Just Add Vodka

Yes, a spiral staircase definitely made sense.

But—where to put it?

The great room seemed the obvious spot.  Measuring in at twenty-four by twenty-six feet, it could handle a moderate-sized hole in its floor with ease.

And yet.

If we put the staircase in the front corner, where the sofa and end table met, it would spiral down into the front crook of the L-shaped living space below, blocking the French doors we’d paid so much to have installed.

Putting it in the back corner, near the bathroom door, would block access to the garden door below.

Positioning it in the middle of the large back wall of the great room might work, but doing so would eliminate most of the seating area on the lower floor.

Back to the drawing board.

Putting the staircase in the bedroom didn’t make sense either.  Although the bedroom was large, it wasn’t huge, and putting a four-foot wide hole in one corner of the room would definitely limit the furniture placement possibilities.

Also, who wants to have to schlep into the bedroom to go downstairs, particularly if someone else is having a private moment in there—sleeping, playing Tiddlywinks or whatever?

Finally, and most conclusively, the bedroom, which was air conditioned, was positioned squarely above the carport, which wasn’t.

We stared at each other in disbelief.  Maybe the two floors weren’t meant to connect.   Maybe the twain weren’t intended to meet.

I broke out the cocktail shaker.

Alcohol, I’ve discovered, can sometimes un-stop even the most log-jammed brain.

This first occurred to me the day I moved to D.C. fifteen years ago.

I had bought a new bed for myself, a large, metal, canopied contraption with at least forty or fifty parts.  I laid out the components on the floor of my new apartment and stared at them in rapt silence for at least a half hour before it occurred to me that I was never going to get this thing put together without some sort of mental lubrication.

A gear was stuck in my brain, and it needed oil.

Or vodka.

I downed several stiff drinks in rapid succession, and soon a task that had appeared impossible seemed not only possible but embarrassingly simple.

The bed almost constructed itself, which was a good thing since I was so sloshed I collapsed onto it the minute I was done.

Meanwhile, back in “where to put the staircase-land,” I waited for a visitation from the Step Muse, who stubbornly resisted my call.

Michael sat quietly on the sofa nearby.  “How about connecting the balconies?” he asked in his most casual voice.

This is one of the things about Michael.  He never acts excited or screams “Eureka!” when he’s solved a difficult problem.

He just solves it and tells you the answer.

My mind raced.

Of course.

We could put the staircase in the front corner of the balcony, near the driveway, facing the water.  Nothing was happening in that corner of the balcony anyway. And just think of the ocean views as you went up and down.

Good old vodka.

The next time you have a problem, give it a try.

Taking Steps

The problem of how to connect the upper and lower floors of the house had us stumped.

The more we studied Steve’s architectural renderings the more we knew we didn’t want a flight of wooden stairs tacked onto the side of our concrete house.

But we couldn’t think of anything better.

For a brief moment we considered putting the staircase on the garden side.  At least it wouldn’t be an eyesore from the road.  But to make this work we’d have to install at least one and maybe two new doors into the exterior walls, and we were pretty sure we lacked the intestinal fortitude to withstand another demolition project.

The logical fallback, of course, was to put the staircase inside.  Hailing as we did from a latitude where things like staircases are most often found indoors, this seemed to make perfect sense.

But it didn’t take us long to figure out that staircases gobble up lots of square footage—we’d have to sacrifice a hefty amount of living space if we chose this option.  Also, the few places where it made sense to break through for the staircase on the upper level made no sense at all in the corresponding space below.

In desperation we turned to shelter magazines.

Alas, most of the staircases in Architectural Digest and The World of Interiors are grand, sweeping and often marble.

Not quite what we had in mind.

So we moved on to travel magazines, many of which feature vacation houses in far-flung places.

But as staircases in vacation homes tend to be utilitarian rather than decorative, few staircases are actually depicted.

In fact, almost none.

“Let’s look at photos of our own house,” Michael logically suggested one afternoon.  “Maybe we’ll get inspired.”

So we downloaded all of the photos from our recent trip onto my laptop and prepared to be inspired.  Here, after all, were beautiful shots of the great room, the bedroom, the kitchen, the balcony.

We stared until our eyes hurt.

Nothing.  Or at least nothing we hadn’t thought of before.  There just didn’t seem to be a practical solution to our problem.

“Maybe we should rebrand our advertising campaign,” I remarked.  “You know, ‘Vacation with your kids without ever seeing them,’ or, ‘Stay with us and lose ten pounds walking from bedroom to bedroom.’”

Michael wisely ignored me and continued scrolling through our photos: sunset at the beach, a long shot of the fort, an interior of the coffee bar in Isabel.

Hang on.  The interior of the coffee bar.  What’s that object in the middle of the picture?

It’s a spiral staircase.

A spiral staircase!

Perfect.

Vacant Stair

Back in D.C. we cautiously congratulated ourselves for having completed the two main floors of the house.

There was just one problem—they didn’t connect.

To get from the upper floor to the lower, you had to walk along the upper breezeway, unlock the gate, go down a short flight of stairs into the neighbor’s driveway…

…walk down the main road that ran beside the house, swing back into our driveway…

…unlock the carport gate, and enter the second floor breezeway.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

If we rented out the house as a three-bedroom unit (think parents upstairs, children down), the guests would think we were insane and demand a refund.

It wasn’t as if we hadn’t foreseen this problem.  Steve had, in fact, produced a number of spiffy designs to solve it.  But this was before he got sick and work had fallen behind schedule and we had spent a lot more money than we expected.

In short, it had been a problem that was easy to ignore–until it wasn’t.

Which was now.

We pulled out Steve’s designs and reconsidered.  Each was ingenious in its own way…

…and yet there was something indefinably wrong with all of them.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until suddenly it dawned on me:  all of the staircases were on the exterior of the house.

Whatever the house’s architectural shortcomings, it was a perfectly contained unit, a large cube enclosed by balconies on two sides and unadorned facades on its garden and back side.

David’s staircases would have to be appended to one of the two balcony facades and would, in essence, violate the integrity of the structure.  This didn’t seem right.

We racked our tired brains.

Then we racked them some more.

Nada.

Over a Barrel

The next morning found me staring glassy-eyed at the relatively empty living space downstairs.

We’d managed to buy quite a bit of furniture in San Juan the day before but we still didn’t have a sofa.

And a sofa, alas, was unlikely to materialize in Vieques.

If I’d been the dramatic type I would’ve torn my hair and wailed.  Instead, I whimpered for a few minutes and ate some Cheerios.

Around ten a.m. Michael loaded me into the car and drove me into Isabel, where he strong-armed me into the one and only furniture store on the island, an emporium whose garish wares made those we’d strolled past with such disdain the day before seem like masterpieces of restraint.

I considered grumbling but decided against it—Michael can be very determined when he’s worried about me or when he’s just sick of hearing me complain.

And when he’s in that mood there’s absolutely no use resisting.

The selection, as expected, was appalling:  Louis XV style living room “suites” in gilded wood with embroidered upholstery (who would burden his tropical getaway with such ornate stuffiness?)…

Early American-style side tables with quaintly turned legs…

…and, intriguingly, a half-keg coffee table that had obviously been designed to grace the rec room of a Milwaukee tract house but had somehow migrated south to the Caribbean.

The proprietor rushed over excitedly to greet us.  “You find what you need?”

“Hmm…” I began disingenuously, not wanting to hurt the guy’s feelings despite his rampant bad taste.

“Not so much,” Michael interjected.  “Is this everything you have?”

The man’s face lit up, then fell.  “Ah, we have some very plain things upstairs.  But nothing you would like.”

Plain things.  That’s exactly what we would like.  “Could we see?”

He led the way through a back door and up an external staircase, apologizing all the while for exposing us to the unworthy trash we were about to encounter.

The unworthy trash, of course, was exactly what we were looking for.

The first thing we saw when we walked into the dusty, shadowy space was a dark-stained rattan two-seater sofa with off white cushions.  Nearby were two matching easy chairs and a coffee table.

Perfection.

Making a quick calculation that the proprietor might be willing to part with such “undesirable” merchandise at a discount, I offered seventy-five percent of the asking price—a savings of more than $300.

He jumped at it.

But back downstairs, once we had arranged to have the pieces delivered, he took me by the elbow and steered me back toward the half-keg coffee table.

“Very high-class piece,” he said.

“It’s nice, but I don’t think…”

“Fifty percent off, and free delivery for everything.”  He really was a very persuasive salesman when he tried.

I admit I wavered a bit.  Maybe it wasn’t so hideous after all.  Maybe we could use it as a trough for the neighborhood horses to drink from.

Or firewood, if we’d had a fireplace.

“We’re done here, thank you,” Michael said firmly, guiding me from the store.

It’s so wonderful to be saved from yourself sometimes.

Furni-Tour

Our shopping spree at Plaza Las Americas was at best a qualified success, so after lunch we sprinted back to the car and drove hell for leather to the Discount Furniture Outlet on the outskirts of San Juan.

This outlet, where we had bought some of our favorite pieces of furniture the year before, including the corner cabinet Daniel had somehow managed to misplace…

…consisted of a warehouse crammed to the rafters with a vast array of mostly contemporary furniture and shoddily constructed knock-offs of modern Italian design…

…with the odd traditional or Caribbean-influenced piece tossed in for good measure.

The hideousness of most of the merchandise made shopping at the Discount Furniture Outlet remarkably easy—we were able to power walk through whole sections of the store with barely a comment except for the occasional shriek of horror.

Our spirits sank as we sped from room to room.

Nothing.

Then, just when it seemed like we were destined to go home empty-handed (what would we do about a dining table, so easy to find at home but so stunningly expensive to ship to Puerto Rico?), we rounded a corner and there it was—a handsome Balinese-style carved mahogany table and six cane-back chairs.

Maybe a little darker than we had in mind but perfectly in keeping with our décor.  And marked down!

Lurking prominently nearby, as if they were just hoping we’d take them home, were a handsome teak coffee table and a side table in a similar style.  Riding our little wave of victory, we rounded the final corner and came across the perfect bookcase for the upstairs great room.

Barely believing our last-minute luck, we paid up, arranged for shipping and were back at the airport with time to spare.

Despite our streak of good fortune, there was still the problem of a sofa for the newly-renovated downstairs.  On the sunset flight back to Vieques I allayed my fear of flying by obsessing about this problem.

Needless worry is such a handy distraction sometimes.

Certainly there was nowhere on Vieques to buy a sofa, and shipping a sofa from D.C. was as much out of the question as shipping a dining table—maybe even more so.

Michael, as always, worked hard to soothe my anxieties.  Maybe Jane could locate a sofa of some sort and we could have neutral slipcovers made for it until we found what we really wanted.

Or maybe we could round up two or three easy chairs from other parts of the house and arrange them downstairs so that the absence of a sofa wasn’t immediately noticeable.

“After all, who demands that their rental house contain two sofas?” Michael asked rhetorically, while no doubt suspecting that I was, in fact, just such a person.

All the same, I appreciated his efforts to haul me back into the land of reality and agreed that the problem could be solved one way or another.

But I didn’t sleep that night.

Yes, I know.  Pathetic.

But that’s the way I’m put together.

When I was twelve, I woke up early one morning and realized that I detested the furniture in my bedroom and couldn’t stand it another minute.  While my parents snoozed away downstairs, I found a bucket of white paint and whitewashed everything in the room.

Horrified at first, my mother later admitted that it was an improvement.

I’ve been on a roll ever since.

Grand Mall Seizure

Yes, the downstairs level of the house was taking shape, but it was becoming painfully obvious that we needed more furniture.

Lots more.

And although we could barely stand the thought of launching another assault on the San Juan shopping mall, we had no choice.

So we duly boarded an early flight the next morning, buckled our aching bodies into a rental car, and set out, with a sigh, for a second round of marathon shopping at Plaza Las Americas, the vast, sprawling mall on the outskirts of San Juan.

Our list was long.

In the furniture category, we needed a sofa, two comfortable chairs, a coffee table, and a bookcase for the downstairs living area, side chairs for both bedrooms, and (since we’d moved the rattan dining set we’d originally bought for the upper floor to the downstairs space)…

…a new dining table and chairs for upstairs.  The new table, we decided, would need to seat six to accommodate the occupants of our about-to-be-launched three bedroom rental.

Our list of miscellaneous items was even longer:

A second television; a dorm-size fridge and microwave for the kitchen; bedspreads, mattress pads and sheets for all the downstairs beds; a rug for the bathroom; and all the other things you take for granted unless you happen to be setting up housekeeping for the first time.

Our first stop again was Sears, which, though hardly our furniture emporium of choice back in the real world, had yielded a bumper crop of good deals for the Vieques house the last time around.  Also, this particular Sears included a mini-Pier 1 tucked conveniently within its walls (alas, now closed) and it shipped to Vieques at a very cheap rate.  What wasn’t to love?

But luck wasn’t on our side this time.  The sofas in Sears were too big and those in Pier 1 too small.  The dining tables were pseudo-Mediterranean monstrosities almost as big as our house, the chairs mini-thrones more suited to a mock medieval banquet than a vacation home.

After a couple of hours of retail sturm und drang, we finally managed to buy the bedding we needed in Sears and two rattan armchairs and a bookcase in Pier 1.

That done, we dashed over to the electronics section where we found the TV we wanted, along with a small refrigerator and an inexpensive microwave.  For shipping purchases, all of our selections were painstakingly assigned a single order number, a process that involved several long and spirited discussions among the sales associates and a number of phone calls back and forth between various departments.

Once this exhausting transaction was completed, we dashed up, famished, to the food court on the top floor…

…and wolfed down plates of tacos and rice in the midst of rowdy teenagers who never seemed to be in school.

Four hours till our flight back to Vieques and tons more to buy.

Help!

The Pachyderm Waltz

Once we finally got back to the island we hardly knew where to begin.

Although Jane’s helpers had already moved our belongings from her garage into the downstairs space (along with several pieces we’d decided to relocate from upstairs), the men had done little more than pile the furniture into the newly refurbished space.

It was a daunting prospect.  Plastic-shrouded mattresses lay like beached whales across dusty consoles and rattan chairs…

…brooms and mops nestled untidily in the corners……while boxes of every size and shape filled in the blanks.

In short, it was a near-solid wall of chaos.

We began by moving all the boxes out onto the breezeway.  There Michael opened each one in no particular order, sorted its contents, and bagged the guts (usually environmentally unfriendly Styrofoam peanuts).

Then he broke down the boxes themselves.

In the ninety plus degree heat, I began inside by creating a provisional passageway from the main door straight through to the garden door on the opposite wall—nothing could be accomplished until we could move back and forth more freely through the space.

Then I began edging each piece of furniture toward its ultimate destination.  It was like dancing with elephants.

By late afternoon Michael had unpacked all the boxes and stowed their contents—everything from shower curtain to blender—toward the front of the main room, where the dining table and chairs would eventually be placed.

In the meantime, I had managed to scoot, coax and finesse the bigger items into their intended rooms (with occasional help from Michael with the heavier pieces).  By the end of the day the beds in both bedrooms had been assembled (twins in the back, queen-size in the front)…

…the kitchen had begun to take shape, and the living area had been knocked together with the few pieces we had so far.

Tomorrow we would begin placing all the smaller items where they belonged.

It was a start.

The next morning I called Steve to give him a first-hand report of how wonderful everything looked.  His voice was thin and reedy.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Back in the hospital,” he sighed.  “I keep getting these damn lung infections.”

“Is Sue there?”

“Of course.   She’s right here.  I’m afraid this hasn’t been much fun for her.”

I tried to click into a lighter mood.  “You wouldn’t believe how great the old place looks.  You’re a genius.”

His sudden laughter degenerated into a protracted cough.  “Thank Jane, not me.  All I did was knock down a few walls.”

“That’s not true.  It’s beautiful.  We can’t wait for you to see it for yourself.”

A long pause.

“Me too,” he said.  “And hey, thanks for calling.”

Fright Delay

“Now she was lovely,” I commented as I sidled up nervously to the gate agent, gesturing towards my predecessor in line.

“Charming.”

“How do you stand it?”

She finished typing and hit “enter” with a loud click.

“It’s pretty bad.  On the other hand, if I quit I’ll end up announcing the blue light special at Kmart.”

She smiled—yes, it actually qualified as a smile, though a slightly sinister one.  “Or worming puppies at the Bethesda Humane Society.”

“Either way, you’re dealing with assholes,” I mugged, hoping to dazzle her with my wit.

She stared right through me.  “What can I do for you?”

“We were wondering,” I mumbled, tempted to flee in terror, “if there’s a chance we could get on another flight, maybe with a partner airline.”

A look of pity flitted across her stern features.

“That seems highly unlikely, considering that all the airlines loathe and despise each other at this point.”

“Ah.”

She sized me up for a couple of seconds.  “Where’s your traveling companion?”

I pointed to Michael, who was lingering shiftily nearby.

“The tall one?”

I nodded.  “Yep.”

She stared at her screen for a few moments.  “Tell you what,” she began.  “When we do actually get this wretched flight in the air I’m going to upgrade you gentlemen to business class.”

“Oh my god, that’s so nice,” I gushed.

She gave me one last appraising look.  “Save it,” she said, not unkindly.  “It’s gonna be a long, long wait.”

We got to San Juan at 6:30 p.m.  We had missed our connecting flight by almost six hours.

There was still one flight to Vieques but it was full.  We were stuck.

Resigned to the idea of spending the night in San Juan, we rushed back to the airline ticket counter and explained our fate, hoping at least to get a free room.

The agent typed our information into her computer at a glacial pace and said, “I sorry.  Since San Juan not your final destination we don’t have no responsibility for you stay here.”

At this point, Michael moved into battle stations.  He positioned himself directly in front of the diminutive woman and said, “It’s been a long day.  Have a heart.”

She gazed up into his big blues eyes for a moment and said, “Excuse me.”

Ten very long minutes later she came back with her supervisor.  “It okay.”

She handed Michael a voucher for the airport Days Inn.

As far as we were concerned, it could have been the Ritz.

Gate Wait

Our journey from D.C. to Vieques generally took between eight and nine hours door-to-door, depending on our connection in San Juan.

On departure day, we would get up at about 4:00 a.m., leave the house at 5:00 and catch a 7:00 a.m. flight from Dulles to San Juan that landed around 11:45.

If luck was on our side we would then sprint across the sprawling, hyper-air-conditioned airport and jump on a 12:45 flight to Vieques.

But that was a rare occurrence.

More often than not, there was a delay in our departure from D.C., meaning that we’d miss the 12:45 to Vieques and be forced to take the 2:30 flight instead.  Even so, we would get to the house by 3:30 or slightly later.

We had made the journey from D.C. to Vieques eight times since buying the house and had fluctuated between the two scenarios described above.

But that was about to change.

When we arrived at Dulles that still-dark July morning around 5:45, the departure board indicated that the flight was “on time,” scheduled to depart at 7:00 a.m.

And things looked normal enough at the gate, meaning that the waiting area was crowded with sleepy-looking people sipping coffee, the heavy silence punctuated by the occasional, muffled flight announcement or the scream of an over-excited child.

We settled in for a half-hour wait before boarding began.

We were still waiting five hours later.

First came an announcement that the “carrier” (aka plane) that was slated to take us to San Juan had been delayed in New York.  This seemed odd.  Typically planes scheduled to depart as early as 7:00 a.m. have been loitering on the tarmac since the night before.

But of course there are always exceptions, we told ourselves.

And anyway, the flight from New York was a short one and since there was no bad weather to cause further delays on this cloudless July morning there shouldn’t be a problem.  Maybe we’d be delayed an hour or so and would be forced to take the 2:30.

No big deal.

Then came the announcement that the plane in New York was experiencing mechanical difficulties.

Big deal?  Yes.

We swung into action.  Michael dialed the airline on his cell phone…

…while I dashed to the check-in counter.  Four people had already queued up ahead of me but I was quicker than most—within minutes at least twenty people snaked along in my wake.

The woman in front of me was soon up to bat.  “I’m making a speech in San Juan this afternoon.  How are you going to make sure I get there on time?” she hissed, all but seizing the gate agent by the neck.

The agent, who had looked grumpy even before the delay was announced, now bristled with irritation.

“To be honest,” she replied, not even bothering to look up, “I can’t do anything to guarantee you’ll make your speech today.”

The woman spluttered.  “You’re not even going to apologize?”

The agent looked up at the woman and flashed an odious smile.  “Okay, I apologize.”  This was spoken with all the sincerity of a python to a rabbit just before swallowing it whole.

I was up next.

God help me.

Sweet Heat

Lots of people complain bitterly about the heat and humidity of D.C. summers, but Michael and I love them.

While others are hibernating in their houses with the air conditioning cranked up to “Arctic Blast”…

…we’re out on our bikes, sweating buckets, frying our endorphins.

The hottest day of the year often finds us doing something so counter-intuitive that even I’m forced to question our sanity—rowing on the Potomac…

…walking from our building in upper Northwest to Capitol Hill (some seven miles), or hiking the Billy Goat Trail at Great Falls.

In short, it doesn’t get too hot for us.

So when we discussed the idea of returning to Vieques in July, it seemed completely normal.

Yes, the timing of our trip to the island the previous July had been dictated, at least in part, by our need to get the upstairs level of the house finished in time for the rental season.

But once we got there we realized we didn’t mind the super-drenching humidity, the sheer wall of heat that slapped our faces when we opened the door of the air-conditioned bedroom and walked into the un-air-conditioned living room.

In fact, we liked it.

And anyway, we had a deadline again this year.  The lower floor had to be decorated and furnished in time for the coming season so we could advertise the house as a three-bedroom and, we hoped, pull down some serious cash.

No problem, right?

Ha ha.