Bass-Ackwards: A Wrong-Way Romance

by Eris Adderly

  Maybe life could be different, now. Possibilities he’d only imagined in vague and unlikely terms were flowering right in front of him. Who gave a shit how they’d arrived there. They were there. At least he was pretty sure of it after last night.

  How to even talk about it, now that was another thing. Some of his grin faded as he shot emails off to vendors, but Bill nodded to himself. He could figure it out. Other impossible shit had already happened; he could get his brain and mouth in order, too.

  Gravel crunched outside and he turned his head to see a smallish metallic beige suv rolling into the lot. A woman got out, blonde, maybe ten or fifteen years older than him. Headed toward the front door, clanked her way in.

  “Hello,” he said, turning on the stool.

  “Howdy.” She pushed sunglasses off her nose and onto the top of her head. “You Bill?”

  He resisted the urge to squint, wary. “That’s me.”

  “I’m a neighbor of a girl you got workin’ here? Christina?” She put a tan purse down on the counter. “Well, her granddad’s neighbor, anyway. She says ya’ll rent leaf blowers?”

  “Sure do.” He stood, relieved to veer into business.

  “What’s the rate on ‘em?”

  Bill laid out their pricing and terms by rote and printed a rental agreement when the woman decided to commit. He picked up the phone and dialed the shop extension. Travis answered.

  “Can you bring up that leaf blower, please?” Bill said. “Twenty-one?” The woman was getting her credit card out.

  “Yup,” said Travis. “Be right there.”

  Bill pointed with a ballpoint to the places she needed to sign and initial, and then handed over the pen. She pushed the paper as far away on the countertop as her arm would reach, probably nearsighted, and started zig-zagging out her name.

  “You know,” she said, eyes on paper, “it’s good to hear you’re taking care of her.”

  He clamped down on a near cartoonish double take. “I’m sorry?”

  The pen stilled, and the woman looked up at his tone. “Well,” she said, eyeing him, “she told me she got a raise. And damn sure if that little thing didn’t need it, bless her heart.”

  “Why’s that?” Bill did not care for the bad taste on the back of his tongue.

  “Well, her granddad’s one of those, oh what do you call it”—she slid her card toward him on the Formica—“people who can’t throw things away. Got a bunch of newspapers stacked up all over his house. Collects junk.”

  “Hoarders.”

  “That’s the word.”

  He took the card and turned to swipe it through the machine, the knot in his gut twitching like an ugly cocoon.

  “Anyway,” the woman went on, “he’s got it real bad. County’s been on him with all kinds of citations. Notices. Last time I talked to her, she said he had no more chances to fail those inspections. She told me she had to take a whole day off just to go to court over it. But I guess now that she’s got a little bit more money, she’s keepin’ him out of trouble. Hired some caregiver, comes over a few times a week.” She shrugged. “Seems like it’s gettin’ better.”

  “Here’s your receipt.” He stapled the flimsy strip of paper to her copy of the rental agreement. His heart was assaulting him like he’d just run a sprint. “That’s good to hear she’s able to … take care of her business. She don’t talk much about it here.”

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t be telling tales outta school,” she said, folding and tucking the paperwork into her purse, “but she’s a good kid. Ain’t nobody else got the patience for that old man. I sure don’t.” Her smile was less than apologetic.

  Travis came in through the door to the back half, hefting the leaf blower. “Hi there.” He nodded to the woman. “This for you?”

  “Sure is.” Her tone was bright, now.

  “She signed everything already,” Bill said, barely present.

  “All right then, ma’am,” said Travis. “If you want, I’ll help you put this in your car and tell you how it works.”

  “Sounds good.” She turned her head back to Bill as they headed to the front door. “Nice meeting you!”

  “Likewise,” he grumbled, in full return to his normal self. Perhaps the pendulum had swung even further.

  No. Not ‘perhaps’.

  He stared, unfocused, out the window, at Travis giving instructions near an open hatchback in the glaring sun.

  What.

  The fuck.

  All his foundations washed out to sea like so much piled sand.

  He’d only rationalized the start of this entire thing on the premise that if she was willing to sell herself for cash, it was somehow fair game for him to act like an entitled, domineering prick. Regardless of whatever it might have evolved to, the whole structure was built on a lie. Willful ignorance.

  You didn’t ask her one question, did you? You just saw an opening—literally—and inserted yourself. You’re just what everyone says. A fucking asshole.

  And really? He hadn’t seen even one clue that things weren’t what he thought? She’d said she didn’t have money for clothes. Quit college. Almost never went out for lunch. She was all scraped up from yard work at her granddad’s place. He’d just isolated the incidents. Didn’t bother to be curious about patterns.

  He’d only been curious about how many more ways he could make her beautiful face contort like that.

  Fuck. Fuck.

  But if it was purely sacrifice, purely obligation on her part, what about Sunday? Everything he’d seen in her eyes, heard straight from her mouth?

  I like what you do, Bill. Because it’s you.

  No. No, that didn’t make it right. They were where they were because he’d, what? Manipulated her? Coerced? Self-loathing crawled over his skin.

  Christina’s neighbor was shutting the hatch on her car, nodding a final time to Travis.

  Bill was a fucking storm cloud.

  ✪

  On Wednesday, Christina all but flounced into the Haul Ash on a cloud. Monday and Tuesday’s aches from cleaning some of the horrors in her granddad’s kitchen were pleasant reminders of being alive. She was opening the shop today, and Bill would be in at ten.

  Was it wrong she couldn’t wait to see him?

  When his truck pulled into the lot, she ran fingers through her hair, in complete acceptance of the idea she was doing it to look nice for him. Why lie to herself?

  She watched him park and step out onto gravel, vacillating between two or three different things she might say when he checked in behind the counter. Her pulse fluttered, ridiculous.

  He veered right and headed to the shop.

  Her shoulders fell, just a little.

  Whatever. This is his business. He has things to do other than come in here right away and flirt with you.

  She went back to the customer call list.

  When she hung up after the fourth call, including two people who hadn’t answered, her boss came in through the back half and Christina all but melted, turning toward him like a sunflower.

  “Hi.” The honeyed smoke in her tone, her smile, said everything.

  Bill had his hands in his pockets, thumbs hooked over denim, and his eyes cut down and to the side. Her melting became deflating.

  “Christina,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”

  Oh god. What. What.

  He exhaled through his nose and managed to make eye contact. Scraped raw. That was how he looked. His mouth opened for at least a full five or six seconds before words cracked the silence.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her forehead knotted. “Tell you what, Bill?”

  “About your granddad?” That searching gaze sliced her laterally, Zoro with accusations. “That’s why you needed the money, isn’t it?”

  Christina huffed, the obstacle course shifting right in front of her. “Yeah?” She stuffed her palms between her knees. “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah, it matters.” He was just the wrong
side of too loud and she stood, some defensive thing springing to life. “I’m a fuckin’ jackass.” Bill made a sharp gesture and she flattened into the corner of the counter. “I’m takin’ advantage of you! It ain’t right.”

  Her face folded up and she glanced at the window. Now would be a bad time for anyone to show up. She folded her arms and turned back to him, the cliffside crumbling under her feet.

  “Bill … I agreed to this.” And why did it look like those words hurt him more? “Who the … fuck are you mad at here?” She hissed the expletive in a harsh whisper, as though there were people around to hear.

  “Me.” He’d raised his voice. “I’m mad at me, Christina. I didn’t … I never …” He raked a hand over the top of his head. “Look, we can’t do this anymore. It’s done.”

  She coughed up a tight noise of consternation. And of all the twenty things she wanted to yell at him just then, the absolute worst one flew out of her mouth.

  “But I need the money!”

  His scowl could have bent mountain ranges in half. “I know.” He turned to pace into the office. “I know you do. I’m gonna leave it. The paycheck part … it’s fine.” He stopped walking and swiveled his head to look sideways at her. “Just, I … we can’t do the rest.” A sigh left through his nose. “I can’t.”

  This asshole was picking now to get noble? Really?

  “Bill …”

  Her phone vibrated on the counter. She ignored it.

  He turned and eyed her cell. Raised his brows at her. Christina made an eye roll that involved her whole head and neck, and reached for the interruption.

  The caller id read ‘Denise’.

  Now fucking what?

  The one call she couldn’t let go to voicemail.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Christina, it’s Denise.”

  “Hi.” What? What? Hurry up.

  Denise hurried up. Christina stared at Bill, watching helpless as her entire universe tore itself to tatters, a wildly flapping tarp in a tornado. She let silence echo over the connection for way too long after the woman stopped talking.

  “Christina?”

  “Yeah. I’m heading down there. Thank you, Denise.”

  She thumbed the call to an end.

  Bill’s attention on her was complete. “Everything okay?”

  No! Everything is not motherfucking okay! Nothing is okay!

  The lump in her throat felt like it was going to cramp.

  “Bill, I”—she shook her head—“I have to go. Like, right now. I’m not gonna be back today.”

  She brushed past him with her phone and purse, forgetting the time clock altogether. Her eyes were burning by the time she reached the Bronco.

  “Help me get my shoes,” her granddad said.

  “Whaddya need your shoes for, Pops?”

  The nurse walking past the open door to the shared room for the tenth time had Christina distracted. She looked back around at her grandfather.

  “I’m ready to leave.” He was pushing his torso up from the hospital bed on spindly arms, mouth tight in concentration.

  “You’re not going anywhere today,” she reminded him.

  “Oh?” he said, halting in his attempts to leave the bed. “Why not?”

  “Because you gotta heal, Pops.”

  They’d revisited this conversation several times that afternoon while Christina was there to visit. Pale gold light settled in from the room’s single window that overlooked a staff parking lot. Her stomach rumbled, but the guilt over having to leave him again, with people who were busy, who weren’t going to be patient, had kept her glued, if shifting, in the hard plastic chair.

  The woman in the next bed coughed on the other side of the separating curtain between the two halves of the room.

  “I can heal up at home just fine.” He was sitting back now, though, if grumbling about it. A tv hung high on the wall, and a weatherman on mute pointed out an impending heat wave over a map.

  Christina sighed. “You’re gonna need people to get you things,” she said, “while your hip heals enough so you can walk on it more. I’ve gotta work, and Denise can’t be there every day. And if something happens, you’re gonna be right back here, anyway.”

  She hated this inversion. Hated it. The old man had taught her how to change a tire. How to make a particular whistling sound with her teeth that he knew used to make her dad crazy. How to make cornbread and use a table saw.

  He was the source of all knowledge during her childhood. The person who had the patience to teach her about hard work, and about doing right even when it was a pain in the ass, and no one would see, anyhow.

  And now, here she was having to explain things to this man who helped raised her. Obvious things. Like he was the child asking ‘are we there yet’. She knew the pattern, and she hated it. Hated when people talked to old folks like they were children. Like they hadn’t lived and loved and suffered for decades already and hadn’t earned the respect of being spoken to like a peer. And it stabbed at her to watch herself slipping into that patter. Simplifying everything. Increasing her volume.

  “Knock, knock.”

  Christina turned to the voice at the door; one of the nurses she recognized was making his rounds.

  “How you doing, Mr. Dodd?” The young man approached her granddad's bed.

  Pops eyed the nurse with suspicion. “Oh, I'm alive, I s'pose.”

  Christina stood and scooted back the chair. “Hi, I'm Christina,” she said. “I'm his granddaughter.”

  “Hi. Jordan.” He pointed at his nametag. “Will you be helping out when your grandfather gets home?”

  “Yup. I'm the one,” she said. “I'm the primary contact.”

  “Okay, good.” The man was swapping places with her and moving around to the far side of the bed. “How's your pain, Mr. Dodd?”

  “Eh. Only hurts when I breathe.”

  Christina grew a half-smile and shook her head at her granddad's stock response.

  “Well, we can get you another pill,” said Jordan. “How about I just check on this incision here?”

  The accepted lack of privacy made her shift her weight to the opposite foot, awkward. “I'm gonna head home for today, Pops,” she said. “I'll be back in the morning, okay?”

  “Okay, sugar.”

  Leaving while he was distracted like that made her skin tighten.

  Coward.

  She could hear her granddad grumping at the nurse, even as she left the room. It murdered her every time she had to leave him here, but she was only one person.

  Hell, she was the only person in this situation. Everything fell on her. Talking to the doctors and nurses. Dealing with the house. Still getting to her damn job, because none of this extra shit was going to keep the lights on at her place.

  She’d thought about calling her cousin Lloyd, but if she could even get him to come up from Tyler, the best she might expect would be he’d come say ‘hi’ to her granddad in the hospital. Then they’d probably go get some lunch, and then he’d be off. Christina needed real help, and there wasn’t going to be any.

  The doctors acted like they were going have him discharged in another week, maybe ten days—although that seemed awfully quick for an eighty-seven-year-old man who’d just had a hip replaced. She needed to kick it into high gear on the hoard. He’d need a place to rest and keep healing after he came home, not have to be picking his way around a bunch of junk that might decide to fall on him. They’d be back to ground fucking zero, if that happened.

  The sun burned her shoulders and arms in that humid way the skin really felt as she picked a route through the visitor parking lot. The interior of the Bronco was even hotter than the air outside, and Christina arranged the towel she’d laid on her seat back in place so her thighs wouldn’t singe right off when she climbed behind the wheel.

  Tomorrow would be the fourth of July. Air conditioning was a nice wish.

  At least everything with her granddad was a distraction—if a horrible,
inconvenient, emotionally draining one.

  A distraction from that shit Bill had pulled.

  “Look, we can’t do this anymore. It’s done.”

  Right when she’d needed that fucking asshole. Then. That was the time he’d chosen to evaluate his goddamn ‘role’.

  Her knuckles were taut around the steering wheel as she turned right on the road that would lead her to the main highway.

  You ‘needed’ him, Dodd? Since when?

  What had she thought this was? This … whatever between her and Bill. Enough to be scared of, at least. Enough to make her panic about almost having spent the night at his house.

  But that feeling. That gold goddamn feeling the next day she’d come into work after the infamous Three Hours at his place. Right before the shit hit the fan, and she’d seen him with new eyes and a new heart, and pathways had been opening up all around.

  Right before the universe had told her to go fuck herself.

  Christina Lee Dodd didn’t have nice things. Even a semblance of ‘nice things’ that grew out of twisted foundations she was trying to ignore. Best she remember that.

  Sorting through piles of junk on her grandfather’s property during a holiday was going to help her do it, too.

  ✪

  Neighborhood kids were already setting off firecrackers somewhere down the block while Christina put her shoulder into shoving open the last of the windows in her granddad’s living room. Every window in the house she could reach, she’d wedged open as far as it would go. Better to air out the funk.

  She picked her way back to the kitchen where she’d cleared one small bastion of space on the counter for cleaning supplies. People on those tv shows about hoarding always wore little disposable masks while they cleaned, but those things made Christina’s face all humid. East Texas on the fourth of July was enough.

  She did pull on a pair of work gloves, though. No sense reaching into anything gross or sharp. Or spiderwebby.

  In the bedroom, Christina had already made loads of progress. The floor and bed were visible again, for one. And the closet door could open and close without anyone having to shift a stack of boxes every time. She’d managed all that while Pops had been in the hospital for his fall, and now the ensuing surgery.