ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK

by Susan Griscom

  Adela blushed. She actually blushed, a lovely rosy color and I reveled at the thought that I caused it.

  “Um … I … You were in really bad shape.”

  “Yeah, but there’s one thing that keeps eating away at me and I can’t seem to shake it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, you know if I had been just a few minutes earlier maybe I could have saved my dad.”

  “Or possibly died in the fire with him,” I added.

  “Maybe. But then I wouldn’t have this ache in my chest from the feeling that I might have been able to save him.”

  “You can’t blame yourself for your father’s death any more than I can blame myself for not being with my family. The earthquake took your dad’s life, not you. It’s possible I may never see my family again, but I know I have to move on whether I find them or not. I’ll never stop looking, though.”

  “I know.” We sat silently for a moment, then I said, “We have to find a way to get out of here first, which I’m thinking on.”

  “I wonder what time it is. Do you know how long we were asleep?”

  “No. I’m guessing five or six hours.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah. I could eat.”

  “Me too. I’m starving. I’ll go heat up one of those cans of soup.” I watched Adela walk to the other side of the cellar. She turned toward me holding up two cans. Her face appeared like an angel’s in the dim candlelight.

  “Which one do you want? Clam chowder or cream of potato? Max took the other chunky chicken noodle and another one I can’t remember.”

  “Clam chowder sounds fine.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  I heard the match strike and the sizzle of the Sterno and then I heard some rustling noise from where Adela was. I could barely make out her backside and she turned and caught me staring at her bottom and quickly stood holding up a cardboard box. After she prepared the soup, she blew out the Sterno and walked toward me, carrying the box like a tray with two bowls of soup on top.

  “Look what I found,” she said, sitting next to me.

  “Scrabble.”

  “Yeah. How about a game after we eat? Do you feel up to it?”

  “Hmmm … I guess you haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what?” she asked before taking a spoonful of soup into her mouth.

  “Well, I don’t know if you want to play me at Scrabble. I am the Scrabble champion in the entire town of Pleasant Ridge, you know.”

  “Ha, yeah right. Well, you haven’t played against me yet. I’m gonna kick your butt.”

  “We’ll see about that, Dely.”

  She froze and looked at me.

  “What?”

  “My dad sometimes called me that.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I won’t call you that again if you don’t want me to.”

  “No. It’s okay.” She gave me a half smile and we finished eating. I wasn’t sure if I just made it into some secret group of special people in Adela’s life or managed to completely exclude myself.

  ~~ Adela ~~

  I really didn’t know if having Court call me Dely was okay. The nickname had always been reserved for only my dad’s use, but the way Court said it gave it a whole new meaning and kept alive the endearment of the silly name.

  Court set up the game while I took the bowls away and hurried behind the wine barrels.

  I winced at the sound of Court’s groans and barely finished my business when I heard a crash and hurried to find out what happened.

  Court lay on the sleeping bag groaning and squirming. “What’s wrong?”

  “The pains, they are shooting stabs of fire against my hand and my leg.” He moaned as his entire body jerked from the pain, accidentally kicking the board off the sleeping bag. All the little tiled letters went flying in all directions. “My leg, it’s on fire again.” He grabbed my arm, squeezing so tightly, I was sure that the blood flow to my hand stopped for a few seconds. “Please, Adela, make it stop. Make it stop.”

  “The pain meds must have worn off.” I grabbed the container of ibuprofen, dumped the last four into my palm and filled a cup with water.

  “Here, Court. Take these.” I shoved them into his hand and he popped all four in his mouth at once then guzzled down the entire contents of the cup of water before dropping it on the floor.

  “Adela,” he groaned. “I can’t stand it. The flames are shooting through my skin again, worse than before. I don’t know why. You need to take a look.”

  Chapter 19

  ~~ Adela ~~

  I had never seen anyone in as much pain as Court seemed to be. I questioned my ability to make him comfortable. I pulled one of the gauze strips off part of the burn, fearful of what I might find. Luckily, the burn didn’t look any worse, but he certainly seemed to be in more pain than before. I glanced around the cellar trying to think of something to do when it dawned on me. Up until that very moment, I didn’t know how the crazy coincidence that we sat in the middle of a wine cellar surrounded not only by bottles of wine, but barrels of the stuff had eluded me. The ibuprofen was obviously not strong enough and maybe it would help if Court drank some of the wine.

  I’d had wine a few times with Max while hanging out down here when his parents weren’t home. Wine made you feel relaxed and Courtland needed to relax. My parents loved wine. I remembered my mom saying she had a headache while pouring herself a glass of wine once. It was just minutes after Grandma Casteille left from a weeklong visit last Christmas. Shortly after my mom finished the wine, she was in a much better mood. Now that I thought about it, I was certain my mom drank the wine as more of a celebratory drink rather than medicinal. Especially after she slouched down on the sofa next to me with the glass of wine and whispered close to my ear, “Now I can relax.” I missed her.

  I patted Court on the shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  Most of the bottles had fallen during the quake, and now lay scattered on the cement floor, broken. Puddles of red wine mixed with some white gave some of the puddles a dirty pink color. But still, several bottles survived. A wine bottle opener had to be somewhere in the cellar, but with limited lighting, I couldn’t locate one, and I didn’t know how to work one anyway. I walked over to one of the wine barrels and studied it for a minute. Like all the others, it had a plastic plug in the side. If I could remove one of those plugs, wine would probably spill out. Yeah, spill out all over the floor. I found one of the barrels over on its side and rolled it until the plastic plug faced up. I used the end of the can opener to pry the plug out. It took me a while, but I finally got it. “Hmmm … how do I get the wine out?”

  “Look around for something that looks like a turkey baster.” I jumped at the sound of Court’s voice, unaware he was even coherent enough to know what I was doing, let alone hear me mumbling.

  I took the candle and scoured the floor around the barrels and sure enough, about four feet away, lay a plastic siphon. When I thought about it, I did remember Max telling me how they took sample tastes of the barrels to get an early impression of the wine so they could determine when it would be ready for bottling. He mentioned something about social events, too, where they offered barrel tastings.

  I shoved the plastic siphon into the hole and pulled it out. Nothing came with it.

  “Adela, you have to put your thumb over the top rubber thing and pump to get the tube to suck up the wine, then hold your thumb over the little hole so it doesn’t drain back out.”

  How did he know I was having trouble? I swear that boy seemed psychic sometimes. “Oh,” I said, trying not to sound too stupid or surprised. I stuck the clear plastic tube back in and pressed down on the black rubber casing and by golly, I had a siphon full of red wine. I accidently moved my thumb and red wine dripped out onto the floor. “Shoot.” Of course, the cups were nowhere to be found in the dark. I put the siphon down, took the candle and retrieved the cup I’d used for the water. Heading back to the barrel of wine,
I once again stuck the siphon in the hole and pumped up some wine, expertly releasing the wine into the cup like it was an everyday occurrence, filling the small container almost to the brim. I tasted the wine, cringing, but swallowed the nasty bitter liquid. I had no idea whether the wine was good or not. In my opinion, this awful stuff rated down somewhere between cough syrup and that green stuff my mom gave me when I had the flu to help me sleep, except this stuff seemed to be laced with a tart effervescence to add even more to my aversion. I was definitely not an expert, but clearly this wine needed to age a bit more. Somehow, I didn’t think Court was going to be too picky, considering the pain he was in.

  I walked over to Courtland and winced at the way the muscles in his arms and torso twitched, his eyes shut tightly together, his hands fisted on top of his chest and realized he must be fighting back the urge to scream from so much pain. Holding back my own impulse to cry, I asked, “Court. Can you sit up?”

  He blinked his glassy green eyes open.

  “I have wine here. Can you drink some? It might help take away some of the pain.”

  He nodded, sat up and, leaning against the corner of the wall for support, took the cup, and downed the entire contents before handing it back to me. “More. Get more.”

  “Um … okay,” I said and walked back to the barrel to refill the cup.

  I came back and handed the wine to him. This time he sipped and looked up at me. “This was a good idea, shoulda thought of it earlier. It’s a little bitter, though. I thought the Wendells produced some pretty decent stuff, but this … this must be fairly new.”

  “I couldn’t find a corkscrew to open one of the bottles.”

  “Oh.” He nodded and took a big gulp and handed the empty cup back to me again. “More, please.”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Adela, I’m going to die anyway. I might as well die drunk and pain-free.”

  I went back and filled the cup again. This time I didn’t hand it to him. I held on to it and sat down instead, scooting close to him on the side closest to the wall and leaned back against it. I carefully took his leg with the sprained ankle and lifted it onto my lap and smiled at him.

  Court reached out for the cup, but I held it just out of his reach.

  “Can I have that?”

  “If you promise not to guzzle it.”

  “Why not? It tastes like crap. Have you tried it?”

  “Yeah. I took a sip.”

  “And?”

  “You’re right. It’s crappy, but you’re getting drunk.”

  “And your point is?”

  I shrugged, not sure what my point was. I handed the cup to him, watched him drink it all and figured the wine was working, because the lines in his forehead went away and the muscles in his jaw relaxed. His body wasn’t as rigid and tight as it had been, his gestures a bit looser, a definite improvement from his earlier struggle with pain.

  “Adela, I think it would be totally awesome if you tried to find some more candles and searched for a corkscrew. Check the drawers—there must be several. I can open a bottle of wine. The stuff in the bottle’s gotta be better than this.”

  He was right, of course. The first drawer I opened had a corkscrew in it. I picked up one of the bottles from the floor, amazed that it hadn’t broken, and brought it and the opener to Court. Sitting back down next to him, I handed him the corkscrew and watched as he twisted the opener into the cork. As he pulled the cork up and out of the bottle, it made a little swishy popping sound. He grinned. “There. This should be better.”

  He filled the cup and handed it to me. “You first.”

  “I don’t want any.”

  He shrugged and took a sip. “Much better; you sure you don’t want to try it? It might help deaden the pain of what happened yesterday or was it a couple of days ago? I’ve lost track of time.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of using alcohol to alter my feelings about my missing family, but what would one sip hurt? I scooted closer to him and took the cup, placing the rim to my lips. This wine smelled better than the stuff out of the barrel, so I sipped. “Not bad.” I handed the cup back to him. “It’s weird the way your pain comes like that.”

  “Yeah. Maybe my nerves are beginning to heal and they’re feeling things again.”

  “Is that what happens?”

  “Beats me. Sounded good, though.”

  “What about that game? Still want to play?”

  “No. I’m not in the mood, but now that the pain isn’t so bad, I think I’d like to try to stand. My ankle’s not hurting so much anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I think with a little help I can do it.”

  “Okay.” I stood and waited for him to stand.

  He grunted and stood up. “Give me your hand just in case.”

  Instead of taking his hand, I held on to his arm.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? You’ve had three cups of wine and you are a little wobbly.”

  “Ha, Miss Castielle, it would take more than three glasses of wine to knock me down. Let go.”

  I released his arm and he swayed a little but managed to steady himself.

  “See? I can do it. Don’t underestimate the power of the male ego.”

  He took a step and fell into me. I grunted as I caught him, holding him up. “Yeah, you’re tough all right. But you’re not doing too badly for a guy wobbling around in just his shirt and boxer shorts trying to be all macho.”

  He smirked at me. “You know, you’re really pretty when you’re being sarcastic. It’s only because I haven’t been moving around a lot.”

  His lips were inches from mine and I held my breath. He straightened his body and let go again, taking a couple of steps. He stopped and turned his head back toward me. “I’ll be okay.” He slowly walked behind the wine barrels and I let him go.

  I plopped back down onto the sleeping bag and leaned against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest. When Court came back, he had another cup in his hand. “Here. Hold this, please.”

  I folded my legs in underneath my butt and took the cup as he sat back down. Leaning against the other wall in the corner we were in, he draped his bad leg over my lap again, then picked up the other cup and handed it to me. I held the two empty cups while he filled each one. He took one of the cups from me and took a sip. “That one’s for you.”

  “I don’t drink,” I proclaimed indignantly.

  “No time like the present to start.”

  “Drinking just makes people stupid.”

  “Hell, Adela. You’re going to be dead by the end of the week. Do you really think it matters?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Not yet, but gettin’ there,” he chuckled. “My hand feels better, that’s for sure. Wish you’d thought of the wine a day or so ago.”

  He took another sip and stared at me; our gazes locked for a few seconds. “You have very large brown eyes. You know that?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Beautiful ones, too. Yeah, and they have these tiny fiery specks in them that dance when you get upset. They sure danced a merry jig that day I walked Big Blue around the yard with you sitting on top, fuming at every word I said.”

  “How could you have seen my eyes when I was sitting on top of Blue and you were on the ground pulling us along?”

  He touched his finger to his eye. “I saw them. I couldn’t help but see them. The golden specks danced like little flames in your eyes.”

  “My eyes were flaming because you were berating me to my horse. Did you think I couldn’t hear you?”

  “Oh, I knew you could hear me. I wanted you to hear me. It was a stupid thing to do, especially after I told you not to try to ride him.”

  “He is my horse. I had every right to ride him.”

  “Not right after an earthquake. You could have died if I hadn’t grabbed the reins. He was headed straight for the fence and ready to buck. He would have trampled you.”
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  Court was right, but he was also getting drunk and I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition. I knew what happened when people drank—they talked. A lot. Max once told me a story about Tom Westerly, a guy he’d had a few beers with. Tom told him he had sex with Leanne Snyder. Max said Tom never would have told him if he hadn’t had all those beers.

  But having Courtland somewhat inebriated right now was better than watching him suffer in agony from his injuries.

  “I was berating you through your horse.” He laughed. “I am impressed that you actually got that. Good for you.”

  “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

  “Aw, don’t pout those luscious lips at me. I don’t think you’re stupid.”

  I stared, dumb-stuck by his “your luscious lips” remark and couldn’t say anything.

  “I take that back,” he said and took another sip of the wine. “I did think you were stupid to hang around Maxen Wendell most of your life, but other than that, I think you’re very intelligent in a magnificent sort of way. You are also very pretty. Too intelligent and too pretty for Max. Guys like Max, they just use women. I bet he never told you about Chelsea Arden.”

  “What about Chelsea?”

  “Chelsea was my friend. But like you, and every other girl in school, for that matter, she swooned over Max Wendell.

  “I don’t swoon,” I said defensively.

  “Ooookay.” Court grinned. “Anyway, Chelsea told me he asked her out. She invited him over one time when her mom and dad were out. Well, she didn’t really invite him. She said he just showed up at her door. She told him he couldn’t come in but he talked his way in anyway. The guy’s a charmer, that’s for sure.”

  I wanted to add, “Well you are too, if you only knew it,” but I kept it to myself. Court was without a doubt a hottie, but he never flaunted it, wasn’t an in-your-face kind of guy like Max. Court didn’t need to be the center of attention, so his rugged handsome features didn’t overpower the rest of him. He kept a low profile, blending in like wallpaper.