When I saw it, I said, “Wow.”
The mansion was done in the French Country style, a term I picked up in a book about local architecture, where the house was featured prominently among others of its kind. The estate was built in 1904, so at least the aged stone facade and weathered gray shutters represented a genuine pedigree. The tall, steeply hipped roof featured overlapping slate tiles. Pairs of chimneys flanked the structure, appearing as mirror images where they peeked above the roofline. The windows were tall and narrow, and those on the first and second floors were aligned in perfect symmetry. Over the years, rambling additions had been laid end-on, like children’s wooden blocks, though in perfect keeping with the original elegance. There was something Disneyesque about it. I half expected an arc of fireworks and a swelling chorus of “When You Wish Upon a Star.”
I parked and made my way to the front door, which was standing open. I rang the bell, which I could hear sounding inside in the sort of soft chime that suggests the intermission is over and we should all return to our seats. While I waited, I listened to the birdies chirp. The air smelled of lavender and pine. I was wearing my usual jeans, tennis shoes, and a turtleneck that was ever so faintly stretched out of shape. No sign of my fairy godmother, so Ari would have to take me as I was.
When no one appeared after a suitable interval, I peered in. The marble-tiled hallway ran the width of the house and it was currently so crowded with furniture, they might have been preparing for a liquidation sale. Most of the pieces were antiques or very good reproductions: chairs, side tables, armoires, a chest of drawers with ornate bronze drawer pulls. A woman in a white uniform applied wax to a handsome mahogany tallboy inlaid with a lighter wood.
I took one step in, thinking someone would notice me. At the far end of the hall to my left, the elevator door stood open and two men in coveralls coaxed a rolling pallet into the hall; framed works of art were stacked against the end panel at a slant. Their progress was supervised by a gaunt woman wearing jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks. I was hoping to catch her attention, but no one seemed aware of me. There were other paintings leaning against the wall on either side of the corridor. I leaned around the door and rang the bell again. This time when the chime sounded, the gaunt woman in jeans looked in my direction. She broke away from the two workmen and moved to the front door.
I handed her a business card. “I have a meeting with Mr. Xanakis.”
She gave the card a quick read and stepped back, which I took as permission to enter. She turned and walked down the hall. There was no hint of her place in the household. She might have been Ari’s new bride, his daughter, his housekeeper, or the woman who watered his houseplants and walked his dogs. In the warm air that wafted from somewhere in the back of the house, I picked up the scent of roasting chicken.
Two women stood near the double doors that opened to the dining room. One was rail-thin, blond, late thirties, wearing a black velour lounging outfit that consisted of pants and a matching zippered jacket with something sparkly underneath. The other woman was also rail-thin and blond, in a snug black power suit and spike heels.
The portion of the room I could see had unadorned walls padded with a pale green silk. There were fifteen oversize squares and rectangles of darker fabric where paintings had once hung, protecting the fabric from fading. In the center of each was a recessed receptacle that contained an electrical outlet. That way picture lights could be affixed to the frame without a length of unsightly electrical wire hanging down to the baseboards. In my Aunt Gin’s trailer when I was growing up, she’d sometimes have power strips hosting double and triple adapters with eight brown cords trailing from a single socket like piglets nursing at a sow. I thought all sockets looked like that.
The two women studied the room and the woman in the power suit said, “That’s all going to have to come out.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Quick fix? Get all that fabric out of there and paint the walls charcoal gray. That’ll hide some of the flaws.”
The woman in black velour looked at me sharply. “Who’s this?”
The woman who’d answered the door said, “She has a meeting with Mr. Xanakis. I was going to show her to the gym.”