As You Were (8 page)

10

TRU UNLOCKED THE FRONT DOOR AND MOTIONED Brittany inside ahead of her. “Have a seat, I’ll start a fire.” Tru set Brittany’s backpack on the floor by the sofa, and greeted the calico cat that appeared from the kitchen to rub itself against her leg. “Hey, Dropsi-doodle. Have you been lounging on the countertops since mama’s been gone?” The cat mewed a response, and continued to circle Tru’s leg affectionately. “I’ll feed you in a minute.” The cat noticed Brittany, then, and her eyes widened in recognition. She meowed loudly and ran to Brit, stretching up to put her paws on Brit’s leg.

“She missed you.” Tru found that the cat’s response made her misty-eyed.

Brit patted the cat’s head, then picked her up and stroked her.

Tru took kindling from the cabinet beside the pit. Stacking it on the andiron, she set aflame the Fatwood Firestarter stick with a long match.

As Dropsi leaned against Brit, purring softly, she inspected her new milieu. The smoke-gray sectional was positioned in an “L” configuration. She seated herself on the one facing the fireplace and watched Tru place a log atop the flaring tinder, as Dropsi settled onto her lap, still purring. She noticed the framed photo on the mantel of she and Tru posing with their arms around each other in a wooded area. “Where was that picture taken?”

Tru glanced over and then up to the mantel. “That was in Nederland. One of our weekend camping trips last summer.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s West of Boulder, in the mountains. Really quaint.”

Brit’s stomach growled. “Got anything to eat around here?” She petted the cat absently.

Tru turned from her squatted position to peer back at her. “I think there’s some roast left. I’ll heat some up for us.”

Her first need addressed, Brit recognized her second. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Tru blinked away the aloof tone of Brittany’s voice, and pointed toward the doorway. “Through there, second door on the left.”

Brittany hauled herself out of the plush sofa and disappeared into the hall. Dropsi followed Brittany, knowing that a trip to the bathroom usually meant she could get some fresh water from the sink.

Tru took the poker from its wrought iron stand and jabbed at the logs until satisfied that the flames had caught. She drew the wire mesh screen closed in front of the pit and sat on the carpet, leaning back on her hands. Obviously locked out of the bathroom, the calico returned and stepped into her lap, kneading her legs with her clawless paws, Tru stared into the pit and tried to concentrate only on the flames. They leaped blue, red, orange, and yellow, licking the wood and chewing it up, then spitting it out in small particles onto the stone of the fireplace ledge.

“I thought you were going to heat up the roast?” Brittany said behind her, indignant.

Dropsi jumped out of her lap and darted into the kitchen, as if startled by Brittany’s voice. Tru bit back the retort which leapt to her tongue like the flames of the fire she had been watching. Instead she pushed herself up with a grunt and headed for the kitchen mumbling, “Yes, My Queen...”

“What?”

Tru threw back over her shoulder, “I said, ‘those logs are green’—it may take them a while to catch.”

Brittany looked over at the fire and back toward the kitchen doorway, through which Tru had disappeared. Rubbing her neck, Brittany returned to her spot on the sofa and stared into the flames. As the fire crackled, she considered her predicament. It would not be long, she guessed, before this Tru-person began to make a move on her. Brittany almost hoped she would, so that she could put her in her place.
If she thinks she can bring me to this cozy little retreat, build a nice fire, provide a warm supper, and then get a little repayment for her trouble, she had another think coming. It wasn’t my idea to come all the way out to this God-forsaken mountain; I resisted strongly enough. Well, let her accept the situation on my terms, then,
she decided emphatically.

Brittany heard a beeping of the microwave, and a few minutes later, Tru appeared with two steaming bowls. “Here ya go.” Tru placed the dish of roast on the coffee table in front of Brittany.

Brittany looked up at her with a pithy smirk. “Thanks.”

Tru turned around with her own bowl quickly, so that Brittany’s expression would not make her feel like a serf at the foot of a master. She sat at the opposite end of the sofa and began to eat; glancing every so often at Brittany, who ate her own meal in abstract silence.

They finished at precisely the same time, and Tru rose to retrieve the bowl from Brittany. “Feel better, now?”

“Does it matter?” Brittany responded caustically.

Tru stood over her, holding both empty bowls, and after a brief, pregnant silence, she turned and took the dishes back into the kitchen. When she returned, Brittany stood in front of the fireplace, her arms folded. Tru came to the fire and held her palms out to its warmth. “I’ll sleep in the guest room.”

Brittany snorted. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Tru could feel the hair on the back of her neck rise up, and had to concentrate all her energy on maintaining control of the raw temper that this new version of Brittany seemed to incite in her. The frustration she had felt when they first met sprang from sexual tension, and Brit’s aloofness, but she had never been mean. Tru bit her bottom lip hard and exhaled slowly.

“Oh,” Brittany turned to face her, sarcastically. “Did you expect me to bed down with you?”

Tru felt the restraints she had placed carefully around her temper stretch and break. “Hey!”— came the angry shout.

Brittany gawked at Tru, her eyebrows high on her forehead.

“Do I have green teeth?”

Brittany cleared her throat, mumbled something which Tru cut off.

“—am I seven feet tall, hairy like an ape, with swamp slime oozing off me?! Am I?!” she demanded.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s simple enough.” Tru counted off each item on her fingers, “Do I have green teeth? Am I seven feet tall? Am I hairy like an ape? Do I have swamp slime oozing off me? Well?”

Brittany stared at her, transfixed by the redness of Tru’s face, the way her dolphin-gray eyes turned to pewter. “I never said—”

“No! You never said it! But you sure as hell treat me that way! I’m not a monster! Get over yourself!” —and she stomped from the room, down the hall, and slammed the guest room door behind her.

Brittany stared at the doorway for a long moment, her eyes moving as if reading some invisible words in the air.

Slowly, she smiled.

A half hour later, as Brittany watched CNN, Tru appeared in the doorway. “I’m sorry for—losing
my temper...”

Brittany smiled demurely. “No problem.”

Tru hesitated, then moved to the sofa to sit. She watched headline news for a moment, and

the anchor announced that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his son were injured in a

motorcycle accident.

“
Governor
Schwarzenegger?” Brittany said. “The actor?”

Tru smiled. “Yeah. I guess it sounds crazy if you don’t remember it.”

They continued to watch, until the ticker mentioned snowstorms in Colorado. Tru picked up

the remote and tuned to the Weather Channel, to find that it was headed in their direction. “It’s going to get pretty nasty outside tonight.”

The phone rang and Tru answered it, telling Brenda that Brittany was fine and still recovering from the accident. She hung up. “Brenda said to tell you hello and she’s thinking about you.”

“Who’s Brenda?” Brittany said.

Tru blinked a few times. “Never mind.”

The small talk disintegrated into no talk at all, and finally they were left with only the sound of the television.

As Brittany flipped through channels on cable, Tru pulled her laptop from the bag beside the sofa, and booted into Windows, opened Outlook Express and opened the mail in her eCig folder. She had new orders to fill.

Brittany watched her for a moment. “Do I have my own computer?”

Tru looked up. “Um...yeah...it’s in the bedroom closet, in a black bag.”

Brittany got up and fetched it, soon settling back down on the sofa next to Tru. Oddly, she found that she knew exactly how to boot up and use it. Those memories had been untouched. But she had no idea what she would find. She opened her own Outlook, and then watched her inbox start to fill up. “Holy crap,” she murmured.

“What?”

“’You’ve got mail’...” she mimicked the infamous sound byte.

“I bet you do.”

Brittany watched as they added: offers for penis enlargement, fake lottery winnings, and Canadian prescription offers; mail from Brenda, with subject lines growing progressively worried about where Brittany had disappeared to; funny pictures and joke forwards from Jan, Liz...and a mail from someone named Travis, letting her know he had a guest room if she needed it.
Odd.
She glanced at Tru and decided against mentioning it, but wasn’t sure why. “I got a mail from Brenda.” She said instead. “Should I write back? I mean, I don’t know what to say, because I don’t really remember her...”

“Well, I contacted most people and let them know the situation. They understand.”

“Oh.” She looked up at the doorway to the hall. “Are you going to show me around the house?”

“Okay.”

Brittany stood and followed as Tru started toward the hall. Tru indicated the first door on the right. “The master bedroom. You can sleep in here.”

“Alone, right?”

Tru sighed. “I’ll sleep in the guest room.”

“You didn’t think I was going to bunk with you, did you?”

“We’ve had this conversation. I think it’s clear that’s not an option.”

“Just checking,” she answered. Brittany looked at the Southwestern comforter on the bed, and the propped up pillows with beige and green cases. Then the walls caught her eyes. “Why are there all those faded places on the walls? Where’s the pictures?”

Tru put her hands in her pockets. “I took them down after you left. They’re packed in a box in the closet.”

Brittany turned to look at her. “They were mine?”

“Yes.” Tru knew she didn’t understand. They were hers: paintings she’d created and photographs she had taken when things were still good between them. Tru took them down only a few days before she found her again; fearful that looking at them everyday would add to her suffering.

“Is it okay if I put them back up?”

“Sure. We can do that later. Let me show you the rest of the house.” Tru led her across the hall to the other bedroom. “This is the guestroom.”

Brittany took in the guitars and speakers and recording equipment. “Looks more like a studio.”

“Well, it is, really. I use it for music.”

“So you got two rooms in the house?”

“We shared one, and I used this one for music. You did your creative stuff out in the workshop.”

“What creative stuff? What did I do?”

“Photography, painting, and sculpture.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I’ll show you your stuff if you want.”

Brit nodded, and Tru headed for the kitchen door, with Brit in tow. “Where are we going?”

Tru took their jackets from the hook and handed Brit hers. “Out to the workshop.”

After making their way through the snow to the shed attached to the barn, Tru opened the door and switched on the light. In the center of the room, there was a pottery wheel, and scattered about were the tools and productions of a sculptor’s trade. Busts of famous figures, elongated, dancing women, pottery, and masks, all rendered in clay. “Wow. I did all this?”

“Yes. You were very talented. Are talented. Maybe if you played around with this stuff, it would come back to you.”

Brit moved to a bust that graced a pedestal in the corner. “This is you.”

“Yeah. You did that a few months ago. You’ve sold lots of stuff to galleries and collectors.” She pointed to the other side of the room. “That’s your darkroom. You developed pictures in there.”

Brit went to the small door and stepped inside. Switching on a light, the room flooded with a hue of indigo, and she quickly browsed the photos papering the walls, the those dangling from a string attached wall-to-wall. There were images of deer, rabbits, snow-covered trees, sunsets, the horses. “Wow. I was good.”

“Maybe you still are.”

Brit picked up a 35 millimeter camera. “I don’t know anything about this, now...”

Tru heard the sadness tingeing her voice. “It’ll come back to you. Don’t worry. It’s too much a part of who you are.”

Then she turned and saw on another wall, an infinite number of images of Tru; smiling, goofing around, laughing, playing her guitar. And quite a few more of them together. In those, Brittany thought, she looked like she was madly in love with Tru.

Brit switched off the light. “Can we go in, now?”

“Sure.”

Tru locked the shop door, and they trudged inside. Taking off their coats, they hung them up and Tru moved into the living room, picking up her eCig and drawing on it, releasing a cloud of apple vapor.