Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

bankbook. But whoever’s renting the place, to the tune of twenty-five hundred dollars a week,” she added meaningfully, “is going to expect the use of the kitchen from time to time. And the bathroom,” she added when Lulu opened her mouth to speak again, obviously anticipating what would come next.

With another sigh, Lulu spun on her heels and made her way across the hall to her only bathroom, tugging off the note she’d stuck on the door there. Bree, who’d followed her, shook her head again, more slowly this time, but smiled. “Maybe we should do a final walk-through, just to be sure there’s nothing you forgot.”

Reluctantly, Lulu nodded. And she did her best to keep her mouth shut as Bree removed the sticky notes she had placed prominently on not just the remote, but the television, the CD player, the cabinet holding her dishes, the pantry, and the back door.

“I just painted the deck,” she said by way of an explanation for that last.

“And you have a beautiful backyard that whoever’s staying here will doubtless want to enjoy,” Bree told her. “Especially in the evenings. Our evenings are lovely this time of year.”

“Whoever’s staying here will probably be going to parties in the evenings,” Lulu pointed out. Parties were, after all, one of the main reasons people visited Louisville during Derby.

“Then you won’t have to worry about them using your deck,” her friend replied. “And you can wash the dishes when you come home,” she added, “and the sheets and towels and anything else that might get cooties on it while someone else is staying here. It’ll be fine, Lulu,” Bree said again. “Anyone who can afford to drop that much money for two weeks’ lodging will behave responsibly and take care of your things.”

Lulu told herself to listen to her friend. It wasn’t like she had a lot of priceless antiques or anything. Her house was a two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow from which she had managed to squeeze out a third bedroom in the attic, and it still had some scarring on the hardwood floors and plaster that was chipped in places. But she’d been refurbishing it by herself for almost a year now, and she felt responsible for the place in a way that was almost maternal. She just couldn’t tolerate the thought of some stranger inhabiting it who didn’t care for the house the way she did.

“But what if the renter is someone who has bad karma?” she asked her friend now.

Bree patted her hand. “Your fierce dogma will protect the place.”

“What if the renter is full of negative energy?” Lulu asked.

“Your positive attitude will overwhelm it.”

“What if they do something to mess up all my excellent feng shui?”

“You can ask your chi about that if it happens.”

“What if they break my glass?”

That, finally, seemed to stump Bree. Because it was an important consideration. Lulu made her living—barely—by designing and creating art glass. Her home was full of her work. The more exquisite—and expensive—pieces, she’d carefully packed away and taken to her Main Street studio. But there were too many for her to remove them all.

“If they break it, they bought it,” Bree finally said. She handed what was left of the Post-it notes back to Lulu. “Make a note of that and put it in a prominent place. And then we need to get the keys to Eddie. He said your prospective renter is arriving at five o’clock. And don’t worry,” she added as Lulu penned the last of her notes for her guest. “Whoever stays here will feel right at home. I’m sure they’ll love the place as much as they would their own.”

LULU’S FRIEND EDDIE RAFFERTY WORKED FOR HOT Properties, a three-person agency he’d started with his brother and his partner that the trio ran out of Eddie’s shotgun house in Phoenix Hill. A big chunk of the company’s income was made during the weeks prior to the Kentucky Derby, thanks to their success in renting out private residences, like Lulu’s, specifically for that event. When he wasn’t renting out houses to out-of-towners for that first Saturday in May or selling real estate to locals, Eddie was dressing like Liza Minnelli in her Sally Bowles persona at the Connection downtown, belting out “Cabaret” and tap-dancing with an elegance and finesse Lulu would have envied, had she had any desire to dance on stage in platform shoes before hundreds of people.

Which, of course, she didn’t. Not just because she was more comfortable in her Birkenstock knockoffs, thank you very much, but because the thought of being in the limelight that way frankly made her want to break out in hives. In fact, being in the limelight like that had once made her break out in hives. Years ago, when she’d been interviewed at a local craft fair for some puff piece on the news, back before she’d realized how much she didn’t like being thrust into the spotlight. Now that she knew she didn’t handle attention well, she avoided it. Of course, that resolution had come too late for the tens of thousands of viewers who’d seen her bloated like a rancid pufferfish on live, local, late-breaking news and were probably still plagued by the nightmares.

Anyway, it was just as well Lulu had chosen the career path she had, cloistered away in her studio where she could create beautiful glass and sell it, both there and from her website online. That way, she had minimal contact with the outside world, and there was little chance anyone would take much notice of her. Certainly, hardly anyone ever stopped her in the grocery store anymore and said, “Hey, aren’t you that pufferfish girl who was on the news that time?”

Because it was rush hour by the time the two women arrived at Eddie’s house, Bree couldn’t park on the street, so she offered to circle the block while Lulu ran inside, relinquished her keys, and signed the rental agreement. Unfortunately, Eddie had a client with him when