Chapter 5

END COMMERCIAL BREAK #4

Pete drove up to the Harris property, having just returned from a cliff-side treehouse near Memphis, Tennessee which was in serious need of modification, lest it kill both of the trees which were supporting it. The first thing the head of NTAS saw as he brought the pick-up truck to a stop was his son Henry, who was carrying a bucket of paint.

“How’s it going?” the father called out.

“Going great,” Henry called back as his father made his way to the back yard. “But Paula wants to talk to you.”

Pete gave his son a quizzical look, but the client is the boss and when the boss wants to talk to you, you talk to her. So Pete knocked on the back door. Paula answered quickly.

“Hey Pete,” she said, inviting him in. “Julie knows something’s up, but I don’t think she knows it has anything to do with a treehouse. I think she thinks she’s being moved into the attic.”

Paula led Pete down a hallway and stopped in front of two doors, one on each side.

“I wouldn’t ask anybody to live in that attic,” she continued. “There’s no overhead space. Anyway, she’s managed to drop it into conversation that any decorators or other ‘professional living space personnel’ should take a good look at her room, and that means you. So, here’s Julie’s bedroom.”

Paula opened the door and the man stepped into a bedroom no larger than the loft space in the treehouse. There were posters on the wall, posters of Tiesto, Blood Stain Child, and a movie poster for Interstella 5555. Another poster directly over the twin bed showed Dr. Mikannibal, dripping blood and breathing fire in her skimpy outfit and angel wings. The bed itself held several stuffed toys representing Sailor Moon and other anime characters.

“The room’s so small,” Paula lamented, “that she has posters she can’t even put up. She has a Babymetal poster her boyfriend gave her, and it sits in the closet.”

“I’ll send Tori here first,” the Treehouse Man assured her, “before she does anything else. We’ll let Julie decide what posters go where, but Tori will need to know what she’s leaving room for. I guess the bed stays here?”

“Yeah,” Paula nodded. “It was plenty big enough when she was nine, sleeping alone every night. But now she has sleepovers, and a boyfriend. Paul and I wouldn’t try to sleep in a twin bed, and we shouldn’t ask her to.”

Pete continued to glance around.

“She’s got a good collection of books,” he noted.

“If she can have even a little bit more in the way of bookcases, she’ll be thrilled,” Paula informed him. “A lot of her manga are in boxes under the bed.”

“Ah,” Pete said, nothing else being necessary. He’d learned what manga were when he was in Japan: comic books.

The head of NTAS returned to the treehouse to find the crew busy with the final touches. Seanix was sanding the hand rail for the stairs; Chuck and Devin were painting, and Henry was applying the foil which would make the heart-shaped door to the extra toilet shine like chrome.

“Even if you don’t love to go,” Henry grinned into the camera, “you’ll love having an extra place TO go!”

Pete asked a few questions to ascertain how things were going, but then he lost no time in getting to work himself. There was a safety railing which needed to be assembled for the loft. Pete paused a moment to look into the camera.

“We’ll wait until the loft is furnished to install this railing,” he explained. “That way we can move things in more quickly. Of course we have to have a railing TO install.”

As the day wore on, the whole crew was sweeping and doing general clean-up. Seanix had a request for Pete.

“Pete, remember I asked about taking off early today?”

“Yeah,” Pete assured him. “I said OK. Something about a concert, and you’d make it up tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Pete,” Seanix said. “I think I might even ... well just thanks.”

Seanix took off, some of the crew waving as he left. There was only about an hour and a half before quitting time anyway.

The next day a moving truck pulled up to the Harris residence. By the time Pete and his crew arrived various pieces of furniture and accessories were being unloaded.

Pete grinned as he recognized his favorite designer. He had already written the little voice-over he would later record for the TV:

“To give this teenage love shack a young-but-not-too-young look, I’ve called in the Tupelo Tornado, Teenage Trend-Setter Tori!”

Just before leaving for the airport to pick up Julie, Paul showed the girl’s room to Tori. The designer inspected things more closely than Pete had, after which both crews, Tori’s and Pete’s, carried stuff up the stairs. Soon lighting fixtures were installed, dark curtains were hung over the windows and then pulled back, admitting natural light, and thick, sound-deadening carpet was installed on the floors.