High Noon

The place you told Essie about?”
    “Yeah.” He looked back at it as a man might a beloved old aunt. “She needs some help.”
    “Yes, she certainly does.”
    Boards blinded half the windows while the front veranda sagged like an old pair of jowls. The paint—what was left of it—curled off the wood in a sickly yellow.
    “You have your work cut out for you,” she commented.
    “That’s half the fun. And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that.”
    “About what?”
    “Come on up a little. The steps are fine.” He took her hand, drew her up. “Structurally it’s in pretty good shape. Some this, some that. But mostly it’s cosmetic.”
    “It’s going to take a lot of Max Factor, Duncan.”
    “Max…right, right. Got it. Yeah, it needs a lot of makeup, but I’ve got ideas about that. One of them’s about curb appeal, you could say. Your place—Mac Namara House?—it’s got excellent curb appeal. I hear you do all the gardening around there.”
    “Most of it.” She pulled a bottle of water out of her purse, offered it.
    “You carry water in your purse?”
    “I could open a small sundry shop with what I carry in my purse. I have no idea how you men get along with just pockets. Would you like it? I have two.”
    “No. Thanks. I’m good. Ah…gardening. Your gardening.”
    “Mmm.” Taking a sip of water, Ava noted the tangled mess of the front lawn, and the viciously healthy bindweed that dominated. “Essie putters a little. Phoebe barely has time to do more than yank a few weeds now and then. I enjoy it most, so I do the most.”
    “I like to garden.”
    “Do you?” Now she looked at him with a smile.
    “Found it out when I started fooling around with the house I—the house I live in. I’m not too bad. You’re a whole lot better. So I thought maybe you might be able to help me out here.”
    “Here?”
    “I’m thinking we’ll have to start pretty much from scratch. Mostly what’s here has gone woody, or it’s dead, except for the weeds, of course. They need a good killing. We’d want some new foundation plants for sure and something splashy. Maybe a dwarf blooming something—little weeper maybe—on the side there. A trailing vine up the trellis.”
    Baffled, Ava studied the sorrowful house. “What trellis?”
    “The one I think we should put up. Or an arbor. I got a fondness for arbors.” Imagining, he jiggled the change in his pockets. “Then there’s pots and window boxes. A lot of big—and let’s go splashy again—pots and window boxes. And there’s a space around the back? It’s small, and I’m thinking a little patio with a pretty little table and chairs, that kind of thing. Needs a couple of beds to frame it in. Potted trees, so on so on. So, think you can help me out?”
    “I’m confused. You want me to help you landscape this place?”
    “I’m looking to hire you to landscape this place.”
    Because the breath stuck in her throat, Ava took a long drink to clear it. “Duncan…Why would you think I could take on a project like this? I’m not a landscaper. I just do some gardening.”
    He did a little gardening, Duncan thought. What Ava did was what Essie did with hook and yarn. She created art. “I don’t want a landscaper here, exactly. Nothing against them, not a thing. I want something homey, but a little dramatic. Individual. I like what you’ve done to the Jones Street place. That’s what I’m looking for here. I’ve got pictures.”
    He pulled a folder from a briefcase on the steps, pushed them at her. “Of the house, the grounds—such as they are, the verandas, so on. And I worked up some of the basic ideas I have in mind. Not set in stone, but ideas. And the budget I was thinking of.”
    Curiosity got the best of her, so she opened the folder, paged through until she got to the budget. “I’m going to sit down here on these steps.”
    “Okay.” He sat down with her. He did love sitting on a step or a stoop in the city and just watching life go by. So he was content enough to do just that as she was silent for several moments.
    “Duncan, I think you must be an awfully sweet man, but you may have a mental problem.” When he laughed, she shook her head. “You don’t offer a major project like this to someone who isn’t proven.”
    “Well, major’s relative. I have a major project elsewhere, which maybe we’ll talk about some other time. I want this to look like a home.” He wanted the life that went by to see it as one.