Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (29 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Creative individuals, painters, potters, carpenters have fingers that arc, like yours.”

“And how do you know this scientific fact?”

“My mother is a sculptor.”

Clay wore boyish good looks in a manly shell. He was different from the cute guys I knew in high school. Attention from girls swelled their heads, turning them into arrogant assholes. Clay wasn’t self-absorbed, just the opposite. He was unaware of how his green river eyes, callused hands and tuft of chest hair that scurried out of his shirt collar affected me.  “Seems y’all had some fun this afternoon. How come you didn’t invite me?”

“I don’t have your number.”

“You do now,” he said, penning his digits on top of my paperwork. “Listen Rachael, I’d prefer to get you back to Grogan myself, but the infirmary is short-staffed and we’re overwhelmed with snow-related injuries. I can’t leave right now, but I’d like to stop by tomorrow. If that’s okay?”

“Are you medically qualified to check on my injury? Or are you flirting with me?”

A loud speaker asked him to report to the front desk. He laid my paperwork on a moveable table.

Clay failed to squelch a grin. “Yes to both your questions.”

MACY RANKED THE HIGHEST in the sane and sober category and drove Big Blue the .5 miles back to Grogan. No one had ventured where road, sidewalk and lawn melded into one, and she crawled through the virgin snow, using streetlamp posts as a guide. The infirmary’s vending machine selection of Ho Ho’s and stale pig rinds wasn’t an adequate sweet and salty snack for Hugh and Katie Lee. The two fixated on creating a nacho-pizza, and Macy dropped them off near the cafeteria. Under the cast of lamplight, we watched them kick ankle deep snow, en route for a late night nosh session.

Under a veil of flurries, Macy parked Big Blue behind Grogan. Draping my coat over my shoulders, the arms flapped like kite tails. Linking her arm in my free one, Macy guided me up the unshoveled stairs.

“Question for you. Did we just leave Clay Sorenson at the Campus infirmary, or was that a hallucination?”

Macy clenched me tight. “That was Clay-boy.”

“Recap please.”

“After you fell, you couldn’t move. Hugh and Katie Lee got you to the infirmary.”

My shoulder pinged. “I’m with you so far. What about Bridget?”

Macy unlocked the lobby door. “She couldn’t walk without crashing into inanimate objects. She went to her room to sleep off the whiskey.”

“Katie Lee and Hugh drove me -– drunk?”

“They didn’t drive you. They pushed you.”

I shook wet snow off my hair. “What?”

“There was a racket outside my room. When I came out, your drinking buddies had you in a rolling luggage cart.”

“Quit messing with me. How did I get to the infirmary?”

Macy tapped seven on the elevator key pad. “You know the yellow plastic bins on wheels?”

“The ones we used to move our stuff in the first day?”

Macy didn’t bother to stifle a laugh. “The lunatics filled one with pillows. They loaded you in and wheeled it across campus. Your fantasy man scooped you out.”

“Clay carried me?” My chest tightened. He had enveloped me in his arms, warmed me against his chest, and I didn’t remember. “Did he check me out--medically? Wait a minute. How do you know all this?”

“Someone had to make sure they didn’t leave you to freeze. I followed behind the three of you in big blue.”

“Did he say anything nonmedical to me? You can tell me. Good, or bad, just be gentle with the ugly.”

“Rach, he likes you. He was overly protective and got you into a room right away. I managed Pixie and Dixie in the lobby while he and a nurse adjusted your shoulder.”

“He said he wants to stop by to check on me.”

“Make sure you’re showered and have clean sheets on the bed.”

“Macy!”

“A girl needs to be prepared.”

“Speaking of being prepared, are you on friendly terms with Hugh?”

“Better than friendly.”

“Do tell.”

“I’ve decided to pretend what happened--never happened.”

“We need to talk this one through.”

Outside my door, Macy yawned. “Tomorrow.”

“Thanks for watching out for me.”

Macy winked, and I opened my door. My bed rested on the floor.
Who pulled the loft apart?

“What happened to you? Get caught playin’ in a possum trap?”

I sunk into the armchair and looked at the digital clock. It was midnight. “Nash, what are you doing here?”

NOTE TO SELF

Jack Daniels is no friend of mine. He must be related to bathtub dew.

28

T
hat’s
N
ot
A
S
peed
B
ump

I
awoke to a room filled with gray shadows, and as lunchtime approached, the sky hung in an almost unnoticeable cast of light-hued pewter. My legs draped over the arms of the paisley chair in our room, and I squeezed a palm-sized ball filled with dried beans. Clay had stopped by the day after the loft incident to check on my shoulder. He showed me a few arm-flexibility exercises and gave the squeeze sack to me.

The way I toyed with it, you’d think I had a nervous condition. It was mental, but I liked placing my fingers on something that he’d given me. Okay, so he didn’t give it to me as a gift. It was supposed to help strengthen my shoulder, and the campus infirmary had charged me seven dollars. Regardless, it reminded me of his strong hands touching my shoulder and sent me into a dreamy fantasy of being in a hot and sweaty tangle with him under the sheets. I had Clay’s handwritten phone number, which I kept in my pillowcase, and I knew where he worked. Now I needed a foolproof plan that didn’t involve stalking or anything obviously psychotic to get some quality alone-time.

Macy popped into our room and asked Katie Lee if she could borrow her electric typewriter. “Hi Macy,” I said. She ignored me and positioned her stance, so I had a view of her back.

“I’m sorry I misplaced your hooded sweatshirt. If I don’t find it, I’ll buy you a new one.”

The back of her head faced me. “Thanks for reminding me. It cost forty-eight dollars,” she said, then marched back to her room with the typewriter.

 I shrugged at Katie Lee looking for perspective regarding Macy’s chilly temperament, but she was preoccupied abusing the push button phone. She’d mangled the cord into something that resembled a macramé belt I’d made at Girl Scout camp, and when she slammed the phone into the cradle, her left ear coloration glowed like an atomic fireball. She complained, “Where the hell is he? It’s been five days.”

The night I’d slipped out of my loft, Nash had shown up on his way to a “gig,” And Bridget had let him into the dorm. Since I’d hovered in incoherence and Katie Lee was southern, our door had been unlocked while I was at the infirmary. He thought he’d surprise Katie Lee and waited. When I arrived without her, he’d paced around the room, moving from the top of her desk to the dresser. My head pounded, I wore an ice pack under my bra strap and my balance wasn’t exactly stable. Nash acted like the Energizer Bunny, and I threatened to pull out his battery. Once he anchored himself in a sitting position, I garbled semicoherent portions of an afternoon spent with my liquid nemesis. Nash half-listened. His eye wandered from the view of a passing student down below the window, to our closed door. I’d sprawled on my bed, and Nash had offered me a soda, with a straw and I washed down three Ibuprofen he’d fetched from a container of medicine in Katie Lee’s drawer. He gave me an extra pillow and tucked a blanket around me, not leaving any loose corners.

“Nash, how do you know when you love someone?”

He sat still for a minute then chuckled. “They sizzle your insides, and you do the same for them.”

“Not sexually. I mean in your heart.”

The heater under the window made a clicking noise before it kicked on and blew warm air.

Nash turned out my desk lamp. “You know you’re in love when you do what’s best for both of you.”

My eyes felt heavy. Before I closed them, I said, “Katie Lee doesn’t care about money, she cares about you. Whatever scheme your in is going to backfire.”

Nash kept quiet. I wondered what he was doing, but was too tired to check.

“Whisky-swillin’ has you talkin’ crazy. So where is Katie Lee exactly?”

Without opening my eyes, I garbled, “Making nacho-pizza with Hugh.”

I remember hearing our door click shut. When I awoke, shades of gloom streaked through open blind slats. Fully clothed, Katie Lee lay asleep on top of her bedding. Nash had vanished and I wondered if I’d imagined seeing him, but Macy verified that he hadn’t been a figment of my imagination.

Katie Lee slept into the afternoon. After she drank a Pepsi, she crawled back into bed, and I asked if Nash had found her.

“Rach, I never saw him. He didn’t tell me anything about a gig.” Katie Lee pressed all ten of her fingers into her eyebrows as though they were antennae providing clairvoyance. “My boyfriend shows up unannounced then leaves without a word or even a note?”

DESPITE THE FRIGID TEMPERATURES and snow on the ground, major highways had been cleared and classes resumed. Walking back from class, I longingly reminisced the August heat and humming cicadas. For four days, I’d witnessed Katie Lee unsuccessfully phone-stalk Nash. On day five, she slammed the hand-held in its cradle. She grabbed her pink ski coat and tied a scarf around her neck. As she placed a hand on the doorknob, a tear escaped her eye. “That’s it. I can’t live like this. It’s over.”

I waited a minute, weighing the sincerity of her words. I’d never seen her so rattled. She and Nash had fought before, but they never broke up. Nash, a professional smooth-talker, had always made nice before the breaking point. He’d have to dig deep in his bag of grovel to fix this one. This was epic, and before I lost my nerve, I zipped across the hall.

Macy plucked typewriter keys with a single finger. I stood behind her and peered at the words she typed.
The Third Gender, Somewhere between a man and a woman
, a paper for her Sex and Gender psych class. “Katie Lee is breaking up with Nash.”

“I’m not talking to you.”

“I’ll give you the money, I promise.”

“Rachael, I’m not mad about the sweater. I’m pissed that you told Hugh you knew we slept together.”

I puffed an air-blast, thinking that Hugh was screwing things up on multiple levels. “I did not. Who told you that?”

“Bridget.”

“Whoa.” I motioned my left hand fingertips to my right palm. “Time out. Who told her that?”

“No one told her. She overheard your conversation.”

“Bridget needs to mind her own business or invest in a hearing aid. I didn’t tell Hugh. He blabbed to me when we were snowed in.”

“He’s bragging?”

“He wasn’t bragging.”

“What did that fucker say?”

“Macy, he likes you. He’s having a hard time reading your signals and wanted my take.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I lied. I told him it was news to me.”

“Good.”

I flopped onto Macy’s bed. “He knew I knew. I told him I didn’t have any idea what you wanted from him.”

Macy pulled the paper out of the typewriter. “Shit.”

“What do you want me to tell him?”

“Rachael, I don’t want a boyfriend. I want to have fun. Being tied to one person puts a crimp on fun.”

“How do you know Hugh wants a serious girlfriend?”

Macy slid a piece of paper into the typewriter. “I can tell.”

“Did he say something in your moment of passion?”

“Can we talk about something else? Is Nash dead?”

Pulling apart a mini-Russian stacking doll that sat on Macy’s windowsill, I confessed, “Not that I can verify.”

“Then I don’t believe they’re breaking up.”

“They haven’t spoken in five days —- a Guinness record. This time he’s cracked her shell. She’s a broken woman. It’s our obligation to take her out and get her mind off him.”

Poking her head in Macy’s room, Bridget asked, “Who’s going out?”

I hesitated to tell Bridget, but figured she’d heard portions of the conversation. If I didn’t tell her the news, she’d construe a tale that would make me look demented. “Jeez, do you wear a Miracle-Ear? Katie Lee.”

“I have something for her. Is she around?”

Macy plucked typewriter keys and hit return. “It’s over with Nash. She’s going to dump him, once she locates his ass.”

Bridget’s enchanted eyes grazed past mine. “Is she now?”

We both realized that her secret lost relevance. Telling Katie Lee that Bridget had slept with Nash would only be spiteful and result in one or both of us losing her friendship. The destruction of Katie Lee’s relationship wiped the board clean between Bridget and me, and she grinned a wide smile.

BRIDGET AND MACY WAITED OUTSIDE our dorm room. I had on my coat and Katie Lee flicked the light switch. We’d brave the cold to help Katie Lee dull the sting of her problematic soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend at the tropical bar beneath the Holiday Inn. Nothing raging crazy. Just a few hours spent with friends, away from the dorm. My fingers encircled the door handle, ready to close it when the phone rang. We all stood in a holding pattern and stared. On the sixth ring, Katie Lee spoke without southern. “Rachael, will you answer it.”

A raspy drawl greeted me, “Hey Raz, how’s the arm?”

“Still attached.”

“That’s good to hear. Is Katie Lee around?”

I covered the receiver and mouthed Nash. Our mini-refrigerator chided in a low hum, but Katie Lee kept silent. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I were her. Ignore the call or give him hell and hang up. If she went soft and listened, girls’ night would be ruined. What could he possibly tell her as an excuse? Maybe he’d pull out the old alien abduction to explain his five-day, couldn’t-find-a-phone disappearance. It was the best explanation I thought of—at least the one with the most potential for flexible interpretation.