by Camy Tang
“ . . . so you see, only that little date on the patent really means anything . . .”
Eun-kee had something in her hand. Where did she pull that from? She had on the filmiest dress, it barely covered her —
Bang! The sound resonated through the rec room. The women in front of the TV jumped in their seats. What happened? Trish squinted at the screen, but she wasn’t close enough to clearly see . . . Wait a minute.
“ . . . and really, when you think about it — ”
“Oh my goodness, she shot him!”
It took a second for her to realize she’d shouted her thoughts out loud, and that she’d interrupted Lawrence, and that it was obvious she hadn’t been listening to him, and that he was looking at her like a particularly nasty fungi under the microscope.
He sniffed through his long nose — and so straight! It made Trish want to break it for him, except that was rather violent and it was usually Lex who was violent, not Trish — and puffed out his chest so she could see the lack of muscles under his polo shirt.
She smiled. “Nice meeting you, Lawrence.” She hustled back to the TV.
Rats, it was commercials. “What did I miss?”
The ladies were more than happy to enlighten her. “She shot him in the shoulder.”
“I thought it was the heart.”
“No, that might be fatal. It has to be the shoulder because they can’t cut his character.”
“Maybe they’ll draw out his death over a few weeks.”
Clara touched her hand. “How did you like my nephew?”
Trish shook her head and sighed melodramatically. “He doesn’t appreciate K-dramas.” She infused as much disappointment and disdain as she could into her tone.
The women gasped as if she’d said he was an ax-murderer.
Clara laid a hand over her heart. “I would never have insisted he meet you if I had known.”
“Your friend certainly likes K-dramas.” Sumiyo pointed toward Kazuo, talking animatedly with another lady about the show. A sly smile. “He’d make a good husband. No fighting over the remote control.”
Oh brother. Hmm, wonder if Grandma had asked them all to plead Kazuo’s case for him? It wasn’t entirely unlikely. “We don’t suit.” She tried to look happy about it.
Kazuo appeared as if summoned. “I must ask you something.”
It silenced all the chattering women in a heartbeat. They turned bright, expectant eyes on the two of them, who were conspicuously standing on the fringes of the TV-watching group.
Oh, no.
“I need you back in my life. You are my muse, my creativity. How can I show you that I am nothing without you?”
Coming off of Lawrence’s arrogance, Trish had an easier time resisting Kazuo. “You’ll find someone else — ”
“I heard you are in need of housing again.”
Well, she had told Mom. Of course Grandma would find out, and she apparently did a lot of talking to Kazuo. “I’m fine. I’m in temporary housing, and I’ll find something — ”
“Since you refuse to live with me, I will leave my apartment.”
“But your parents pay for your apartment.” And pretty steeply, too.
“I will leave so you can live there. I need you. Come back to me.” He grabbed her and kissed her.
Kazuo kissed perfectly. His firm lips were urgent but not brutal, his hands clasped her waist with the force that said, “I need you,” but not too hard, the heavenly scent surrounded her . . .
“Trish!”
The voice screeched through the stars she was seeing and sent her crashing to earth. She managed to yank herself away from him and turned.
Lex stood in the doorway, hands on hips, fire coming out of her nostrils. Well, not really, but she was certainly mad enough.
“I promise, it’s not what it looks like — ”
“It is what it looks like.” Kazuo tried to embrace her again. She shoved him away.
“It looks like you’re kissing him back pretty good there, Trish.” Lex’s gaze skewered her.
“No, he jumped me, I promise — ”
“Oh, it was so romantic.” Clara beamed at them.
“It was not romantic!” The blood rushed to her head and pulsed so hard, she felt like her hair stood on end. “It was awful!”
“Didn’t look too awful from here.” Lex leaned on one leg and crossed her arms.
“I don’t need temptation like that. You saved me from temptation. I really needed you.” She was grasping at straws, but Lex’s shoulders relaxed, even though her look screamed, You are an idiot.
“Well, here I am. Let’s go.” Lex turned to leave.
“Uh . . .”
“What?” She clinked her keys. “Are you seriously telling me you want to stay?”
“Stay with me.” Kazuo reached out his arm, but Trish slapped his hands away.
“Can I, uh . . . finish watching the K-drama?”
TWENTY-THREE
I thought I was going to die.” Trish tossed the remnants of their Chinese dinner — homemade from Jenn’s magic wok — into her dingy kitchen’s temporary trash can, a paper bag from Albertson’s. “Not just the kiss, but his declaration. The ladies acted like it was a marriage proposal.”
“Well, that’s pretty big coming from Kazuo, right?” Jenn’s voice was muffled as she talked into her chest (as usual). She scrubbed at their chopsticks in the sink.
“That wasn’t big. He was trying to break down your defenses.” Venus scraped the last of the leftovers into a Tupperware container.
It was seriously raining on her venting session that Venus had happened to be at Jenn’s house when she called to invite her here for dinner (well, actually she called to beg Jenn to cook for her because she couldn’t stomach another night of fast food). Not that she didn’t love Venus, but while Jenn would commiserate, Venus would tell it like it is. Trish was not in the mood for realism.
“When we left, it was pretty anticlimactic. Actually, all Kazuo talked about was the cliffhanger at the end of the K-drama.”
Jenn started laughing.
“Jeeeeeennnn.”
“I can’t help it,” she wheezed. “Maybe you can bribe him away with a K-drama cruise.” She giggled.
Trish leaned against the counter. “Lex hated the K-drama. She kept whispering that she thought we should leave while he was preoccupied.”
Jenn hooted. Even Venus gave a shout of laughter.
“Laugh it up. You’re not the ones staying in a dump.”
“How’s apartment hunting?”
“I can’t find a thing. I don’t understand it. I can’t stay here any longer.”
“At least the smell is gone.”
“I had to borrow an industrial-strength coverall from the clean-room at work, then I swept out the living room and left the windows open for a few days.”
“How about the bathroom?” Venus peered at the closed door.
“Oh, uh . . .” Trish swallowed. “I try not to use the toilet, and I don’t look at the ceiling. I’ve been showering at work.”
“You poor thing. Sounds stressful.” Jenn’s voice oozed warm fuzz-ies that wrapped around Trish and gave a sympathetic hug.
“Oh, come on,” Venus said. “It’s like camping.”
Trish lifted an eyebrow. “This from the woman who thinks staying at a 3-star hotel is ‘roughing it’?”
“I can’t go anywhere that doesn’t have wireless Internet and a pool.” Venus pouted.
“At least a forest smells better.” Trish paused, then gave the news that weighed on her heart. “Grandma called tonight.”
Both her cousins sobered.
“She offered that apartment again. Rent-free, if I’d get back with Kazuo.” She chewed her lip. She hadn’t exactly told Grandma no, but she hadn’t said yes, either.
“Don’t do it.” Venus was firm.
“God will provide housing for you,” Jenn declared. “Don’t let Grandma tempt you to do something God wouldn’t want fr
om you.”
“She said, ‘Kazuo’s a wonderful man, and you don’t want to be the next oldest single female cousin when Lex marries.’ ”
Venus chortled. “You should tell Lex what she said.”
“Are you kidding? If Lex had been here, she’d probably have started a fight with Grandma.”
Venus snorted. “If Lex weren’t Christian, she’d live with Aiden and never marry him just to give Grandma grief.”
“You’re so mean to Grandma.” Jenn spoke with the firmness of an old argument. “She only wants a large family.”
“She wants to control her large family.” Venus’s look was dry.
Trish couldn’t really argue with that. She was one of the last people who’d want to upset Grandma, but even she knew Grandma had a thing about micromanaging. Lives, in particular. “I just feel so guilty. Grandma’s never been mad at me like this before.”
“She’s your grandmother, not God,” Venus said back.
Well, that put things in perspective. She’d call Grandma tomorrow and tell her no. Would she have decided the same course of action if Venus hadn’t kept her accountable? She was so weak . . .
“Well, I’ll keep looking for housing.”
Jenn finished washing up the few dishes. “There are new listings on the Internet every day.”
Trish nodded, her spirits rising. “There’s got to be something near work and in my price range opening up soon.” She stuck her hand on her hip and chirped, “I mean, it’s not like God doesn’t want me to find an apartment, right?”
Trish needed to go to the bathroom. She was at work — it shouldn’t have been a problem. No scary bathrooms here.
Except that twenty minutes ago, with her arms coated in orange-brown cell culture disinfectant, she’d put it off because she didn’t feel like going through a major wash cycle to get the super-detergent off her skin. Now, with her bladder ready to explode, she set the stainless steel sheet down, whether half-scrubbed or not, to make a run for the ladies’ room.
Her gaze landed on her cell phone, resting on the dry countertop, out of reach of the detergent and water. With stomach gurgling painfully, she had called Grandma, but her nausea had only gotten worse when she got Grandma’s voice mail. Trish had left a quavering message for Grandma to call her back. She wouldn’t call right this moment, would she? Trish would only take a second to go to the bathroom.
She stripped off her gloves. They hadn’t protected her forearms, but they allowed her to give her hands a quick rinse so she could touch doorknobs without fear of smearing orange Betadine all over them. She scrunched paper towels to dry her hands, then turned around.
Spenser stood directly behind her.
“Aaaaaaaaah!” Her scream made the glass windows to the biohazard hood resonate in counterpoint.
She tripped backwards, but her flailing arm knocked into the plastic pan filled with orange-tinted soapy water. Whoosh! The water cascaded onto the floor.
“The incubators!” Trish grabbed a stack of paper towels and raced to the edge of the puddle that lapped near the cell incubator units on the far wall. If water got to them, they might break or compromise the cell plates of studies inside.
The throbbing in her pelvis intensified in protest that she wasn’t headed for the bathroom. Trish gritted her teeth and laid down more paper towels. “What were you doing there? Trying to give me heart failure?” She didn’t look up at him as she spread smaller stacks of paper towels on the edges of the mini ocean to try to stem the flow toward the several-thousand-dollar incubators. “I didn’t even hear the door to the room open.”
No answer. She turned around to an empty cell culture room. Had she dreamed he was there?
Nope. He’d been smart. His head and a mop handle appeared in the glass window in the door. When he re-entered the room, he slammed the door with a deliberate flourish.
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Trish ran for more paper towels to border the edges of the spill. “Did you hear me just now?”
“No, but I knew what you were going to be saying. Something about how you never heard me come in.” He reached out with the mop and caught an orangeish rivulet that made a run for the far incubator.
She scowled at him but couldn’t deny it. How did he do that? He must be able to do that with all the girls. Well, except that they’d have to be invisible if he’d been talking to any lately, since she hadn’t seen him playboy-ing around.
Don’t go there, you dummy. She’d already blown her chances with him.
The Betadine water was also heading — although more slowly — toward the biohazard hoods on the opposite wall. She needed to stem that while Spenser saved the incubators, but the floors there were disgusting. She knew because she’d been intending to clean them.
She really wanted to go to the bathroom. She danced from foot to foot as she slapped on another pair of gloves, which stuck to her damp skin so she couldn’t fit her fingers in all the way With glove fingers flapping, she grabbed a stack of paper towels and ripped off the paper wrapping, made slightly difficult by the half-on glove. She stopped the closest finger of water creeping toward the equipment.
They worked in silence. She happened to glance behind her and caught sight of Spenser’s rather nicely muscled back. Oh, my.
And he had to see her now, like this.
She detested Betadine. It got rid of anything resembling a germ or mold, but it foamed up so much that she needed to do numerous wet swipes when she cleaned. Inevitably, Betadine, suds, and water ended up all over her.
She already had huge water splotches on her faded T-shirt — selected in anticipation of this thankless chore — and her jeans sported dollops of suds. Her hair had escaped her ponytail, so wisps stuck to her cheeks and probably stuck out of her head at wild angles. She usually had orange streaks across her face, and she saw an orange smudge on the bottom edge of her safety glasses.
Trish felt about as attractive as Shrek.
Plus her bladder screamed bloody murder at her.
She knew she really shouldn’t be staring at the attractive sight of Spenser’s backside moving while he mopped up the water . . .
He turned and caught her staring.
Heat rushed to her head and she knew she must be an interesting purple color, clashing with the orange goo on her skin.
Spenser gave her a wink before he turned back to mop more of the water.
Aargh!
She threw a stack of towels at another flank of invading water. “Since you’re here, I might as well tell you. I decided to volunteer for worship. I already called Olivia, and I’ll start next week.”
He grunted. “I knew you would, eventually.”
She had to stem a rapidly moving pool so she couldn’t turn and give him a swift kick in that nicely shaped behind.
“What changed?”
“Singles Group on Wednesday night.” Yuck, this floor was grimy with spilled cell culture reagent. “I couldn’t help myself during worship.” And might have condemned a poor boy’s eternal soul, but that was between him and God, right? “I knew I was pleasing God doing it, because I was being myself.”
“It’s kinda cool when you get into worship, you know.”
Trish jerked up but bonked her head on the underside of the cell culture hood table. “It is?” She rubbed her crown with her forearm so she wouldn’t get detergent in her hair.
“It’s . . . I don’t know . . . inspiring.”
She liked being inspiring. “Thanks.”
Her cell phone suddenly blared. She took small satisfaction that Spenser jumped a few inches. He actually had a couple moments of hang time.
Then the realization that the call was from Grandma slammed into her chest and stopped her breathing. She tried to strip off her gloves, ripping the nitrile cuffs, as it rang again. Breathe, come on, you have to breathe to answer it.
She splashed water on her hands and blotted her orange-dyed forearms with paper towels. Her entire arms had started to shake like she had palsy
. The room began to spin. She couldn’t make her diaphragm work to suck in some air . . .
“Are you breathing?” Spenser’s concerned voice came up behind her. He whacked her between the shoulder blades.
She coughed, hacked, and wheezed in a painful gush of air. She flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
“Trish, it’s Grandma. Was there something you needed?”
My life intact once you find out what I’m going to say. “Grandma. I, uh . . .” She crossed her legs and jiggled her foot in mid-air. She so needed to go. “I’m not going to take your apartment.” Something to be said for a teeny weeny bladder, it made that almost easy to say.
Silence on the line.
“Grandma?”
Click. Dial tone.
The sound screwed into her chest with wrenching twists. Grandma must be completely and utterly ticked off.
Trish rarely upset Grandma like that. Hardly ever. She’d always secretly sighed in relief when Grandma’s wrath fell on Lex or Venus without touching her. And now . . . She was going to throw up, because her stomach felt like she’d drunk sulfuric acid.
Spenser reached in and took her cell phone away. His hands were so warm, they burned her fingers. Then his arms, clothed in an orange-streaked lab coat, wrapped around her and pulled her close.
Expensive cologne, undercut by the fresh scent of Lever 2000 soap and a deeper thread of musk. He even blocked out the harsh tang of the Betadine. For a moment, she felt completely at peace.
She suddenly noticed her heart beating harder — funny, she thought it had stopped. The ache in her chest didn’t go away, and she still wanted to hurl, but both feelings had dimmed as if Spenser had turned down a stove burner.
Then she had to pull out of that warm scented embrace. She grabbed her stomach even as she headed for the door.
“Are you okay?” Spenser’s finger plucked at her sopping wet T-shirt sleeve before she moved around him.
She didn’t even pause on her way out. “I need to go bad.”
He’d enjoyed holding her. At the same time, he’d felt like a fraud.