Danger, Sweetheart (6 page)

The gorgeous midwestern sky was blotted out by the woman, who had—quite without his help—righted herself and held on to every file. He gazed up at her like a stunned beetle. “My coccyx is numb,” he told the lovely stranger, and would have been appalled, except:
ow
.

She snorted, a sound that should have been inelegant but was instead charming. “D'you want me to call a doc?”

“Please don't.” He shivered at explaining any of this to a physician. “I'm begging you.”

“Well, at least let me help you up. You were diving out of your truck to help little old me, right? My hero!” She fluttered her eyelashes, which Blake hadn't realized until that moment could be done sarcastically. “It's the thought that counts, or something.” He grunted his agreement and proffered his wrist; she seized it. What followed was tugging and a series of grunts and groans until, after an impressively long time, she surrendered to the inevitable. “Get up, maybe?” she suggested.

“Can't. Numb coccyx: still in effect. What did you trip on?”

“What
don't
I trip on?” she said cheerfully. “If it's on the planet somehow, I'll trip. And, y'know, these didn't help.”

“These?”

She swept her skirt suit beneath her and squatted beside him, somehow making it look graceful. Her small, close-set pale blue eyes seemed to almost sparkle at him. He knew they weren't sparkling, not really. It was a phenomenon brought about by how the light caught her vitreous humour
*
and bounced off the retinas. “It's my own fault. They seduced me,” she explained, as if what she was saying made sense to him, a stranger. “Wedge shoes are the ultimate in style and comfort, they said.” She pointed down at the offending brown wedges and puffed glossy bangs out of her eyes. “As comfortable as walking shoes, they said.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

“
Them,
” she replied darkly. “The devil's messengers. Soulless creatures, all of 'em. The editorial staff of every single fashion magazine for women.
Heads will roll!
”

Lovely
and
insane, an unfortunate combination.

From a distance she had been pretty, which, now that they were face-to-face, did not do her justice. Shorter than he by several inches—he was fairly certain; they hadn't been standing at the same time thus far—with deeply tanned skin and a sturdy, slender body. Her deep brown hair was cut short, curving about her high cheekbones, and her bangs ended just above dark eyebrows. She had a broad, clear forehead and a wide, pretty mouth.
Native American, certainly. What else? The eyes, those light eyes …

She grinned. “Trying to figure the mix?” He glanced away, embarrassed to be caught gaping like a teenager, and she laughed outright. “Irish and German on my dad's side, and—”

He tried not to interrupt her, tried to stop himself, but the thought had hit him and come right out of his mouth like he was Rake, or five. “You—”
Are lovely. Are intriguing. Are carrying too many folders.
“—have high cheekbones.” At some point in the festivities, she had carefully put the folders on the sidewalk. A prudent move.

“It's good that you told me that,” she replied, sounding perfectly serious, then shattering the illusion with a snicker. “Hadn't ever noticed.”

“I think my brain is also numb.”

“You
really
shouldn't leave the door open like that. You're basically demanding to be made fun of. It's entrapment!”

“Please,” he replied.
Please stay here and keep talking to me. Please don't take two trips when you can barely manage one, because otherwise we'd never have met. Please tell me how a stranger's smile makes me want to smile, too. Please.
“Mock away if you like. My brother is one of the world's greatest mockers and he's been torturing me for years. You have no power over me.”
Lie.

What is wrong with me? We've only just met. It's not even sexual—or not entirely. I just like hearing her voice and watching her eyes. Did I hit my head on the way down, too?

She squatted again to help him, and this time as he grasped her small, cool hand he was able to rise to his feet. “Naw. Too easy. Don't say, ‘That's what she said.'”

He snorted and managed—just—not to rub his coccyx. “What year do you think this is?”

“Touché.” She bent to scoop the folders back into her arms, blocking him with her coccyx when he moved to help. “Nope. Confidential, sorry.”

“Oh.”
Do not leer at her lovely behind. Do not.

“I've … you know.” She jerked her head toward the rambling white house. “Gotta get back to it.”

“‘It'? Do you work here?”

“No, it's a temporary setup. The Great Outdoors Band is in town, so
…”

He should not, he thought as she trotted off after a parting smile, but he did. He liked how she said things that made no sense, then assumed he understood everything. It should have been annoying. It absolutely was not.

He watched her until she went around the side of the house

(a temporary setup, but she eschews the front door?)

and then went to find his mother. If he'd known what was coming, he never would have left the driveway. If he'd known he'd just had the best part of his month, he never would have left the Supertruck.

 

Six

“Couldn't help yourself and I blame myself. Took your offer to help and didn't think about what it meant, what you'd do, and instead of actual help you went Martian and doomed this town!”

Blake, fluent in four languages (including English), had no idea what his mother had just shouted. He tried to parse the sentences; surely the answer was in there somewhere.
Couldn't help yourself … blame myself. Active voice, suggesting current events in which I played a significant part. Think about what it meant: she had anticipated another outcome. Actual help … Martian? Several theories: 1) my mother is an alien, 2) my mother thinks I am an alien, 3) my mother is drunk at eleven
A.M.
, 4) my mother has gone clinically insane, 5) this woman isn't my mother; she is a hologram programmed by alien scientists to mimic my mother exactly, 6) if not alien scientists, then perhaps programmed by—

A sharp
crack!
an inch from his left ear; his mother had crossed the room while he ruminated. The sound sent him rocketing back into his body and (unfortunately) back in his mother's room.

“Come back here right now,” she ordered. “No sneaking into your brain when I'm talking to you.”

Talking?
Then, the even more perplexed thought:
sneaking?

“I apologize. You were ranting?”

“We were discussing your giant cock-up.”

Blake blinked.
My mother said “cock.” Yes, it was part of a hyphenated word, but she could have said “screwup.” Balls-up. Even fuckup. Any of those would have been fine. Perhaps not “balls.” What is happening?
“I don't understand.”

“Exactly!”

“You seemed—we only—you were besieged. On the phone, all those talks we had, you sounded…”
Broken. Bereft. Lonely.
“… overwhelmed.”

“It was good of you to call,” she replied, calming. “You always called right back, no matter when you got my messages. You're a good boy, when you're not killing me with blood pressure spikes brought on by stress.”

“I—”
No.
He had no follow-up to that. Best to stay quiet.

His mother let out a short bark of a laugh. “And yes, overwhelmed, that's putting it—are you saying I inferred I needed you to rush to my rescue?”

No.

Don't, Blake.

Do not do this.

“Actually—”

Blake!

He shut out the increasingly hysterical inner voice. “—I inferred, as I was the listening party; you implied. ‘Infer' and ‘imply' are opposites.”

You care nothing for living. Definitive proof at long last.

Pretending not to notice his mother's reddening forehead, he doggedly followed the line of thought to its logical conclusion. “The speaker implies. The listener infers. I inferred.”

“Not. Now. Blake.”

“I'll put the badge away,” he agreed at once. Even when Rake wasn't there

(Hey, grammar police! Shove that badge right up your ass!)

he was there. And it bought him a smile, thank goodness, however brief. Time to get back on track. “During our conversations I
inferred
you felt overwhelmed. You
implied
you were plagued with problems.”

“Stop using the past tense!” she snapped back, but the fingers that had jerked him back to the present now affectionately ruffled his neatly combed hair (fun fact: she affectionately
smoothed
Rake's eternally mussed hair) before pulling away so she could resume her pace/rant. Her pant. Her race? “And the only thing I'm plagued with is sons.”

Hands shoved wrist deep in his pockets, Blake scraped his toe along the green floral carpet, scowling down at it as he mumbled, “'M not a plague.”

An inelegant snort was his mother's rebuttal. He looked up to watch her pace and was disoriented—again—by the décor.

Flowers,
had been his initial thought upon entering the room.
Flowers everywhere. But not in a charming meadow way. A funeral home way.
Flowered carpeting (green, with sizeable pink cabbage roses). Flowered wallpaper (white tea roses over pale pink stripes). Flowered curtains (sunshine yellow background and tiebacks littered with roughly eight million daisies). His mother had been pacing back and forth so quickly, her small form darting from floral-curtained window to floral-curtained window over floral carpet, that she reminded him of an irritated hornet trapped in a vase with flowers not at all happy to be in there with her.

“Do you know what I'm trying to accomplish here?” she asked after another minute. But she shook her head even as he opened his mouth. “No, that's not fair. I never told you boys in so many words. I spent decades never talking about this place; I can't put that on you two.”

Thank God! Blake, you idiotic bastard, you just might live through this!
“Then why—?”

“I thought that when you said you were coming to help … I thought you meant
help
.”

“I
did
help!” he protested. “You don't have to worry about the farms anymore. They aren't your responsibility anymore.”
Why are we still discussing this? Why are you so upset when the problem was easily solved? Why am I overnighting in the world's oddest bed-and-breakfast?

“Yes. They.
Are!
” She whirled on him so quickly, Blake experienced a sympathy dizzy spell. “That's the whole
point
. That's what you don't
get
.”

Dear God. More italics talk. Not good, most emphatically not good. It forced him to say three words he loathed, words he tried never to say aloud if he could help it, a bad habit that had led to much unpleasantness: “I don't understand.”

“No. You don't; that's clear to me like it never was before. That's on me, too. But you will, boy. I promise.”

“All right.” Blake pitted every shred of self-control into not sounding terrified. “Enlighten me, if you please. I'm all yours. Here, I'll…” He looked around, spotted nothing to sit on that wasn't embroidered, topped, or near flowers, and sank into the overstuffed chair near the fireplace.

“Now you listen like your life depends on it, Blake.” Unspoken:
because it does.
“What you've done in your Martian arrogance is … is…” His mother was trailing off in confusion (he could count the number of times that happened on both hands) and staring into space.

“Mother?” She was too young for Alzheimer's, he thought in a panic. Wait; was she?

“Oh!” she gasped, slapping herself on the forehead like a gothic heroine. “I promised Roger I'd help him deworm the White Rose of York!”

Blake stared up at her from the chair that was making a valiant effort to suck him in. If there was such a thing as flower quicksand, this chair was the physical manifestation of such an entity
.
“You promised who? To do what?”

“Deworm the White Rose of York. She's a pig,” his mother added impatiently, clearly irritated with Blake's continual stupidity.

Blake began to give serious thought to the theory that the train had crashed, that he was even now in a canyon somewhere with train cars piled everywhere, slowly bleeding out. All of this … whatever it was … it was just a hallucination conjured by his dying brain to divert him from the fact of his own death.

“Mom, I don't—”

“To be continued!” she snapped, jabbing a bony finger in the general vicinity of his face before sweeping out the door. “We are
not done
!” she italicized, her voice getting farther away with every stomp. She didn't slam the door—Shannah Tarbell would never indulge in such childish behavior, no matter how tempting—but the weight of her displeasure was much worse.

Blake, never a fan of casual profanity
(everyone does it; there are so many more interesting ways to express shock/anger/surprise/sadness; how dull),
managed a, “What the
fuck
?” before allowing the chair to suck him the rest of the way in. If he was lucky, it would suffocate him.

 

Seven

The terms, the hideous impossible terms of his withdrawal from disgrace and reinstatement into his mother's affections, were made horrifyingly clear over dinner that evening.