Page 2 of A Little Love

Leading out of the kitchen was another short hallway that led to an outer side door, a short set of stairs that went up into another wing of bedrooms and presumably the old servants’ quarters, and another longer set of stairs that went down to the landing that supported the back door. To the right of this landing was the laundry room, which led to a massive garage (already outfitted with all the tables and tool space needed to double as a workshop). To the left were two more sets of stairs. One took him up to the second floor and third floor attic; the other went down into a full and unfinished basement.

The sump pump under the rickety wooden steps had stopped working, so stepping off that last stair had him standing in two inches of murky water. Sure enough, two joists under the kitchen floor had rotted out.

“Well,” Tricia said proudly, fists planted on the curves of her skirt-clad hips. “Is this a project or what?”

It was something. Nolan looked at the broken joists. “It definitely is that.”

He turned in a full circle, drinking it in all over again—the standing water up over the tops of his boots, the filth caused by years of neglect, the graffiti tags that littered the cement walls, a flood-soaked mattress blackened by mold and God only knew how many used condoms floating on and around it, along with all the other flotsam the previous owners had left behind: discarded bits of broken furniture, Tupperware lids and Fisher-Price toys, bobbing in indiscernible dots of color in the murk. He ran through a silent list of everything he’d have to do just to make this rundown heap habitable. The peeling paint, the asbestos, the updates, the roof…

He was quiet for so long, by the time he turned full circle Tricia had lost her smile and her confidence. Her fists were no longer knuckled upon her hips. Instead, she stood on the bottomof those rickety steps, tapping worried fingertips and chewing at her bottom lip.

“Did…” She hesitated. “Did I get it wrong? You said you wanted a project, right? Something you could get lost in.”

Nolan looked at the basement all over again. This was definitely a project he could get lost in. On the other hand, it was also the kind of nightmare project that could easily overwhelm and drown a man. Never a pleasant prospect, especially not in this water.

But then, it was only thirteen thousand to buy.

No bank in the world would offer a loan on a house in this kind of condition, as she’d already pointed out.

Fortunately, he didn’t need a bank either to buy or to remodel. Fifteen years of careful money management while he’d served his country, bouncing from base to base, first around the States and then the world—Italy, Germany… Afghanistan and Iraq, before bouncing back to Connecticut before his long-awaited discharge finally, finally, brought him back to Oregon—if he was careful, he’d have more than enough.

“It does have great bones,” he said, coming back to the stairs.

Tricia blinked twice. Her fingers stopped picking at one another. Cautiously at first, her smile returned. “That dumbwaiter is my favorite part. I know that probably sounds silly. Well, the dumbwaiter and the hardwood flooring in the attic. It might extend all the way through the first floor as well, although there’s no way of telling what’s under that horrible carpet.” She stopped herself and flushed, a bright pink that under any other circumstance he would have found beguiling had he not already compartmentalized them both into the very professional relationship of real estate agent and client.

Still, it was hard not to smile back as he agreed, “Very horrible carpet. And that painting…” He tsked, and she rolled her lips in an effort to keep from laughing.

“It is a little over the top. So…” She shrugged, her hands flapping out slightly before slapping lightly back against her skirt-clad thighs. “What do you think? I’ve got a few other properties I could show you. Nothing quite as extreme as th—”

“No,” Nolan said, startling himself as much her by the abruptness of a refusal he hadn’t known until that very moment he was going to give. Belatedly he tried to soften it, but it surprised him how firm his resolve had become in such an incautious span of time. That wasn’t like him. Not at all. “No, you’re right. This is the perfect project.”

Huge. But then, that was what he needed, wasn’t it? This was going to be the project that kept him from going crazy while he struggled through the transition of military life to civilian; from G.I. Joe to Regular Joe. Someone who wouldn’t hit the deck, grabbing for a non-existent sidearm every time a car backfired, and who slept on a bed instead of finding a blanket and pillow on a hard floor more familiar, comfortable… and safe. Although with the Fourth of July just around the corner, he already knew nowhere would feel safe once the fireworks started going off.

PTSD was an insidious thing. Already he could feel those cold, sick knots tightening in his guts just at the thought of night after night of nightmare-inducing, rapid gunfire-like popping. But that was in the city. Scio was a tiny little town, with neatly laid out streets (less than ten blocks in all), lined with old, but fairly-well maintained houses… except for this one, of course. He hadn’t counted, but he’d be surprised if there were more than fifty homes within town limits. Fifty houses could still produce a lot of fireworks, though.

Maybe he could soundproof the basement. He was planning to build a dungeon down here anyway, a little soundproofing would fit right in. Nolan looked around him. Cement walls, high, narrow-ledged windows, exposed joists but huge, wide-open spaces—he could easily put a small room at one end, linedwith acoustical panels, noise absorbers and insulation foam, and hunker down for a few weeks, listening to music and eating take-out until the popping stopped. He was army, after all. Army was good at hunkering down and waiting out the shit storms.

Finances in mind, he breathed in the dank, dark smells of the flooded basement, adding up how much work was going to have to go into this, but also seeing the potential.

“No,” he said softly. “You gave me exactly what I asked for.” Something he could ‘lose himself in’ as his therapist had put it, back when Nolan was still seeing a therapist and thought it might do him good. When his gaze finally came back to Tricia’s, he found her staring back in startled pleasure.

“Really?” she asked, in a way that all but cemented in his mind the certainty that he was absolutely her first sale.

He came back to the stairs. “Take me to the paperwork. Let’s do it.”

“Oh, that’s great!” She whipped around so fast, she almost lost her footing. One stiletto heel slipped off the edge of the rickety stairs, but almost as fast, she latched onto the very wobbly rail that was (barely) attached to the wall beside her. Nolan caught her other arm, just in case, but her enthusiasm did not diminish. “You’ve made a great decision. As much TLC as this place obviously requires, you’re still getting a great house for the money!”

As much money as he was going to have to pour into this place to make it livable, he doubted he’d see even half back whenever it came time for him to move on. Following her up the stairs, Nolan avoided saying as much, but as Tricia reached the first landing ahead of him, he caught sight of something that up until that point he’d missed entirely.

Tricia wasn’t wearing nylons. She wasn’t wearing any kind of stockings at all, in fact. Her long beautiful legs were bare; the black seam lines racing from the backs of her heels all the way upunder the hem of her slightly too-short business skirt had been tattooed permanently into place. It was as she turned the corner of that landing, glancing back to grin at him over her shoulder, that—between the sunlight filtering in through the dirty back door window and his following behind her at a slightly lower level—quite inadvertently, Nolan found himself looking up her skirt.

He only saw midway up her thighs, but that was enough to spy the black and blue bows that made up the upper portion of each leg’s tattoo, and the word that crowned the soft flesh just below her buttocks. One word per bow: Daddy’s Little.

Nolan stopped mid-step.

“This is a great town,” Tricia was saying, as she continued up the next flight completely unaware that she was continuing on alone. “Friendly people, quiet neighborhood. Did I tell you about the town rooster? His name is Big Red. I guess you’d call him free range. He likes to hang around the post office. People open the door for him and he pretty much goes anywhere he pleases. He likes to roost on your porch, by the way. Hopefully, his crowing won’t wake you up… um, every day.”

Daddy’s Little.

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