The Good Twin(22)

“Thanks. I’ll be here. How much will that be?” For the first time in my life, it didn’t matter how much something would cost. Ben had given me a credit card and deposited $5,000 into my bank account. If I ran out, he’d assured me he would replenish it. But I doubted this man took plastic. I wasn’t even sure he took checks. I had to make sure I had enough cash on hand for him.

“I’ll just bill the Gordons.”

“No,” I said, a little too quickly. “I’m paying my own way.”

“Then, a hundred bucks should do it. So, eleven tomorrow. See you then.”

He turned away from the door, took a step, then turned back. “By the way, I’m Jake. What’s your name?”

“Mallory.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mallory.” He waved his hand, then left, leaving me wondering if I’d made a mistake using my real name.





CHAPTER 16

At precisely 11:00 a.m. the next morning, I heard a truck rumble up my driveway. I looked out the living room window, saw it was Jake, and opened the front door.

“Are you always this punctual?” I called out to him as he exited his Chevy Tahoe.

“I try to be,” he shouted back. He headed to the back of his truck, then loaded firewood into a caddy and wheeled it to the side of the house. Five minutes later, he came to the front door, holding a number of logs in his arms.

I opened the door, and he stepped inside. “The Gordons have a rack for the wood on the side of the house,” he said. “I stacked the rest there. It’s covered with a tarp.” He walked over to the fireplace and placed the logs inside. “Ready for your lesson?”

“Sure.”

From his back pocket, he pulled out a box of extralong matches. “Got any old newspapers?”

I shook my head. Did anyone read a newspaper anymore? I got my news from the Internet, just as I suspected most of my contemporaries did nowadays.

“Old magazines?”

Again, I shook my head.

He sighed. “I’ll be right back.” He ran out to his truck, then came back in with a stack of newspapers in his hands. “Okay, the first and most important thing is to make sure the flue is open.”

“The what?”

He waved for me to get closer, then leaned his head inside the fireplace. “See this lever here? Push it back, and it opens a vent for the smoke to go up the chimney. Pull it toward you, and the vent closes. When a fire is going, the vent needs to be open. When the embers are out, close the vent.” He tore the newspaper into strips, laid them over the wood logs, then lit the paper with one of the long matches. When the flame caught one of the logs, he stood up. “There. Simple as that. Think you can do it?”

I said I could, then went to get my wallet. I withdrew five twenties to hand to him.

“How about instead of paying me for the firewood, you let me take you to lunch?” he said.

“That doesn’t seem like a fair bargain for you.”

He smiled his killer smile. “Actually, I think I make out pretty good with that deal.”

Ben had warned me to keep to myself as much as possible. But after five days of being mostly by myself, the thought of spending an hour with another human being was too tempting to turn down. “Sure. It’s a deal.”

Before we left, he showed me how to put out the fire, for those nights I was ready to turn in before the fire had died down. Once it was out, we got into his truck and drove into town, then pulled into the parking lot of the Eggs Nest. It was brightly decorated with funky pictures of people and buildings in Pop Art style. The waitress led us to our table and handed us our menus.

“What’s good?” I asked as I looked over the offerings.

“Everything. This place has been an institution for decades.”

We gave the waitress our orders, then sat back in our chairs. I studied the man sitting opposite me. With so much hair covering his face, it was hard to tell just how handsome he was, although his eyes were almost as blue as mine, and his straight nose fit perfectly on his face—not too long or wide. His lips were full, and when he smiled, his whole face lit up. “What do you do when there’s no snow to clear or firewood to chop?” I asked him.

“This stuff is just filler for the winter months. I’m a landscape architect. I studied it at Cornell.”

I’d never gone to college myself, but I knew Cornell was one of the Ivy League schools.

“And you came here to work? I’d think there’d be more of a call for your services in Westchester County. From what I’ve seen, the landscaping on homes around here seems more natural, less planned.”

“Don’t be fooled. It takes a lot of work to make a garden look natural. Besides, my territory extends down to Rockland and across the river to Northern Westchester and Putnam County. But my base of operations is here in High Falls, because this is where I grew up. And it’s too beautiful to leave.”

I nodded in agreement. It was too beautiful to leave, surrounded by mountains, dotted by farmland and cozy hamlets that seemed to be a mecca for artists.

“So, what brings you here?” Jake asked.

It was a question I’d expected, and one I’d prepared for. “I’m writing the next great American novel, or, hopefully, at least a readable one. Back in Queens, I shared an apartment with three other women. It was hard to concentrate with all their noise. So, Ben suggested I stay here for a few months.”