Chapter 11: The Bungalow
The street they stopped on, Witzend, struck him as a bit strange. It looked like the dividing line on a map on which some godlike urban planner had decreed in stentorian tones to an awed city council, “There shall be a division: to the left, commercial property; to the right, residential.” The odds of that having happened were remote, he knew, but whatever had happened, the result was the same. To the left were low commercial buildings, interspersed with small parking lots and shaded by a few trees. A pharmacy two blocks down, along with a shoe store a block in the other direction, were the most easily recognizable businesses. He saw a sign for a law office and outdoor tables indicated a bistro of some sort.
On the right-hand side of the street were a series of one-story bungalows, red brick with picket fences. Their lawns were well maintained, and front gardens bloomed with flowers. Each bungalow had a front porch supported by brick columns and most sported hanging planters. They differed only in minor architectural details and the colors of their trim.
“This is it.” Amy indicated the second house on the block. Its trim was yellow and white. “C’mon.”
“Dr. Lau,” Katherine said abruptly when Amy was half-out of the car. “I have some phone calls I need to make. Take whatever time you need. I’ll be here when you’re ready to go.”
“Okay. We shouldn’t be too long. C’mon, Kirby!”
He exited the big SUV and walked around to the sidewalk. Amy was already through the picket fence’s gate and halfway up the walk. She waited for him to reach the front porch before displaying a shiny new key hanging from a brightly colored key fob that appeared to have writing on it. She held it where he could see it clearly.
“Burly, Bald, Beard-O!” he read aloud.
“Yeah.” She positively beamed with happiness. “My friend Mutt has a 3-D printer and it was pretty easy to design. I even painted it myself.”
“Wow,” he said. “Thanks. Now, if I lose my keys, whoever finds them will know exactly where to return them. It seems that in choosing medicine, you abandoned your true calling as a comedienne.”
“Shut up! You know you love it!”
“It’s such a thoughtful gift, how could I not?”
“Wanna see your house?”
“Lead on, good doctor. Lead on.”
The ‘clack’ when she opened the lock told him that the bright yellow front door was a steel security door and not the decorative wood it appeared. When they walked in, he flicked a fingernail against the doorframe and discovered it was also steel. Inside, he found himself looking at hardwood floors, plaster walls, crown moldings, and tall ceilings. It was, in many ways, reminiscent of Adelaide’s home, but scaled down to bungalow-size and lacking the insanely expensive details that screamed “multimillionaire!” Framed prints on the walls matched the colors of the modern-looking sofa, love seat, and easy chair that made up the living room suite. He dropped onto the sofa and was immediately comfortable. He smiled.
“Will that do for his majesty Beard-O the First’s royal butt?”
“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged. “The royal cheeks are pleased.”
“Knock knock!” A voice came from the doorway, accompanied by the light rapping of knuckles on the open metal door. “Are you our new neighbor?” Two women stood in the doorway. They appeared to be about sixty. One carried a platter covered in plastic wrap.
Without waiting for a response, they stepped in. The one in the lead wore a striped rugby shirt and jeans, with her pale white hair styled in a low-maintenance bob. She walked over and stuck out her hand for him to shake while he was only half-way up off the sofa. “You’ve gotta be Jeff! Hiya, Jeff, I’m Patty!”
He stuck out his black hand to shake hers and became suddenly self-conscious, but the woman, Patty, barely glanced at it. She took it with a firm grip.
“His name is Jeffrey,” her companion corrected softly from behind her thick, round glasses. She was plump and bosomy and wore her salt-and-pepper hair in a pageboy coiffure so precise that it might have been cut with laser beams. “Addie was very clear on that point.”
“Awwww! He doesn’t mind. Do you, Jeff?” asked his somewhat brash guest.
“Actually,” Amy piped up, “He’d rather you called him Kirby.”
“See, Marci?” Patty looked at the other woman. “I told you. No grown man wants to be called Jeffrey.” Turning back to him she continued, “Kirby, this is my roommate, Marci.”
“We made you some cookies,” said the soft-spoken woman with the round glasses. Her dark eyes were pretty, but were distorted, magnified by the powerful lenses.
“Thanks,” he said as he took the plate. “This is Dr. Amy Lau. She—”
“Oh, we know Amy! How are ya, sweetie?” asked Patty.
Amy shrugged. “Well, I could complain, Aunt Patty,” she admitted, “but it wouldn’t do me any good.”
“Atta girl!” With perhaps excessive gusto, Patty wrapped her arm around the diminutive doctor’s shoulders and squeezed. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
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“Sound advice,” her roommate agreed. “Patty, we should probably let Jeffr—, ah, Kirby have some time to get acclimated. Addie said today is his very first time to see the place.”
“Is that right? Okay, but if you need anything, we’re right next door.”
“The house on the corner?”
“Other side,” said Patty over her shoulder as she and Marci exited. “We’ve got the green trim and the round window on our front door. Bye, Kirby. Bye, Amy.”
“Bye!” Kirby and Amy said simultaneously.
“Very nice to meet you!” he added.
“Bye.” They barely heard Marci’s soft voice as she stepped out of the door.
When he was sure the women were far enough up the walk not to overhear, he said to Amy, “Well, that Patty is sure something else.”
“Miss Adelaide has known Marci for a long time and Marci and Patty have been friends since they were children. Patty has, apparently, been like a force of nature all her life. No one she meets is ever a stranger. Now come, King Beard-O, let us take the grand tour of your domain.”
An open doorway led from the living room to the dining room, which featured a table and chairs for six that were, perhaps, slightly too elegant for the bungalow. A tall china cabinet stood against one wall. Something caught his eye through the glass door as they passed, and he stopped short.
“Hey,” he called Amy back from the kitchen. “Is this yours?” Inside the china cabinet were dinner plates, cups, saucers, bowls, and various serving pieces, all with the familiar 19th- century floral patterns, guest-starring Daffy Duck.
“What? Oh, no. No. When Miss Adelaide commissioned my set, she went ahead and ordered six sets because, once they had designed it and were making one set, it wasn’t that much more expensive to have six made. I guess since you liked mine so much, she decided to give you one too.”
He nodded his head several times and he could feel the big grin spread across his face. “Cool!” A thought crept into his mind. “Wait. How does Miss Adelaide know I liked your tea set? Did you tell her? I didn’t.”
“A sorceress who doesn’t know what’s happening in her own house isn’t worth the price of her shoes.”
“Oh. Is that some kind of sorceress saying?”
“Nah. I just made it up—but it’s true. Adelaide knows everything that goes on in her house. From this point forward you need to assume every sorceress does. Now, let’s go see the rest of your bungalow.”
The kitchen was small, but serviceable, with newly refinished cabinetry and countertops and matching appliances that couldn’t have been more than a few years old. The bungalow’s single bathroom had been gutted and remodeled and bore no resemblance to what it must have originally looked like when the house was built in the 1920s. In Kirby’s eyes, this was a good thing. Modern fixtures in gleaming white porcelain and an enormous, tiled walk-in shower that surrounded you with multiple nozzles put the dingy plastic shower stall of his apartment in stark relief. Would I have argued so hard against moving if I had known how nice this place was?
“Hey, Amy!”
“Yeah?”
“How much is the rent on this place?”
“Miss Adelaide says that, since you have to move because of what you did to help her, you only need to pay what you were paying at your old place.”
That was a deal. That was one hell of a deal, especially considering how cheap the rent at his apartment had been. Wait. Hold on. “Amy, who owns—”
“Yeah, yeah. Adelaide owns the whole block—and she owns another block down the street a bit. She’s your new landlord.”
“And that’s how Patty and Marci came to live here?”
“Probably. In fact, it seems almost certain. Is that a problem?”
“No. I think I can live with that. The price is right and, if I tried to live somewhere else, I might not be able to live with it.”
The house had two bedrooms, one had been converted into an office, but the presence of a futon indicated the room could do double duty. On the desk was an unopened box with a computer several generations newer than his own pictured on the side. Another unopened box on the floor displayed an illustration of an office chair on the side and the words “Big & Tall”. There were more boxes, containing other electronic items, and their sheer number made him slightly giddy. If the boxes had been wrapped in red and green, the office might have represented Kirby’s version of the Platonic ideal of Christmas. He wanted to do a little dance and giggle excitedly, instead he said, “I guess y’all didn’t have time to finish setting up the office?”
“Well, if there’s too much clutter in here, we can get rid of some of this stuff.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary—by which I mean, don’t you fucking dare!” They both laughed. “Did you pick out all of this stuff?”
“No, that was Katherine. She’s like an online shopping guru or idiot savant or something.”
“Well, that’s one area where her RBFS won’t hold her back.”
“Her what?”
“Resting Bitch Face Syndrome. Geez—and you’re supposed to be a doctor!”
The bedroom, like all the bungalow’s rooms, was of a modest size and tastefully decorated. The bed was a queen-size, the dresser was almost taller than he was, and in the closet hung four suits in various colors and a tuxedo. He knew without looking that they were all in his size. Gifts from Adelaide.
“Here you go.” Amy tossed him a small, flat box that had been on the pillow of the bed.
He bungled the catch and had to pick it up off the floor. The box contained a golf glove.
“That’s the closest thing to your size we could find in Oklahoma City. Your palms are stupid-wide. It’s kind of stretchy, so it might fit. Try it on.”
He was reluctant to think of himself as the kind of guy who walked around wearing only one glove, but he remembered his recent hesitation to shake Patty’s hand. He opened the box and looked at the glove, then closed it and tossed it onto the bed.
“Hey,” Amy protested with a scowl. “What gives? I had to drive around to six different places to get that.”
He closed the box and tossed it back to her. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate that,” he said, smiling, “but it’s for the wrong hand. I need one for the right hand which, in this case, happens to be the right hand.”
Her scowl was shattered by a sudden grin. “Ha! That is too funny. How did I fuck that up? Sorry, dude.”
“Please accept the pardon of King Beard-O the first, who thinks you’re awesome, regardless.”
“Well, since we are within his domain, it seems I must. But could you do me a favor and not tell Miss Adelaide?” When he failed to answer her question in a reasonable amount of time, she turned back to look at him as he gazed out the window towards the neighboring house.
“Would you look at that!” he said.
“What?”
He pointed toward the neighbors’ window. Patty and Marci stood close. The woman with the round glasses had her arms around her roommate’s neck and rested her head on her roommate’s shoulder. The taller, white-haired woman was leaning down kissing Marci’s ear, her hands were holding Marci’s round bottom, kneading it as the two of them swayed side to side and shuffled their feet. He could not hear the music, but they were obviously dancing. Suddenly, Patty dipped Marci and planted a deep and abiding kiss on her lips. Isn’t that something? I thought they only did that in the movies. “Well, I’ll be damned!”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
There was an edge to her voice that confused him a little. “I mean those grannies next door got game, girl. I hope when I’m their age that I’ll be lucky enough to have someone to dance with like that.”
When she did not respond, he turned to look at her and found her regarding him with an amused look. “You know, Kirby, you just might be all right.”