“Oh, my God, you guys, are you sitting down?”
As I dash toward their lunch table, Tracey and Kara shoot each other puzzled looks before looking back to me. “Um, Mia?” Tracey asks, drawing out her vowels as though she’s speaking to a dog or a particularly dim child. “Do you need us to get off our chairs and move to the floor, or are you preparing us for some piece of potentially advantageous news?”
“News! News! News!” I yip, waving my hands in front of my face like I’m trying to cool myself down as I fall into my chair. I’m so excited I can barely form multisyllabic words.
Kara immediately mirrors my excitement and begins to bounce in her seat. “What? Movie deal? The Persiflage Films thing? What’s happening?”
“Better! My house! I found my house! I got a house!”
Tracey rests her hand on my forearm in an attempt to calm me. “Whoa, slow down there, Speed Racer. I saw you yesterday and you hadn’t even mentioned anything worth a second look. Now you’re what? Making an offer? Already under contract? How can that be? You are not Little Miss Snap Decision. I mean, last week you spent twenty minutes at the Whole Foods meat counter debating between the prime rib eyes and the grass-fed filets. But you could pick a house — the biggest investment of your life — in an afternoon? Tell me how this works.”
My words come rushing out. “Okay, number one, protein is a priority in my life, and number two, because the universe essentially rented a billboard and said, ‘Hey, Mia, this is the place.’ It’s fate. I am destined to live in this house.”
Kara grabs me for a quick hug. “Yay! I’m so happy for you! Tell me everything. . starting with how you’re not buying in my parents’ neighborhood!”
I take a big breath and try to steady myself. “No worries. We’re going to be east-siders, so you’re totally safe. Anyway, we’re up in the Cambs yesterday and Liz’s looking at her MLS printouts. She’d pulled a listing that was outside of our set budget, but she said there was something about it that made her want to take me there.”
“Pumpkin, that ‘something’ is called ‘commission.’ ”
I cut Tracey a sideways glance before continuing. “So, like, Liz is all, ‘There’s an interesting notation in the remarks section,’ and I’m like, ‘What?’ and she’s like, ‘Lemme read the whole thing,’ and I’m like—”
“And you say you have trouble mastering the modern teenage dialect.”Tracey smirks.
“Ignoring you. Anyway, she goes, ‘I guess this house has a claim to fame. Someone used it in a movie a while back.’ Which, hey, that’s kind of cool, right? Then we look at a bunch of lame and boring houses and I forget she mentioned it. Then we eventually pull up and I see what she’s talking about, and right then and there in the passenger seat of Liz’s Volvo, I shat myself.”
“Oh, sweetie!” Kara gasps. “Are you okay?”
“Figurative shat,53 I’m fine.” I take another huge breath and I inadvertently start grinning, remembering yesterday. “I’m actually pretty goddamned great, to tell you the truth. Listen, do me a proper. Close your eyes and picture this. Imagine yourself going down a long, circular driveway to a big brown-and-white Tudor tucked back in the woods. And in the distance? You can hear the lake.” I clear my throat and try to stop beaming.54 “Ahem, big lake.”
“Mia, that sounds awesome!” Kara gushes. “Particularly since I can just sneak up Whitefish Bay Road to get there and I won’t be spotted.”
“You really think your parents or their friends are going to have a watch out on the roads you might drive, all in an effort to bust you if you don’t stop by home?” Tracey demands.
Kara begins to gaze off into the distance with a melancholy expression all over her face. “Without a shadow of a doubt.”
“Um, hello? Not done! So, you’re imagining this house, yes?” Then I realize I don’t actually have to have my eyes shut during this exercise and I open them. “Now visualize a big picture window. Do you see it?”
Tracey’s and Kara’s lids are firmly closed, but one of Tracey’s eyebrows is getting dangerously close to raising itself in exasperation.
“Envision this big window and on the other side is a shiny glass dining table and it’s, um. . all aglow, as if being lit by candles on a birthday cake. And two people are kind of hunkered over it. Now as you’re taking in this scene you start to hear the opening notes of a really amazing song, like. . ‘If You Were Here’ by the Thompson Twins.”
Tracey’s eyes snap open. “You’ve just completely ripped off the final scene of Sixteen Candles.”
Kara does the math a couple of beats quicker than Tracey. “No… no! No way!”
I say nothing and just nod.
Kara begins to shriek,“Holy shit, you’re buying Jake Ryan’s house!” causing all the hipsters at Lulu’s to look up from their graphic novels and Vonnegut books. Listen, kids, when you stop trimming your beards like bonsai trees you can judge. Until then, I’ll be the one doling out snide looks, thanks.
“How is that even possible?”Tracey wonders.
I reply, “The Jake Ryan character lived in Abington Cambs, so it makes sense that’s where his house would be. John Hughes filmed a ton of stuff up there, so it figures he shot a real place. Plus, all homes go up for sale eventually, right? Why not that house and why not now? My point is that this is the universe’s way of telling me I’m meant to buy Jake Ryan’s house.”
Tracey persists: “Wasn’t that place kind of a mansion? And it’s close to the water? I’m not sure how to say this, so I’ll just say it — I realize you’re doing well, but I didn’t realize you were doing mansion-on-the-lake well.”
“Weeeeell,” I drawl.“Remember how the house was so quintessentially eighties?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kara agrees. “All the chintz and the glass tables and brass accents. That movie’s like a living time capsule.”
I nod. “Right. The good news is that, um, the eighties never quite ended there. I guess the couple who owned it during filming sold it, and they sold it to someone else, who died shortly afterward, so nothing’s been touched in at least twenty years. A trust owns the place now, and they’ve priced it to sell to anyone who wants to take on the renovations. Mac hasn’t even seen it yet, but when I told him he could tear out drywall, he was totally behind me.”
“Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm, right. But it’s still a mansion on the lake, and those aren’t cheap,”Tracey persists.
I begin to squirm a bit in my seat. Sometimes I wish Tracey would stop writing terse police dramas and go back to chick lit. She was a lot less intense back then. “You’d make one hell of an interrogator,” I observe.
“Uh-huh,” she agrees, not breaking her gaze.
“Fine, it’ll be a bit of a stretch financially, but we can do it, especially if we tackle some of the rehabbing ourselves. Plus, I’ll get a big check once I finish my work in progress, which, ugh, don’t remind me about right now. Anyway, if I get in a financial pinch, I can create a new book series, maybe for adults this time. Come on! It’s Jake Ryan’s house! You can’t put a price on that!” I exclaim.
“Except you can, because that’s the nature of real estate,” Tracey says.
“No, Mia’s right,” Kara agrees. “Ask any woman between age thirty to fifty and she’ll tell you that Jake Ryan was her ideal man. I mean, who wouldn’t fall in love with the hot guy who actually gave a shit about inner beauty? And when he showed up at Samantha Baker’s sister’s wedding in the Porsche? That’s every modern girl’s dream of the knight on the white horse. Did you know the Washington Post did a big article about his enduring legacy a while back? Twenty-five years later, women still want Jake Ryan to do filthy things to them. Fiiiillll-theee. I know; I read their e-mails.”55
Tracey rakes her hand through her curls. “Honestly, I never saw the appeal. Too pale, too brooding. Not for me. Also, it bears repeating that a) Jake Ryan is fictional; ergo b) he never lived in that house, and c) you absolutely can put a price on that. In fact, I’ll wager that price was clearly marked on the MLS sheet.”
“Listen,” I say. “The bottom line is this: I have faith in fate and I take stock in signs.”
This is no exaggeration; I’m a firm believer in destiny. Maybe this is because I grew up listening to my right-off-the-boat Polish grandmother’s stories. The only time her fairy tales ended badly was when those involved ignored the signs. To this day, Babcia56 Josefa swears that fate has already determined every nuance of our lives, and all we have to do is look for the hand of divine guidance.
Irina, my mother, grew up under this same philosophy, which she then manipulated to convince Babcia that it was the universe telling her to marry that Italian steelworker.
By “universe” what she really meant was “pregnancy test.”
They got married anyway, despite conflicting signs.
They’re divorced now.
Universe—1, Mom—0.
I continue. “Here’s the thing, Trace. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years obsessed with all things John Hughes. I mean, I want to live in the AC just to be in the environment that used to inspire him. So when Jake Ryan’s house practically falls into my lap — much like Samantha Baker’s ill-fated sex quiz fell in front of Jake in study hall — divine will is sending me a message and I can’t ignore it.”
“I’m curious. Is the universe telling you to take out million-dollar mortgages? Is the universe suggesting that you burn things? Does the universe send you secret messages about your neighbor through your dogs?”Tracey queries.
Kara and I both fold our arms in soundless solidarity.
“I’m simply saying that sometimes the universe is an asshole.” We continue to scowl. Or Kara does, anyway. Then Tracey shrugs her shoulders and picks up her menu with great resignation. “Fine. I’m not going to be able to convince you otherwise. So, I guess… mazel tov and let me know how I can help.”
“Thank you,” I say, squeezing her hand. I go through the motions of reading the menu, but I’m pretty much having the exact same feta cheese plate with a side of chicken I’ve been ordering for the past four years.57 But something still bothers me.
“Tracey, do you mean to tell me you really weren’t into Jake Ryan?”
She arranges her face in a moue of distaste. “Not so much.”
I think about that long and hard.
“Is it because he didn’t have an AARP card?”
“Do you love it? You love it, right? I already love it but you need to love it.”
Mac leisurely and deliberately takes in the view. “I’ve been here for fifteen seconds and I’ve only seen this one spot. We probably need to have dinner and go to a couple of movies before we decide if we want to take this relationship to the next level.”
We’re with Liz, standing in the gracious entry hall of Jake Ryan’s house.
Okay, maybe it’s not so gracious anymore.
Maybe it looks a bit like the lobby of a transient hotel, with all the weird black and white octagonal inlaid tiles and grimy windows. The only thing that’s missing is a Plexiglas cashier’s booth and a sign detailing hourly rates.
Every other time we’ve viewed a home, we’ve had to slip on the blue booties before embarking on the tour, but the pile of shoe covers has long been abandoned on the other side of the hall. I guess people walked in, saw the state of the floor, and decided that a little mud could only improve the situation.
“You have to use your imagination,” I assure him. “Don’t be like all those assholes on HGTV who won’t buy a house because of the wallpaper. It’s not load-bearing wallpaper, people! All you need is a steamer and some elbow grease! Please, Mac, just clean it all up in your head. Do a little mental mopping. I bet that’s why no one’s snapped this place up yet. They don’t have our kind of vision. You can’t let an ugly floor distract you from the vaulted ceiling. Picture a beautiful crimson Persian rug in the middle of this room and a nice round table that would be handy for mail and keys and stuff. We could do this up like a Four Seasons lobby, with giant sprays of fresh flowers. Gorgeous!”
“When you showed me the listing online, I couldn’t comprehend how this place could possibly be in our price range,” Mac muses. He touches a closet door and it immediately falls off its hinges. We all jump. “I have a better understanding now.”
We proceed to the left and enter a two-story ballroom. “A ballroom, for crying out loud! We could have balls!” I exclaim. Okay, fine, I may be giving him a bit of the hard sell. I can’t even envision what a ball might look like, but I maintain it would be nice to have the option. Most likely the only balls this room would see would be of the tennis variety, with Daisy and Duckie chasing after them.
Mac laughs. “Number one, that’s what she said, and number two, come see these picture windows in the dining room.”
“I do see them — and the view in front of them!” Majestic fir trees form a semicircle around the bay window. Beyond that, there’s a thicket so dense I can’t quite determine how deep the ravine is that runs behind the house. The seller’s Realtor says that after the ground dips down, it goes back up and the lake is just beyond it. Right now the whole area’s too snow covered (and lovely) to inspect firsthand.
“No, I want you to take a look right here.” I can’t help but turn around first to see where the glass table would have been in this room. Suddenly I have a craving for birthday cake and Thompson Twins music. Snapping me out of my reverie, Mac begins to point at various parts of the main window. “The seal’s broken on all of them. You can tell because of the condensation between the two panes. These are huge and custom and they’ll need to be replaced. That’s hundreds, if not thousands, right off the bat, and we’re only five feet into the house. Plus, these parquet floors? Their best days are behind them. Do you notice how worn and thin they are? They may be so far gone they can’t even be refinished.”
I’m not sure how to argue this, and then it comes to me. “We’ll ask for a buyer’s credit!”
“Ooh, no, sorry. Can’t do that,” Liz says, waving her MLS listing. “The trust that owns the house is selling it ‘as is.’ However, if you go under contract and the place inspects badly, you’d have the option of walking away without losing your earnest money.”58
“I can’t imagine this place would inspect badly,” Mac notes, tapping the wall, which results in a small rain shower of plaster dust.
I decide my best bet is to distract Mac from the grotty floors and imperfect windows. I brush the powder off his shoulders and hustle him into the next room. “Check this out — a formal library!” We move into a room that’s covered in a rich mahogany paneling and lined with what seems like a hundred shelves. “I mean, think of what my book collection will look like in here!”
“Probably a lot like Masterpiece Theatre meets Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
“What does that mean?”
“You own ten thousand books and they’re all pink, paperback, and have shoes on the cover.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“No, I say that like they don’t require being displayed in a room where smoking jackets are appropriate. It would be like cutting butter with a chain saw, or hiring a chauffeur to drive the dogs to the beach.Yeah, you could do it, but why bother?”
“I disagree. An enormous paneled library is just what my books need to give them a bit of gravitas. And Daisy would love to go for a ride.”59 Granted, my hilarious Save a Buggy, Ride the Amish framed print wouldn’t fit in so great here, but otherwise? Perfect!
As we pass from room to room, Mac remarks, “I don’t remember most of this in Sixteen Candles.”
Naturally Mac’s familiar with Hughes’s entire oeuvre, having taken a couple of film classes in college. The first time Mac referred to Hughes as “a brilliant filmmaker” during a group discussion, my ears perked up. As he rattled on about Hughes’s prowess in developing minor characters and punctuating poignant moments with the perfect song, I found myself wondering why I’d kept Mac in the Friend Zone for so long.
“Wouldn’t they have filmed the inside scenes on a set?” Liz asks.
“Actually, I believe the bulk of the interiors were filmed on-site. The producers rented out the house for the duration of filming. Most likely what we’re seeing is different because of renovations made postshooting.” Hey! Look at me and my fancy film knowl-edge! I’ve thus appointed myself the expert of All Things Hollywood as a result of my sporadic meetings with a handful of entry-level entertainment folks over the past few years. Once I had a sit-down with a film studio flunky who spent the whole time talking about his Facebook page. Sure am glad I paid for a full-fare ticket to LA to take that meeting.
I continue to dazzle the crowd with my insider information. “Remember the part in the movie where Dong and his date crash through the floor on the exercise bike? The owners actually had a huge hole in the ceiling because of a leak. John Hughes thought it was so funny that he wrote it into the script.”
Mac nods along with my monologue. “What you’re saying is that this house has a history of water damage.”
Oh! Hoisted with my own petard!
When we get to the kitchen, Mac marvels at the antiquated appliances. The bizarre — possibly sparking — track lighting in the bedroom causes him to scratch his head in disbelief, and the state of the laundry room makes him shudder. I didn’t realize you could stick linoleum floor tiles to the ceiling, either, but maybe that was the style back then?
“What do you think so far?” Liz probes.
“You already know my vote,” I say.
Mac’s a lot more skeptical, especially when the floorboard beneath him cracks. I try to cough really loudly to cover up the noise, garnering a knowing look from Mac. Busted. “Mia, I’ve counted nine different varieties of flooring and we haven’t even been to the basement yet. Every wall is made of a different material, no two windows are alike, and I’m pretty sure I saw daylight coming through the side of one of the closets. It’s like this place was an elaborate game of handyman Truth or Dare.”
“There’s so much space!” I insist. “And so many rooms!”
“We’ve passed six bathrooms so far,” he observes. “Each one of them has had a different color and style of toilet. I’ve seen black, white, mint green, powder blue, baby pink, and light purple—”
“Lilac. Technically that shade is lilac,” I inform him. What can I say? I watch a lot of Color Splash with David Bromstad.
“Who installs a lilac toilet? Prince? On top of that, functionally, not a single bathroom countertop hits higher than my inseam. Great if I’d like to wash my crotch, but I’d have to bend at a ninety-degree angle to brush my teeth. Who lived here? Circus folk? Carnies? Plus, we are only two people. We don’t need six toilets. Let’s face facts, Mia — this house is a disaster. We’d have to call it Apocalypse House.”
“You wanted a fixer-upper,” I protest.
Mac tries to break the news as gently as he can.“This house would be a journey into the heart of darkness of home renovation. What we have here isn’t a fixer-upper so much as it is a tearer-downer.”
“Please do me a favor and don’t rule it out until you’ve seen the whole thing,” I beg.
“You’re the boss,” he says with more than a little resignation, following me down the too-steep stairs.
Liz is fully versed in all the reasons I want this house, a few flaws notwithstanding, but I need her to help me sell Mac. After we tour the bedrooms, she pulls out the big guns. “Mac, perhaps you’ll be interested in the full English basement. Plenty of space for a pool table!”
“Honey, see? There’s a bar down here!”
When I say a bar, I don’t mean a small slab of countertop and room for a few stools. I mean a full, operational, ready-to-open-forbusiness bar with a keg cooler, an industrial-strength ice maker, and seating for fifteen, all covered in a really retro knotty pine paneling. Plus, you have to go through a separate door to be able to stand behind the bar, so it’s particularly authentic.
“Huh,” he says, running his hand over the place where I’ll wager he’s already mentally stocking cut lemons, limes, and other assorted cocktail garnishes. I saved the basement for the end of the tour because I’m counting on Mac’s unresolved bartending issues. He was hired as a bartender during college but he kept yelling at people when they’d order blender drinks and was eventually demoted to bouncer. Actually, that’s how we met — he stormed into the dining area one night because he wanted to see what kind of person60 ordered a banana daiquiri in an Irish pub. Oh, and FYI? This is the perfect example of the hand of fate at work. If I didn’t have a lifelong love of Cool Whip — topped cocktails and he weren’t so fussy about what he mixed, we’d have never met.
“Nice, right?” I prompt.
“Hmph,” is all he says in response.
After we’re finished (grudgingly) admiring the bar, we head into the adjacent area. There’s a big spot in the middle of the carpet where someone’s laid down more parquet to form a functional dance floor. I point down at it, saying, “How many homes have you seen that come with their own disco?”
“Other than in The Jerk? None,” he replies before something in the corner grabs his attention. “Hey, what is that over there?” He points to a platform that’s surrounded by paneling, covered in carpet, and buffered by stairs.
“Not sure,” Liz admits. “We couldn’t figure it out last time.” She and I kind of thought it was a stage for midgets, but don’t want to say this, because Mac’s already convinced this house was built for little people.
Mac takes a small jackknife out of his pocket. He very gingerly peels back a section of the carpeting and lifts a small portion of ply-wood. Then he whips out a mini Maglite and shines it in the crevice, leaning in close to get a better view. “There’s a. . Jacuzzi under here.”
Liz and I are both completely perplexed, although this does make slightly more sense than a little-person karaoke stage. “Does it have water in it?”
“No, no, it’s empty. I guess that explains why there’s a huge exhaust fan over there.” He gestures to a massive grated system behind the hot tub.
“That’s just badass,” I exclaim. “How often do you pull up the carpet and discover a hot tub? How much fun would that be? You could stand behind your bar and I could sit in here and have fruity blender drinks. If that’s not the key to happiness, what is?”
“Let’s be realistic, Mia. The hot tub is obviously broken if it’s covered up with panel and carpet. Plus it’s so big they probably built the basement around it. I doubt we could get it out,” Mac cautions.
“Details! Silly, torturous details! We can get it fixed,” I promise.
We move on to the main part of the basement and Mac grows really quiet. We’ve just entered the area that meets his exact specifications for his dream home-theater system. Not only is this room the right shape and height and width for ideal sound quality, but the windows are positioned in such a way that they wouldn’t cast a glare on the plasma screen. He won’t look me in the eye and all he manages to mumble is, “I might be able to work with this.”
Yes!!
We move on to the basement kitchen. “What is this?” Liz wonders, poking at the black screen and weird knobs. “Like an old TV or something?”
“Ha!” Mac barks. “That, ladies, is a microwave. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the first microwave. Ever.”
I feel like all my good work with the bar and media area might be for naught, and I can sense I’m losing him again. “Mock it if you want, but a microwave is what, a hundred dollars to replace? What you’re failing to see is that there’s a whole extra kitchen down here with a fridge and a stove and a dishwasher. Yes, it’s all a bit Brady Bunch, but I bet it’s functional. Which means you’d still be able to prepare your gourmet meals61 while the upstairs is under renovation. So this is actually a really good thing.”
Actually, if any of these appliances are functional, I’ll be shocked, but I feel it wise not to mention this.
After Mac mocks the kitchen a bit more62 he moves on to the basement bathroom, and we add one more color (beige) to the toilet collection. He’s appalled by the state of the water heaters, and I’m not sure what he might have thought about the furnace, because he was bent over, clutching his sides and laughing.
When Mac finally composes himself, he takes my right hand. “Mia, this isn’t going to happen. We cannot in good conscience buy this house.”
I begin to panic and speak almost exclusively in exclamation points. “But it’s huge, it’s close to the water, and you’d get to renovate! This house has great bones! Think of all the new tools you can buy! And the location! Come on, this is east Abington Cambs! You can’t get a better address than this! Yeah, there are a few cosmetic issues, but those will be fun to fix! If this house were fully operational and perfect, we’d never be able to afford it!”
He appears wholly unmoved by my monologue.
Then I do something I’m ashamed to admit. I try to get my eyes to water, knowing full well that crying is his Kryptonite. I generally follow Spider-Man’s aunt’s dictate of great power coming with great responsibility, so I rarely trot out the tears without due cause. Yet my eyes stay dry for some reason, so I surreptitiously snake my left hand up to the thin, sensitive skin beneath my armpit and I give it a solid pinch to see if that prompts the waterworks.
It doesn’t.
Damn it.
“Mia, stop that. You’re going to leave a mark.” He pulls my left hand out of my cardigan. “We’ll find our house. But this isn’t it. There’s too much to do. I mean, maybe renovating this place wouldn’t be impossible, but it seems like an awful lot for a couple of first-time home buyers to take on. I don’t want to put that kind of financial or emotional stress on us. I mean, we are too important, and I worry that the strain might mess up what we have. Does that make sense?”
Numbly, I nod. He presents a cogent case for his findings. I can’t argue with his logic. . and yet I don’t understand how this can be. I’m supposed to live here. I feel like this place is my destiny, the manifestation of all my childhood dreams. When my sister and I were home at night while Mom worked her second job to give us a better life, this is where I’d imagine I’d be once it got better. The universe told me so; all the signs pointed to it. Then to be so close and have it not work out? I don’t get it. What are the odds another John Hughes movie house is going to open up in our budget (stretched though it may be) in the next couple of weeks? Walking away from this place feels wrong all the way down to my soul.
Liz concludes our tour, saying, “I guess that’s everything. Why don’t we head up the back stairs, since we forgot to look at them last time?”
Just as we’re about to ascend, we pass one more door. “What’s in here?” Mac asks.
Bitterly, I respond, “Probably just another utility room full of ‘fire hazards’ and ‘red flags’ and all the other scary words that mean we don’t get to buy Jake Ryan’s house.”
He pushes open a heavy steel door to reveal. . nothing. We’re enveloped in darkness. “Let me see if I can find a light.” Mac feels the walls until he finds a switch, flips it, and illuminates a vast expanse of cement walls and wire shelves. There’s an exhaust system similar to the one over by the defunct hot tub, and in the far corner, there’s a low door with a dial on it. On the opposite side, I spy another junction box with a bunch of thick blue wiring coming out of it.
“What a perfect area for dry storage,” Liz remarks.
I’m not so sure about that. “Maybe. But I don’t like how there aren’t any windows. I feel kind of claustrophobic in here. Plus the door’s so heavy that I’d worry about getting trapped.”
Confession time? Being trapped is a real concern, because I kind of get stuck a lot. It’s not because I’m fat — regardless of what that jerk Vienna says. I’m actually in fine shape, especially when you consider my deep and abiding love of butter. But I’m a bit of a disaster magnet. Things just seem to happen to me, like once when I was vacuuming in front of this huge antique mirror in the bedroom. Somehow the cord must have caught and the whole thing came crashing down on me. Luckily it didn’t shatter, but I spent half an hour screaming for Mac to get it off me, and he couldn’t hear me over the roar of my Dyson.63
If a locked door’s going to break, I guarantee you I’m on the inside of it. One time Ann Marie and I were staying in her brother’s loft in New York and the bathroom doorknob fell off while I was in the shower. Fortunately Ann Marie is the unholy love child of MacGyver and Martha Stewart, so she not only had me out in ten seconds flat using nothing but items from the fridge and spice rack, but she also whipped up a miracle hair serum that kept me from getting the frizzies the whole time we were in town.
“Anyway, are we ready to go?” I don’t want to leave, but I don’t really have a choice.
I guess this isn’t, in fact, going to be my house. Mac and I are a solid partnership precisely because we listen to each other, so I’m not going to insist we buy this house just because I have some weird tie to a couple of movies made a quarter of a century ago. We function well as a couple because we make our decisions together. We’re a team. I mean, separately we’re both one hundred percent, but when we band together, we’re one thousand percent. That’s why we’ve come so far from our humble postgrad beginnings. If one of us makes our mind up based on rational thought and solid arguments, the other has to respect that.
Liz and I turn to leave but Mac just stands there. “Mac? Mac? Honey? Are you coming?”
“This room. .” he says in a voice full of awe and wonder. “Do you know what this room is? This is a panic room.”
“A what?” Liz asks.
“Like that Jodie Foster movie?” I add.
“Right, exactly.” He begins rubbing his hands together, almost as though in anticipation. “You see, over there, someone installed a ventilation system and a pumping system, and that over there is enough CAT5 fiber to support a government-grade surveillance system. There’s a ton of room to lay in supplies, and with a foundation like this, someone could easily survive any disaster, up to and including nuclear war. And over there? That’s a gun safe big enough to house an actual arsenal. You know what? I’d like to see ORNESTEGA try to breach this perimeter! Ha! This is. .” He trails off again as he takes in every bit of the room.
He touches the walls with quiet reverence, and it’s the first item he’s come into contact with in this place that hasn’t cracked, splintered, or crumbled. “This is. .”
“This is what, honey?” I prompt.
“This is. . our new home.”