that exists to keep me as cool as possible in these hellish temperatures. It also covers very little of my body, though I can’t claim that my body is an instrument of seduction. It has, for these past couple of years, been nothing more than an instrument to get me from one place to another. To fix up my motel. To make friends. To sit and write books, enjoy good food and conversation.

Not toseduce.

For good reason too. But I suddenly wonder what he thinks about my looks. About my body.

For one brief moment, his eyes get hotter. But then he looks away.

“They’re harmless,” I say.

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