1.Nancy Indulges a Whim
Back in Berkeley after our short visit to Montana, where I interviewed for a job at the small university in Butte, Nancy and I were given an opportunity that has pretty much taken over our lives recently. (As for the job in Montana, it was offered to me. I turned it down, though, because my grant-funded job at UC was renewed for another year and the opportunity I just mentioned meant we had to stay put in the Bay Area.)
Thanks to a loan from Nancy's parents, we were able to buy an old two-story house in the inner Richmond District of San Francisco. So, in late August, we moved out of our Berkeley apartment and into the house, which has great potential but is definitely a fixer-upper. I've got a longer commute now to my job, but at least now we live in a more interesting place.
Nancy, meanwhile, found work downtown at an art gallery. The pay isn't great, but she likes the work environment.
Working on the house has taken up most of our "leisure" time. I have quite a bit of job flexibility, including being able sometimes to work at home, so I've been able to get to home improvement projects at odd hours as well as on weekends. Nancy's work schedule is flexible, too. So she's able to help me with the some projects.
But we had to hire several contractors to do the jobs we couldn't do ourselves. Which leads to the main point of this narrative.
One Wednesday evening in late September, just after I got home, Nancy and I were in the kitchen throwing a few things together for dinner while the drywallers finished work for the day in the upstairs bedrooms. Nancy, with a twinkle in her eye, kissed me as I was putting the salad together and told me quietly that an interesting thing had happened a little earlier.
"It wasn't really planned," she began. "But, you know how I am. I had a chance to 'accidentally' show off my body and I took it. I hope you don't mind. I think this is the first time I've done this sort of thing without you being present. It was an evil-minded spur-of-the-moment impulse."
"I wish I'd been here, that's for sure. But go ahead and tell me about it."
We listened to the guys upstairs turning on fans to dry the spackling they'd just applied. Then Nancy put her arms around me and gave me a deep kiss. She was wearing a sweat shirt and a short skirt, something she'd thrown on quickly, apparently. It wasn't the sort of thing she'd normally wear.
"In a few minutes," she whispered to me, "when the guys come downstairs, you'll notice that there's a new helper. He's just a kid, really."
"That's probably Vince's nephew. He mentioned something about having him help."
"Maybe. I never talked to him."
We expected to hear the drywallers' footsteps on the stairs, but none came. They must have been doing more clean-up.
"Anyway," whispered Nancy, "when I got home at about 3:00 o'clock I could hear the guys working upstairs. I had a snack and decided to take a shower downstairs since they're still working on the upstairs bathroom."
[Since Nancy and I had been displaced from upstairs, we'd been sleeping in the guest room adjoining the kitchen. It was more comfortable than the small cabin in the back yard which the previous owner had used as an art studio. A small bathroom with a shower adjoins the guest room. Its door is only three feet or so from to the door into the kitchen.]
"So, just as I was entering the guest room to get undressed for my shower," she continued, "I caught a glimpse of this kid out of the corner of my eye. He was just walking into the kitchen. Maybe he was getting a drink of water. Anyway, since he'd been working upstairs when I got home, he had no way of knowing who I was. But I knew he saw me going into the guest room."
"Did he say anything to you?"
"No. And as I said I didn't say anything to him. I decided, on an impulse, not to let him know I'd seen him."
"But you were still fully dressed?"
"Yes. I had on the long skirt and sweater I'd worn to work."
Just then we heard the drywallers coming downstairs. I walked out to the bottom of the stairs to intercept them. Vince, the contractor, was the first one down. Behind him was a foreign-looking guy who works for him and, behind this guy, the teenager.
Vince and I talked a few minutes about the job upstairs. He'd be back tomorrow morning, he said. He'd like us to leave the fans on for as long as possible, unless the sound of them was too annoying. As we talked, his main helper and the teenager carried some things out to Vince's truck.
The boy was tall, slender, and rather pale. I could make out short red hair under his baseball cap, which he wore backwards. The one time I stood briefly face-to-face with him he seemed to avoid eye contact.
After they left, I rejoined Nancy in the kitchen. She was putting a casserole in the microwave oven to reheat it.
"I saw the kid," I said. "He looks about seventeen. I wonder why he's not in school."
Nancy smiled at me. "Do you want me to tell you the rest of what happened?"
I sat down at the kitchen table and said I'd love to hear it.
"As I said, he saw me going into the guest room, but he didn't know I'd seen him. So, feeling devilish, I decided to give him a little show. You see, there's a direct view from the sink here into the guest room when the door is open."