My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [34]
“Worst of all, what if one of us suddenly develops an interest in illegal drugs? Place like this, you can’t just walk out front and buy crack. Serious inconvenience.”
Then we drove back to the city, laughing all the way until we got to our depressing neighborhood and still-squalid home. Then everything was a lot less funny.
I feel like once we figure out where to settle in for good, and after I complete this manuscript, only then can I get down to the business of fixing what’s wrong with me.
Finally.
“What was that thump?”
“Was that a thump? Sounded more like a crash to me.”
Fletch and I are in the living room, drinking coffee and watching FOX News. We’re heckling every story we see Stadler- and Waldorf-style, which makes this a pretty typical Saturday. We planned to look at houses today, but we’re in the middle of a vicious September rainstorm and neither of us wants to brave the expressway in a monsoon. Plus, I’m already two weeks overdue on mymanuscript and I’ve got to get it done,68 so I’m in for the day.
“You really want to debate the semantics of the noise we just heard instead of getting up to inspect it? Oh, hello, Mr. Breaking-and-Entering criminal! We’re in here! Come and murder us!” I singsong toward the back of the house. This might be funny if there hadn’t been a spate of B&Es in the neighborhood in the past few weeks.
“’S fine,” Fletch assures me, eyes still on the screen.
“Really?” I huff. “You’re not even going to get up? FINE YOURSELF.” I hurl myself out of my seat and stomp into the kitchen.
“Can I have more coffee while you’re up?”
“Can’t. Busy being stabbed,” I yell back. But there’s no evidence of breaking and entering. Or entering, anyway. Something definitely broke.
“What the hell’s going on here?” I mutter to myself. I bend over to inspect the problem. One of our hardwired under-cabinet lights has just fallen out of the wall and into a puddle on the counter. “Swear to God, if that little bastard took a leak on here again, we’re having him for dinner.” Our surly cat Bones has taken to peeing up here lately. I assume this is how he expresses his unhappiness with the litter-box situation. I admit I haven’t provided the level of sanitation he normally requires, but ever since I got hit with a flying rat this winter, I seem to have lost my passion for keeping his toilet perfectly spotless.
“What’s the problem in there?”
“Light fell out of the wall.”
Apparently this is too interesting—or his cup is too empty—not to see firsthand, and Fletch approaches from behind me while I furiously dry and decontaminate the counter. “Here, I’ll fix it.” He tries to place the fixture back up, lining the screws up with the holes in the wall, but it immediately falls out again. He tentatively touches the drywall underneath the cabinet . . . and his finger goes right through it.
“This is soaked,” he reports.
“How’d that little shit manage to wet the wall?” I wonder. “Did he back up to it? Does he need to go to the vet?”
“If Bones peed hard enough to saturate the wall, he needs a priest, not a doctor. This isn’t urine.”
“Well, hurrah for us being slightly less squalid than anticipated! But if this isn’t pee, what’s been flooding the counter? Is this from the bathroom?” I ask.
“Can’t be—we’re fifteen feet away from those pipes, and this is an exterior wall. This is coming from the roof over the back porch.”
“Do we have a problem?” I fret.
Fletch gives it a dismissive shrug. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Now let’s get some more coffee.”
I head back to the living room, glancing at the wall over my shoulder. “Okay . . . if you’re sure.”
“Trust me.”
Does the statement “trust me” ever NOT become famous last words?
Over the next few weeks we find out that not only is our roof leaking, but our foundation has cracked. Water has saturated the electrical panel and the back wall’s become structurally unsound, which is causing the porch—you know, the place where I’m supposed to finish