Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sometimes she even pushed us to speed things up.
“We're spending as fast as we can,” I laughed feebly.
Her first big coup was hiring our new contractor/handyman.
“He's from Boston,” she said. “And he's very low-key…not your typical handyman-
type. Best of all, he's very talented.”
I gulped.
“And very expensive, I'm guessing.”
She laughed.
“He's worked on other houses for me and I think he's pretty reasonable, considering the
quality of his work.”
“And how do you define 'pretty reasonable'?”
“He said he'd install your new kitchen for $3,000.”
Reasonable enough.
“Okay, hire him,” I said, feeling uncharacteristically decisive. “What do we do next?”
“Nothing much,” she responded, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “Just design
and order a kitchen and send it down by next week.”
We ordered the kitchen from
Home Depot
.
Don't tell Daniel.
The night before we placed the order, I dreamed that we were wandering up and down
the broad, cheerless aisles of a generic big-box store and actually ran into Daniel. He had
a pastel sweater draped over his shoulders and was cradling a tiny, ill-tempered dog in the
crook of his arm.
“I'm just here for the research,” he offered defensively, in the same tone you'd imagine
Marie Antoinette would use if you caught her haggling over tchotchkes in the Paris flea
market.
Clearly, I needed to erase Daniel from my memory banks forever.
☼ ☼ ☼
“Okay, now pay attention,” Michael instructed as we approached the yawning doors of
our nearest
Home Depot
in the Virginia suburbs. “We're going to pretend that this kitchen
is for our house in D.C. We'll get them to design it here, then we'll take the plans to San
Juan and order the whole thing down there.”
This strategy made perfectly good sense but it also made me squirm. I'm a terrible liar,
and even though this wasn't technically a lie, it did a pretty great job of tap dancing around
the truth.
So I decided to let Michael do the talking.
Our “kitchen associate” was a young Asian woman named Luong. She was kind and
patient, which made me feel even guiltier about our little ruse.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search