The first time I met Vani, she reminded me of a bird of paradise wearing a chicken suit. The chicken suit in this case was a frumpy charcoal gray business jacket worn over a long sleeve white blouse and matching skirt. She looked like a fifty year old with no figure at all. Only after close inspection did I determine that it was camouflage. She was, in fact, a south Asian beauty. It didn't help that she was out of place sitting at rickety old table in an old harvest gold kitchen in a rundown house in a down on its heels neighborhood. She was a bird of paradise wearing a chicken suit while living in a junk yard.
"I need a house-mate who will help me upgrade and remodel this house. I'm proposing that based on the work you do, I drop your rent on a monthly basis. The work, as you can see, is extensive." She gestured at the chaos around her looking for a moment like a TV spokes-model if only she hadn't brushed up against something dusty during our tour. She now had a dust streak across her nicely shaped bottom.
"Exactly how would that work?" I challenged her, "I have no problem with mowing the lawn and shoveling the snow at fifteen bucks an hour, but make remodeling worth my time. Nobody I know will climb on a roof or remodel a house for fifteen bucks an hour."
"I'll deduct any construction work you do from your rent at the rate of fifteen dollars an hour."
She sat back and looked me in the eye. Someone had told her, I'm guessing her father, that it was important to look a person in the eye when striking a deal. She looked more like she was giving me the fish eye. She did have big soft brown eyes that I could get lost looking into, but not lost enough to slog away for unending hours at fifteen bucks an hour.
She pulled at the collar on her blouse every few seconds as if she wanted to get out of that silly outfit. I couldn't blame her. It was too hot to be wearing that many layers of clothing.
"You don't need a handyman. You need a general contractor to turn this run down four bedroom house into student housing; and fifteen dollars an hour for a contractor is a joke. The foundation is in good shape, but not much else is. Your plumbing leaks, your windows need replacing, that ancient furnace in the basement has a hole in the heat exchanger the size of my fist, the roof has to be replaced before winter, your electrical box needs upgrading, and your entire house needs siding and blown in insulation."
Her face registered something between anger and desperation. I didn't want to crush her so I backed off.
"None of that scares me. If you have the money, I can fix it. I want to live here for the summer rent free while I fix the major stuff. We split the utilities. I'll oversee the contractors I bring in for free, but the repairs I make myself, you'll pay me for at the rate of thirty dollars an hour. Fifteen an hour is fine for shoveling snow and mowing the lawn though."
"That's unreasonable."
This time her eyes flashed unadulterated anger. She had fire in her, I liked that.
Vani pulled herself up to her full height of five feet five inches and ground her sensible heels into the gritty linoleum. She stood undaunted even though I towered over her by the better part of a foot. Her pluckiness made me smile. My bird of paradise showed her beak and talons.
"You need to interview a lot more people before you realize the deal that I'm offering you. Have a good evening, Miss Sauri. We'll talk again."
I stood, walked out the side door and climbed into my truck. Hell, a part of me wanted to stay. She was a maiden in distress, and I wanted to help her, but not at fifteen dollars an hour. You don't build respect by starting out as a doormat. The money was immaterial, I knew I was going to rebuild the house. I had dreamed about her and this house three times which pretty much meant our relationship was written in stone, but she needed to respect me. Remodeling is hard, fussy work.
Still, I was drawn to her like a roofing nail to a rare earth magnet, and I liked the way she looked at me. Shaking hands with her had been a shock. If I shook hands with anyone else, I got a sense of who they were and who they were going to be. With Vani I got nothing at all. That alone sparked my curiosity about her.
On my way home, I stopped at my favorite Chinese restaurant and got an egg roll and a quart of egg drop soup for dinner. When I turned the corner on my block I heard the music emanating from the house where I rented my room. The nineteen year olds were blasting their music again, and I was sure the police would visit us. I couldn't wait to get out of the place.
The following morning, I savored my coffee in the sunlight on the porch of my house. The day promised to be a hot one, but for now a touch of flower scented coolness hung in the air. University classes had ended the week before, and I wasn't taking summer classes. It was nice not having anywhere to go and no assignments or tests to worry about. For the moment, the dewy steps I sat upon were the perfect place to contemplate my world.
Try as I might to think of other things, my mind returned to Vani. How could it not when I had dreamed about her and her house before I met her? She had a smile so breathtaking that I almost forgot that what she proposed was ridiculous. She was so unlike my volatile, over-dramatic, former girlfriend Amy who dragged chaos with her wherever she went. Amy who proved that no good deed goes unpunished. I had seen her yellow VW beetle driving past the house several times.
Still, Vani amazed me, I had touched her and had seen nothing of her future. The first touch of stranger released a torrent of information about them. Some was flattering, some not so much. The more I touched them, the more information I got. It made dating almost impossible. Imagine knowing that the lovely woman you were attracted to will cheat on you every chance she gets. Even worse, what if you knew every disgusting habit your date had before you established any sort of relationship.
I checked my watch, it was still too early to call Dr. Rita Summers. She was a psychologist who was familiar with my peculiar abilities. Her summer office hours began at ten. She had asked me to keep her updated on anything that happened of an unusual nature; meeting Vani qualified.
I would write when I was done with the coffee. My nineteen year old house-mates had stayed up late last night which meant they would be slow getting up. I didn't hate the lazy dolts. One would die of a narcotics overdose in two years, two would drop out of school at the end of next year because of their drinking, and one would graduate and spend his life in a loveless marriage. It's hard to hate anyone once you know what fate has in store for them.
The nineteen year olds wouldn't get up until one or two in the afternoon, and that's when their endless high volume head-banger music would fire up again.
One day I would be a successful author. I had no control of these flashes of the future and so I had no idea of when I would become a successful author or how. That wasn't how my foresight worked. The only thing I could do for now was to keep practicing.
The flashes of the future come when they come. It's like I was given a house full of IKEA furniture, but none of the assembly instructions.
My thoughts circled back to Vani again. She had given herself a problem she couldn't solve without major help. Who thought it was a good idea to drop a twenty-one year old woman without tools or skills deep into a whole house renovation project during the twelve weeks of summer between her sophomore and her junior year? She was pretty opinionated for a person who knew little about building restoration. She would not be easy to deal with.
As I walked into the house to grab another cup of coffee and remembered another problem. While surfing through an investment site on my laptop, I my gift told me that GIMC would enjoy spectacular growth over the next five years. The problem was investment houses were getting wise to me. One of my brokers had joked during my last transaction that the entire office had benefited from my last buy order. I dreaded the idea that I might be targeted as an investment genius. People might begin looking too closely at me, and I did not want to spend my life as a government or corporate asset. I needed a proxy to buy for me. My problem was that I had no one I could trust.
I met Dr. Summers at a coney island that evening. Over a gyro and small Greek salad I told her of my meeting with Vani.
"You got no reading on her at all?" she asked.
"Nothing beyond recognizing her from my dreams."
Sometimes, Rita looked at me like I was a frog she was getting ready to dissect. This was one of those times, and that look made me nervous.
"Would you object to a hypnotic regression?"
She watched my face intently. Being a psychologist, she could read me like I was a tweet in Twitter. I, being a man, couldn't read her at all.
"I don't mind. I'm curious about how Vani fits into my life. Is your boyfriend still on a dig in Ethiopia?"
