by A. J. Downey
When I reached my shiny new door, I had to sigh. My thoughts returning to Oz. I was surprised to find myself slightly disappointed I hadn’t taken him up on a late dinner tonight, yet at the same time found myself apprehensive about tomorrow.
I was a war of emotions lately, and I had to confess, I wasn’t coping very well at all, lately. I locked my door behind me and sighed with relief at being alone, dropping my purse and my briefcase on the floor right there in the entryway, stepping out of my heels and leaving it all in a pile.
I would take care of it all later.
First, I showered. Then, I fixed myself a salad and a hot cup of tea with some honey in it. Finally, I took it all into my living room, set my small plate and my cup and saucer on the coffee table and dropped onto my couch with a sigh.
I went for Persuasion. My favorite Jane Austen adaptation to film and truthfully, one of her only ones without the prominent theme of sisters.
Reading her books, watching the film adaptations of her work practically on repeat –they were my most favorite guilty pleasure.
I fell asleep, sandwich half eaten, tea less than half drunk and when I woke, it was to the DVD’s menu screen playing over and over on repeat. I groaned, and pushed myself into a sitting position, my neck and shoulders in knots.
I didn’t know what had woken me, but then my notification chimed again. An incoming text.
I pushed myself up and went to my discarded briefcase and purse by the door, rooting through them to find my phone.
Ofc. Jones: Just got off work. Wanted to check on you.
Ofc. Jones: Looks like you may already be asleep. Hit me up tomorrow.
I frowned at the phone, noting the eight-minute time difference between the two texts and heaved a sigh.
Me: I fell asleep on the couch. Thanks for waking me up so I could go to bed.
I didn’t want him to feel bad for waking me up, so I figured that might help negate that. I put things to rights. My dishes in the sink, sandwich in the trash, and cold tea down the drain. My purse and briefcase went where they belonged, and my phone came with me into the bedroom as I got ready for bed.
It chimed just as I slid between the sheets.
Ofc. Jones: Sorry, I was riding to the 10-13. How are you doing? Okay?
I rolled my eyes and texted back.
Me: I’m fine. Just tired.
A few minutes later my screen lit up.
Ofc. Jones: We both know you ain’t ‘fine’ but it’s alright. You get some better sleep and I’ll meet up with you tomorrow. K?
Me: Okay.
He wished me good night, I returned the sentiment, and then I flopped back into my bed and stared at the ceiling.
I was suddenly wide awake. Sleep doing its level best to elude me in every possible way.
Finally, frustrated, I got back up and went across the hall, flipping on the overhead light in the spare bedroom that I used as a studio.
Mia’s unfinished painting sat on the easel, staring back at me. Forlorn, lost, and accusing. Three emotions I identified with all too well.
I was all three. Forlorn, lost without my sister and accusing both myself and God for letting it be her instead of me.
“I should have grabbed you, pushed you, I should have done something, anything, to save you.” I covered my mouth with my hand finding it suddenly too hard to breathe with the overwhelming emotion swamping me. Closing my eyes didn’t help. Slow breathing didn’t help. None of the tricks I was taught to control and moderate my anxiety did anything. Instead, I drowned on dry land. Crumpling to my floor in the little studio-bedroom’s doorway… giving myself over completely to my grief.
It was almost a miracle how cathartic a cry like that could be. Before I knew it, the storm had passed almost as fast as it had come on. It felt like hours had passed instead of only minutes and even though sleep had dodged me just moments before, I was suddenly exhausted and ripe for sleep.
Rather than fight it, I went with it. Snapping out the light and returning across the hall to my bedroom.
I fell into bed and went right to sleep, feeling guilty about lying to everyone every time they asked.
How are you doing? Are you okay?
Every time I answered ‘fine.’ Every time, the lie got easier. Every time it couldn’t be further from the truth… and then there was Oz.
We both know you ain’t fine… but it’s alright.
It was something to think about.
It was something I couldn’t stop thinking about, even as I fell asleep.
9
Oz…
I pulled up to the curb between a couple of cars a couple doors down from Elka’s place. I sighed out and undid the chin strap on my brain bucket. I was replaying some of the talk I’d had with Reflash and Skids the night before.
I still wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing here, but it felt right that I keep doin’ whatever it was.
The chief and deputy chief had pretty much reassured me I was doin’ the right thing and to just go with the flow. So here I was, on time, about to do just that.
When she answered the door, I caught a whiff of something sweet, like vanilla. She looked up at me with those big doe eyes of hers and they just slayed me but I played it cool.
“Hi,” I said, and she gave me a brave little smile.
“Hi,” she said back in her quiet way as she stepped out onto the front stoop with me. I stepped back to give her some room and thought to myself, okay, she wants to play it like that. That’s cool, that’s cool.
She locked up her place and I let my eyes drift down her back. She was dressed casually in a women’s cut light pink tee and a pair of jean shorts that did great things for her already out-of-this-world ass. The cuffs on the short shorts rolled up into a neat ridge making her legs look like they went on for days.
Her feet were tucked into a nice pair of white ladies’ Adidas, which I could appreciate. I always appreciated some brand-name classic style kicks. She had them paired with some low socks that barely peeked at the edge of the shoe. Her long, shining dark hair was pulled up off her neck in a high ponytail and as always, her makeup was understated as she turned those large, bronze eyes back up to mine.
“Everything alright?” she asked, tucking her keys into her little crossbody bag at her hip.
“Yeah! Yeah, everything’s good with me,” I said.
“Okay.” She nodded and gave me a nervous smile.
“So, where’s this place you wanna go at?” I asked, sliding my sunglasses back on my face.
“Um, it’s just a couple blocks this way.” She jerked her head up the block and turned.
I grinned and nodded, falling into step beside her saying, “Okay.”
We moved up the block and lapsed into a deep silence, doing it. I finally had to be the one to break the ice by asking her, “You finish that painting you were working on the other day?”
“What? Oh, no. A restoration effort takes weeks most of the time. I finished cleaning the painting, but I’ve just started the retouching process.”
“Wow, how could it take so long, though?” I asked. “Doesn’t seem like it has much that needs doin’.”
“I can only work on it a few minutes at a time before I need to do something else. Retouching is suuuuuper tedious and really is unforgiving. I don’t want to use more pigment than is required and you really don’t want to rush so you do a little here, maybe twenty minutes, maybe as much as an hour, then you work on something else for a while. The cleaning process you can do for hours on end, it’s just the retouching and the painting process that you really want to get right and not get lackadaisical about.”
I smiled and listened to her talk. She was passionate about it. I think this was the most I’d honestly gotten her to talk about anything since I’d started coming around.
“So, you like your work,” I said with a smile.
“I do,” she said and smiled, blushing faintly. “Sorry, you probably find it really boring. I’m sure what
you do is far more exciting.”
I tried not to frown and wondered briefly who had abraded off some of her shine. Nobody should ever have to feel like they had to apologize for what they were passionate about in my book, yet Elka had. I pushed it to the back of my mind in favor of answering her supposition.
“It’s a job, I mean, you know,” I buried my hands in my pockets and shrugged my shoulders, “I guess you can call it exciting but it’s not fun. It just is what it is.”
I actually hated talking about work with non-LEO’s. They just didn’t get it and to be honest, my job was a shitshow on any given day. I dealt with people who were high, who were crazier than a shithouse mouse, who were belligerent and bein’ total assholes on the regular.
I did a lot of work with the worst humanity had to offer and I tried to do my best on puttin’ what little good I had to give in ‘em before they hit the street again, but I couldn’t stem the tide. None of us could. It was rough out there and dealing with the worst on the regular, you had to have a thick skin. Whether you wanted it to or not, that changed you.
I told Elka as much and she listened intently, nodding gravely, stopping in front of a shop door. I looked through the glass at a wall of bamboo and realized we were here. She looked up and asked me solemnly, “So how do you do it? How do you get through the day?”
I put out a hand and dragged open the door for her and said the God’s honest truth, “I keep the bad people locked up and I know that I’m protecting the good people out here. People like you.”
A smile flashed briefly across her lips as she stepped through the door and into the soothing atmosphere of trickling water and piped-in Asian music with its tranquil notes. The smell of chlorine in the lobby from the little fountain was a bit strong but creeping out from around it were some exotic smells that I just didn’t know about.
“Two please,” she murmured at the tiny little Asian hostess who slipped two menus out of the pocket on the side of her cart. I slipped my sunglasses up on top of my head as the hostess smiled and led us into the dimly lit atmosphere of the restaurant to a table under this great, carved wooden pagoda thing in the middle of the place.
“That’s impressive,” I said with a low appreciative whistle and I pulled out Elka’s chair for her. She slipped into it and I gave the hostess a nod of appreciation. She flashed a smile, dipped into this weird little curtsey thing and left us to it. I slid into the chair across from Elka and picked up the menu.
“How am I supposed to tell what any of this is?” I asked as I ran my eyes over the unfamiliar names for things.
She laughed silently, face gently amused, shoulders shaking, and she went from pretty to beautiful in that moment. I had to reach under the table and adjust myself, hoping she didn’t realize what I was up to because awkward and creepy, neither of which I was trying to be.
“There are descriptions in English under the names of the dish.” She looked me over and asked, “You trust me to order for you?”
I felt my mouth turn down as I considered it and finally bobbed my head slowly. “Seems like a safe bet,” I said.
“You allergic to anything?” she asked.
“Nah.”
“Okay. They use a lot of peanut sauces and the like. Coconut milk and shrimp, too. I guess I should have asked before suggesting it, but I didn’t think about it.” She sounded entirely too guilty about the slight oversight and I just barely managed to keep the frown off my face.
Again, I wondered what was up with that and again I dismissed it as none of my business… at least for now.
She studied the menu intently and I took the opportunity to study her while she was preoccupied.
The more I looked at her, the more I liked what I saw. It was like one of her paintings. The more you looked, the more details you could pull out. The more beautiful she became. At least to me.
As she studied the menu, I could pick out more details about her. The way she bore the weight of her sadness on her shoulders with grace. The way the longer she perused the menu, the more the pinched look left her face. She looked tired, but there was an elegance to it. For all the shit she’d been through since I met her on that fateful day, I could see she still bore the brunt of a much older hurt.
She’d been handed more than her fair share, but she was handling her own and it was impressive.
In watching her, I leaned back in my seat and had mad respect for the woman in front of me. She looked up and closed the menu, the faint smile on her face slipping as she looked me over.
“What?” she asked, uncertainty creeping into her voice.
“You’ve been through a lot of shit,” I said plaintively.
“Um, I suppose so,” she said quietly, blushing faintly.
“You’re killin’ it, though. You don’t think anyone sees it, but I see you. It’s hard, but you’re makin’ it happen for yourself. You’re doin’ good. A lot better than most people would. That’s for sure.”
“Um, thanks?” she said meekly.
“Just speakin’ the truth,” I said with a shrug.
“Are you always so…”
“Blunt?” I asked.
“Direct?” she said at the same time and it was certainly more tactful, but I didn’t care about none of that shit. I was past sugarcoating anything and I told her so.
“You ain’t gotta sugarcoat nothin’ with me.”
“I – I – I was just being polite,” she stammered.
I nodded. “That’s cool, but you ain’t gotta be polite with me.”
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” she said gently. “You’ve already been so nice and done so much for my family.”
I barked a jagged laugh. “I don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like I’ve done enough, honestly. And as for my feelings, not like you’re gonna hurt all one of ‘em I got left.”
She tittered a light laugh and asked me, “Is your sense of humor always like that?”
“Dry, sarcastic and as black as my ass?” I asked and her eyes flew wide.
“Yeah,” she said, caught off guard once more.
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
We were interrupted by the waitress, coming to take our order. Elka ordered quietly in gentle murmurs and asked me, “Is it alright if I don’t get it too spicy?”
“Sure,” I nodded.
She turned back to the waitress who gathered our menus off the table with a smile and went back toward the kitchen to put our order in.
Elka was considering me silently and I let her. I didn’t know what she was thinking and at the same time I didn’t know what to say.
Finally, I asked her, “What are some of your favorite things?” figuring it was a safe enough topic.
“What, like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens?” she asked, and I was like, “Sure if you like.” Her smile grew and she said, “Like bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens?”
I frowned slightly and laughed a little nervous myself because it sounded a lot like I was missing some kind of a joke.
“Sure, uh, what else?”
She barely suppressed a laugh and sang, “Brown paper packages tied up with strings. These are a few of my favorite things!”
I chuckled and nodded. “Oh, she has jokes! I got you.”
“You’ve never seen The Sound of Music?” she asked, laughing lightly and I shook my head.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Oh, then that is so unfair, you’re missing over half of the joke and why that was funny.”
“Guess you’ll have to educate me some time,” I said laughing.
“Pretty sure by the end of it you would hate me, but sure. We could watch it sometime if you’d like. Actually, that is one of my favorite things. I really like watching the film adaptations of Jane Austen’s books.”
“She write The Sound of Music or whatever?” I asked.
“What? No! Um, sorry, that was probably somewhat of a non sequitur. I just meant that I liked watching films, not
that I don’t like The Sound of Music, I do; I just like the Jane Austen films a lot more. They’re not even the same time periods. Sorry. I’m not being very succinct.” She shook her heat and pressed fingertips to her forehead in her flustered state and I just waited her out, glossing over the awkward for now.
“They good?” I asked. “The Jane Austen movies.”
“Oh, my God, yes. So good. She was so far before her time.”
“I don’t know anything about her,” I said. “Never heard of her.”
She gave a long slow blink like that just did not compute.
“How many movies are there?” I asked.
“Um, well, she wrote six books but not all of them were made into films. Movie-wise there’s Persuasion, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, and Emma.”
“They a series?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, they’re all stand-alone stories.”
I smiled. “I’m always up for new things. I’d watch one with you.”
“Yeah?” she asked surprised.
“Yeah, why’s that surprise you so much?”
“Um, they’re not exactly car chases and explosions,” she said blushing.
“What are they?” I asked. “Romance movies?”
She blushed and stammered, “Yeah.”
I nodded. “Consider me forewarned. I’d still do it.”
“Okay,” she said and looked unconvinced and I suppressed a laugh and asked, “What you don’t believe me?”
“Make you a deal, if you hate it, at anytime, you can tell me to turn it off and I will.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed and wondered, again, what kind of fucksticks she’d been hangin’ with that she felt like she had to both apologize and hide and make all these deals and shit with me over the things that she liked. I mean, I wanted to know – it’s why I asked her. I just didn’t think it was a good time to go over that particular subject yet. I just got the vibe that it was still a little too early for that.
She was starting to open up and I didn’t want to ruin what was clearly a good mood for her. I had to imagine that she hadn’t had a feel-good time or day in a minute.