Can't Buy Me Love (3 page)

Chase
nodded seriously. “But once I explain... surely she’d understand?”

“Explain
what? That you think so little of women that you think all of them are
money-hungry twits?”

“Well
when you put it that way...”

“You’re
delusional. And an idiot. Look. You just need to keep perspective. That’s all I’m
saying. And don’t fall for anyone who won’t be comfortable in your world.”

“My
world is expansive,” Chase grinned.

His
friend shook his head. “If you find a woman who likes ballgames, beer, fits
into your social life, and can stand up to your grandfather, I’ll buy you the
best bottle of scotch money can buy for your wedding present. Until then, just
be careful. I mean, it Chase.”

Chase
raised his bottle to his friend. “Thanks, Jared.”

Chase
spent the evening with a bottle of scotch by his side, and his computer on his
lap. Next to him was a notepad where he had carefully listed all the places he
was determined to go over the next month. Three diners, two local bookstores
and an associated book club that was reading some good classic fiction, four
potential churches, three neighborhood taverns, and a local men’s fall football
league that was looking for players. He might not meet women at the football
practices, but maybe one of the guys would have a sister. He had also found a
few possibilities for volunteering, including a local free clinic, an
after-school program for kids, and a downtown homeless shelter. Of those three,
the homeless shelter would fit into his schedule best, since it would more
easily allow him to go there on weekends when he’d likely have the most free
time.

Pulling
his calendar toward him, he looked over his schedule for the next few weeks. Fortunately,
while his work had him keeping some late hours these days, his social world was
actually quiet. August tended to be slow, while kids were gearing up to go back
to school, and parents were taking families on end-of-summer vacations. So he
had time for this. In fact, it was a really
good
time for this.

Looking
at his list, he figured he’d try dinner and a bookstore next Friday, check out
the shelter on Saturday, and go to one of the churches on Sunday. Not bad for
his first weekend of being a normal guy. Now if he could just figure out how to
dress so he looked like a normal guy, and not... well... not like himself.

This
wasn’t going to be comfortable, he reasoned. He was most at home in an office
or a fine restaurant, dressed in a high-quality suit and surrounded by others
with a similar background. It was ironic, really. He had practically been
raised by his grandfather, who only wore suits to weddings and funerals. Chase remembered
many weekends traipsing around in the woods with his Granddad, or helping the
old man on a house project. He’d learned plumbing, electricity, dry-walling,
and overall maintenance from his grandfather. But now, he called people to do
things for him. His life was his job, and even his social life reflected that.

Jared
was right. Chase used the various fund-raising and society events to meet
people. People who would be beneficial to his business, of course, but also to
meet women. It was just easier, he reasoned. He was there, they were there… He
didn’t even need to work at it. Problem was, he seemed to be drawn exclusively
to women who loved money.

Chase
knew that there were lots of women at these events with good jobs, good lives,
good hearts. So why was he inexplicably drawn to those who weren’t interested
in anything other than the latest gossip, the newest shows, and the trendiest
restaurants? There must be something wrong with him, he reasoned, since he was
the one who sought out these women in the first place.

In
many ways, it was the same with Charlene. While her father had introduced them
briefly one evening, and while the signs that she only dated wealthy men were
there, she’d been attractive enough that he’d been willing to overlook her lack
of ambition, and he’d been the one to ask her to dance. She hadn’t started
asking him for things yet – no hints about jewelry or expensive trips. But it
was likely only a matter of time. Chase was sure that she was no different from
the others, and her lack of interest in anything relevant to real life was
appalling. It really was past time to break things off with her. He doubted she
was at all interested in him, and he certainly wasn’t interested in her.

But
as he’d explained to Jared, she was an easy date for him right now. No strings,
no expectations, and she fit into his world very well, which meant that he
didn’t need to start looking around for another woman to accompany him to
events. So why rock the boat?

But
wasn’t that what he was doing now? Rocking the boat? Because he sure wasn’t
sticking to safe and known territory. This weekend was going to be different
and unusual – a calculated risk on his part. And Chase was looking forward to
it in a way that he never looked forward to his usual weekends, which were
often filled with work, exercise, and some sort of social event. He felt more
optimistic than normal. He was shaking things up a bit. And maybe, just maybe,
he’d start to feel more like he was back in control of his world.

His
weekend planned, Chase closed his web browser and opened up his Dropbox. His
secretary had placed a lot of documents into the folder on Friday evening
before she had gone home for the weekend, and Chase was determined to get
through most of them before Monday morning. It was going to be a late night,
but it didn’t bother him tonight. For some reason, he was feeling a bit more
optimistic and energetic this evening. Maybe that’s what rocking the boat did
to a man.

Four

“Lena!”

After
three exhausting days of report-writing, Lena was fully focused on filling in a
pile of financial forms associated with the quarterly reports that one of their
major donors required. It wasn’t until Frank appeared in her doorway and practically
shouted her name that his voice actually registered. And when it did, it scared
the living daylights out of her. Jumping nearly a foot out of her seat, she
whacked her head on the arm of the lamp next to her chair and nearly knocked
the light over. Reaching out, she steadied the shade, using her other hand to
catch a pile of papers before they fell.

Finally,
she looked up into the grinning face of her weekend manager.

“What
?”
she finally managed to ask, her irritation tempered by the fact that she really
loved this man to pieces.

“I’ve
got a new volunteer out front,” Frank informed her as he leaned against her
doorframe, his grey hair worn short in a military style, and an army-green t-shirt
tucked into the waist of his worn blue jeans. His face was weathered, but his
eyes were keen and intelligent, and right now, they looked at Lena with a
combination of fondness and concern.

“Well
hooray for you,” Lena said dryly, straightening the lampshade and sitting back
down in her chair. “I’ll take you out for a beer later to celebrate.”

Her
response just made Frank grin even wider. “I think this guy might be someone
you can use,” he told her.

“Use
how?” Lena narrowed her eyes, wondering where her co-worker was going with this.

“He
seems like he’s got a brain that knows about finances and bookkeeping. I could
put him to work serving dinner, but I think you might want to talk to him at
some point to see if he could help out in the office.”

Lena
sighed. This could be very good news, but she was stressed at the moment. The
report was due on Monday, and she kept getting interrupted. She hated working
in the office on weekends – if she came by the shelter on Saturday or Sunday, she
wanted to be helping out with dinner or child care. But this weekend was
different – she needed to be in her office, focused on the damn computer
screen. And she needed to get this report
done
.

Looking
back up at Frank, Lena leaned back in her chair, pulled off her reading
glasses, and rubbed her temples. “Frank, you rock. You really do. But I can’t
meet him today, honest to God I can’t. I haven’t gotten any sleep in the past
three days, and even though you seem to love my crabbiness and the circles
under my eyes that may actually now be permanent, I’m sure I’ll scare the poor
man away if I meet with him today. So please tell him that we’re glad he’s
here, put him to work doing whatever you think he might like to do, and I
promise
you that not only will I meet with him next week, I’ll take him for coffee and
try to be nice.”

“Try?”
Frank grinned.

“OK.
I’ll be nice. Damnit. Now,
go away
.”

“Don’t
forget my beer,” Frank said with a grin, ducking as Lena hurled a roll of paper
towels at him from behind her desk.

Laughing
to herself, she turned her attention back to the report.

Chase
saw the roll of paper towels as it flew at the head of the weekend manager that
he’d talked to on the phone last weekend. A huge grin broke across Frank’s face
as he caught the roll and set it down on a nearby table. The smile completely
changed him from looking tired and worn-down to energized. Frank just shook his
head as he strolled over to where he’d left Chase moments ago.

“Lena’s
working on a quarterly report for a donor, and she’s a little stressed,” he
said loudly, making sure his voice carried back into her office. “But she said
to tell you that she’s really glad you’re here, and if you have time sometime next
week, she’ll actually put on a nice face and buy you a coffee. Maybe you can
talk her into a drink to mellow her out some,” he added with a grin.

“
I
heard that
," came a loud yell from the office.

Frank
grinned again, then called out, “Or coffee! Coffee is fine!”

“
Frank
...”

Chuckling,
Frank patted Chase on the back. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

Chase
had introduced himself to Frank by his first name – Edward. Frank immediately
shortened it to Ed, and began showing him around the shelter. Within five
minutes, Chase had no idea who he had met, and no hope of remembering anyone’s
name.

Following
Frank through the maze of hallways that seemed to just keep getting more
confusing, he looked around him in growing amazement.

“Should
I be dropping breadcrumbs?” he asked dryly as they made yet another turn
through a doorway that seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

Frank
chuckled. “You’ll get used to it. This used to be an old hotel back in the 40’s,
and there are a lot of... shall we say...
unusual
halls and rooms. We
can’t figure it all out, unless it used to be a brothel and there were back
hallways upon back hallways so people could get in and out without being seen. Lena
tried looking into the history once, but didn’t get much further than the old
records in city hall, which didn't seem to be too accurate.”

“Wow.
This is a hell of a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. So how does a
place like this run?”

Frank
just shook his head. “We have no earthly idea, son. It just does. Lena keeps
the money flowing in, and she’s in charge of general operations. She’s got a
degree in social work, and another in public administration, so she’s the one
who is responsible for making sure the lights stay on. We have eleven other
full-time staff members, including my counterpart who works during the week, an
office secretary, and two additional licensed social workers. Apart from the
full-time staff, everyone else is either part-time or a volunteer. A lot of
churches in the area staff the kitchen on a rotating basis, and we get food
contributions from local grocery stores and bulk stores that give us day-old
bread, slightly rough vegetables, and soon-to-be-expired canned goods and dairy
products.

“In
the winter, we have a harder time making ends meet, since we get a lot more
folks coming in to get warm and get a hot meal. But we make it. And Lena gets
out and does what she can to bring in grant funds for the big stuff. Like two
years ago, we had a fire in the kitchen. Wiped out the entire room – took out
appliances, cabinets – everything. We kept going by serving nothing but soup
and sandwiches for months, while Lena found the money to rebuild. Now, thanks
to the generosity of a handful of people, we’re feeding twice the number of
people we did before the fire. And with this economy, it’s needed.”

They'd
reached the kitchen, and Chase looked around him in surprise. It was large, but
it was also warm and clean and bustling with people who seemed genuinely happy
to be there. Watching the staff moving about the room, he asked, “So it’s
mostly a place to get a meal?”

But
Frank shook his head. “There’s definitely the soup kitchen component, and it’s
one of our biggest ministries. But Helping Hands goes way beyond feeding
people. We offer housing for up to eight families at a time, allowing homeless
parents to keep their kids with them, and to keep them all off the streets. We
have individual beds available to single people or for small families for
limited time periods, but we’re cautious about that, since we don’t want kids
in with the general public for long. We make exceptions in the winter – we don’t
like turning people away when the temperatures drop, so we usually reconfigure
spaces, and just segregate men from the women and children.”

Grabbing
a small piece of cheese from a pile of cubed cheddar on a cutting board, Frank
grinned as the woman cutting a large hunk into smaller pieces whacked him on
the hand with a spatula and grinned back at him.

He
continued. “We also provide help with job hunts, we have an interview wardrobe
room available so people can look professional when they are job hunting, and
we have computer training and job training. We require people who stay here to
be drug-free, alcohol-free, and to contribute to the center in some way. It may
be volunteering for a few hours a week, it may be a small financial
contribution if they are working part-time, or it may be mentoring or tutoring
new arrivals.”

“And
you don’t have problems with security?”

“Oh
sure we do. But we have a lot of burly volunteers, and we have the local cops
on speed dial. They know us, and often stop in for hot coffee and to give us a
police presence from time to time. For the most part, our problems are kept to
a minimum. Our worst days are when the temperature drops so low that our
population gets crowded, or the days when the temperature is in the high nineties,
when everyone’s tempers are frayed.”

“I’m
impressed so far,” Chase said, and realized that he was. His idea of a homeless
shelter was night and day different from this place, and he was surprised to
realize that he wanted to know a lot more. “So how can you use me?” he asked.

Frank
nodded, pleased that Chase was still interested in helping out. “I’d like to
start you out in the kitchen – it’s where we start most of our new volunteers. Gives
you a feel for the movement of the place. But after that, we want you working
where you feel most comfortable and most called. Some people gravitate toward
computer training, some toward kitchen duty. You, I’m thinking may be able to
help out a bit in the office, given the skills you described over the phone. But
let’s see if you like the place, and think it’ll be a good fit before we assign
you anywhere. If you don’t run kicking and screaming from the place in a couple
of days, we can do a better job of matching you up.”

“Sounds
good.”

“How
much time can you give, son?”

“Weekends,
for sure. Maybe some during the week, but I work full time, so I’m not as
reliable then.”

“OK.
Come on back. Let’s get you an ID tag, and then we’ll outfit you with an apron
and a big spoon so you can help with the lunch rush. Sound OK? I’ll introduce
you around to the kitchen staff before I leave you.”

Chase
nodded. This, he thought, was a good start. And he found himself wanting to
learn more about the shelter and how it ran. That was a first for him – he
normally didn’t care at all about how organizations worked, just that they did.
He donated a lot of money to charity, but his interest in their day-to-day
operations mostly consisted of looking at their books to ensure that a good
portion of his funding went to operational costs, and not into printing return
address labels and sending them to people who didn’t want them or use them. But
this was an intriguing place, mainly because it was so different from what he’d
expected it to be. So he followed Frank back to his office, and when he had a
new laminated ID card on a lanyard around his neck, he found himself anxious to
join the lunch crew.

For
someone who was used to running a business, and telling others exactly what to
do and how to do it, he was surprised at how willing he was to just do as he
was told. Grinning to himself, he realized how shocked his employees would be. First
blue jeans, and now this. He’d been right – he needed this shake-up to his
life.

Lena
was working in her office on Wednesday afternoon when she heard a knock on her
door. Looking up, she saw Frank standing in the doorway. Concerned, she
motioned him in. It was a Wednesday, and Frank didn’t normally come by the
shelter during the week unless she asked him to.

“Everything
OK, Frank?” she asked, pulling her glasses off and looking up at her friend.

“Oh
yeah,” he assured her. “I’m just here to pick up my toolkit. I left it here
this weekend when I was fixing the loose railing on the stairwell.”

“We
had a loose railing on the stairwell?”

“Yeah.”

“Why
doesn’t anyone tell me this stuff?”

Frank
shrugged. “What’s the point? You’re busy. I fixed it. We’re back in business.”

Lena
blinked. “Well. Thank you.”

“You’re
welcome. Did you get your reports done?”

“Yeah.
I finished the last one mid-day on Sunday, so I had a few hours to myself that
afternoon. I took Winston for a long walk, then did some much needed de-furring
of my place. Some days I think I live in a barn.”

“We
missed you on Saturday night.”

“I
would have been there too, but I stayed here late. And I was just tired enough
that one beer would have had me snoring on your couch for the night. I’ll be
there this weekend, though, unless my father decrees attendance at some ridiculous
shindig or another.”

“Seriously,
Lena. Can’t you just tell him to butt out? It’s your life.”

Lena
shook her head. “I know it’s hard to understand, Frank. But he’s my father. And
I’ve disappointed him enough over the course of my life that attending these
events with him seems like a small thing to do when it pleases him so much.”