The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag 00 - Swept Under the Rug

one answered, I called you. The wheezing tipped me off. Thought you could use a ride home. Or an oxygen tank.”
    “Quit picking on me and spill.”
    Leo loved to tell drawn-out stories and he was quite good at painting a picture. “Since it was my night off, I went to a party in South Boston with a few of my friends. Do you remember Dillon?”
    “The angel who made me those slipcovers?” Without consulting me, my mother-in-law had purchased a sofa and matching love-seat for us for Christmas. It may have been a nice gesture, if made out of kindness instead of mortification. Or if the furniture was scotch-guarded to protect the gleaming white upholstery.
    “That’s him. Anywho, he bought this fab mini-mansion, which he just finished renovating. Total Greco-Roman masterpiece, sculpted columns, authentic wall treatments throughout. He had the idea he’d do a restore and flip, but with the markets cooling off, he got stuck with it.”
    “Yikes, makes me glad we unloaded our house in Virginia Beach when we did.” I’d been following the housing bubble story online and some of the tales curled my hair. My own personal nightmare is to be penniless and at the whim of the universe. It’d happened before and I’d survived, but the thought of losing everything, of being so poor I couldn’t buy food for my family gave me palpitations.
    “Well, he rented out the upstairs half for a song so he could keep up with mortgage payments.” Leo was like a little kid saving his favorite piece of candy ‘til last.
    “And…,” I prompted as Leo pulled up to my house.
    “Do you have any good coffee? Not that generic brand swill, but fresh-off-the-Columbian-mule coffee?”
    “I swear; you are such a drama queen.”
    “Hello kettle, this is the pot calling and I’m sorry to say it, but you’re black.”
    “Fine, I’ll make you some real coffee.” I lunged from the car, and slammed the door. So what if I was proving his point?
    My freezer was stocked for a Leo visit and I retrieved a bag of whole bean medium-dark and tossed it at his head. “You make the coffee. I need a shower.”
    “Work on my day off? You must be joking.”
    “You brought it on yourself, pal. Besides, you make better coffee.”
    “True, true. It’s such a burden being me.” Leo knew where I kept everything and he already had the filter in place by the time I left the kitchen.
    I have showering down to a science, as long as I don’t have to look good afterwards. I can go from mud wrestler filthy to sparkling clean in under two minutes. The low-maintenance look, or as close as I get to it without resembling an alpaca. Neil appreciates this about me and I usually ignore my dormant and understated pride, except when I want to make an impact. Then it takes over an hour to get myself whipped together.
    Leo didn’t need me to impress him, so after I garbed my frame in a faded sweatshirt and a pair of decent jeans; I traipsed in the kitchen and poured myself the first cup. “Enough of the stall tactics, I want the juicy tid-bits.”
    “Where was I?” Leo tapped his chin in mock forgetfulness. The man has a brain like a steel drum, he has to in order to run Ralph and Laura’s household so smoothly. I circled my hand, indicating he should move it along. “Dillon and his masterpiece.”
    “Right, so we had a small get together there last weekend—”
    “For the Super Bowl?” I interrupted, smiling behind the rim of my mug.
    Leo quirked an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, yes Miss Sassy-pants.”
    I gagged on my coffee. “Seriously?” The mental picture of Leo and his Bostonian pals hanging around munching chips and staring at a big screen wouldn’t gel. They were more the Oscar-party types.
    “We each dressed up in our favorite player’s team colors and I brought these little spinach-stuffed puff pastries, absolutely delish! I’ll shoot you the recipe.”
    “Of course,” I murmured, getting a better angle on the image. “So get to the entrée already.”
    “Well, he’s a Raider’s fan—”
    “They didn’t make it to the Super Bowl.”
    Leo shot me a withering glance. “You’re point being…?”
    I smiled and promised myself I wouldn’t cut him off anymore.
    “So he had the snazzy little black and silver outfit; I swear he looked just like a young Tom Jones. As soon as I saw him, I got heart palpitations and made for the kitchen. He came in to get a glass of white wine and comment on the pastries. It was Kismet. And he asked