by Amber Foxx
Ruth, still enraged, glared after Dusty, who could be heard grunting and scrambling to his feet on the other side of the wall. She ran to the wall, stepped onto the rock, and pulled herself up on tiptoe to watch his limping sprint away from the house. As she did so, Ruth’s hand touched something snagged in the tiny peaks of the rough surface. A speckled feather. She stepped down from the rock, her anger appearing to weaken, and held the feather, her eyes active, her expression shifting from concentration to the dawning of an idea.
Dropping the feather and turning, she walked back to the oval path in the garden and began to imitate Dusty’s attempt at a sacred dance. She dissolved into silent laughter. Clapping her hands, she hastened into the house, grabbed a notebook from the chaos of newspapers, books, and magazines on the coffee table, and dug frantically through the heaps, shoving unwashed plates and full ashtrays aside to find a pen, and then sat on the floor and began to scribble in the notebook.
“Muffie as Wannabe. New obsession. Muffie thinks she’s a reincarnated Indian. Does this dance. Mix in with her other pagan stuff and lust for Native men. Muffie: ‘I don’t have to wannabe, I am.’” Ruth sketched the dance posture and admired her work, shaking her head with a low chortle.
As a glow of headlights crossed the front window and cut off, she glanced up with a frown, muttered, “Shit,” and walked to the front door. Opening it, she met a police woman coming up the walkway. The dog began barking.
“Ms. Smyth?” the officer said. “You reported someone in your garden?”
Ruth waved dismissively and started back into the house. “He’s gone.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“Stupid tourist. Gawking at art.”
“He was still trespassing. You don’t have to go talking to strange men in your yard at night. You did the right thing to call.” The officer hesitated, looking into the room behind Ruth. The Chow dog stood a few feet behind its owner, growling. “You sure you want to let this go?”
“Yes.” Ruth bristled, hand on the door. “I’m fine. Good night.”
When the officer left, Ruth closed the door and returned to the table to look over her notes. She lit a cigarette and nodded, smiling. The dog chased Pie across the room, but Ruth didn’t take her eyes off the page. She sat down and resumed writing, laughing to herself, and made another sketch.
Mae pulled out of the vision. Heartless, but not cruel. Ruth had no more concern for a homeless mentally ill person with an injured ankle than she did for a terrorized cat or a messy house or the staff at her restaurant. She hadn’t intentionally let Dusty die, but she didn’t see him as a human to worry about, either. Once she was inspired to make fun of him, she’d forgotten about everything, even treating the police woman she had summoned as an inconvenience to be got rid of.
When Mae opened her eyes, she realized how little time had passed. Jamie hadn’t moved other than to turn his head to look at her.
“She got distracted. Stopped in the house to write that sketch we saw tonight. Her wannabe jokes. So she never saw him jump, didn’t look where he went past the alley. She even sent the police away. So, in a way it’s her fault he died, but not on purpose.”
Jamie gazed into her eyes, and then seemed to process something, gears clicking in his alcohol-slowed brain.
Mae asked, “You gonna remember all this tomorrow?”
He sat up, juggled a few imaginary balls, caught one, and watched the rest roll away. He would hold on to enough.
Tired from the psychic work, Mae rose to put the tea mugs in the sink. She needed to use a crystal on herself and go to bed. Time to get Jamie settled for the night, too, while the roller coaster of his emotions had stalled out. She started for the living room to get her grandmother’s ruby to cleanse her own energy field.
“Jeeeezus. What’s that smell?” At Jamie’s exclamation, Mae stopped in the kitchen doorway. He pushed away from the table, regarding his legs with distress and shock. “Did I puke on my pants? Fuck. I’m fucking covered with it. Just shoot me.”
“No, sugar.” She couldn’t help laughing. “You fell in the apricots.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “Yeah, I did. Fuck. Looks like vomit. Jeezus.” He shuddered. “Hope I don’t.”
“You already did.”
“Fuck.” He sank low in the chair. “Clean. I need to be clean.”
He seemed to be getting less coherent again. Mae knew from living with her first husband that blood alcohol kept going up for a while after rapid drinking. Was Jamie still getting drunker? As sleep deprived as he was, it was hard to sort out fatigue from intoxication.
“I don’t trust you in the shower. You might fall down.”
“Bath,” he said to the table, and then faced her, suddenly anxious. “You don’t think—fuck—you don’t think I cracked onto you to get a bath, do you?”
“No, of course not. You’re the cleanest—” She cut herself off. Cleanest mentally ill homeless person I’ve ever met? “I’ll run a bath. Stay put. I don’t want you bumping into anything.”
Leaving him collapsed at the kitchen table, she crossed the living room to the bathroom. Behind the closed door she shed her clothes and stood at the sink, sponging herself clean of the day’s dust while his bath filled. A shallow bath, not deep enough for a drunk to drown in.
Her concern for him hurt. How had Lisa managed to live with him, always worrying what he’d do to himself next? Crash Test Dummy. Master of Disaster. Death Wish. Mae didn’t want him to be a mentally ill homeless person. He was a fire of life in spite of some strange force driving him toward damage or death. Was there any chance for him to heal? The ordinary existence she took for granted—not rich, not free of struggle or pain, but safe in her own solid, practical mind—would probably feel like some kind of nirvana to him. Had he ever felt that way? Would the fact that she’d closed off his visions help?
Wrapped in a towel, Mae went to the bedroom, closed the door, and got into her nightgown. On her way back to get Jamie she paused in the living room to take a few conscious breaths and cleanse her energy with her grandmother’s ruby. When she returned to the kitchen, she found he had taken his pants off, tossed them across the room, and resumed the same position at the table, in his pink shirt and white jockey shorts that looked too big for him.
Mae tried not to laugh. “What are you doing?”
“The smell. My pants. Didn’t want to puke in the sink.”
“That was real thoughtful of you.” In a way, it was. She picked up the jeans, carried them to the laundry room. The apricots did smell overripe. More laundry. Then she noticed—her clean clothes had been folded into obsessively neat little piles, the cups of her bras tucked into each other, her panties pressed into perfect little colored squares in a stack, her running clothes in another orderly arrangement, matching colors together. While she’d been in the bedroom trying to think what to do and he’d been so strangely silent, he’d folded her clothes. Her underwear. So intrusive and personal and yet so caring. She could almost feel him trying desperately to quiet his mind, to be useful to her and prove himself a good partner, trying to make order out of something, anything, after his mood or his visions had troubled him so much that he couldn’t play music on the street.
She left the jeans in the machine and returned to escort him to the bath, slightly embarrassed at being with him in his underwear. Jamie had long legs with that same ropy, sculpted look that his upper body had, as if all the fat had been drained from him. Mae thought of Hubert’s solid, perfectly proportioned body in contrast, and wondered what he would say if he could see her and Jamie.
He wouldn’t care. Hubert was probably looking at Jen in her next to nothings—Mae stopped the thought. She didn’t need to go there. She had enough on her hands and on her mind without that.
“Jamie, when I leave you, can you take off your underwear without falling and hitting your head on anything?”
“Dunno.” He sat on the toilet lid while she unbuttoned his shirt. “You won’t h
elp?”
“I know you’re drunk, but I really don’t want to see your,” she helped him out of his sleeves, “your ... all of that.”
“Take a bath in my grundies, then.” He moved to the edge of the tub and lowered himself into the water. “Ah.” He sighed, smiled, wriggled in the water. “Jesus. Fucking back to the womb.”
The wet cloth began to be revealing. Mae left the room.
“Let me know you’re conscious sugar, make some noise.” Asking Jamie to make noise—now that was a new twist. She tucked a sheet around the sofa cushions, added a pillow from her bed, and a blanket. He seemed to run hot or cold randomly. No telling what he would need. He would want Pie to hold onto. Mae found her in her little cat bed. Once Jamie got settled, she would deliver Pie. They’d both like it, man and cat.
In the bath, he began going through vocal scales. Good sign, not passing out, staying peaceful.
What would Jamie do after she left? She couldn’t stand the thought of him sleeping outside, even if he’d blown a lot of money on good camping equipment. It had to be scary out there, and sad and lonely. Maybe she could ask her father and Niall if Jamie could cat-sit a few days. Marty had wanted her to stay longer for Pie, make sure the old girl was all right until the tenants arrived, and Mae—she felt bad about it—hadn’t wanted to, because she wanted to get away from Jamie. Hadn’t even remembered to arrange for the cat until now, though she’d intended to ask Jamie to visit her.
Mae sat in a chair, thinking. This would work. Pie wouldn’t be abandoned. Jamie would have a place for a few nights. He’d be able to eat three meals, sleep better for having Pie with him, and then ... then what?
He had friends he was probably avoiding in order to hide his situation, but he would have to tell someone and ask for a place to stay until his parents got back, and then he’d have to stay with them, pride or no pride. No one would rent to him. His credit was ruined, with unpaid bills and a bad check to a landlord. Even if Wendy got started right away on booking him gigs or new recording sessions, it would be a while before much money started coming in.
Jamie’s scales turned into a kind of game, singing the word “high” in his upper range, the word “low” in his lower range. This became a chant, alternating “High aspirations” at the very top notes he could reach, and “low self-esteem” at the bottom. Funny—but it wasn’t. It was true. Water sloshed, and then began to gurgle.
She fluffed the pillow on the sofa, glanced at Jamie’s sleeping bag next to the door. His parents wouldn’t want that for him. What would it be like to know your son was sleeping in a park?
A thumping and stumbling broke into her thoughts, and she stood, starting toward the bathroom.
“You all right, sugar?”
“Little slip. Not bad. Vertical now.”
“You need a hand?”
Laughter, snorts, and loud hah’s. “Fuck. Sorry. Naked. Don’t want to see me in the nuddy, do you?”
“Not really. Put your towel on, come on out here. Carefully. I made your bed.”
He appeared in the bathroom doorway, still damp across the shoulders, holding a towel around his waist with both hands, and wobbled toward the sofa. Mae tried to avoid the scars on his belly, but her eyes were drawn to them. She quickly looked to his eyes instead, and saw the last trace of laughter die hard into darkness.
“Come on, lie down,” she said.
“Can’t.” He stared at the sheets and pillows. “I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
He sat on the sofa arm and almost lost the towel, letting it gap across his left thigh and hip, revealing the final scar she’d not yet seen, a surgical scar, and around it the traces of what must have been gashes from rocks or branches. That had been a horrendous fall. She was looking at the root of his slide into homelessness. Jamie could no more pay for that hip joint than fly to the moon, and he’d tried.
He took a slow breath. “Dying.”
“Tonight?”
He looked at the couch. “Yeah. Like Hendrix, y’know? Choke on puke. Die like a fucking rock star and I’m not even famous yet.”
“You still feel sick?”
“Dunno.” His voice faded out to a hoarse whisper. “Sorry. I’m bloody rotten. I’m ugly.” He rubbed the scar on his upper arm, and then spread his fingers over the marks on his belly. “I’m a mentally ill homeless person sitting in your fucking living room scared to go to sleep and I’d rather die—I’d rather fucking die than be this. Jeeeezus.” A weary rage rose in his voice. “How fucking stupid can I get?” He punched the back of the sofa with one hand while the other worked at the edge of the towel, clutching and releasing repeatedly. “I wish I was dead—and I’m scared I could die.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Mae moved without trying to reason with herself. No choice. Picking up the pillow, she walked to the bedroom and put it back on the bed. Then she came back into the living room and scooped Pie from her cat bed, holding the cat against her chest as she said to Jamie, “I won’t let you die.” Her own steadiness surprised her, how calm and sure she sounded. “You can sleep with me.”
She didn’t watch him follow her. She knew he was there, his normally silent steps heavy.
“Check for scorpions.” He sank into the chair by the bed. “Spiders.”
“Where?”
“In the bed.”
Demonstrating her cooperation, she set Pie by the pillows and flipped the covers back all the way.
“Pillows too,” Jamie said. “Seriously. Bities get in your bed. I’m not just phobic. They really do.”
She checked under each pillow, lifting them high enough to show him all was clear—not that she thought he could see that well—and then walked to the doorway, turned off the overhead light, and turned on the starry ceiling. Jamie would like that.
Mae sat on the bed. “I’m getting in, and I’m not looking at you naked. But it’s okay. Get in with me. I’ll make sure you don’t choke or anything. You’ll be all right. No bities, nothing. It’s all safe.” She slid to the far side of the bed and lay down, her back to Jamie, expecting him to flop beside her. She tried not to think about Mack, about sleeping with a drunk, and reminded herself that Jamie’s problems were different.
He didn’t move.
“Come to bed,” she urged.
His voice came out thick and tight, the one word framed by a gulp and a sniff. “Fuck.”
More to take care of.
Mae rose, moved the tissues to the table on Jamie’s side of the bed, and walked to where he sat huddled in the chair, rocking, fists pressed to his mouth. His sadness made her heart ache all the way to her hands. She wrapped her arms around him and helped him up, letting his towel fall, and led him to the bed.
The bed. It must be what shook him so—he hadn’t slept in one since the first of June.
He sank on the edge of it, and she sat beside him, lightly touching his shoulder. “It’s gonna feel nice, sugar. A bed.” Crawling across to the far side again, she lay down and patted the place beside her. “Come on. You need to sleep. You’ll feel better.”
Jamie shook his head and fell onto his side, drawn up in a sobbing ball. He must be so tired he didn’t even know what was wrong, like a little kid. Mae curled around his back, making soft, reassuring sounds, stroking his hair as he sweated, shook, and tried to curl up even tighter. The breakdown was even noisier than the previous one, with sobs that bordered on shouts, broken up by vocalized gasps for air. Yet somehow, even while it hurt to ride it out with him, there was more room inside her now to hold his pain. She slid her arms though his and rubbed his belly, touching the scars, and he shuddered, crying more softly.
When Jamie finally quieted, he propped up on one elbow, blew his nose a few times, and lay down on his back. Under the starry ceiling, she could see his eyes, wide open, still wet.
Pie walked over to him and began to knead at his thigh. Resting a hand on the cat, Jamie turned his face to Mae. “I love you.” His voice was surprisingly s
teady. “I want to be the man you danced with, the man who made you laugh while we cleaned this bloody mess, the friend who kept you company and showed you the town ... I want to be ... I want to be ... the best memory of your life when you go.” More tears flowed. “Not this.”
“Shh.” She touched his tears away, kissed him on the forehead. “Go to sleep. It’ll be all right. You’ll be a beautiful memory. I know you will.”
She stayed awake, watching over him, until he faded into a stillness that looked like sleep.
A few hours later, Mae woke to the small, frightened sounds of Jamie’s nightmares. She rolled over to reassure him with a light pressure on his shoulder, to stir him out of the bad dream. Without waking fully, he wrapped his arms tightly around her and pressed up against her. The whimpering stopped, and his breathing changed—more rapid, not more relaxed, and he mumbled a question about why she was wearing a nightie. Did he think she was Lisa?
Feeling his erection stir against her, Mae inched away. What had she gotten into? A foolish, reckless situation. Sweet and sad or not, he really was a mentally ill homeless person, and a drunken one at that. In her bed, and wanting her.
Mae sat up, and Pie crept into the space she had occupied. Still apparently asleep or close to it, Jamie petted the cat and tugged her against his chest, and she somehow not only tolerated the squeeze, but even answered it with purring.
Rising from the bed, Mae opened the windows and let the cool night air blow in. It had been hot lying next to Jamie. He radiated heat as if sleeping was work.
After checking to see that he was still quiet, she sat in the wooden chair and closed her eyes. Exhaustion flooded her. Her calf muscles were still sore. She should get Jamie to give her a massage before she drove the next day. No, bad idea. She shouldn’t.
Sleeping in the chair proved impossible. Best to go to the couch. Mae went to the bed to get a pillow, and noticed that Jamie was starting to cough and retch, not fully waking. She shook him, and he staggered to his feet with a gasping, “Oh fuck,” and made a stumbling run for the bathroom.