Three weeks into the 'partnership' with Ron things were going smoothly. I had caught up with some of my old customers, and made a sweet new friend in Ginny. Ron took care of all the phone work, so my job was easy. We talked late every afternoon to plan out the next day, and things were rolling along nicely.
"Hey buddy," his friendly voice crackled through the cell phone. "Got a new customer. I'm in the middle of the Miller job, so you get the honors."
The next morning I pulled in to an almost nonexistent driveway and shut off my engine. The yard was overgrown, and the house looked like it was crumbling. The siding looked like it had been scraped for paint two or three decades ago, never painted and left to weather, and it was hidden behind two big cedar trees that had started out as shrubs on either side of the front steps. They were concealing most of the house, and rubbing against the siding, wearing the wood away when the wind blew. Three cats were prowling around when a woman in an apron came out the unpainted and faded front door.
"You are handy?" she asked in a thick accent that sounded like Russian.
"Handyman, yes," I said. "Steve Mills. I work with Ron."
"Good, yes," she said. "Lot work for you."
Her name was Zoya, and as I was to find out, she was a Russian mail order bride. The man who had sent for her and married her was an eccentric old gentleman who had lived alone his whole life and decided he wanted a woman to call his own before he died. I'm not sure how long he lasted, or how long they were married, but he died a month before Zoya called Ron and me. She wanted to be able to sell the house when the estate was finalized, but it had some problems the realtor told her she needed to fix first. She walked me around and showed me a few things.
"They say safety issue," she said in her charming broken English, pointing out the wooden back steps which were completely rotted. "Can you fix nice?"
"Sure I can build some new steps. Something simple since you're gonna sell the place, right?"
"Yes, simple, yes," she said.
She showed me a broken basement window where the cats were coming and going, and a wobbly railing on the staircase to the second floor.
"They also say I need smoke dektors. What is that smoke dektors?" she asked.
"Smoke detectors," I said. "They're electronic devices that go on the ceiling that set off an alarm if you have a fire."
"Okay, yes, smoke dektors," she said, "I need. They said more, but only this things I have to have."
"Okay," I said. "Let me make a list and go pick up some supplies, and I'll be back in about an hour to get started."
I went to the nearby home center and picked up what I needed, and drove back to the decrepit old house. I got started on the back steps, and the spring day was warm. When I'd worked up a sweat I took off my shirt and let the sun bake into my fading winter tan, which had reached its peak on the beach with Becka in Fort Lauderdale. After an hour or so Zoya came out to see me.
"I cook you lunch?" she asked with her first nice smile.
"Yes, thank you, that would be nice," I said, smiling back at her.
She held my gaze for longer than I expected, and turned and disappeared into the house. Half an hour later wonderful smells drifted out of the open windows, and my stomach started growling. Half an hour after that Zoya came out to get me.
She watched me pull my shirt on and I went in the house with her. She sat me down at a small metal topped table in the kitchen and fed me cabbage soup and small meat pie things she called 'pirozhki,' with a delicious meat and vegetable filling. She didn't sit down with me at first.
"Aren't you eating?" I asked as she hovered over the stove, watching to see if I liked what she gave me.
"No, you eat all," she said.
"I'd like you to join me," I said. "It's delicious, but there's way more than I can eat."
"A Russian big like you would eat all," she said with a sly smile, and she reluctantly sat down with me and took a pirozhki for herself.
"This is the best lunch anybody's ever made for me," I said, lying a little as I thought back to Chrissy's wonderful lunches which were equally good.
Zoya smiled, and I smiled back. She was a beautiful woman, in her late twenties, with the full body of someone who'd eaten a lot of this kind of heavy cooking. Nicely curvy though, although her big apron had concealed a lot of her since I had gotten there. If the photograph the old gentleman had chosen her from was of her shining face, I could certainly understand why he picked her. But I'm guessing the picture showed at least some cleavage, which I was pretty sure was immense and lovely based on the way the apron draped over her.
"More shchi?" she asked, gesturing at the soup bowl.
"No thank you," I said. "It's delicious though, very good."
As we ate we talked a little bit about her life here, and the whole 'mail order bride' thing.
"It was scary, yes," she said. "My family thought crazy. But it's good . . . it was good."
"Your husband was good to you?" I asked.
"Oh yes, good," she said. "Very good gentleman. Old though. Not any . . . how you say . . . playtime." She smiled nervously and looked down at her plate.
"Was that difficult?" I asked, worried I was getting to personal.
"I got use to," she said, looking a bit wistful.
She got up and brought a plate over from the counter and set it down next to me. It looked like some sort of a cake type thing with a cheesecake like filling in the middle.
"Vatrushka," she said with a lovely roll of the tongue, and she cut me a big piece.
I learned one thing that day — the old gentleman she was married to didn't die of starvation. I got up from the table and thanked her, and she looked up at me.
