Excerpt from CHRISTMAS AT THE HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE
Wreaths were hung, trees were decorated,
lights were strung. Gingerbread baked in the oven and wassail simmered on the
stove, filling the air with the aroma of Christmas spices. Every surface sparkled. Fires were laid in each guest room, awaiting
only the strike of a match, and the London Symphony Orchestra’s recording of The Nutcracker
Suite wafted softly from speakers throughout the public rooms. A framed copy of the dinner menu was artfully
placed on every dressing table, and on each bed, in a leather bound
commemorative folder, the day’s agenda was printed in scroll font on heavy
vellum paper. No detail had been
overlooked, from the cut-glass canisters in the bathrooms filled with lavender
scented cotton balls, to the fragrant basket of evergreens and cinnamon sticks
that flanked the front door. This was
the moment everyone at the Hummingbird House had been working for, planning
for, and waiting for all year. Their
Christmas guests arrived today.
Gift baskets filled with hand-poured chocolates, local
cheeses, preserves, water crackers and a bottle of Ladybug Farm wine were
thoughtfully placed in each guest room—with the exception of the room the two
teenage girls shared, whose basket contained a bottle of sparkling cider—along
with complimentary wineglasses etched with hummingbirds, a corkscrew tastefully
imprinted with the name and phone number of the B&B, and of course, a copy
of the Geoffery Allen Windsor book.
Hand-loomed Christmas stockings, one for each guest, were hung above the
fireplace in every room, specifically designed to coordinate with the
mantelscape, of course. The bins were
filled with firewood, the walk was so thoroughly swept it practically gleamed,
and even Mother Nature had cooperated with a delicate frosting of snow that
dusted the winter lawn and the holly bushes like confectioner’s sugar. Everything was perfect. They were ready.
Almost.
Order Christmas At the Hummingbird House here
And see how it all began with THE HUMMINGBIRD HOUSE
Excerpt from The Hummingbird House:
Of Vice and Men
By Paul Slater
After twenty
three brilliant, flashy, and often outrageous years with you, Gentle Reader,
the time has come for me to say goodbye to In
Style and all it entails. We’ve
laughed together, we’ve cried together.
We survived mom jeans, Cuban heels, and Kim Kardashian together. But now the voice of adventure calls me in a
different direction, and I know your best wishes for a safe passage are with me
as I sally forth to boldly go where no self-respecting style guru has gone
before.
The country.
It’s been
three months since I left the hustle and bustle of the big city for the bucolic
pastimes of the Shenandoah valley, and I’m often asked what I miss the
most. The traffic jams on the
Beltway? The gangland shootings that
dominate the nightly news? The clever
cocktail conversations of Washington’s
finest, those silver-tongued devils to whom we are eternally grateful for
putting the hustle into the term “hustle and bustle”? Or perhaps simply the vastly underestimated
delights of really reliable Internet service?
The answer, my friends, is none of the
above.
Here in the
country we watch the sunsets instead of musical theater. The musical stylings of the chickadees have
replaced concerts in the park and we attend county fairs instead of the
opera. Fusion cuisine may be a bit hard
to find, but farm fresh produce is on every corner. The Manolo Blahnicks have been traded for
gardening clogs and Fashion Week for the Founder’s Day Parade, but life has
never been richer.
“I certainly hope you don’t expect to support us with
that drivel,” commented Derrick, reading the computer screen over Paul’s
shoulder. His arms were filled with
folded towels—half aqua and half peach, six hundred thread count, finest
quality Egyptian cotton --and his reading glasses had slipped down to the tip
of his nose. He was, in fact, wearing
gardening clogs.
Paul scowled at him briefly. “I’m experimenting with a
new style.”
“So I see. If you don’t mind a suggestion…”
“I do.”
Derrick lifted an eyebrow and used his index finger to
push his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. The tower of aqua and peach towels tilted
precariously. Paul sprang up to help
him. “Sorry,” he said, transferring half
the stack into his own arms. “I don’t
mean to be cranky.”
“My suggestion was going to be,” replied Derrick
archly, “that you turn your considerable talent for the written word into
producing advertising copy for our brochures.
We’re supposed to be running a business here, you know. By the way, the
towels arrived. Gorgeous or not?”
“Gorgeous,” agreed Paul, admiring them. “You didn’t forget the white ones for the
ladies to remove makeup, did you?”
“Shipping separately.”
Derrick nodded toward the cursor still blinking on the screen. “Where’s the ‘vice’ part?”
Paul sighed.
“Still looking for it.”
“Aren’t we all?”
The muffled sound of a car door slamming reached them through the tall,
wavy-paned window of the small office, and Derrick’s face brightened. “That must be the girls. Bridget is bringing three dozen eggs and Cici
promised to look at the leaky faucet. I ordered two cakes for tomorrow’s brunch,
too, and Lindsay is bringing another landscape.
I’m going to try to get Bridget to help with the demi-glace for the pork
loin while she’s here. Come give us a
hand, will you?”
Paul glanced thoughtfully back at the half-empty
screen of the laptop. “Maybe I’ll start
a blog,” he said.
“Boys!” a voice called from the kitchen door. “Are you here?”
“Be right there, sweeties!” Derrick paused at the
doorway to glance back over his shoulder.
“Right,” said Paul.
“Coming.”
But he lingered in the office as Derrick hurried away,
gazing at the words on the screen. “What
do I miss?” he muttered. “My life.”
He used his elbow to close the laptop without
bothering to save the document, then he went to put the towels away.
~*~
The lodge had begun its life, as far as anyone could
tell, as a one-room way station for travelers in the days of rutted wagon roads and horse drawn carriages,
serving cold ale and hot stew, along with a straw mattress on the floor if you
didn’t mind sharing with six other men, for twenty five cents. A bath was extra. Paul and Derrick had scoured the countryside
antique shops for a tavern sign from the era, but the best they could do was a
hand-painted wooden livery sign that harkened from a hundred years later, which
they hung from the arch of the twig pergola that led to the herb garden.
When the Dry Creek gold mine opened in the 1830s, the
lodge added a second story and another
wing to accommodate the miners who flooded into the county to try their
luck. A full course meal was offered
every Saturday and Sunday night at the wide-board table in the dining room, and
it became so popular that extra tables had to be set up on the porch in the summertime to accommodate
the townspeople who drove out for the meal.
The mine played out, and the lodge descended into the ignominy of a
private home for a decade or two. Then
came the Shenandoah Valley Railroad and the rooms were once again filled with
the bustle of travelers and the aromas of good sturdy food. Derrick had salvaged a wooden bench from an
old railroad station in Pennsylvania to commemorate the era, and it now
welcomed modern day guests in the entry hall of the lodge.
The provenance of the lodge became muddled during the
early part of the twentieth century, but there was a picture of it in the
archives of the local paper when it opened its doors as the Blue View Motor
Court in 1955 and again as the Heavenly Hash Diner in 1968. Paul had found a set of chrome stools with
red vinyl seats from an old diner in Georgia, had had them beautifully restored
by an acquaintance of his from Washington who just happened to own an auto-body
repair shop, and had them bolted to the floor around the stainless steel island in the kitchen,
almost as they might have been in the sixties.
The building was occupied by a group of lawyers in the
eighties, stood empty in the nineties, and fell into disrepair until a private
party undertook the task of restoration at the turn of the twenty-first century
with the idea of turning it into a bed and breakfast. The result was a long rambling structure
embraced by a wrap-around porch with peeled-log support posts, tall narrow
windows, and a mixture of log and lap siding stained a nature-loving
brown. There were seven airy guest
suites, each with a door opening onto the shady porch, and each door was painted
a different color—bright fuchsia, canary yellow, cobalt blue, emerald green, purple, tangerine, watermelon red. It sat in the midst of a tangle of
wildflower gardens accented by twisted laurel arbors and colorful folk-art bird
feeders, and was surrounded by the flowing vista of lavender blue
mountains. It had functioned as the
Mountain Laurel Bed and Breakfast for a mere six months before Paul and Derrick
came to stay there with the idea of retiring in the Shenandoah valley and
building their dream house. They were
immediately drawn in by the funky charm of the place, the quiet evenings, the
lush gardens, the comic antics of the warrior hummingbirds, and grew enchanted
with the life of ease and hospitality offered by life at the B&B. When the opportunity arose to purchase the
property and become the permanent proprietors and gracious hosts of what was
now known as The Hummingbird House they did so without hesitation.
They were only now beginning to realize they had not
entirely thought this through.
Of course there had been renovation and redecorating
to do, and one could not accommodate paying guests while construction was going
on. They had made a point of continuing
to open for the Sunday brunch that had been popularized by the previous owner,
and they always had a waiting list for reservations, but they both knew that
was due mostly to the fact that their friend Bridget did the cooking. The art gallery that Derrick had established
in the front of the house always saw a lot of traffic on Sundays, and their
friend Lindsay, an amateur artist of considerable talent, helped keep the
display interesting by rotating her own paintings through the collection each
week in keeping with the current theme. The one thing they hadn’t really given
much thought when they purchased the place was that older homes, particularly
ones that are open to the public and required to meet certain health and
building codes, demand a good bit of maintenance, and the only thing either one
of them knew about maintaining property was how to dial the handyman’s number. Fortunately, they now knew how to dial the
number of their friend Cici, who had restored a hundred year old mansion
practically single handedly, and who knew more about nail guns and ratchets and
pipe fittings than either of them was likely to learn in a lifetime.
If the truth be told, they never would have made it
this far without the help of the girls, and that was why, seeing them all
gathered in the kitchen now with very determined looks on their faces filled
both Paul and Derrick with an uneasy dismay.
They didn’t like to admit it, even to themselves, but they each had
known this moment was coming for some time now.
Paul rubbed his hands together in false enthusiasm as
he came into the kitchen, declaring, “Ladies, you’ve never looked more lovely! Lindsay, new shoes? Bridget, darling, love your hair! That shade
is definitely you.”
Lindsay glanced down in confusion at her worn, if
freshly laundered, plaid sneakers, and Bridget gave him a skeptical look. “It should be,” she said, touching her short
platinum bob briefly. “It’s the same
color I’ve used for thirty years.”
All three women had passed their first blush of youth
decades ago, but all three still had legs that could wear shorts without
embarrassment, and glitter polish on their toenails when the occasion called
for it. The edge might have fallen off
their fashion sense since they had abandoned the suburbs for the country, but
they weren’t exactly attending society parties every weekend, either. Even with their hair tied back against the warm
midsummer day and their tee shirts less fresh than they might have been six
hours ago, Paul’s compliments were not entirely insincere.
Paul brushed a kiss across Cici’s cheek. “Cici, you
look—“
“I look like I spent the morning pulling weeds and the
afternoon setting Japanese beetle traps in the orchard,” she interrupted
impatiently. “We need to talk.”
“Will you look at these eggs?” Derrick put in
cheerfully, trying to postpone the inevitable.
He carefully transferred the eggs from their padded basket to a big
yellow bowl on the countertop, fussing over them as he might a flower
arrangement. “They’re as pretty as
Easter eggs. Brown and green and
turquoise… what do you call the green ones again, Bridget?”
Bridget forgot her stern demeanor and agreed happily,
“They are pretty, aren’t they? And the
yolks are as bright as butter!” She
started helping unpack the basket. “Now
remember, fresh eggs don’t have to be refrigerated, so these will do just fine
until morning on the counter. In fact,
if I were you…”
Cici spoke over her.
“Let’s all sit down, shall we?”
Paul looked at Derrick. Derrick looked helplessly back. Like guilty children, they went to the table
by the window where they took their family meals, held out a chair for each of
the ladies, and then took their own seats.
Cici took a breath.
“Boys, you know we love you,” she began, “but we have
to have a talk.”
Derrick smothered a groan. “No good thing has ever happened to me after
those words.”
Paul gave Cici his most endearing smile. “Oh-oh. Have we over-imposed ourselves upon your good
natures?”
“Oh, no of course not!” Bridget exclaimed, but Lindsay
silenced her with a sharp and meaningful look.
“The thing is,” Lindsay said carefully, folding her
hands atop the table, “we know it’s hard getting settled into a new community,
and that you never would have made the move if it hadn’t been for us, and we
love having you here, we really do. But—
”
“But we can’t keep running over here two and three
times a day,” Cici interrupted impatiently.
“We’re spending more time taking care of your place than we are our
own. We have our hands full working to
get the winery off the ground—“
“And I’m trying to open my own restaurant,” Bridget
put in.
“And I’m supposed to be planning my wedding,” added
Lindsay, “on top of everything else.
It’s not that we mind helping out—“
“Yes we do,” Cici corrected her flatly, tossing her an
exasperated look.
“It’s just,” continued Lindsay deliberately, “that
we’re worried that it’s gone beyond helping, and is bordering on enabling.”
Derrick looked at Paul with a touch of horrified
embarrassment. “This is an intervention,” he said.
Cici sat back and folded her arms. “Exactly.”
A beat passed while they absorbed this. Then Paul glanced at Derrick uncertainly and
said, “I don’t suppose this would be a good time to mention the loose
floorboard in the powder room.”
Cici lifted her eyes to the heavens and blew out a
breath that ruffled her bangs.
Bridget reached across the table and squeezed
Derrick’s hand, her gentle round face filled with compassion. “The Bed and Breakfast is yours now. You have to let it be yours. Take over, be in
charge, make some decisions.”
“We’ve made plenty of decisions,” Paul objected. “We decided to completely redecorate the
public rooms.”
“And expand the art gallery,” added Derrick.
“And enclose the side porch to enlarge the dining
room.”
“And you did a fine job with all of that,” Bridget
assured them. “Everyone loves the new
glassed-in dining room.”
“But who was over here every day helping you paint and
strip wallpaper and move furniture?” Lindsay pointed out.
“And who was it who called the contractors and
supervised the workers while you two were busy ordering Battenberg tablecloths
and shopping for mismatched Havilland?” Cici put in.
Paul and Derrick exchanged a look that was both
abashed and distressed. “They’re right,”
Paul told his partner. “We’ve been
fiends.”
Derrick turned to Cici. “We used you
outrageously. Can you ever forgive us?”
Cici shifted her gaze toward Lindsay in a mini-eye
roll, but her lips quirked with repressed amusement. “You’re not fiends,” she admitted, “and
you’re forgiven. But…”
“But,” Lindsay interrupted firmly, “it’s time you
started doing things for yourself. How
can you make this place your own if you don’t, well, own it?”
“And when are you going to open for business again?”
Bridget added. “You’re missing the
height of the tourist season.”
“We are open for business,” Paul objected. “This is the most popular place in the county
for Sunday brunch.”
“It’s the only place in the county for Sunday brunch,”
Bridget said. “And what I meant was,
when are you going to start renting the rooms?
That’s what a bed and breakfast does, you know.”
“A bed and breakfast also offers breakfast every
morning,” Paul said, “and I really only know how to make three things.”
“Two,” Derrick corrected, and Paul frowned a
little. “Of course, I only know how to
make two as well.”
“One,” Paul corrected.
They looked at each other for a moment, and then
Derrick said, “We’re not nearly ready to open to the public yet.”
Paul added, “We haven’t even started redecorating the
guest rooms, and the entire second floor has to be remodeled…”
“Who knows what we’ll even find when we get up there?”
put in Derrick with a shudder. “We
opened the door once and saw a spider the size of a puppy. Slammed the door
closed and taped it shut.”
“Not to mention the spa,” Paul said, “which we haven’t
even started yet. Frankly, it’s going to be rather more expensive than we’d
planned, so it may take awhile.”
“It would be a great deal more affordable without the
Roman baths,” Derrick pointed out smugly.
“And I told you, one massage room is plenty if we intend to put in the
steam room as well.”
At Bridget’s raised eyebrows, Paul explained, “Not
Roman baths, just a simple hot tub. And
I might have said something about a small waterfall.”
Derrick looked self satisfied, but said nothing.
Cici, Lindsay and Bridget were also silent for a
moment, but the look that passed between them spoke volumes. Finally Lindsay said, “You know, boys,
considering the way your house-building project turned out, it might be a
little too soon to take on a major construction project like a spa.”
Derrick winced and Paul deliberately looked away. It was, in fact, too soon for them to even
talk about that fiasco.
Lindsay said, “The guest rooms don’t need
redecorating. They’re gorgeous. Everything is gorgeous.”
“They’re fine, I suppose,” admitted Paul reluctantly,
“if not entirely to our taste.”
Bridget said gently, “Sometimes you can wait so long
for everything to be perfect that nothing ever gets done.”
Cici said, “Guys, I really don’t know what the problem
is. The place was in perfect operating
condition when you bought it and it was full almost every weekend. It’s the only really nice overnight
accommodation within an hour’s drive and it could be a gold mine for you. You just need to open.”
Lindsay squeezed Derrick’s hand. “All we want is for you to be happy. But how can you know if you’re going to be
happy here unless you actually try?”
Paul said worriedly, “I just don’t think we’re ready.”
“Then get ready,” exclaimed Cici, exasperated.
“We have plenty of towels,” Derrick pointed out
helpfully.
“We don’t have a staff,” Paul protested.
“All you need is a housekeeper,” Lindsay said.
“And a cook,”
Bridget added quickly.
“Most people,” Cici pointed out, “go into the
bed-and-breakfast business because they want to do it themselves.”
Paul looked at Derrick. “That’s exactly why we wanted to do it,” he
agreed. “Only…”
“Only,” Derrick said, “I think we rather imagined
ourselves more in the roles of genial hosts.”
“ Patrons,”
agreed Paul. “Maître d’hôtel. “Reminiscent of the grand houses of Europe.”
The three women exchanged a look, the corners of their
lips tightening in a mixture of resignation and repressed mirth. Bridget stood and kissed Derrick atop his
head. “We love you. I’ll put the cakes in the refrigerator. And,” she added sternly, “hire a cook.”
Cici dug a tool of out her pocket and handed it to
Paul. “This,” she told him, “is a
wrench. It’s used to fix leaky
faucets. Come on, I’ll show you how.”
Paul meekly followed Cici from the kitchen and Lindsay
turned to Derrick. Her tone was a little apologetic. “Are we still invited for brunch tomorrow?”
Derrick looked at her hopefully. “Do you know
how to make a pork loin?”
~*~
“You know what the difference between men and women
is?” declared Cici, flinging herself into the front porch rocking chair.
She was so
distracted that she let the screen door bounce closed behind her, and Bridget,
who followed with a tray of lemonade and cookies, caught it with her toe. “Well, for one thing, men usually hold the
door.”
“Oh, Bridge,
I’m sorry.” Cici leapt up again and held
the door. There was a faint cloud of
anxiety in her eyes as she added, “Do you think we were too hard on them?”
“Too hard on who?”
Lindsay came down the stairs, smelling of a delicate floral body wash
and wearing a loose print maxi-dress with no bra, her hair pulled back and damp
around the edges from her shower. The
day was done, the chores were completed, they were at home with each other, and
comfort was the order of the day. She grabbed a cookie from Bridget’s tray
before she took her own rocking chair, swinging her legs up onto the porch
rail.
“The boys,” Cici said.
She moved some magazines off the white wicker table between the chairs
to make room for the tray.
“I wasn’t,” Lindsay replied easily, biting into the
cookie, “but you were, definitely. These
are great, Bridget. Lemon drop, right?”
“I doubled the recipe,” Bridget said, pouring the
lemonade. “I’ll take the boys a batch
tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” said Cici. She handed a glass of lemonade to Lindsay,
and took one for herself, along with two cookies. “I never knew of a problem a lemon drop
cookie couldn’t fix.”
Lindsay tasted the lemonade. “Nice,” she said. “Different.”
Cici sipped and agreed, “It’s a good day for
lemonade.”
Bridget poured herself a glass. “It is a nice change, isn’t it? I used a fresh basil simple syrup.”
The other two women tasted again and murmured their
appreciation.
Sometimes it seemed like only yesterday that the three
of them had shared a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Baltimore and Paul and
Derrick had been their neighbors. It had
in fact been four years since they had stumbled upon the old brick mansion in
the Shenandoah valley and decided to try their hands at bringing it back to
life. What they had imagined to be a quiet retirement clipping roses and
drinking tea from patterned China cups in front of the fire had in fact turned
out to consist of a dawn-to-dusk labor of love, replacing rotting timbers,
pulling weeds, hauling fence posts, fighting potato bugs and planting a
vineyard cutting by cutting. Now they
shared not only a home, but a life, and Paul and Derrick-- perhaps the most
unlikely candidates imaginable for the rigors of rural living-- were once again
their neighbors.
A slow and lazy
dusk settled over Ladybug Farm and the three women, as they had done every evening
since they had moved into the old house, settled into their rocking chairs to
watch the sun set and solve the problems of the world. Usually their refreshment of choice was wine,
but after a hot day working in the vineyard they had decided the lemonade would
be a refreshing break from the ordinary.
A light breeze stirred the air beneath the shade of the wrap-around
porch, rustling the fronds of the ferns that hung in evenly spaced baskets
around the porch and sending of them to turning lazily. As the light took on
the purplish shadows of evening across the wide expanse of meadow that
stretched before them the sheep huddled into their night time knots and the
shoulders of the mountains that stood guard over them became muted with the
deep greens and shadowy blues of another ending day. Through the open windows they could hear the
sounds of Ida Mae, who had been taking care of the hundred year-old house
almost as long as it had been standing, rustling around in the kitchen, closing
down old day and preparing for a new one.
“So,” said Bridget, settling into her chair with a
cookie and a glass. “What’s the
difference between men and women?”
“This I’ve got to hear,” murmured Lindsay.
Cici ignored her.
“Men expect everything to be easy,” she answered. “They’re programmed that way from birth. All their lives they have some woman taking
care of them, doing things for them…”
“That’s because, most of the time, it’s easier to do
it ourselves,” Bridget pointed out.
“Learned helplessness,” said Lindsay, who had taught
third grade for twenty-five years. “It’s
sweeping our society, like ADHD. Only you don’t get it from Red Dye Number
Seven or early childhood immunizations.
You get it from well-meaning mothers.”
Cici have a decisive nod of agreement. “I’m not saying it not our faults,” she
said. “I’m just saying men, as a gender,
have an entirely different attitude about adversity than we do.”
Bridget sniffed with laughter. “Anybody who’s ever taken care of a man with
a head cold can testify to that. A woman
could go through twelve hours of labor while having both wisdom teeth extracted
without making half as much fuss.”
Lindsay and Cici raised their glasses in a toast to
that.
“Women, on the other hand,” Cici went on, “expect life
to be difficult. We don’t even bother to
complain until things start approaching impossible.”
“And we get it done anyway,” said Bridget.
“Look what we took on with this house,” Lindsay said.
“Broken plumbing, trees crashing through the sunroom…”
“Sheep storming the front porch, a sink hole in the
back yard…”
“Rattlesnakes, fires, blizzards…”
“Not to mention the ordinary painting and refinishing
and patching and rebuilding,” Bridget said.
“The chicken coop, the goat house…”
“The winery,” Lindsay added, and they all nodded,
impressed with their accomplishments.
“And did we complain?” Cici demanded.
They thought about that for a moment, until Bridget
finally admitted, “Well, maybe a little.”
“All right, a little,” Cici conceded. “But we never gave up.”
“Talked about it a few times,” Lindsay reminded them,
and Cici frowned, annoyed.
“The point is,” she began.
“The point is,” Bridget spoke over her, “We got it
done. Women always get it done.”
“Right,” said Cici.
Lindsay raised her glass. “To women who get it done.”
The three clinked their goblets and sat back, sipping
lemonade and munching cookies.
“Good lemonade,” Cici said.
“Just tart enough,” added Lindsay.
“Hits the spot,” agreed Bridget.
They rocked for a moment, looking at their glasses.
“It’s nice for a change,” Lindsay said.
“Just the right amount of sugar,” Cici said.
Bridget put aside her glass. “ I’ll get the wine,” she
said.
“I’ll get the glasses.” Cici followed her inside.
“The corkscrew’s on the counter,” Lindsay called after
them.
Evening at Ladybug farm had begun.
~*~
The Hummingbird House is available October 10, 2013
Order your autographed copy here
