Chapter Eighteen

Torbin insisted on taking me to his house. He knew that Cordelia and I were still wallowing in relationship limbo, that I wasn’t likely to go to the house in Treme with heat, and that my office down in Bywater still lacked gas service. He tossed me in one bathroom and Liz in another, with instructions to get ourselves in some hot water.

Halfway through my shower, the door briefly opened. Torbin shouted, “Incoming,” and tossed a heap of sweatpants, Tshirts, socks, and just about anything else I might want to wear. I let the water wash over me. After having been so chilled, I felt like the world had possibilities again. A voice whispered in my head that it was okay. I had warm water and Torbin was on my side, still willing to rescue me. And lend me his clothes. I quickly dressed, wanting to keep the warmth from the shower caught in the cloth.

When I emerged, Torbin and Andy were in the kitchen making hot chocolate, the real kind with milk and cocoa.

“We all got a little chilly,” he said.

Liz joined us. Torbin and I are close to the same size, so I wasn’t quite as lost in the borrowed clothes as she was.

He handed me a steaming cup and I took a sip. “Ah, chocolate and being toasty warm. Life is good.” At the moment, it didn’t even feel like a lie to say it.

Out of the seeming blue, Torbin asked, “Can you find out what kind of car that woman drives?”

“Patty What’s-Her-Name?” I asked. “Why?”

“No one pushes my lavender cousin into a swimming pool in December and gets away with it. It’s time to go nuclear. Shrimp in the hubcaps.”

Taking her cup of cocoa, Liz asked, “Shrimp in the hubcaps? Why?”

Andy answered. “Revenge is a dish best served cold. Put the shrimp in when the weather is like this and no one will notice for a while. Then have a few hot days and the car will smell like rotting fish.”

“And no one ever looks in the hubcaps,” Torbin said with glee.

“I am never crossing any of you,” Liz said, but there was admiration in her voice.

“Many times merely the plotting was enough,” Torbin said, “but this might have to be one of those times when the fantasy just doesn’t do it.”

“I can probably find out what kind of car she drives,” I offered.

“Do so,” Torbin said, “and we’ll take it from there. We have to make sure it is indeed her car. It’s too tacky to shrimp someone else.”

“I’m glad you have some morals,” Liz said wryly.

“Only the most immoral kind,” Torbin clarified.

From our nefarious plotting we moved to sorting out practical details. Liz’s rental car was still Uptown where we’d parked it. She was polite enough to offer to get a cab, which Torbin turned down. She seemed relieved, like whatever happened here was a much better adventure than going back to her hotel room alone.

We decided that cars could wait until tomorrow. That left sleeping arrangements. Liz and I could bunk together in the spare bedroom or one of us could sleep there and one on the living-room couch.

“Bunk beds for the nephews and nieces,” Torbin explained. His and my cousins could be just as homophobic as anyone, but they seemed willing to suspend that prejudice for a kid-free weekend of leaving the children with their doting gay uncles. I suspected he was pointing out to Liz that he wasn’t throwing us together in the same bed.

“I claim the top bunk,” Liz said. “I always was stuck in the bottom one as a kid and I think it scarred me for life.”

I opted for the bottom one. Torbin and Andy kept this room ready for guests, so the beds were made, which saved them some time and trouble. Plus the couch was lumpy.

Besides, Liz was a smart woman. Just from what she’d observed tonight she had to know that I had a drinking problem I wasn’t handling very well and was in the midst of some major cable-TV-worthy dyke drama. Add to that how tired we all were—Andy had been yawning since we got here. I felt like I’d done a marathon. Being cold, soaking wet, and shivering is hard work.

I thanked Torbin for his kindness, showed Liz the guest bathroom, and let her go first while I washed our mugs and the saucepan. Andy was even polite enough to say they could wait until morning, but I felt like I had to do something to make up for the mess I’d caused.

Just as I put the last dish away I heard Liz exit the bathroom.

She was sitting on the bottom bunk when I finished with my bedtime routines.

“Hey, I thought you wanted the top.”

“Thought I’d be polite and wait for you. It’s not much fun to get on top with no one below you.”

Is she flirting or am I just tired, I wondered.

She scooted over to make room beside her.

Flirting.

I was tempted. Liz was smart, attractive. Available. Leaving in a few days. Sex would be another escape from thinking about all the things I needed to think about.

I sat down beside her. The warmth of her leg next to mine felt good.

“It’s been a while since…I’ve been in a situation like this,” she said.

“What, stuck with a bunch of insane strangers?”

“That, I’m used to. That’s about the definition of jetting into disaster zones. No, being with a woman who reminds me that I have a body attached to my brain.”

“But is your brain attached to your body?”.

She looked at my quizzically. “I think so. Why?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the who’s-sleeping-with-who mess I’m involved in? Plus, the comments about drinking…have some justification.”

“Tell me what I need to know.”

“You planning to be here that long?”

“Let’s start with the alcohol. Did you start drinking after Katrina?”

I struggled with the answer, finally saying, “Katrina didn’t help…but I started just before.”

“Why? Does it have anything to do with the so-called mess you’re involved in?”

I liked Liz and felt okay talking to her. Given her life, I doubted I could say much that would shock her. Plus, she didn’t live here. If I regretted what I said, at least she would be gone and not around to remind me of my foolishness.

“It has everything to do with it. On the Friday before Katrina hit, I walked in on my partner in the arms of another woman.”

“That has to hurt. Live-in, share-chores kind of partner?”

“Had our tenth anniversary not that long ago.”

“Was it a ‘sorry, I made a mistake’ or ‘sorry, I’m leaving you’ kind of thing?”

“I walked out, went to a place I own—used to own.” That was another hole in my heart, the shattered debris left where my childhood home used to be. All the memories were tangled. The last time I would ever see it whole was in the misery of Cordelia’s betrayal. “I took a bottle of Scotch with me. Then Katrina hit, and we weren’t together…and haven’t really had a chance to talk yet.”

“Wow. That’s kind of a long time to let something this important hang.”

“It’s a big part of does anything still tie me to this place.”

“Have you talked to her at all?”

“Some, but it’s been hard. Mostly practical things. And over the phone. We seemed to have an unspoken agreement that we would wait until we’re seeing each other face to face to hash things out.”

“By any chance was she at the party last night?”

“I was talking to her just before I got pushed into the pool.”

“The tall woman? She was about to jump in, but that obnoxious woman was blocking her.”

Another mark against Patty. At the moment, she’d be lucky if she got only shrimp in her hubcaps. “That sounds like her,” I said.

“I met her. She was part of a group I ended up talking with that Raul knows here.”

“You met her? What did she talk about?”

“I don’t think she said much. The usual introduction pleasantries. She mostly listened, from what I recall. I asked Raul about her and he told me she had been one of the doctors stranded in Charity after Katrina. If I noticed anything about her, it was that she seemed lost. And that made sense after he told me about her experience.”

“We’re all lost here,” I said quietly. “Every single one of us has lost something—friends, family, a house, a job, a life.”

Liz turned my face toward her and gently kissed me. She held it only a moment, then pulled away. “I have a great fondness for women who take in scared kids from the Midwest. Atlanta and New Orleans aren’t that far away. But right now you need to find what you’ve lost, not add complications.”

She stood up, then climbed into the top bunk. We said good night.

I was still awake when I heard her fall into the steady breathing of sleep.

It had been a long day. I realized how right Liz was. Cordelia had come over to talk to me, then tried to go into the pool after me. Then had watched as Liz did dive in, drag me out. And sit next to me with her arm around my shoulder. What did Cordelia think? Especially with Patty giving everything the most negative spin possible.

I didn’t know. I didn’t know what she thought, what she wanted, what was possible. I didn’t even know what I wanted. No, that wasn’t completely true. I wanted her to want me back, to give me the power to decide. I wanted to not be in this limbo anymore. Except maybe I did, if it saved me from knowing that she was gone, only a live ghost haunting me with what might have been.

Right now all I wanted was to go to sleep and not think about it until tomorrow.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14