A Season for Second Chances(23)

“You’re amazing!” people would say. “I don’t know how you do it!”

And Annie would think, If only they knew what a fraud I feel most of the time. She was forever waiting for them to realize that she was making it up as she went along.

Boisterous melodies from a live folk band burst out of the open door to the Captain’s Bounty along with the smell of roast beef and potatoes cooked in duck fat, rooting her back in the present. The joyous sounds of banjo and fiddle seemed to suit the landscape. It was a little before six, the Captain’s Bounty’s turn to feed the masses. Annie determined to test the Captain’s hospitality soon.

There were a couple more weeks before the evenings would start drawing in earlier. But although it was light, it was cooler now than it had been at the same time even three weeks ago, and Annie was glad of her sweater. She walked slowly down the hill, soaking in this beautiful place that would be her home for the coming months. And she felt, well, she felt lucky.





Chapter 18



The next morning, Annie was woken by a strange squeaking sound and the tinny clatter of metal. She was momentarily disoriented until, remembering where she was, she pushed the discombobulation of sleep aside and opened her eyes. The wallpaper was a festival of pink tea-rose posies tied together with lilac ribbons in repeating patterns around the walls. The morning light permeated the cream jacquard curtains. Annie stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, carefully so as not to encourage more wrinkles.

There came another metallic clatter. Annie padded out into the hallway in her blue scotty-dog pajamas, scratching her bird’s-nest head as she went. She yawned loudly as she walked into the sitting room and came face to face with an unfeasibly tanned man looking at her from the other side of the glass.

Annie screamed and threw a scatter cushion hard at the window. The cushion thumped dully at the window and flopped onto the window seat. The tanned man looked down at the cushion and then up at Annie, bemused. Annie dashed back into the hall and stood with her back to the wall, panting. Her brain clicked back into gear, and she realized it must be the third Monday of the month, which meant the man at the window was Paul, the window cleaner. Jeez! Where is the time going? she wondered.

Annie mussed her hair into what she hoped was more beach-tousled than sweaty-bed, straightened her pajamas, and walked back into the sitting room with as much dignity as she could muster. Paul was laughing, hands held up—one holding a squeegee—in surrender, the way only a person supremely confident at the top of a ladder could do. He had a friendly face. His skin was the color of a well-roasted chicken, and a career spent outside had given him wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that deepened into well-worn creases when he smiled.

She found herself laughing at him, laughing at her, and quite forgot that she wasn’t wearing a bra and that her boobs grazed the bottom of her rib cage beneath her baggy pajama top. She had a sudden urge to twirl her hair around her fingers, and a strange stirring in her briefs reminded her that she hadn’t had sex in a very long time. And, more to the point, that she would like to remedy that as soon as possible. And why shouldn’t I? she thought. I’m forty-four, not dead!

Paul motioned down toward the ground and raised his eyebrows. Annie gave him a double thumbs-up and wondered if she’d always been this uncool. As Paul began to dismount the ladder, Annie dashed into the bedroom and hurriedly put on her bra. She scooted into the bathroom and performed the quickest of tooth brushes and squidged a blob of toothpaste onto her tongue for extra freshness; she didn’t want to frighten him off with morning breath.

Several unboltings later, Annie wrenched open the front door and felt the fresh morning air burn her minty tongue and whistle through the gap in her pajama top. Paul the window cleaner leaned casually against the mailbox post. He wore a white T-shirt—wet down the front—and old straight-cut stone-washed jeans. His hair was a mess, a tangled windswept mass of blond and gray with coarse stubble to match. Annie expected him to snap open a can of Diet Coke any second. He broke into a wicked grin when he saw her.

“Hello!” he said. He walked over to the steps and leaned against the handrail, one foot resting on the bottom step. When he wasn’t scaling ladders, leaning seemed to be his thing. It was difficult to descend the steps with any kind of sex appeal while wearing hedgehog slippers and a pink fluffy dressing gown with cat ears on the hood, but Annie gave it her best shot.

“Hello,” she said, hoping she didn’t have a toothpaste mustache.

“Mari found her brave victim, then,” said Paul.

“Victim?” asked Annie.

“Have you ever spent a winter on a beachfront?” Paul asked.

“No,” admitted Annie. “But how bad can it be?”

“Spoken like a true townie,” said Paul. “It can get pretty wild!”

“I think I can handle it,” said Annie. Oh my God! I’m flirting!

“I’m sure you can,” said Paul. “Is it just you?”

Forward! she thought.

“Yes,” said Annie. “Just me.”

Paul grinned. If a star sparkle had tinged off his teeth at that moment Annie would not have been surprised.

“Good,” he said. “I’m Paul.”

“I know,” said Annie. “Mari told me you come every third Monday. To clean the windows, I mean.”