The F-Word

I look up. “Will you please stop calling me that?”

“Sir,” she says pointedly, “about the weekend…”

Aha. Here it comes. One out-of-control kiss, and she’s backing out of our arrangement. I push my chair back a little.

“Look, that kiss didn’t mean a thing. I already explained…”

“I need to make plans.”

“Bailey. If you want me to promise it won’t happen ag—”

“Will you want to drive up?”

I blink. “Drive up where?”

“To Schenectady.”

“Drive up to…Oh. To the wedding. I thought…” I clear my throat. “Sure. We’ll drive.”

She nods. “I just wanted to double check. I mean, there are choices. We could take the train. Or fly. Or—”

“We’ll drive.”

“Fine.” She hesitates. Color begins sweeping into her face. “And what about lodging?”

“Lodging?”

“If my mother still had the house, we would stay there. But her condo is small. Smallish. There’s a tiny den with a pullout sofa that she got second-hand. Well, third-hand. It was my Aunt Sally’s and then Aunt Sally gave it to her daughter Thelma and when her daughter got married, she passed it along to my mother…” Bailey clamps her lips together, inhales, and starts fresh. “So I’d have to sleep with my mother. You’d have to sleep on the pullout sofa. But I can’t, and neither can you.”

I am getting lost in the syntax, meaning the safest response is, “Because?”

She shrugs. “Until three days ago, my mother kept hoping I was going to the wedding. When I flat-out told her I wasn’t, she told my Aunt Sylvia that she and her husband could stay with her. Arthur—that’s Aunt Sylvia’s husband—is…he’s a little heavy. He’ll need the pullout sofa all to himself, and Aunt Sylvia will sleep with my mother. Then, when I phoned my mother and told her I was coming—that we were coming—she called my Aunt Cynthia to see if she could put up Sylvia and Arthur, instead, but—”

I hold up my hand. I am drowning in a sea of relatives I haven’t even met.

“Book us into a hotel.”

“Yes. I tried.”

“But?”

“But, everything is filled.” She looks at me. “There’s some kind of renewable energy conference going on. Plus weddings. Not just Violet’s. There are three others.”

“Yeah, I get it, but there must be a room somewhere.”

She nods. “I’ll give it another try.”

* * *

Bailey’s efficiency is a godsend.

She plans my business trips with care. By late morning, I know she’s planning this trip with the same concentration to detail.

She messages me, tells me she’s contacted the woman who always takes care of Walter when I’m away. Mrs. Lopez will spend the weekend at my house and Walter will be happy. He adores her and she adores him.

“What about Prudence?”

“Prudence?”