A Tale of Two Trucks Read Online Free PDF

the transsexual? He couldn’t get to the mouthwash fast enough!” I complained. “No, I’d probably have better luck with McGee.”
    “Ah! ‘Probielicious’,” Joe commented, using the nickname that Tony had given his coworker on a previous episode. We both burst out laughing and were in a good mood when we got back to work.
     
     
    T HE hardest part of the whole project (at least emotionally) was the nursery, where Joe’s little baby girl had slept for her two short months in this world… and also where she had died. Everything was left exactly the way it had been, down to the box of diaper wipes, which were now bone dry. I could tell from the stale, musty smell that the door had not been opened in a very long time.
    “Do you want me to do this?” I asked when Joe paused in the doorway.
    “No. I… I need to….”
    He was groping for words, so I placed a hand on his arm and squeezed.
    “It might be good for you to… get some closure,” I said quietly, and he nodded. I walked over to the window and pulled up the blinds, letting in some sunlight, then turned to survey the items in the room. “Do you have a box that we could put her things in?”
    “Um… yeah, I think so,” he replied and went in search of it.
    I used my DustBuster to suck the dust off the stuffed animals and placed them in the box he came back with, along with her baby clothes. I asked if I could put the baby powder and other half-used items in the next house I designed, and he was more than happy to let me have them. But he wept silently as he sat on the floor to disassemble the crib, which broke my heart. When I knelt on the floor to hug him from behind, he grabbed my hand and clung to it for a long time.
    He finally took a deep breath, regaining his composure, so I had to let go of him and let him finish his project. I taped up the box of Dana’s things to make sure they would be protected, and then, with a marker, I wrote her name on the top in a cutesy cursive, embellished with flowers and hearts and smiley faces. Joe sniffed but grinned through his tears when he saw my handiwork. Then he carried the box tenderly up to the attic for safekeeping.

Chapter 6
     
     
    I WAS spending a lot of time with Joe after hours now, since he wanted to assist in remodeling his house and I worked on other clients’ projects during the day. I couldn’t resist teasing him, though, that it was his way of getting me to come over and cook dinner. He blushed bright red and spluttered that I didn’t have to, but I cut him off right away.
    “I’m just kidding ! I enjoyhaving someone to cook for,” I assured him, waving off his protests with a bamboo spatula. “And it’s no fun eating dinner with only the TV for company!”
    “Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind….”
    “I wouldn’t be doing it if I minded, now, would I?”
    “No, you wouldn’t,” he conceded with a grin, showing how well he’d come to know me.
    He’d been doing a lot of remodeling work with Fred’s crew recently, which gave him fresh ideas for his own place too, and he was now totally on board with ripping out the wall between the dining room and kitchen (although we decided to tackle that later). He’d balked at some of my color choices but agreed to let me paint his living room and dining room walls a warm burgundy, to be offset by black-and-white furniture that would make it look more masculine.
    “It’s gonna be The Man Cave!” I chortled, sketching out what I had in mind after dinner that Friday night. “Ooo! I just had a scathingly brilliant idea: do you want a Holstein-patterned faux fur rug? We could go for a cowboy and western look!”
    He looked at me in mild exasperation and shrugged. “ You’re the designer— you decide.”
    “Okay… then I say ‘Nay’ to the cowboy, but we’ll do Holstein couch cushions just to break up the monotony. Oh! I could paint you a picture with some kids tipping cows—wouldn’t that be a hoot!”
    He laughed at the