bad. It was just beside the”—he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to remember the old building he’d been to so many times as a kid—“water fountain,” he said. “It was beside the water fountain.”
“Beside the water fountain?”
Chip nodded, and his head knocked against the fridge ceiling. “Just above it actually. To the left. There was a plant there though. Lots of people. Easy to miss. Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“Well, I just looked at my schedule this week and it’s a bit dense. What do you think about—I’m sorry, what is that noise in the background? Are you . . . is that . . . music?”
Chip jumped out of the fridge and slammed it shut. He didn’t want to move closer to the abysmal noise, but the only place he hadn’t tried hiding at this point was in one of the three bedrooms upstairs. Unfortunately, that would mean getting closer to the source of the noise before going up.
He had no choice.
He jogged toward the stairs, covering the phone with his hand as he did.
“Yes,” Chip said, pulling his hand off momentarily as he took the stairs three at a time. “Let me see”—he covered the phone again—“if I can turn this down.”
“Is that . . .” Mr. Richardson said, suspicion heavy in his voice, “‘All I Do Is Dream of You’?”
Chip ran inside his room and shut the door. The windows vibrated with the noise.
He snatched up his pillow and all but dove for his closet.
Yanking the door shut, he dropped on the floor in the blackness, stuffing the pillow between the cracks. “Yes,” he said, catching the muffled but still audible chorus. “Yes, I believe it is.”
Chip hung his head.
There was a pause.
“Splendid!” Mr. Richardson remarked. “I’ve been listening to that same tape all morning. You know, we’ll be doing that musical for the next lineup. Singin’ in the Rain. You’ll have to come and sing all the songs from the audience. I know I will!”
Mr. Richardson chuckled on the other end of the line, and Chip, only too heartily, joined in.
“Tell you what. Were you planning, by chance, to attend the finale of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Sunday afternoon?” Mr. Richardson said.
“Was I?” Chip gave a half laugh, half cough. “Where else would one rather be this coming Sunday?”
“Excellent. We’ll mix business and pleasure. I’ll tour you around before the show then. See you around noon?”
There was another pause in the music outside.
Chip stood, then cracked open the door. Slammed it shut as a new song began.
“Perfect,” he said over the trumpets. “I’ll see you then.”
Chip sweated through the slew of polite parting statements, then set the phone down in the darkness of the closet and exhaled. He could feel his hot face in the darkness, knew that if anyone opened the door on him in that moment they’d find a grown man sitting cross-legged on the floor, grinning like an ape who’d found his lost banana.
Because Chip McBride had weaseled his way into a meeting with the chief administrator of Abingdon’s renovation project of the year. The very same Chip McBride who—after days of strategic internet research—knew more about domed ceilings, sweeping archways, and embossed gold wallpaper than the architects and manufacturers of old.
He let his imagination run wild for a moment. He pictured himself in a brand-new workspace: a historically renovated office building with an original Degas painting on the wall, offering Perrier to his clients.
Chip moved to the window and gazed down. The chorus to “Singin’ in the Rain” spilled out of the speakers. The dancers clumsily twirled a variety of umbrellas as they danced in the congested area. Floral umbrellas, tattered umbrellas, not one but two oversized umbrellas with “First Tennessee Bank” printed in gold. He smiled, seeing Bree nearly poke out the eye of another girl as she, a beat behind the others, spun in a circle.
He watched Bree put her hand up and step back, evidently in the midst of apologizing when she glanced up and caught his eye. She paused, her umbrella drooping.
He smiled with everything he had.
Then, just for the fun of watching her umbrella drop completely, he waved.
“Nice try, Bree,” he said, and even though she couldn’t hear him, he could’ve sworn from her expression she knew exactly what he’d said.
Several hours and several dozen calls, problems sorted, estimates created, and dollars juggled later, Chip whistled to Russell as he made his way upstairs. His legs ached from the dinnertime run. His knees