23 - She's a Mystery

Rolling the vehicle to a smooth stop, Petey put down the driver’s side window and stretched to reach the button that would announce her presence at the gate of Dorothea Bongiovi’s home.  It wasn’t long until a voice, she presumed to be Dorothea’s, came over the small, discreetly placed speaker. 

“Can I help you?”

“Petey Diehl.  I’m here to look at your television.”

With no further ado, the wide black gates gracefully parted, admitting her into the exclusive haven within. 

Easing her foot from the brake, she stretched her toes to engage the accelerator and carefully navigated Tony’s silver Durango through the opening.  Upon following the surprisingly short, straightforward driveway, she found herself in what strongly resembled a parking lot.

Pulling in alongside another car, she put the Durango in Park and tucked the keys into the pocket of her backpack, which lay on the passenger seat.  Petey zipped up the pocket and curled her fingers around the straps.  Her faithful backpack contained her laptop and some other electronic gadgetry that she may need. 

As she stepped from the vehicle, a sharp gust from the adjacent river blew her ankle-length velvet cloak into a billow behind her, and she fought to grab the edges and keep it around her legs.  The wind was cool, making her thankful for the velvet tights she’d put under her short dress.

Keeping the cloak firmly grasped in one hand, Petey surreptitiously took in her surroundings while she progressed steadily toward what she assumed was the main entrance. 

The huge French chateau style home was light in color with a multitude of white window sashes and trim ornamenting its two stories.  The only dark spot was the wrought iron that screened the lower half of the upstairs windows. A multi-car garage to her left had doors painted in the same white, giving everything a cool feel.

Maybe it’s just the wind off the river, but the whole place feels cold.  Definitely something that should be in Europe housing the Duke and Duchess of Grandiose, rather than a rock star's family in Jersey.

She hoped the lady of the manor wasn’t as pretentious as her home.

Her foot had no more landed on the welcome mat before the heavy door swung inward to reveal a comfortably dressed woman, with long brown hair.  There was nothing remarkable about her.  She looked like any average wife or mother.  Definitely not Lady of the Manor-esque.

“Petey, I assume?” She held out her hand at Petey’s nod, her cordial smile not quite reaching the wary brown eyes.  “I’m Dorothea.”

She extended her own blunt, blood-tipped hand to shake.  “Nice to meet you.  I understand you have a technical problem.”

Petey watched the debate take place behind Dorothea’s eyes, and smiled, patiently awaiting the outcome. It was something she'd experienced time and again. Despite whatever reassurances Tony had made, Dorothea was questioning whether she should allow the freak into her home. 

The cool breeze whipped around her ankles again, catching the cloak and billowing it outward as well as sending a cold draft rushing up her skirt.

If she's going to send me packing, I wish she'd hurry up.  

“Mom!  When are they going to be here to look at the-“  The blonde teenager stopped in her tracks both physically and verbally upon seeing Petey on the threshold.  “Wow…” she breathed.

“Petey,” Dorothea interjected smoothly, prompted into making a decision by the appearance of her daughter.  “This is my daughter Stephanie.  Stephanie, this is Petey.  She works for your Uncle Tony and is going to take a look at the TV.  Why don’t you show her where it is?”

“Uh, sure.”  The girl’s wide blue eyes, so much like that of her father, couldn’t seem to keep from staring.  “That’s a really cool cape.”

Petey smiled and murmured her thanks. 

“Can I take your... cloak… for you?” Dorothea offered.  To her credit, she didn't act as though doing so would give her a communicable disease.  

“No thanks, I’ll just lay it over a chair or something if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

Stephanie guided her across the wide foyer, past the grand staircase, across another hallway and into a very formally decorated room done in shades of blue and gold.  The array of windows allowed the sun to stream brightly into the room, brightening the gold to a sunshine yellow.  The décor in here held true to the French chateau styling of the architecture, rich and opulent.

“The TV is right there.”  Stephanie pointed to a huge monstrosity at the far end of the room that had risen from the parquet floor and stood at least seven feet tall and twelve feet wide.

“Big television,” Petey observed blandly.

“My husband picked it out.”  Dorothea’s amused voice was close behind her, having trailed them into the room.  No doubt to mentally review the precious antiques and collectibles so that she could account for them all later, after Petey was gone. “You know men and their toys.  It didn’t matter that he could barely turn the thing on.”

Cat-eyes darting toward the woman, Petey allowed her backpack to softly plop onto the thick rug and shrugged out of her cloak, draping it over a nearby couch.  She refrained from mentioning that she’d experienced Jon’s ineptitude first-hand, focusing instead on the ‘husband’ terminology.  Jon’s ex wasn’t referring to him as an ex.  She idly wondered if there was any significance there.

“Daddy wants the best,” Stephanie observed from her position on the couch, bare feet tucked up under her denim clad bottom.  “In his case, that just also happens to mean the best person he can hire to operate it.”

Petey’s smothered a smile, amused by the girl’s clear view of her father.

“Yes.  Well.  Now we’re stuck with the remnants of that, so let’s hope Petey can get it working again.  I have to check on my younger children, so I’ll just leave you to it.”  She leveled a stern look at her daughter.  “Stephanie, don’t talk her to death.”

“Yes moth-er,” she promised with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. 

With that, Dorothea left Petey under her daughter's watchful eye, Stephanie’s gaze never straying as Petey dug out the digital multimeter and laptop from her bag.

“So are you a Goth?”

I know where you get your curiosity young Miss Bongiovi.

“No, not really.”  She ducked her head behind the mammoth television, looking for the surge protector that was surely there.  Dropping to her knees, she found it mounted to the back of the case, the long cord disappearing under the floor.  The light was on, so the breaker feeding it wasn’t tripped.

“Then what are you?”

An arched brow accompanied Petey’s speculative look at Stephanie Bongiovi.  “Myself.  Do you know where the projection unit is?”

The girl jumped up and moved toward a rectangular box situated on a table in the middle of the room.  After she pressed a couple of items on the touch screen, the tapestry on the back wall descended to reveal the piece of equipment Petey had been inquiring about. 

The piece of equipment that was easily seven feet off the ground, Petey realized with a sigh, cursing her inadequate height.  She would try some other things first, and save that as a last resort. 

“Thanks.”  Unable to resist the temptation, she smirked at Stephanie, asking, “How long did it take your dad to learn how to use that?”

“He actually got it right away,” the girl told her with a smile that also strongly resembled Jon’s.  “The touch screen has programmable labels and the buttons are numbered.  He just has to follow the sequence of four buttons."  She grinned mischievously.  "He's a musician.  He can count to four."

“Smart move on someone’s part,” she said on a chuckle.  Back to her bag, she found a universal tool and flipped out the Philips screwdriver head, efficiently beginning to remove the back panel of the television.

“That would be Uncle Tony.  He says dad got all the creative genes, but not one of them has an electrical current running through it.”

“I believe it,” Petey mumbled, working steadily away.

The wonder in Stephanie’s voice was almost comical.  “You know my dad?”

Biblically, yes.  Other than that, not so much.

“I did some work at his apartment.”

“Oh.”  She shook the over-long bangs from her eyes.  “Was that when Romeo and Jake got lectured about putting their toys in the entertainment center?”

One dimple creased Petey’s face.  “If the toy dinosaur I found was any indication, I’d say that’s a good guess.”  Having removed all the screws she could reach, she now needed a stepladder.  Or…

She crossed to the box Stephanie had been poking in, briefly inspecting it before hitting a combination of buttons that lowered the television only part-way into the floor.  It was enough for her to reach the top screws.

“Hey, that’s pretty smart.”

“I have my moments.”  Petey circled to the back of the television once again to resume her task.

“I really love your dress.  The way it laces up the front like a corset, and has the wide flowy sleeves.  It’s girly, but still very kick-ass.”

“Thanks.”

She hadn’t lowered the television quite far enough and had to lever up on tip-toe to reach the highest of the screws.

“Did the eyebrow piercing hurt?  I got my bellybutton done last summer and it wasn’t bad, but I’ve been thinking about doing my eyebrow too.”

“It hurt pretty bad,” Petey admitted.  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“Yeah?”  The girl folded her arms around her midriff with a frown.  “Mom probably wouldn’t let me do it anyway.  Mothers can be so controlling.”

“Tell me about it,” Petey chuckled, unwillingly charmed by this teen.  “I was thirty-six before I got my piercings and my mother still had a conniption.”

“Thirty-six?”  Stephanie’s jaw fell open with shock.  “You sure don’t look that old.  I thought you were only in your twenties.”

“Thanks.”  That was probably because no respectable 'adult' would look the way she did.

All screws now removed, she placed them carefully in a glass dish on a side table, manipulated the remote to lift the unit completely out of the floor again, and lifted the back of the television free.  Reaching for her digital multimeter, she began methodically testing each of the circuits and softly launched into her recitation of the Declaration of Independence.

“Why didn’t you get the piercing until you were thirty-six?  Haven’t you always been rebellious and dressed this way?”

The board tested as good.  She moved to another set of circuits. “No.  I used to be very cookie-cutter boring.  My quirky nature didn’t get to surface until about three years ago.”  

“Whoa.”  The blue eyes were wide again when Petey hazarded at glance.  “I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn into something totally different than I am now when I’m in my thirties.”

Distracted from her recitation, Petey shook her head and laughed.  “As long as nobody’s forcing you into a mold now, I don’t think you’ll need to break out of it later.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

“Lots of things happened,” she murmured vaguely, mentally delving back into the Declaration and physically diving back into the guts of a television.

“Oh.”  Stephanie’s forehead creased with puzzlement before she veered onto a different tack.  “How long have you worked for Uncle Tony?”

“A couple of months.”

“What did you do before that?”

“Odds and ends.  Radio Shack, a cable company, Dell tech support.”

 “You’ve done that kind of thing your whole adult life?  You never had a long-term career?  Mom and Dad are always telling me careers are different from jobs.  A career should be something you love, but a job just pays the bills.”

Petey froze.  The girl’s questions had been so casual and genuinely interested, that they’d snuck up on her.  Now she was staring down the barrel of one that could be… revealing.

“Your parents are right.  My first career was only a job, so I quit.  Since then I’ve been looking for a job I want to make a career.”

“What was your first career?”

Petey had found the problem.  The power supply had gone bad.  With a new part, it would take only a matter of minutes to fix.  She could do it in her sleep, yet she stared at the damaged component like it was a foreign object. 

She liked Stephanie and her open directness.  She wished she’d had it at that age.  Hell, she wished she had as little as a few years ago.  With it, maybe her life wouldn’t have gotten to that do-or-die place. 

Petey may regret it later, but for now she didn’t want to be the one responsible for stifling such an admirable trait.  She would give her this one.  It was a big one, but it would be the last.  She’d told too much already.

“If you can keep it to yourself, I’ll tell you.”

There went the wide eyes again.  Petey could see by the set of her shoulders that Stephanie was holding her breath, no doubt waiting for something deliciously appalling that she could marvel at for years to come.

 Based on her fashion statement today, the poor girl probably thought she was going to admit to being a grave digger or mortician.

“Okay, sure.”

Sorry honey. Who I am is much more shocking than who I used to be.

“I was a college professor.”