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“Sounds perfect,” she told me with a grateful smile as she turned to walk out of the room, going down the stairs.
By the time I made it down, taking a long minute to try to remind myself that she was a client, that I couldn’t be getting ideas about her, she was already snooping through the bags of snack foods.
“You got party supplies?” she asked with a lopsided smile when she got to the last bag.
“Just champagne and confetti poppers. Maritza has been scrubbing already clean rooms. Figure we can leave a little mess for her.”
“That’s what she gets for coming in my room every morning without being invited,” Jenny said, shaking her head, clearly annoyed about the invasion, but not comfortable enough yet to stand up for herself.
“That’s the spirit. We’ll make sure we aim them at that thick ass carpet too. You’ll be able to hear her cursing from half the house away.”
“I like the way you think,” she told me, going into the kitchen to get plates and forks, grabbing us each a soda, and leading the way to the great room.
I grabbed a couple of the bags – Chinese included – and followed her.
The great room was amazing because while it had two sofas with a coffee table down the center, only one of those sofas had a good view of the TV when it was out of the cabinet.
Knowing this, Jenny had pulled the coffee table to that one sofa. For us to share. Nearly shoulder to shoulder.
Couldn’t exactly say I wasn’t looking forward to that.
“The whole New Year’s stuff won’t start for a couple hours still. Movie?” she asked, looking down at the giant iPad thing that controlled everything in the room from the TV to the lights and the damn thermostat.
“Sounds good. What are you in the mood for?” I asked, silently hoping it wasn’t one of those sappy movies or – worse yet – a musical.
“Something funny. But not stupid-funny, you know? Not supposedly funny because the main character is an idiot. Is smart-funny a thing?”
“I’m sure we could find something.”
Twenty minutes later, we hadn’t. But we settled on a funny cop movie and made the best of it. As if there could be anything bad about being on a couch with a woman eating Chinese food and feeling her body jiggle when she laughed at something on the screen.
The food was mostly eaten by the time it was done, and we both got up to clean it up since Chinese food only smells good when you were hungry and while you are eating it. And a part of me worried that she might want to head to bed or go work on her crafts. But she made her way right back to the living room, a pile of pre-made chocolate brownies on a plate still in their plastic wrappers. When she caught me staring at it with a smirk, she looked down, shaking her head at herself. “the hostess habit is, apparently, a tough one to break.”
“Hey, those brownies they sell in lunchrooms across these United States for fifty cents look like they were made to sit on that bone China,” I told her with false authority, making a snorting laugh escape her – a sound I only got to hear a few times, one that always seemed to surprise her as well. Like she wasn’t aware she could make that noise.
“This tea is great by the way,” she told me, having had to reheat it while we put the leftovers away – a giant fuck you to Lydia which neither of us cared about – because she said it was impossible to enjoy tea with a meal. “I’ve never been to She’s Bean Around.”
“Really? Why not? It’s close to home.”
“It seems entirely too hip and trendy for me.”
“Nah. Everyone goes there. Jazzy and Gala take some getting used to, but they got the best coffee in the county. Definitely worth the long lines and ear-splitting music.”
“I will have to drop in someday.”
“Speaking of,” I chimed in, happy for the segue. “What do you say to heading out tomorrow?”
“Out? Where?”
Even just the mention of it had her stiffening, her blue eyes filling with what I could only call worry.
Worry about leaving the house? Why?
“You need some hanging around the house clothes,” I told her. “I thought we could disguise a trip for that by going to get a black dress.”
“Oh, right,” she agreed, exhaling hard. “A dress.”
“That will be a quick thing,” I assured her. “Go in, point, pay. Then we can go and have fun picking out some shit you actually want to wear.”
“I haven’t owned a pair of jeans in over twelve years.”
“That’s a fucking crime, sweetheart,” I told her, shaking my head, but smiling a bit as the enthusiasm built in her system.
