by W E DeVore
Fuck.
His hand reached for her breast and clasped it tightly, an action that normally elicited a gasp of ecstasy. Q yelped in agony as the swollen flesh screamed. She slapped his hand away.
Ben gave her a quizzical look. “What’s wrong?”
She smiled and pulled him to her. “Nothing. You’re just out of practice. Not so rough.”
His hand resumed its position, albeit a little more tentatively. Q sighed and relaxed into his touch until Ben’s caresses began to feel more like an examination.
She opened her eyes and asked pointedly, “Can I help you find something, Mr. Bordelon?”
He studied her torso for a moment. “They just feel different, is all. Like bigger or something.”
Q flipped him onto his back and quickly straddled him. “Are you going to fuck your wife already or would you rather continue giving me a breast exam?”
Ben pulled her back to him, intent on the former rather than the latter. The sudden vertical movements made the world Tilt-o-meter reactivate. Q’s eyes blacked over momentarily, and she pushed Ben away, escaping to the bathroom before she committed the least erotic act humanly possible.
Collapsing in front of the toilet, she threw up what little she had in her stomach, holding herself together while her intestines flipped themselves inside out. When her body stopped rejecting itself, she stood up on shaky knees to wash her face and brush her teeth.
Ben was leaning against the door frame with a worried expression.
“I’m taking you to the doctor,” he said flatly.
Q shook her head.
“There’s no point,” she said around her toothbrush. “There’s nothing they can do.”
His eyes widened in growing apprehension. She finished brushing her teeth, dried her face, and studied herself in the mirror one more time.
“I’m pregnant,” she finally admitted.
Ben took one long step and picked her up to kiss her. He set her down and fell to his knees, covering her abdomen with his large hand, completely enveloping her in his love and delight. His eyes ran over her face in wonder. “Pregnant?”
Somehow his joy calmed her fears and, thankfully, her nausea, too.
“Happy?” she asked rhetorically.
“Only way I could be happier is if junior in there would stop making you sick, so I could give you a proper welcome home,” he said, grinning up at her.
“Remind me again; what is a proper welcome home?” she asked, actually feeling better for the first time in days.
Q clasped his face in her hands and bent down to bring her lips to his. Ben kissed her slowly before picking her up and carrying her back to bed to refresh her memory.
◆◆◆
Two hours later, properly welcomed home and fresh from a shower, Q pulled on her t-shirt and inhaled the smell of fresh coffee wafting up from below. Her very empty stomach grumbled as she glanced at her reflection in the mirror of the antique vanity at the foot of the bed, discovering that the way the Mastodon logo was being distorted on her chest by her new-found friends wasn’t entirely decent.
She sighed and pulled her t-shirt back off, rummaging through one of her drawers for a very gently used sports bra. Another disappointment awaited when she slipped on her favorite jeans to find that they barely buttoned. She did a couple of determined knee bends, stretching the denim to accommodate her unusually bloated stomach before walking downstairs to find Ben. As she strode into the living room, she paused and stretched uncomfortably, trying to ignore the seemingly constant stitch in her side that had been flaring up for the past few days.
Ben was in the kitchen, listening to someone on his cellphone with a sullen look on his face. She raised her eyebrows in curiousity and he shook his head. Q shrugged and helped herself to a steaming cup of chicory from the coffee pot. She was stirring in the cream when Ben reached over her shoulder and lifted it away from her. Q turned and reached for her cup.
“Hold on,” he told the person on the phone. He held the coffee mug high over his six-foot-five-inch frame and said, “You’re not supposed to have caffeine.”
Q put her hands on her hips. “You’re not supposed to be an asshole. Give me the fucking coffee, Ben.”
She watched him weigh the costs and benefits of dying on this particular hill and was relieved to find that he knew he was about to be outgunned. He handed her back her coffee with a disapproving look. Q took it from him, sipping it in victory, just to rub it in.
Fearing reprisal, she went to the living room to drink her forbidden beverage in peace. Ben finished his phone call and joined her on the sofa.
“The ice maker broke last night and flooded the bar,” he said, scratching at his head and retying his hair back into its ponytail. “Thank god, Josh forgot some chick’s phone number, or it would have sat until Monday. I’m gonna have to go over there and check out the damage, call the insurance company… I’ll be back to pick you up before Sunday dinner.”
Normally, Sunday dinner with Ben’s large, close-knit family was a weekly obligation that Q was happy to satisfy. But after three weeks on the road and several days of having very little control over what remained in her stomach and what didn’t, she was tempted to beg off.
“I’m sorry, babe. But can we skip it?” she asked.
“It’s B3’s graduation party,” he reminded her. “I thought you were looking forward to it.”
Benjamin James Bordelon the Third, or ‘B3’ to his family, was the oldest, and until two Decembers ago, the only grandchild in the large Bordelon clan. On her last break from the road, Q had taken him over to Mikey’s Music Emporium to look at guitars and had surreptitiously put his favorite aside as his eighth-grade graduation present. Mike Ackerman, the owner of Mikey’s, had called her a week ago to let her know that he had it all set-up and ready to go.
Q instantly abandoned any idea of staying home, eager to see the look on B3’s face when he opened his gift, and the looks on her five sisters-in-law’s collective faces as she took her victory lap as this year’s ‘best Auntie ever.’ The competition between Ben’s sisters and her for this prize was fierce every birthday, Christmas, and life event. Having already won Christmas with concert tickets and backstage passes for B3’s favorite band, she wasn’t about to let the title go down without a fight.
She took another sip of coffee. “Where’s his guitar? I want to make sure Mike set the action low enough for him. It was a little too high when he played it at the store.”
Ben grimaced. “I forgot to pick it up, darlin’. I’m sorry…”
“Damn it, Ben. I asked you to do one fucking thing,” she yelled without thinking. She evened out her tone to a more passively aggressive form of hostility. “It’s fine. Just drop me off on the way to the Cove. I’ll pick it up and meet you back at the house.”
He eyed her with concern. “No, I told you I’d go get it, and I will. You stay here and rest. I’ll get it before I go to the Cove. You don’t need to come.”
“And leave it in the hot car? The hell you will,” Q interrupted. The roiling temper that had put her irritability on a hair-trigger for the last week rose to the surface. Lucky for Ben, she was able to push it back down again.
“Darlin’, are you alright?” He raised one perplexed eyebrow with an exaggerated expression, making her laugh and relax slightly.
“Ben, I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” he said. “I really think you should take care of yourself. Watch a movie or something. Take it easy.”
“You don’t need to treat me like an invalid, baby. I’m pregnant, not dying. I’m not going to sit around the house for the next nine months,” she argued. “It’s bad enough I’m going to be trapped here for the next eighteen fucking years.”
“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, reaching for her hand.
“Nothing,” she deflected. She squeezed his hand in hers and managed a passable smile. “I’m just on edge.”
He took her face in his hand
. “I’d feel better if you at least went to see a doctor.”
“It’s Sunday, and this isn’t an emergency. I’ll get an appointment sometime this week. Promise,” she replied. “I want to go get B3’s guitar. Get a little New Orleans in my lungs. Really. A long streetcar ride and a visit with Mike is the best medicine for me. I promise.”
“I’m not going to win this one, am I?” he asked.
“No, my love, you’re not,” she said.
Ben kissed her, acknowledging his second defeat of the day and went to the kitchen to make them breakfast.
After Q managed to eat a piece of toast with butter at Ben’s incessant insistence, they left the house. As they drove, Ben began planning how they should tell his family the news about the baby at dinner that afternoon. Q shut down the conversation flat, telling him that no one was to know until after they’d seen a doctor and confirmed everything was alright. The look of disappointment on Ben’s face physically hurt her, but she refused to give in. The more he talked about it, trying to convince her to let him make the announcement right away, the angrier she got.
By the time they pulled up to Mikey’s Music Emporium on Tchoupitoulas, her fuse had burned down to the last stop before rage stroke, and she could barely contain her frustration. Ben stopped the engine and turned in his seat to look at her.
“You sure you’ll be alright, darlin’?” he asked. “Why are you holding your side like that?”
She glanced down and realized she’d been rubbing the right side of her torso, futilely trying to ease the sharp pain that just wouldn’t go away.
“For fuck’s sake, Ben, I’m fine. It’s just a stitch in my side. Just go and take care of the Cove before our only means of income floods out and we go bankrupt,” she said, trying to exit the car before she completely lost control of her irritation or her breakfast as her stomach began to churn with dissatisfaction.
“Is that what’s wrong? Is that what you meant back at the house?” he asked. “Darlin’, we talked about this. Nothing’s going to change…”
“Oh really? And how in the hell is that going to work? Ben, I don’t want to talk about this right now, please.” she said, feeling the instability of her anger teetering on the edge of an emotional explosion that she didn’t think she’d be able to contain.
“Q, tell me what’s wrong,” he said, holding her hand so that she couldn’t escape. “I’m not leaving until you tell me, so you may as well get it out now.”
“Ben, I’m holding on by my fingernails here. Please let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong,” he insisted. She tried to pull away, but he held her hand fast.
Boom, motherfucker.
“You want to know what’s wrong? Fine. Let me see… what could possibly be wrong with me, Ben? I’ve been on the road for the last three fucking weeks and have puked at least once a day for the last four. When I’m not throwing up, I’m dizzy. My tits hurt. My side aches. I can barely button my jeans. I’m going to have to quit the band that I started and worked to build for the last decade. I’m not going to get to play those shows with Dark Harm, which means I’m going to owe the Prince of Fucking Darkness himself ten thousand dollars and be on the receiving end of a mile-long list of recriminations. All because you refuse to wear a fucking condom now that we’re married. Is that enough for me to be in a bad mood, or should I add that my fucking husband can’t remember to do the one damned thing on his honey-do list and pick up the guitar for his own damned nephew?” she hissed.
Ben pulled back in bewilderment and held up his hands in a defensive pose. “Darlin’….”
“Don’t you fucking ‘darlin’’ me, you asshole,” she exclaimed, her temper flooding her bloodstream with raw adrenaline. “You wanted this. You got it. I told you I wanted to fucking wait. But you just couldn’t. You fucking planned this. You showed up in Atlanta and fucking planned this. So, forgive me if I’m a little on edge; because guess fucking what? The cherry on top of this motherfucking shit sundae is that I have zero interest in having a baby or being a mother.”
Her statement hung between them like a firmament and she instantly regretted it, wishing she could swallow back the venom she’d just spat out. Ben dropped her hand and stared at her as if she’d suddenly transformed into a stranger. She opened the door and got out of the car before the one-sided argument went any further, saying, “Just go. I’ll get B3’s guitar and meet you back at the house.”
She slammed the door and walked to the safety of Mikey’s Music Emporium. But Mikey’s couldn’t give her any quarter. It was ten minutes after noon and, as usual, no one had shown up to unlock the store yet. Hearing Ben open the car door, she turned to the window beside the entrance and regarded its contents, folding her arms and keeping her back to him.
His reflection appeared beside hers in the window, looking at the ukulele she was pretending to admire.
He stroked her hair for a moment and said, “Buy it. Get yourself a new instrument or some of that recording stuff you’ve been eyeing. Just please believe me when I say we’ll work it out. I didn’t plan this any more than you did, darlin’, and I know you’re scared and upset, and I don’t blame you. But trust that I didn’t marry you to turn you into a housewife. I’ll see you back at home later. Go get some New Orleans in your lungs.”
He left before she could answer, and she hung her head in shame, blinking back the tears that refused to disperse on command. She took a deep breath and leaned against the windowed wall, sliding down the sidewalk to watch the minimal Sunday traffic on the street and the tall container ship making its way down the river on the other side of the levy.
After waiting thirty impatient minutes for the store to open, she finally pulled out her phone to call Mike on his cell.
“Hey Mike, it’s Q Toledano. I need to pick up my nephew’s guitar; you said it was ready. Also, the husband wants to treat me, and I have my eye on this ukulele in the window. Come open up, already, will you?” she said to the voicemail.
After another fifteen minutes, she decided to go rouse the owner of Mikey’s Music Emporium from his Sunday morning hangover. She walked to the corner to cross the street, before turning away from the river and heading the five blocks up to Mike’s house. Close enough to the parade routes for a bathroom stop and a bowl of red beans, Mike’s Mardi Gras day parties were an annual tradition for most of the uptown New Orleans musical community. Q had missed more parades than she could remember after being sucked into the all-day jam vortex that was a Mike Ackerman Mardi Gras party.
She strolled down the narrow sidewalk, stepping over the crumbling paving bricks under the arches of the crepe myrtles that enclosed it. A feral cat napping in a spot of sunshine hissed at her as she passed by, making her jump. Q laughed at her own skittishness and took a deep inhale of the fragrant sweet olive tree that towered over the low house across the street, its heavily burdened branches filling the narrow avenue with their citrus-tinged blossoms.
As she made her way through the cozy neighborhood, feeling like the only person in New Orleans, the peace that had escaped her all morning settled through her bones. The occupants of the narrow row houses were still hiding themselves from the early afternoon, and the cars parked on the street next to the odd garbage can were the only evidence that anyone lived there at all. She came to Mike’s block and jaywalked across the street, opening the low, wrought iron gate in front of his house.
Running up the porch steps, she brusquely knocked out the first bars of the chorus to ‘Daydream Believer’ on the front door. When the door swung open before she got her chance to cheer up sleepy Jean, she called, “Mike? It’s Q Toledano. You there?”
The house creaked an empty sigh, and an orchestra of cicadas rose to full volume. Q glanced around the otherwise silent street and peered inside at the visible sliver of the familiar living room before she moved to walk in. “Mike, are you alright? I’m coming in. You’d better not be naked in there …. or dead.”
Or both.
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As she pushed open the door, her hand protectively covered her abdomen. The instinctive action stopped her from crossing the threshold, and she hesitated. She backed away and pulled out her phone instead.
What’s the use of being friends with an NOPD homicide detective if you can’t call him on a Sunday afternoon to do his damned job?
Detective Aaron Sanger was breathless when he answered his phone.
“Sanger,” he grunted.
“Did I interrupt something, cowboy?” she asked, hesitantly.
“What?” he asked, confused for a moment until he realized what she was implying. “No, I’m just working out. You should try it some time.”
“That’s what gigs and sex are for, silly,” she teased.
“Why are you so obsessed with my love life, Clementine?” he asked, although it didn’t sound to Q like he actually wanted to know the answer to his question.