That was all her mail, and as nothing earth-shattering was happening in Texas, she grabbed her gym bag and stopped in the kitchen for a bottle of water as she headed out.
She stuffed the bottled water into her gym bag, hoisted it onto her shoulder, and started for the back door . . . and instantly noticed the brownies from last night staring up at her from the breakfast bar, screaming her name. No, really, they were screaming, Rachel, Rachel, you’re going to the gym anyway, so what’s one brownie?
The brownies had a point. Surely she’d burn off any brownie calories in the first half hour. In fact, she could do the power Yogilates class to be extra sure . . . which really gave her license to eat two brownies.
She managed to escape the kitchen before a third brownie jumped into her hand, and she paused at the back door, peering furtively out the little window to make sure her next-door neighbors weren’t outside and obsessively-compulsively engaged in their excessive yard work. This was not something she could exaggerate—there was something seriously wrong with the Valicielos. As in, Mr. Valicielo spent most afternoons trimming something—shrubs, grass, trees, even their ridiculously tiny dog. And when he ran out of things to trim, he mowed a new pattern in the lawn—crisscrosses, checkerboards, gridirons.
Likewise, Mrs. Valicielo was forever on her foam rubber knee pads, her enormous butt high in the air while she weeded the garden, although it was hard to see how a weed could possibly even root, much less bare its ugly head, as vigilant as she was with her trowel.
The Valicielos were so obsessed with that yard that when the elm in Rachel’s backyard succumbed to root rot and fell over, landing squarely on top of the Valicielos’s chain-link fence, she knew it was big trouble. Sure enough, Mr. Valicielo was over within the hour, anxiously gripping and ungripping his gardening hat as he inquired as to when she might have the tree removed.
“As soon as I can, Mr. Valicielo,” she’d said. “I don’t have the money just now.”
“Aha,” he’d said, and looked at the tree laid across his fence again, wincing. “But it will ruin the fence . . . There’s gotta be something you can do.”
Rachel had looked at the tree. “I guess I could try and move it,” she’d said, and the two of them did indeed try to move it. But they at last gave in and stood there, hands on hips, huffing with the exertion of having tried to move a tree that seemed much larger on its side than when it was standing up. “I won’t leave it, I promise,” she’d wheezed. “I’ll have it moved just as soon as I get paid.”
Mr. Valicielo had looked at her like he thought that was a load of crap.
With good reason, as it turned out. It had been three weeks now, and Rachel still didn’t have the money to have the tree removed. So she’d adopted the attitude of hide and watch, and when she was certain the Valicielos weren’t around, she’d make a mad dash for her VW Beetle, tear out of the driveway as if she was fleeing the scene of a murder, and burn rubber all the way down Slater Avenue.
The only problem with her approach was that the Valicielos were just as determined to casually run into her and badger her about that tree. On more than one occasion, Mr. Valicielo had chased her down the drive and into the street.
Fortunately, this morning there was no sign of them, so Rachel tiptoed out to the yellow convertible Beetle, fired her up, and raced backward out of the drive. As she backed onto Slater Avenue, she noticed that while she’d been busy hiding, her neighbors (Welcome to Our House! a plaque on their door read, Tony and Ermaline Valicielo) had added two new plastic deer to accompany the five-hundred-head herd, the plastic giant frog, and the pinwheels on their perfectly manicured and festive lawn.
Rachel hit the gas and sped down the street, just in case one of them was looking out the window.
A quarter of an hour later, she bounced into the gym, carrying her extra-large café au lait. Lori, the gal at the desk, almost choked on her tomato juice when she saw Rachel. “God, I thought you had, like, died or something.”
Rachel laughed as she signed in.
“No, seriously, I thought I heard that,” Lori insisted.
All right already, so she’d missed a few weeks at the gym. “I’ve been out of town,” Rachel said with a shrug.
“For a whole year?”
That was so stupid. It hadn’t been more than ten months, max, Rachel thought as she proceeded down the hall.
Her power Yogilates instructor—who had been Rachel’s yoga instructor ten months ago—seemed a little confused, too. Her face scrunched up as Rachel when she came into the studio. “Diane, right?”
“Rachel. I’m in your yoga class?”