The next day, though, there was an even nastier surprise in store for me.
Anthony had obviously told Marissa and Joseph about our problem with the car, because as soon as they and two workmen arrived on Monday morning, the men began to inspect the vehicle. Despite my protestations—the car could sit in the driveway forever, as far as I was concerned—it was decided that before work on the house could begin, the car would have to be repaired. After much gesticulating, sounds of annoyance, and shrugging of shoulders, one of the men, Eddie by name, headed off somewhere in Joseph’s car.
“Have you found what’s wrong?” I asked, hoping for an affirmative and a diagnosis that would not take long to fix.
“Part missing probably,” Joseph replied. “If Eddie moves fast enough, he may get it back. For a price, of course.”
I looked from Joseph to Marissa. “I’m not following this conversation,” I said.
Marissa smiled at me. “We have a lot of old cars here. People grow very attached to them. Parts are scarce; sometimes they aren’t even manufactured anymore. So they get stolen fairly regularly if you’re not careful. We thought the place was far enough off the beaten track that it wouldn’t be a problem. But I guess we were wrong.
“There are body shops around that miraculously always seem to have parts. Everyone knows who they are. So Eddie will visit a couple of them and get the part. It could even be the one we lost.” She smiled wryly.
“Isn’t that theft, or extortion, or something?”
“Probably. Here we call it the way things go. Joseph will clear some of the construction materials out of the garage so you can lock the car in at night.”
“You know, the first night I was here I thought I saw someone out by the edge of the cliff. Someone wearing a hood. Perhaps he’s our thief!”
“Did you now?” Joseph said. “Strange things go on here from time to time,” he added. Marissa’s usual sunny smile faded somewhat, but neither said anything more.
Eddie returned about a half hour later with a mechanic, and the two of them got to work. At first Eddie was very talkative: he told me that while he was at the body shop he’d also checked for a part that would fix the transmission, which is to say, give it a second gear. He’d had no luck. Someone had beaten him to one by minutes, he told me.
But suddenly there seemed to be a chill in the air, metaphorically speaking, and both Eddie and the mechanic grew silent. Soon there was a whispered consultation with Joseph, who in turn whispered to Marissa, who looked really upset. Joseph started clearing his tools and construction materials out of the garage, and Eddie headed out again, returning this time with a huge padlock which he went about installing on the garage door.
All of this was making me nervous, and by extension, annoyed. “We need to talk, Marissa,” I said to her. “I want to know what is going on around here!”
“Let me talk to Joseph,” was the reply. The two of them held another whispered conversation, Joseph finally nodded, and Marissa came back to me.
“The problem with the car was a bit more serious than we thought,” she began.
“More serious than a stolen part?”
“A bit worse than that,” she replied carefully. I waited.
“It’s not so much a part missing. The mechanic said nothing was missing, actually. Some minor problem with the carburetor,” she said. “It’s just there was also a broken line, or something.”
I watched her face carefully. She was frightened, I could tell.
“To the brakes,” she said finally. “You… we were all lucky the car wouldn’t start,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just because the car is so old,” she went on. “But the mechanic says there is a possibility that the line didn’t break, that it was cut.”
I just looked at her. “It’s fixed now, of course,” she said, then burst into tears.
Anyone with any sense would have moved out of the house after this, I know, and I’ve often asked myself since why I stayed. It was partly my capacity for self-delusion, which is as strong as anyone’s. I, like Marissa, preferred to believe the brakes were just old, not tampered with. In addition, I just decided, I think, that these horrible events were not directed at me. Furthermore, I had a job to do, and I didn’t like the idea of telling Martin Galea his house wasn’t ready for his important entertaining. Somehow I didn’t think he’d find a dead cat and what was probably just an accident with the brakes a good excuse for not getting the house finished.
In any event, the job of getting the house ready took up more and more of my time and energy. I’d assumed, more than a little optimistically as it turned out, that by the time Sophia’s lecture rolled around, the house would be shipshape and the furniture winging its way to me.
Instead, after the incident with the car, I put in a rather exasperating and anxiety-ridden couple of days as our work on the house not only did not progress as quickly as it should, but we actually seemed to be losing ground. Galea had said he’d arrive Friday or Saturday to inspect the place, and we were far from ready. I was getting worried.
The electrician, for example, was supposed to arrive Monday morning. However, he and most of the other tradespeople I encountered ascribed to a casual philosophy I’d call a Mediterranean version of manana, and it was late Monday afternoon before he got there. Then what had seemed like a simple matter of installing a few ceiling fixtures had turned into a major wiring problem requiring several holes in the ceiling and walls to put right.
Next we ran out of the glaze for the stucco and had to match it. A good designer, for example my ex-husband on one of the rare days when he was actually prepared to work, would have matched it in a minute or two. Joseph, Marissa, and I took considerably longer, and in the end we agreed we’d have to redo one whole wall to get it right.
Even this would have been manageable. The really big problem was the shipment from home, and my early optimism that meeting Galea’s deadline would be reasonably easy was fast beginning to fade.
A massive winter storm had blanketed much of the Great Lakes region and was now moving on to the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. Nearly twenty inches of snow had dumped on the Toronto area; temperatures had plummeted to way, way below zero; schools and offices were closed, as was the airport.
“We’re completely socked in,” Alex told me. I was in almost constant touch with him and with Dave Thomson as my anxiety levels headed for the stratosphere.
“Dave sent a truck out from his warehouse at the airport to pick up the furniture here and at Galea’s place on Saturday afternoon. He’d found an Air Canada cargo flight headed for Heathrow that night that had room for the shipment. But it was so cold the truck blew a tire on the highway.
“Dave tried to find another truck but couldn’t, then… Well, anyway, they never got here or to Galea’s house and we missed that flight. Then the storm moved in. The airport authorities estimate they’ll be back in business by tonight, so we’ll try and find a flight then. Dave says don’t panic yet!”
“Yet!” I grumped. But there was nothing I could do.
By late Monday night, Malta time, the situation didn’t look any better. The airport might be reopening, but the flights were backed up and Dave was having trouble finding space for such a large shipment at such short notice. Furthermore, a pipe had burst in his warehouse out near the airport, and he hadn’t been able to bring the two shipments there to pack them.