Page 4 of Etched in Stone
“Ray?” She knocked again. Something banged in his apartment. Good. That meant he was home (not that she ever saw him leave) and he was awake. She hoped that she hadn't woken him up. It was nearly nine in the morning and surely that was a respectable time to knock on someone's door. Oh, God, she hoped he didn't sleep in the nude. Great. Now the image of Ray's wrinkly old backside was running through her brain.
The door swung open and there was Ray, fully dressed as he normally was, in a button down shirt, sweater, and a pair of khaki slacks. He had a brown fedora on his head. Jesse could swear he probably showered with it, because she'd never seen him without it.
He said nothing. Just stared at her in a silent broody manner, as if he were thinking of something totally else while he stared at the wall behind her.
“Hi, Ray. My ceiling just came down on me. I was nearly knocked out by a tile in my shower,”
Jesse said as she pointed back toward her apartment.
“Tile.”
“Yes. On my head. And while you're at it, the toilet banshee is getting louder.”
“What's a toilet banshee?”
“There's a loud screeching noise every time I flush. Can you fix it?”
“Toilet. Tile.”
“Yes. Do you want to come and see?”
Ray stood there for a moment, as if he hadn't heard the request.
“I should.”
“Yes. You should.”
Jesse felt bad about bothering the man, but she wasn't about to let that kind of thing go. Once the tile started falling, it meant more was probably on its way. She turned, and headed back to her apartment. Ray followed. How could such an old man walk so heavily? He sounded like a linebacker as he headed down the hall behind her.
Jesse entered her apartment and Ray stopped to look around. Despite her aunt's death being nearly
18 months ago, Jesse had changed very little. It was as if she were still living here for the summer.
Any minute her aunt would come around the corner fresh with some crazy new art piece in her brain.
It was a happy ghost of a memory that she lived with. Jesse couldn't have been more thrilled than when Olivia's lawyer had told her that the entire studio and its contents had been willed to her.
She shouldn't have been surprised. She was Olivia's only living heir. Most of her family had died during World War Two. Only Olivia and her sister Margaret had immigrated to New York. Margaret was Jesse's grandmother who had died when Jesse was two. Her own mother had raised Jesse on her own after her father split.
As a single mom,she’d only too happy to send her kid off to Olivia for the summers for some free day care. Then Jesse’s mom had gotten sick and had gone quickly. From diagnosis to death in six months. She'd said it was a blessing. “Some people linger for years,” her mom had said, but still didn't stop Jesse from crying over it all, and feeling a load of self pity at being an orphan in the world.
“Plenty of people are orphans,” Olivia said. “You have to make your own family, no matter how strange they are.”
Jesse had a sneaking suspicion that she'd somehow been talking about Ray, even though she was pretty sure they weren't lovers. In fact, she'd never seen her aunt with anyone, male or female.
Besides, Olivia had been near 90 when she'd passed. Ray couldn't possibly be that old, though he had been old as long as she could remember.
How did someone politely ask an old man his age without offending him?
Jesse led him into the bathroom, though she was sure that his apartment was a mirror of hers. He followed her in and stood in the doorway. She pulled back the shower curtain and pointed up. Sure enough, another chunk of tile had come down while she'd been gone. There were now three large chunks in the bathtub.
“Yup. It's coming down,” rumbled Ray.
“Can you fix it?”
“I told Olivia the whole thing should have been gutted years ago.”
“Why didn't you?”
