“No.” Annoyed by the jump scare—mostly annoyed at myself because my pulse was racing—I gave her a wide berth as I headed for the sidewalk. “My wick’s perfectly fine as it is, Janice.”
“But… you didn’t even take a flyer. Everyone takes a flyer.” Her pout was audible. “It’s rude not to.”
I could practically feel Tam judging me from across town.You’re not in the city anymore. Here, you don’t have to lock your doors, but you do need to make an effort to engage.
Fine, then. I’d try to engage.
I turned and looked at parka-woman seriously, trying to ignore how my heart was still hammering in my chest. “Has it occurred to you, Janice, that what’s really rude is accosting a man with the desiccated remains of dead trees…”
She frowned down at her flyers.
“… while he’s running a lifesaving errand to the hardware store?”
Janice blinked. “Lifesaving? Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I am perfectly fine. But I engaged a contractor to renovate my house, Janice. A contractor whose ego is as massive as he is, which is saying something since he’s six-foot-twenty. And he’s already working my very last nerve. My plans for my primary bathroom? Scrapped. My instructions to replace my creaky hardwoods with something modern and sustainable? Ignored. My specific request that the paneling in my office should be painted white since walnut stain would make the space feel like I was working in a freaking catacomb? Literally scoffed at.”
A strong gust of wind whistled down Weaver Street, making the pom-poms on Janice’s hat dance. She clutched her flyers tighter. “But?—”
“And,” I continued, “if I don’t have a shovel on Wednesday morning to clean the snow, the man will sigh at me like I’m incompetent, Janice. He won’t be able to help himself. He will roll his eyes. He’ll give a little snort that’s just low enough to make it seem plausible that he thought I wouldn’t hear it, though he absolutely knows I can hear it. And because I am actually very competent, there will be a murder in this town.” I leaned toward her and lowered my voice. “Do you want there to be a murder, Janice?”
I hadn’t meant to say that much or be quite so abrupt, and I felt a little bad when Janice’s eyes went wide and shiny… until I realized she wasn’t upset so much asawestruck.
“But you… you don’t mean… you can’t be talking about… Brewer?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose with cold fingers.Oh, here we go.
“Because Brewer’s awesome,” Janice breathed. “He’s, like, a renovation genius. He’s never had a single unhappy client. And he’s so handsome! And his voice is so pleasant. And gosh, he’s so nice! When my father’s hot water heater burst while I had the flu, Brewer went to his house and changed it out for him at cost, and?—”
“Yes, yes, and he helps little old ladies cross the street while simultaneously rescuing kittens from mine shafts, ending global famines, and single-handedly saving the environment,” I finished. “I know.”
“Oh, wow.” Janice clasped the flyers to her bosom. “I hadn’t heard that, about the kittens. But I totally believe it.”
A noise not unlike the whistle of a teakettle escaped me.
I might not be able to make Janice see the light about Brewer—if I couldn’t changeTam’smind, I had zero chance with someone I wasn’t related to—but I could set her right about some things, at least.
“Janice.” I forced a smile. “I bet most of the people who take your flyers don’t actually show up.”
She seemed startled. “Well, people are busy?—”
“People are statistically more likely to do something when they want to do it, when they choose it, rather than when it is foisted upon them. Read ‘The Art of Choosing’ by Sheena Iyengar and thank me later.”
“But—”
“You need to make people come to you, Janice. Maybe make a visual splash of some kind. Wear a historical costume, for example. People are suckers for a hoop skirt, am I right? But for God’s sake, change the name of the event to something you can say in one breath, like…” I tapped my lip. “Wicked Fun Candle-making, for example. That’s a banger.”
Janice stared at me, mouth open and face blank, like I’d whacked her with a stick.
See, this was what happened when I engaged. No matter how helpful my suggestions, people here just looked at me like I was speaking an alien language.
“You have a good day now,” I said, smiling a little harder. Then I bleeped the locks on my car and headed for O’Leary Hardware.
“Sir! Excuse us, sir!” Some adorable little girls in scout uniforms stopped me outside the store and shook a coffee can in my direction. The few coins inside jingled. “Would you like to donate to the Shoemaker Day Career Fair our troop is organizing?”
I glanced from the girls to their chaperone, a dad holding a coffee cup in one hand and a phone playing sports commentary in the other.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if I’d heard right—Shoemaker Day? Were we encouraging shoemaking as a career choice in this economy?—but I heard Tam’s voice in my head and kept my mouth shut
