Aras, of course, had something to say, although he did keep his voice low. “Are these the kind of people whoneedour help? I’m sure they could afford to hire a crew.”
Ozzy couldn’t disagree, but it also wasn’t their place to question the choices of clients. Not when they were getting the better part of ten-grand per episode to work on the show.
“Keep that talk to yourself.” Mason also kept his voice low, leaning in with one hand on Aras’s shoulder and one hand on Ozzy’s. “Client’s here. We’re not in the business of judging, yeah?”
Melanie walked to the front door. She unlocked it, then gestured them all in. “You can head on back through here, or go to the gate to the left, there.”
Everyone looked to Eliza. She bobbed her head side-to-side before answering. “Think they can just head around to the gate. We’ll get some pickup shots of the inside of the house. Should make good juxtaposition.”
Ozzy didn’t wait for anything else. He headed left, checking out the landscaping as he went. It wasn’tbadby any stretch. Lots of evergreens, gravel, and grass. All well-maintained. The white fence around the back yard was in good shape, and the latch didn’t squeak or catch as he flipped it to let them into the back yard.
Ozzy froze.Well fuck me.
Melanie chuckled softly behind him, then cleared her throat. “We let this area go a little bit.”
“You don’t say.” Ozzy whispered it, but if she heard it or the mic picked it up, oh well. What little grass he could see was mostly dead. Tumbleweeds had clearly blown up and over their nice fence and made a sea to wade through. A path had been cleared, leading to the other side of the yard where a crew was busy setting up. When he breathed in, Ozzy got a lungful ofsomething rotten, like fruit had been left out and fermented. There were no fruit trees, from what he could tell.
The building they wereactuallysupposed to be working in sat to the left of the gate, opposite the clearly neglected patio off the back of the main house. At some point, they’d be able to get there and take stock of the situation.
Ozzy sighed. “Looks like I’m pulling my weight for sure on this one.” He looked behind him at Eliza. “Can I have a chat with you about what this is going to need? So you can get the ball rolling.”
She nodded and gestured down the path carved into the tumbleweeds. While the others sort of meandered, vaguely making their way in the direction of the soon-to-be mother-in-law apartment, Ozzy kept up a good clip until they were separate from everyone, standing at the opposite end of the lawn, but as far away from the current crew as possible.
Then he raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but does this look to you like they’re pretending to need this outbuilding done so they can get their yard fixed up?”
She planted her hands on her hips. “No. It looks like some people who let things get out of hand and now they have a new motivation to try and get things done, but it’s a lot of work and they want some help.” She nodded, apparently agreeing with herself in his stead. “I know it’s a lot, but we got a contractor with great reviews on landscaping to come in for this. We saw the pictures and knew it was in bad shape. We’re playing the story up as a ‘look at the dark secret this family is hiding’ sort of scenario. It’ll be good TV.”
“I’m sure it will.” Itwasjust a job and heshouldn’tcare about need or anything like that. Even though he did, apparently. Even though he was suddenlyfirmlyin Aras’s camp. “Make sure one of the crew is on hand to smack the crap out of me if I start complaining about how lazy and shallow this family is.”
“I’ll do it myself.” Eliza pointed toward the outbuilding. “Now stop making assumptions and go make TV. Put that brain to work on how to fix this.”
“Flamethrower.” When Eliza’s eyes widened and her jaw tightened, Ozzy held up his hands in front of his chest. “Not being a jackass with that one. I don’t know the ordnances in this area, but with this much vegetation to clear out, a propane torch is going to be our best bet. As long as we have access to water and fire extinguishers. Can’t give you a much better answer until I can see the whole canvas cleared off.”
She frowned, but nodded. “You done complaining?”
“No.” He grinned, and Eliza returned the expression, however tightly, so he headed back to join the rest of the group. They’d pushed through the weeds to the door of the outbuilding. Once Ozzy got close again so he was actually in the shot, Mason pushed the door open with his shoulder. It ground and slid, but they got it to open all the way up. Ozzy stayed back, since the interior wasn’t his deal, and instead looked at the outside of the structure. It seemed like it was probably built at the same time as the house. Had the same style, same siding and trim colors, and the windows seemed to match up. It stood a few feet away from the fence in the back, but the right wall was mostly a sliding glass door. He toed a few tumbleweeds aside and, sure enough, there was a concrete slab. A patio for this space, too.
In spite of his annoyance at the state of things—how the fuck were they taking such good care of the front yard and pretending the back was just fine?—the gears in Ozzy’s brain chunked forward, gathering up ideas. He’d need a lot more input to finalize them, but a start was better than nothing.
Chapter four
Evander
The interior was barebonesas hell. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust, which was especially bad since someone had made the bold decision to putcarpetin there. The walls were all contractor white. Some of the windows still had protective plastic over them from the install.
Mostly, it was just crowded with a bunch ofstuff. Neat stuff. Tidy stuff. Labeled stuff. But stuff that the Trangs pretty obviously weren’t using. It might have been a bit of an assumption in most cases, but several of the boxes had dates written on them in blocky permanent marker. They’d been there for a few years, and had the layer of dust to match.
The production crew was with them on this walk-through, of course, but they had carte blanche to make commentary as necessary during their first look. Eliza assured them that this part of the process would be done with voice-over, basically justto show off where they were starting. So Evander didn’t worry too much about being presentational when he spoke. “Need to check on the weatherproofing on this place. Some dust makes sense, but if people are going to be living here, want to make sure that’s up to snuff.”
“It’s already on my list,” said Bunny.
“Once we get things cleared out, I’ll make sure there are no gaps around the windows.” Jake craned his neck as if he was trying to see a gaping hole around the nearest window. He stumbled into the wall in the process, catching himself on his shoulder. He grinned back at Evander when he righted himself. “No gaps there, I think.”
Evander sighed and moved on. It wasn’t the easiest to piece together the space with so much stuff there, but he had plenty of experience mentally clearing out houses to get the lay of the land. The front door let out into an open concept living room and kitchen combo. A short hallway led to a bathroom, although there was no toilet or sink, only a combination tub and shower and some capped fixtures. Across from that was a bedroom packed with so many boxes and totes that it was notably hotter when he stepped into the tight corridor spaced between the boxes. Having so muchstuffin a room, they would hold onto the heat more effectively.
The best feature of the basic house was definitely the sliding glass door that led outside. That would rely a lot on Ozzy and what he did with the space outside, but he was good at what he did. He’d make an outside space worthy of this kind of view and access, that much Evander knew for sure. He could also already see the struggle incoming. With such limited space, it only made sense to treat the patio space as an extension of the house. Evander could design a much better living area for Melanie’s parents with that extra space.
On the last job, Ozzy argued with him about the color of a door because it was outside, even though it was on a covered porch and attached to the house. A fully outdoor space…he wasn’t about to give up control easily.
