Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  Oh, there was an f-bomb. And another.

  The argument rose in pitch suddenly, and then fell silent. An interior door slammed, and things seemed to cool off. She speculated that the combatants had retreated to their corners until the next round.

  “Well, that was exciting,” she told Bert as she went upstairs in search of her pajamas. “How Not to Relationship 101.”

  She and Drew were polar opposite of the doomed couple across the street, thank goodness. Their biggest weakness lay in failing to communicate, not the volatile, explosive battlefield across the street.

  Her phone rang as she was just finishing brushing her teeth.

  Speak of the devil.

  “Hello, fiancé,” she said.

  “Hi, troublemaker.”

  “How goes it?”

  “The apartment is weird and empty without Bert.”

  “I miss you, too,” she said, laughing. His deep chuckle in reply caused a tingle and a warm squeeze to occur deep in her belly.

  “How’s the patient?” he asked.

  For a minute, she thought he was talking about her, but she hadn’t gotten herself injured this trip—winning—and then she remembered she’d texted him about Lynetta’s visit to the ER and subsequent hospital stay. Once a doctor, always a doctor.

  “No updates yet. I’ll keep my phone ringer on all night in case there’s a change.”

  “Hopefully she’ll have an uneventful night and they’ll send her home tomorrow. Although sleeping in a hospital isn’t the easiest thing in the world—she probably would have gotten more rest in her own room at the nursing home.”

  “She has a crabby roommate.” Although why Lynetta even had to share a room with all of her funds was beyond Josie. Did the woman even realize how wealthy she was? Maybe she’d ended up in this situation because she didn’t have any offspring to advocate for her, to make sure the quality of her care was up to the highest standards.

  Cripes. Is that the role I’ve fallen into this time? Am I the relative who’s supposed to take care of her? Albeit, fake relative.

  “Well, let me know if I can do anything for you, even from here. I have a friend at Northwestern in the city, if worse comes to worse. I might be able to call in a favor if you need Lynetta moved out of there.”

  Josie wasn’t sure if the woman would do any better if they took her away from Lake Park Villa where everything was familiar to her, including the hospital and staff, and sending her to Chicago for a more in-depth consultation.

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that open as an option for her, if she wants.”

  She and Drew chatted a bit more while she let Bert take one last romp in the enclosed backyard—alone—while she watched shivering through the kitchen window. Her furry dog-son seemed immune to the cold. When he lumbered back up the steps to be let in, he wagged at her, tongue lolling as if to tease her for missing a good time.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll take your word for it,” she told Bert.

  “What was that?” Drew asked.

  “Bert says hi. He misses you, too.”

  “Sure he does.”

  In fact, Bert had eaten his bedtime cookie and shoved his way ahead of Josie up the stairs to their room. “Hey, he has unplumbed depths we may never know. He may be one of the greatest thinkers of our generation."

  “Kierkegaarrrrrrd,” Drew said, growling like a dog.

  “Heideggerrrrr.”

  “Jean-Paul Sarrrrrtre.”

  She laughed. “That was worse than mine.”

  “My flirt game is strong. Next thing you know, I’ll be texting you Socrates memes.”

  “Ooh la-la. Sexy togas and deep thoughts.”

  And hemlock.

  After a few more minutes of mushy goodbyes, she hung up and climbed into bed in the tiny attic alcove at the top of the stairs. The room was warm, the night was cold and silent, and Josie fell asleep quickly with the sound of Drew’s voice in her mind.

  Chapter 18

  …only to wake up two hours later.

  “What the ever-lovin'…?”

  The wind howled, and her little old lady of a house shuddered and groaned. Even Bert, usually an unflappable soul, had left his pillow. He stood pressing the side of his body against her bed. She could barely hear his whine over the gale of the storm outside. She patted him on the head and listened, trying to decide whether Mother Nature’s tantrum was just a passing squall or—

  A torrent of sleet battered the roof. At least, Josie thought it was sleet. It could have been a dump truck's payload of gravel on top of the house for all the explosive rattle it made on the tiny mottled glass window and roof tiles.

  “That’s it. We’re going downstairs, buddy.”

  She gathered up as many blankets and pillows—including Bert’s—that she could carry and followed him down two flights of stairs to the living room. The air was chilly down here, and the wood floor icy under her feet, but the muffling of the storm noises was worth it.

  She pulled his pillow right next to the old couch that she barely fit on, and he immediately curled up and went to back to dreamland.

  “Seriously? Who goes to sleep that fast? You definitely take after your dad.”

  She put a blanket over him and then made her own nest of covers on the sofa. She settled in to listen to the noises of the storm. The house might be tiny, but the old lady had weathered over a hundred years of arctic blasts from Canada. Surely this one storm was nothing in her long history? Josie shivered and covered her head with a blanket.

  She thought she heard a door slam outside, but in this weather, whoever it was was welcome to cause whatever trouble they wanted. She wasn’t getting up to explore.

  The house creaked and groaned and released its peculiar and ingrained smell of warm cookies while the wood strained and stretched under the icy pummeling from outside.

  Despite her awkward position on the couch, she drifted off to sleep a while later. When she woke up, the sun was shining through the front windows and the morning was silent.

  The calm after the storm?

  Bert lay on his back with his legs in the air, sunlight warming his belly. He groaned and flopped over.

  “Rough night, huh?”

  After the storm spent its fury, she must have slept soundly because she’d missed a phone call. She listened to her voicemail as she jammed her bare feet into her boots and reached for her coat.

  “Hi. This is Ashley from LPV Hospital. We just wanted to let you know that your aunt is being released this morning. She said she didn’t want to bother you and that she’d just call the driver service from Pleasant Valley to come pick her up, but since it takes a while to get all the discharge papers together, I thought you might like to know if you want to come get her. Anyways.”

  There was that same weird way of ending a phone conversation—abrupt, yet rambling—just like Josie’s landlady had done. Was it a quirk of the region or the town? Or maybe the two women were somehow related. Lake Park Villa was a tiny place after all.

  Also, releasing Lynetta back to the very place where she keeps getting sick…how is that a good idea?

  She grabbed Bert’s leash. Just as soon as she took care of him, she’d eat a quick breakfast, shower, and head over to the hospital to see if she could catch Lynetta—and maybe convince the woman to stay another night in the hospital—or at least to let Josie drive her back to the nursing home just like any other fake relative would who had half a sense of familial obligation.

  As short a time as Josie had known the woman, she could already feel the ties that bind two strangers thrown into a common lot by odd circumstances growing and connecting them together. Like seat mates on a cross-country flight. Or kids away from home for the first time all jumbled together in a college dorm.

  As soon as Josie was at Pleasant Valley, she was going to ask to speak to management. Lynetta needed to be looked after more carefully. Someone had to supervise her foods and make sure no one was tampering with them.

  Bert danced his
front paws in place, his nails clicking on the hardwood floor as she untangled his leash and dropped it over his big, bony head.

  “I guess I don’t have to ask you if you’re ready to go.” Before she took him out she admonished him. “Now, be gentle.”

  She opened the door and blinked in the blaze of light and exploding sparkles. She may even have gasped at the utter majesty of the world that had been transformed around her. Every branch was encrusted with icy crystals that caught the morning sun like diamonds hanging from Mother Nature’s lavalliere necklace. Rapid blinking cleared her eyes, but she wasn’t sure whether they were watering from the cold or because it was so breathtakingly beautiful.

  Every leaf, every tree branch, and every porch rail and baluster up and down Lincoln Street was coated in icy, white jewels. Morning sun highlighted every shining rooftop and front hedge down to the tiniest surface, all the shapes and planes. The world was a crystal chandelier, a cascade of diamond-like opulence.

  The emotional force of this gorgeous spectacle struck Josie right in the solar plexus, and she was so overcome, she may have started rethinking her religious beliefs. Somewhere, in some other realm or meta-universe or whatever, was a god or fairy who had sprinkled the place with enchanted glitter. Magic was the only way to explain the incredible view before her eyes, and she may have teared up ever so slightly.

  “It’s so…sparkly,” she said, gasping. “Now, I get it.” Her breath came out in lovely cotton-candy puffs in the still morning air.

  The whole visit so far, she’d been wondering why a person like Lynetta would live in a climate like this when she had the means to pick up and head south for more temperate days. A warmer state would mean that the older woman could get outside and not be confined to her room for the duration of the season. But this magical vision in front of Josie right now, at this very minute, offered somewhat of an explanation.

  It’s just so freaking magical.

  The leash in her hand extended as she came back to her purpose. To Bert’s credit, he didn’t shove his way past her as he normally would have. Instead, he scuttled down the front steps at a gentlemanly and sedate pace for a dog who needed to take care of his urgent morning pee.

  Unfortunately, even the most gingerly taken step proved to be not careful enough as the sole of Josie’s boot hit the sheet of ice covering the entire front stoop and she careened down the rest of the stairs on her butt like a greased pig coming out of a rodeo chute. And squealing just as loudly.

  

  “Oh my lord, Precious! Are you okay?”

  Like a gangly guardian angel in ironed jeans, Aloysius appeared out of nowhere and came bustling around the side of the house seconds after she hit the ground at the bottom of the steps. Bert, who’d wandered off to do his business, had returned and sat next to her on the sidewalk. He patiently waited for her to get back up as if it were totally normal that she’d just slalomed down the stairs on her backside. For once, it wasn’t Bert’s fault; she’d lost her balance all by herself.

  Josie didn’t feel anything at first, but then the pain in her ankle kicked in, and she had to slam her eyes shut it was so intense. The Star Spangled Banner waved behind her closed lids and bells of torment clanged in her ears. When she looked down, one knee was tucked behind her, which wasn’t the injured part—no, the joint that screamed bloody murder was the hyper-extended ankle at the end of that leg.

  She eased her weight off the injured limb and a sharp, blinding agony stabbed through her ankle.

  “Ow,” she managed to whimper, as she gasped for breath.

  “My God in heaven, you went down faster than a glass of chardonnay at book club night. Don’t move,” Aloysius said. “I’ll help you. Just let me take Mister Man from you.” He transferred Bert’s leash from her hand to his and guided her dog up the stairs and back into the house.

  Both of them were nimble as mountain goats on the slippery steps, she noted with disgust. She eased the weight off her injured ankle, feeling like an idiot for not being able to execute the most basic of human functions—walking.

  “Not a muscle,” Aloysius emphasized again. He’d come back before she could try to get up.

  Like any misanthropist worth her mettle, she instantly and uncontrollably reacted with resentment and a string of curse words flowed out of her mouth like an ear-blistering eruption. If she were a dessert, she’d be a chocolate fountain…of f-bombs.

  “I was thinking of running a marathon, actually,” she said, when she caught her breath. “Just as soon as I get the feeling back in my foot.”

  For as spindly and wiry as Aloysius was, he apparently had the strength of a circus strongman. Before she could stand up, he scooped her up in his bony arms, carried her back inside the house, and deposited her on the couch.

  “Thank you so much. I owe you for this,” she told him.

  I might dislike all of humankind as a rule, but at least I have manners. Some of the time.

  He went into the kitchen and came back with a plastic zipper bag full of ice. “Oh no, we’re not done yet. I’m taking you to the ER to get that tiny little Mulan-Chinese-birdie ankle of yours x-rayed. You’re not getting gangrene on my watch, or whatever happens when you don’t take care of it—and you don’t have to repay me for the kindness, sweetie, just never go outside in your pajamas again. We’re civilized people, not beasts on the Wild Animal Kingdom.”

  Chapter 19

  For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Josie was back in the emergency department at Lake Park Villa Hospital. The waiting room was much busier with a collection of people holding their wrists and backs or limping like her. Although she was fully dressed now in a thick sweater and jeans—which had been no picnic trying to get over her screaming ankle—at least two people were still in their flannel pajamas, she noted. Or maybe that was their everyday Walmart wear. Who knew these days?

  She shifted around in her chair, trying not to jostle her foot—but failing, which made her gasp in pain. She dreaded the fact that she was going to have to tell Drew she was injured when she next talked to him—but at least it was an accident this time. No one had shoved her down. Gravity had been her only nemesis. All the same, her record for injuries on trips was getting ridiculous.

  “Girl, I need me some coffee,” Aloysius said, indeed looking like a junkie who needed a fix. He’d been sitting next to her, but now he was tapping his foot and jiggling his knee up and down.

  “There’s a coffee pot right over there.” Josie pointed to the other side of the room.

  He shivered in his designer-brand puffy vest and looked horrified. “That little girl just coughed near it. That coffee and everything in a five-foot radius probably has bubonic plague germs. Just look at her.”

  Aloysius’s alleged Patient Zero was currently skipping in place and swinging a pink mitten from either hand in happy, giggling circles, kind of like a G-rated burlesque dancer’s pasties. Although she was pretty sure she’d seen crocheted pasties in her stripper-pal Shady’s dressing room in San Francisco…which was a story for another time.

  “It looks like I’m going to be sitting here a while,” she told him. “Why don’t you go ahead and leave?”

  He was on his feet before she got the words out—don’t have to ask him twice—and he hustled out the sliding glass ER doors faster than she could say antibacterial hand wash.

  He told her to call him when she needed a ride home, even though she had no intention of doing so. He’d already helped her enough, including digging through her suitcase earlier and picking out her current outfit, which was the nicest shirt and a black cowl-necked Vera Wang sweater she’d brought with her, along with a jewel-toned infinity scarf her friend Susan had crocheted for her. She was better dressed than she’d been in months, and she didn’t intend on taking further advantage of his generous nature. She could always call an Uber or Lyft to get back to the house.

  They have to have those out here, even in the cornfields, right?

  Just as
Aloysius left, her cell phone rang, and she was so distracted by the painful throb in her ankle and the circus of people around her she didn’t check who it was before she answered—which nine times out of ten, she had come to regret after the fact.

  “Where are you?” a woman’s voice said without any other greeting. For a minute, Josie couldn’t tell if it was Lynetta or Greta. Luckily, Lynetta kept talking, and it became apparent which sister it was on the other end of the line. “After a wonderful night’s sleep, the hospital let me go home today. I was sure you’d be in to see me, so I wanted to double check that you knew I wasn’t at the hospital anymore.”

  “Actually, I am at LPV Hospital,” Josie admitted. “I slipped on the steps this morning and twisted my ankle. Just getting an x-ray to make sure I didn’t break anything other than my backside and my pride.”

  “Oh dear. I hope it’s nothing serious. I’ve never fallen on the ice myself, but at my age, it’s a lot more hazardous of course.” Lynetta’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Okay, my roommate was here, but she’s gone now. I just have a minute or two to speak candidly before she comes back. I don’t think she’s tapping our room phone, but I wouldn’t put it past her to know some heavy-duty spy tactics. I think she used to work for the government. One of those Three Days of the Condor bookworm spies intercepting messages from the commies like Robert Redford. She might even have been a double agent for the Russians.”

  Josie blinked. They’d been going along just fine. At what point had Lynetta’s story veered off into the Twilight Zone?

  Lynetta continued, “I try not to let her have access to my food or drinks—just like those young people, how they get roofies in their mojitos and cosmos at the bar—but now I’m wondering if she put something in my toothpaste. Do you think you could bring me a new tube of paste from the store the next time you visit? I like the cinnamon kind with the flavor crystals. Or is that coffee that has the crystals?” She paused to incorrectly sing the advertising jingle for a brand of coffee that Josie suspected might have stopped being manufactured in the eighties.