Louder Than Love

by Topper, Jessica

  “And how long have you called New York home?”

  He had to think for a moment. “I was in and out of the States a bit for work,” he began slowly. “Mostly in the eighties. I moved here permanently in 1994, so . . . crikey, it’s been ten years!” He swished the remainder of his beer around in the bottle. “Imagine that,” he added, more to himself than to me.

  “So how did the whole Maxwell MacGillikitty song thing happen for you? Have you done any other jingles for TV?”

  A nervous bark of a laugh flew out of his mouth, followed by a more subdued but still amused titter. “No, no . . . not my scene at all. My cousin . . . he works for the BBC and was involved in the development of the show. I think it was around 1998, we were down the pub, boozing it up on one of my visits home. He was telling me all about this brilliant kids’ show and this cat, so for a laugh, I started throwing out silly song lyrics. Before I knew it, I had an offer from the producers to submit a song, so I figured, what the heck, I’d have a go.”

  He leaned forward then, elbows on the table and arms crossed. “So Katrina—”

  “My friends call me Tree.”

  He smiled. “I think I’ll call you Kat.”

  I let out a laugh. “My grandma used to call me that. Okay. I’m fine with that.”

  “Have you always lived here, Kat?”

  “Born and raised here in Lauder Lake . . . moved to Manhattan at eighteen for school . . .” Neat and tidy short version or long and painful torturous version? I decided to go with the former. “. . . and moved back here with Abbey in 2000.”

  I hadn’t really noticed his goatee until he began to rub it musingly. It was slightly darker than the hair on his head and started with a little soul patch under his bottom lip. I had never been a fan of much facial hair, but I decided I liked his.

  “So . . . Abbey’s dad. He . . . he’s gone, then?”

  “Just before her first birthday, yes. I . . . It’s hard to talk about it. We’re doing okay,” I managed.

  Instead of the usual head-tilt/auto-reply of “I’msosorryforyourloss” people tended to offer before moving on to a safer topic, Adrian actually gripped both of my hands across the table, riveted his eyes on me, and murmured, “Bloody hell, Kat. How old was he?”

  I let my hands be held as I answered, gazing at them intently. If I stared and didn’t blink or look away, I could possibly stave off the tears.

  He shook his head, sighing. “Twenty-nine is no age. How do you go on?”

  “There are times when my grip on reality gets slippery,” I admitted. I still couldn’t look up at him for fear I would lose control. New topic, my brain screamed. I concentrated on his fingers gripping mine. “Can I see your ring?” I asked, grazing my right pinky against the ring on his left.

  “This? I’ve had it for yonks.” He slowly extricated his hands to pull off the ring and plunk it into my palm. “Picked it up in my travels somewhere.”

  I turned the band around to read it. We know what we are circled the outside. On the inside was inscribed but know not what we may be. I recognized the quote from Hamlet. “It’s a nice thought . . . taken delightfully out of context,” I pointed out, sliding it back across the table to him.

  “Oh?”

  “Sure, considering Ophelia was a raving lunatic at that point.”

  “I’m impressed.” He held the ring to his eye and looked through it as if it were a spyglass before slipping it back on. “No one I know has ever placed it.”

  “Don’t be.” I laughed. “I was the understudy for Ophelia in our high school play. Never actually had to go through with it.”

  Adrian ordered a second beer. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, eh?” he joked.

  “Always a playground instructor, never a killer,” I quipped back, raising my wine glass.

  “Now wait . . . I know that one—Morrison?” He pointed his fork at me. “I can’t believe you quoted Shakespeare and the Doors in the same breath.”

  “Yeah, I’m kind of a walking Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Probably why I became a librarian in the first place.”

  “I must confess . . . when you wrote me and told me you were a librarian, I thought you would be much older.” I giggled, not daring to tell him I’d imagined he’d be much younger. “You know, that dowdy Marian the Librarian stereotype. You definitely shattered my expectations.”

  I blushed. “It’s all right; it’s not the first time I’ve heard that.” Two matching hipster hairstyles bobbed past the window, and my neighbors Chuck and Kyle entered, waiting in the frosted glass vestibule to be seated. The restaurant had been steadily filling up while Adrian and I were busy chatting, but I had hardly noticed anything beyond our intimate table. “It took me a while to make my peace with it. I’d practically hide under bar stools in college when guys asked me about my major. You know, those types of questions that always come up on that first date.”

  “Brits normally don’t use ‘So what do you do?’ as a breaking-the-ice kind of thing,” Adrian explained, draining half his beer in a smooth fluid swallow. “We’re too worried about sounding impolite. And it’s not terribly imperative in the grand scheme of things.”

  “That’s actually refreshing to hear.” I dabbed my lips with my napkin and made a mental note not to ask what else he did besides sing about cats. “One thing I loved about my job was being able to find out about anything. I loved the challenge. Being able to prove the existence of something, that was cake. But having to prove something didn’t exist, well . . . that was infinitely harder.”

  Adrian pondered that notion for several moments. I enjoyed watching his eyes, amused and intelligent, flicker across my face as he intently absorbed what I had to say. “I get that,” he mused, rolling up his sleeves as our entrees were brought out. Four black paw prints were tattooed on his arm in an uneven pattern, as if a cat had walked through paint and then tiptoed up his forearm. He saw me sneaking glances at them. “I’ve got a thing for cats, as you may have guessed. Osirus, a cat I had back home, inspired these.”

  I proudly displayed my own feline-inspired ink, tilting out my right ankle for him to inspect. “My one and only. Inspired by an illustration from a children’s book, Catwings. By Ursula K. Le Guin. I got it with my first library paycheck, in fact.” I remembered my chipped toenail polish then and hastily pulled my foot back under the table. “It’s now one of Abbey’s favorite books. ‘Mrs. Jane Tabby could not explain why all four of her children had wings. “I suppose their father was a fly-by-night,”’” I recited, laughing. “It’s sweet and quirky.”

  “Your Abbey seems sweet and quirky. How old is she again?”

  “Four and a half. She’s a character! I marvel at her every day.” I couldn’t resist listing some of her unique qualities with pride. How she could draw for hours, with her favorite subject being rainbows and her medium of choice being the scented marker. How she had a love for seventies soul tunes and Christmas songs in June. “How about you, any children? Is Natalie your daughter?” I noticed a muscle twitch in his jaw and hoped I hadn’t tread into dangerous waters.

  He contemplated an ear of baby corn that sat quivering on the tines of his fork. “That she is. I wanted to call her Chelsea after my favorite football club, but my ex wasn’t having it a bit.” He gave a short laugh. “So Natalie it was. My only child . . . twenty this year, believe it or not.”

  “That’s nice you dedicated an album to her.”

  “Well . . . I wasn’t around much when she was young . . . always working. Away a lot. I wasn’t too keen on writing letters, so I used to write her these songs. You know, just funny, queer little songs to make her laugh, and I would send tapes to her.” He sighed, fiddling with his ring. “The album was an homage, I suppose . . . but a little too late. We really have never had a close relationship. I was a bit taken aback, I guess, when you told me you had copies of it. Wherever did you find
them?” I explained the secondhand store and he nodded. “I recorded the songs on the fly in a friend’s home studio. The resulting CD was never for sale or anything . . . I think I had to order a minimum of a hundred for the manufacturer to press it. This was before most people had the ability to burn CDs from home, of course. Spot of luck they—and I myself—fell into your hands.” He smiled a weary smile, the wrinkles around his eyes creasing like Asian paper hand fans. I wanted to reach out and trace the delicate lines with my fingertips, to flutter down his cheeks and across his lips. The urge hit me quick and sharp, dragging me back to my reality: longing and desire such strange bedfellows with sadness and loss. My hands remained in my lap.

  “How’s the food?” I remembered to ask. He held up his hands over his spotless plate to admit defeat, and we both laughed. “I told you so! Would you like to try some of mine?”

  “No, thank you, I am practically too podged to walk as it is! Everything was ace. Good call.” He discreetly signaled for the check. “Don’t you dare,” he cautioned as I reached for my wallet. “Please just humor this poor geezer, will you? I’m in your debt for getting me out of the city . . . hell, out of my flat! Left to my own devices, well . . . drunkenness would have been the order of the day, I reckon.” His tone was joking, but his eyes reinforced at least a modicum of truth in that statement.

  “I’m glad I spared you from that.” I smiled. “Well, thank you. For agreeing to play this afternoon, and for dinner.”

  The front vestibule was now three rows deep with eager diners waiting for empty tables. A hand rested tentatively yet somewhat protectively on the small of my back as we threaded through the crowd. I was glad Adrian was behind me so he couldn’t bear witness to the silly grin that insisted upon gracing my face.

  Back in the car, we watched as the sea of briefcased commuters poured from the station toward Main Street. “If we hurry, you can make the 6:35.” I was suddenly very aware of the intimate quarters once again and had trouble finding the ignition with my key.

  “I’d rather kiss you and take the 6:55.”

  His lips had barely pushed out the words before mine sprang into action. The moment was beautifully surreal, as I had been imagining it vividly during the last twenty minutes at dinner. Catching his top lip between mine, I felt it broaden into a grin. It seemed my eager and bold assent shocked him at first, but he recovered quickly, threading his fingers through my hair and pulling me closer. As his tongue gingerly hit mine and his thumbs traced slow concentric circles behind my ear lobes, I felt a jolt firing up my synapses and waking body parts I had forgotten about.

  “Easy, tiger,” I murmured breathlessly, resting my forehead against his. He was breathing hard as well, and his body leaning on mine across the car’s center console felt warm. I touched his cheek and moved to kiss him again when I noticed his lips were swelling. His breathing had turned to a wheezing, and I could see the panic rising in his eyes. It was the same look Abbey had given me after that second bee sting. Help me, do something!

  My hands hastily went into autopilot mode, navigating blindly through my purse to find Abbey’s EpiPen. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this!” I gulped, flipping off the activation cap and plunging the auto-injector into his thigh. “One, two, three, four . . .”

  “Owww! What in bloody hell?” he managed to get out, sweating and shaking and, to my horror, slumping back onto the seat.

  “. . . nine, ten . . . I think you’re having an allergic reaction,” I exclaimed, but he had already lost consciousness. “Shit!” I tossed the EpiPen aside and massaged the injection site as I had been taught. Then I swung the car across the double yellow line in the middle of Main Street and gunned it. The closest hospital was in Peekskill and only six miles away, but with the onset of rush hour traffic, I knew it would take some maneuvering of back roads to get him there in good time. Luckily, I had spent much of my youth on the back roads.

  I kept checking his pulse with my right hand as I drove with the left, sneaking looks when I could to make sure he was still breathing. His wrist was clammy beneath my shaking fingers. Abbey’s EpiPen dose was only half of what an adult should have, so when we stopped at the next light, I fumbled in the glove box for another pen. It had been in there awhile, and I wasn’t sure if temperature could lessen its effect, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to give him a second dose. It would buy us another five minutes until I could get him into the ER. I counted to ten again as I rubbed his leg, thinking that this was definitely not the kind of intimacy I had had in mind twenty minutes earlier.

  A nurse and an EMT were outside of the Hudson Valley Hospital, having a smoke the requisite distance from the ER doors, and I enlisted their help to get him inside. “I think it’s anaphylaxis. He’s had epinephrine.” I clutched the two empty injectors as proof. They grabbed a wheelchair sitting vacant between two sets of automatic sliding doors and away he went to triage. I had a moment to gather my wits, move my car to a legal parking space, and wander in. The reality of the situation was beginning to descend upon me.

  “Mrs. Graves?” A hefty nurse thrust a clipboard at me. Her name tag read DAWN JACKSON, RN. Adrian was nowhere to be seen, so I could only assume he was being tended to. Before I could correct her or decide how to answer, she dumped Adrian’s wallet and cell phone into my hands as well. “Fill out the top portion and the section on insurance information and sign and date both sides,” she explained impatiently as another triage nurse, with an accent that sounded like South Bronx by way of Puerto Rico, began firing questions at me.

  “Do you know if he has any history of heart disease?”

  “No, I don’t know. He’s not my husband. I just met him today.”

  “High blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid disease?” she rattled off.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” I can tell you he likes Chelsea football and cats, I thought. But that’s about all. I felt uncomfortable going through his wallet, but the nurses and that clipboard with its blank pages were staring me in the face. “All I know is he had shortness of breath, wheezing, and swelling around his mouth. I administered .15 mg of epi right away, and then another .15 mg about five minutes ago.”

  “You a doctor?” Nurse Jackson demanded.

  No, but I play one on TV. “I’m a mother whose child has an anaphylactic reaction to bees. I had the pens in my purse and car.” I began to sift through the documents in his wallet so I could at least fill out the identification portion of the forms. I found his license and was surprised to see his first name listed as Douglas, not Adrian. He had a Central Park West address, very ritzy. Also interesting was a birth date of 1963; he was just seven years older than me.

  “I wouldn’t suppose you’d know if he had any allergies?” I shook my head. “Has he eaten anything in the last hour?”

  “Chicken . . . curry chicken. Beer.”

  “ICE?” Nurse Rivas, according to her tame tag, asked. “Does he have ICE listed on his phone?” I must’ve looked clueless. “In Case of Emergency.” She had clearly given up any hope of my solving the case. “Check his phone under I for ICE; some people list a next of kin there.”

  He had nothing like that listed, so I scrolled through and looked for the obvious family members: Mom and Dad, Home, et cetera. No dice. I did find Natalie listed, with a 917 Manhattan cell number, but it was out of service. Not that I had really looked forward to talking to the estranged daughter anyway. Most of his contacts had odd names or were made up entirely of initials—AJ, Biff, KK, Mutt, Zakk. Many were 818 numbers, which I recognized as California, or overseas numbers with confusing dialing codes.

  Nurse Jackson was still hounding me. “Did he have any shellfish?”

  “No. Just chicken. I had shrimp in my dish, but he didn’t . . .” It suddenly hit me that our kiss must have triggered the reaction. “Oh! We, um . . . came into contact after I ate the shrimp.” Both nurses raised their eyebrows at me. “We kissed, and ah . .
. that’s when . . . oh dear.”

  Nurse Rivas murmured, “Hmm, yeah. You go, girl,” clicking her teeth with her tongue. Nurse Jackson allowed herself a smug smirk, not looking up as she scribbled something on a chart.

  “I know, I know, I know nothing about him,” I admitted, as if I were confiding in Marissa or Leanna instead of two nosy and judgmental nursing nazis. “It’s crazy.” What was I thinking? It had been pretty reckless of me, way out of character.

  Embarrassed, I turned my attention back to his phone. Under D, I found a number for a Dr. Rosenblatt. I called, hoping it was his primary who could shed some light on his medical history for the form. The snarky secretary who answered informed me she couldn’t reveal any information to anyone who was not family. “Can you at least tell me what kind of medical practice this is?” I asked, desperate for any clues.

  “This is one of Manhattan’s preeminent psychiatric institutes,” she huffed, as if I should have my own head examined for not knowing this information.

  With a click of the phone, I turned back to the nurses and admitted defeat.

  “It’s all right, honey, he’s conscious now,” Nurse Jackson informed me, hanging up a phone herself. “He’s on antihistamines and oral steroids . . . and he’s asking for you.”

  Hospitals intimidate me; similar to entering a church or synagogue, I always walk slowly and quietly through them feeling awestruck and out of place. I had never broken a bone in my life or needed surgery. Besides being born, delivering Abbey, and then her bee sting adventure, my hospital exposure had been very limited. The real kicker was the smell: always that same lingering odor of institutional gravy from the cafeteria mixed with antiseptic and old skin.

  I allowed myself to be led behind a curtain to Adrian’s bedside, half expecting to see him hooked to machines and tubes. To my surprise, he was sitting up in the bed with nothing but a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger and one of those oxygen nose prong things dangling around his neck, no longer in use. He was still fully clothed, which I took as a good sign. Surely they would have put him in one of those dreaded hospital gowns if they needed to keep him longer or required further examination. I wasn’t sure if my sigh of relief was due to his apparently successful resuscitation or the fact that I didn’t have to see him wearing one of those flimsy gaping garments. Seeing him puff up and pass out was enough excitement for one evening.