Thank the goddess of Wi-Fi signals. There was internet in Foxwood today.
Triumphantly, I plucked my frozen fingers out of the sleeves of my two-layered sweatshirts and logged into FBI Surveillance Van 4.
It was Saturday morning, and I had three whole hours until I needed to catch the train into the city.
I’d already spent an hour throwing debris out of the second-floor window into the dumpster that took up the entirety of my dad’s square inch of front yard.
Then another hour working on a freelance logo design project. It was for a family-run butcher shop in Hoboken and it paid a grand total of $200.
But $200 meant I’d be able to bump up the thermostat a hedonistic degree or two for a few days. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I might be able to strip down to just one layer of clothing! So Frances Brothers Butcher Shop would get the best damned logo I could design.
With my borrowed Wi-Fi, I typed “Dalessandra Russo” and “Label Magazine” into the internet search and scrolled past the results I’d already visited. Turns out Label had been going through a “transition” period recently. There was plenty of information on formidable and fabulous Dalessandra. Former model turned fashion industry mogul and editor-in-chief of one of the largest surviving fashion magazines in the country. Her husband of forty-five years, Paul, had “stepped down” as creative director for the magazine as of about thirteen months ago.
The official line was that they were parting ways personally and professionally. However, gossip blogs hinted at a more sinister scandal, citing the exodus of several other employees around the same time. Mostly women. The blogs were careful to tap dance around it, but one or two of them hinted that Paul’s extramarital affairs played a role in the demise of both the personal and professional relationships.
I found comfort in the fact that a woman as smart and sharp as Dalessandra could be hosed too.
My gaze flicked over the screen of the laptop to the forty-ton porcelain clawfoot tub still lodged in the living room floor. Then up to the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Yeah. Even smart and sharp got hosed on occasion.
“Knock knock!” A cheery woman with a thick Romanian accent chirped as she pushed her way in through the front door.
I really needed to replace the lock and actually use it.
“Mrs. Grosu,” I said, snapping my laptop closed and mentally resigning myself to picking up the rest of my research after my two bartending shifts. If the Wi-Fi held.
“Hello, neighbor,” she said, bustling inside, a yellow casserole dish in her hands.
Mrs. Grosu was a widow who lived next door in a tidy brick two-story with a hedgerow so precise it looked as though it had been trimmed with lasers. She had four children and seven grandkids who came for Sunday lunch every week.
I adored her.
“I brought you Amish country casserole,” she said cheerily. My dear, adorable, elderly neighbor had two great loves in this life: Feeding people and Pinterest. She’d deemed this year to be her cultural culinary exploration, and I was along for the ride.
“That’s very sweet of you, Mrs. Grosu,” I said.
As bad as literally everything else was in my life, I’d hit the lottery with my father’s neighbors. They were delightfully entertaining and absurdly generous.
She clucked her tongue. “When are you going to get that tub out of your living room?”
“Soon,” I promised. The thing had to weigh three hundred pounds. It was not a one-woman job.
“You say the word, and I have my sons come move it for you.”
Mrs. Grosu’s sons were in their late fifties and in no shape for heavy lifting.
“I’ll figure it out,” I insisted.
With an eye-roll, she headed toward the kitchen. “I’ll put this away. Instructions are on the sticky note,” she called in her thick accent.
“Thank you,” I yelled after her, tunneling my way out of my burrow of blankets.
“This is a thank you,” she insisted, returning to the living room as I climbed off the couch. “You got my groceries when my feet were swollen like watermelons last week.”
We were in an endless reciprocation of favors, and I kind of enjoyed it. It felt nice to be able to give something, anything really, when resources were depleted.
She tut-tutted when she looked at the thermostat. “It’s colder than a snowman’s balls in here,” she complained.
“It’s not so bad,” I insisted, stirring the fire in the brick fireplace my father had rarely ever used. I had one more log allotted for the morning, and then I’d turn on the furnace to heat the house to a balmy fifty degrees while I was at work.
I’d never been poor before, but I felt like I was really getting the hang of it.
“Why do you not take my money?” the woman pouted, crossing her arms in front of her gigantic bosoms. Everything about Mrs. Grosu was soft, squishy. Except for her motherly tone.
“You already paid for the dumpster,” I reminded her.
“Bah!” she said, waving her hand as if it had been nothing to shell out a few hundred dollars to cover the cost of an eyesore that was lowering her own property value.
“This is my mess. I’m going to fix it,” I told her. “You need your money for your grandkids’ Easter baskets and for your single lady cruise.”
“Did I tell you that we’re going to a male cabaret in Cozumel?” she asked, throwing her head back and roaring with laughter.
She had. And I still couldn’t get the vision out of my head. Mrs. Grosu and five of her closest girlfriends took a girls’ trip once a year. I was amazed they’d never been arrested yet. But there was always Cozumel.
“I think you mentioned it,” I said, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
“Okay. Good. Let’s go then,” she said, hooking her arm through mine and towing me toward the door.
“Go? Where?” I asked. “I don’t have shoes or money.”
“Get shoes. You don’t need money.”
That was a laugh. I desperately needed money.
“I have some work to do,” I said, trying again.
“No. You always have work. Your calendar on the refrigerator says you work at three. It takes you forty-five minutes to get to work. Therefore, you have time to come with me.”
I’d argued with her before and always lost.
“What you are doing for your father is a very good, beautiful thing. We’re not going to let you go through this alone,” she said, shoving me into my winter coat.
I stuffed my feet into boots and fumbled for my purse.
“I don’t know what that means,” I admitted. “And who’s we?”
“You start a new job on Monday. Mr. Mohammad and I are taking you shopping at that thrift store you like for some work-appropriate clothes.”
I dug my heels into the ruined plywood, making sure to avoid the strip of carpet tacks. “No, you’re not.”
Mrs. Grosu often talked about her older brothers and their wrestling prowess. Apparently they’d taught her a thing or two because I found myself outside. Mr. Mohammad, an Ethiopian immigrant who arrived in America several decades before I was born, waved from his twenty-year-old sedan.
“Oh, no. He has the car,” I said.
“You see how important this is?” Mrs. Grosu said.
Very few things could convince Mr. Mohammad to actually take his car out of the garage. The car had somewhere in the neighborhood of eight hundred miles on it because its smiling, mustachioed owner loved to walk. Before he retired, he’d walked the two miles to his job as a grocery store supervisor. Since his retirement, he still walked. But now it was to church every Sunday and to bridge at the community center on Wednesdays.
My dad had been Mr. Mohammad’s bridge partner. Together they had ruled the community center with subtle nods and indecipherable body language.
So many things had changed in such a short time. Now, instead of looking out for my dad, his neighbors were looking out for me.
“Don’t fight us on this. We’ve got social security checks burning holes in our pockets, and it’s Senior Citizens Day at the thrift store,” Mrs. Grosu said, stuffing me into the backseat.
“Hello, Ally,” Mr. Mohammad sang. He was the happiest person I knew.
“Mr. Mohammad, I can’t let you two do this.”
“You just relax, girly,” he insisted. “We want to do this.”
It was true. They really did. Dad’s entire neighborhood seemed to thrive on the “love thy neighbor” principle. When I sold Dad’s house, when this was all over, I’d pay them back. And I would miss them fiercely.
“Fine,” I sighed. “But I’ll pay you back.”
Mr. Mohammad and Mrs. Grosu shared an eye-roll in the front seat.
“Do not make this weird, Ally,” Mr. Mohammad said and cranked up the Billy Joel cassette tape.
