because he was on foot, his clothing was ragged, and he compared everything to food. The stucco reminded him of the fried okra his mother used to make, the red clematis climbing the courtyard wall could have been juicy tomatoes on the vine, and the color of the warm oak floor that he could see from the doorway brought back memories of toasted marshmallows. I fixed him a ham sandwich, which he inhaled, so I fixed him another, which he hid inside his shirt when he thought I wasn’t looking.
He was genuinely distressed when I turned him down with the lie that I’d already found someone for the job. I felt bad as I watched him shuffle down the drive, so I ran after him, brandishing the few dollars of cash I had. After telling him that if he ever needed anything—and really, I meant food —he could stop by, I trudged back toward my house.
*****
“Don’t tell me you’re payin’ men to interview,” came Hank Tyler’s drawl from behind me.
The heat of a blush crawled up my neck as I swung around to face him. He had shaved off his beard, leaving a smooth, square jaw in its place. The corners of his mouth twitched, and his eyes were lit up with a softness that told me he knew exactly what had transpired.
“That’ll fetch him some dinner,” he added.
“I hope so. I hope he won’t end up drinking it.”
“No luck so far?”
I shook my head. “A jerk, a jerk, and a frail, homeless guy.” For the briefest moment I had the urge to tell Hank the truth, that I hadn’t run an ad, that I’d only put the sign in my yard to piss off my family and now was stuck pretending to interview strangers. There was something about his eyes that made me want to trust him. But trusting some guy I’d met only two days earlier would be insane, and like I was constantly trying to convince my mother,
I
wasn’t.
“Did you see the truck the other guy was drivin’?” Hank asked. “Davis Demolition. I’ll bet he was more interested in tearin’ the place down than fixin’ it up.”
“You’d bet right. I told him all my hopes and dreams for this place … he might as well have been wearing ear plugs.”
Hank lifted his cowboy hat and ran his hand over his head. His scalp was suspiciously darker than the last time I saw him. I was pretty sure he wasn’t bald after all.
His gaze swept over my property, and I followed it, trying to guess what he saw. My property consisted of four of the original half-acre lots, sitting side by side. The only other lot on my side of the street was at the other end and it was vacant, without even a house. It had been cleared, though, a few months earlier, except for several large healthy oaks and a small pine grove. The new owner, whom I’d never met, kept the grass mowed and edged. The effect was a yard that was a little too tidy to be natural, but appeared serene nonetheless.
My property was another story. My house sat in the middle of my first and second lots. This was nice for me since my front door didn’t face either Sheila’s house or Alberto’s but looked out instead at the privacy fence that ran between their properties. Running the length of their fence was a neatly landscaped and mulched area that extended out about fifteen feet. The landscaped area was bordered in the back by tall orange-red firecracker plants and in the front by low-creeping blue-green juniper, and filled in with flowering shrubs and tufts of lilies in shades of purplish blue and golden yellow. Red azalea peeked through in the spring, and pansies would pop out in the fall. I adored the view from my house.
I doubted Sheila and Alberto felt the same. My yard was a disaster. An assortment of weeds had replaced what had no doubt been shrubbery around the house. The weeds had grown so profusely, they’d ended up choking each other to death and now stood lifeless and brown against the stucco walls. On the plus side, the house was fawn-colored; I wasn’t crazy about the color—I planned to repaint a pretty yellow or
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