Infinite Us

by Eden Butler

  My face heated then and I looked away from my brother, not wanting to see the look in his eyes; not sure if he’d pick on me or warn me for all the times I looked a little too long at Dempsey Simoneaux. “You ain’t got to tell me my business, Sylv. I know just how old I am.”

  “Yep, you do and so does Dempsey.”

  He came to my side, turning my shoulders so that I faced the Square. In the middle of that thick crowd, Ripper leaned against a brown brick building, hat tilted up as he watched all that was happening thick in the Square. But he shifted his head down, listening when one of his bad-seed boys nodded toward me and that hat went further back as Ripper moved the numb of a cigar to the corner of his mouth.

  The look on Ripper’s face made my skin crawl, made me itching to be back at Bastie’s farm just so I could swim in the lake and be rid of the feeling of that man’s eyes on me, looking hard. Looking like he wanted to see more of me. That look made my stomach twist.

  “Dempsey ain’t the only one, little sister. Ole Ripper sees it and he’s looking damn hard and he’s a useless bully. You think Dempsey’s daddy and brother don’t see it too? You think every man in the city don’t?”

  “I stay away, Sylv.” I turned back from the Square, from the eyes that stuck to me like a fly trapped on sticky paper. “I keep to Mama’s kitchen and only go out with you or Aron or Dempsey and even when I don’t, I stick to the tree lines.”

  “That’s not good enough. Not when every dirty man in the city, white, black, or whatever else, looks hard at you.” My brother nodded, like he’d had his say and I needed to mind it. “You stick too close to Dempsey and he’s gonna get ideas.”

  I opened my mouth, about ready to tell Sylv to shut it up, but then, I knew I couldn’t. It would be a lie denying what Sylv said and he’d know it the second I opened my mouth. I knew what he meant. Dempsey had already gotten ideas. We both had. He’d held my hand just last week when Aron and Slyv walked in front of us back to Bastie’s farm after the parish priests held a picnic down by the lake. I’d liked the way Dempsey ran his thumb over my knuckles, how my palm smelled like the sugar cane he’d cut down for me as we walked back.

  “Nothing…” I swallowed, wanting the words to stay down in my throat. But Sylv’s eyes went hard, a little worried and I couldn’t keep a thing to myself. “Nothing happens with us. Nothing bad.”

  He nodded, scrubbing his chin with his thumbnail as he led me away from the Square, away from the crowd. We weren’t in a hurry to get back, not when the day was running hot. Not when Mama was sure to have us back in the heat for more deliveries.

  “I like Dempsey. He’s a nice fella and he ain’t nothing like his kin. That’s a good thing, but sis, you got to be smart.”

  “He needs us, Sylv. If we weren’t around, who’d clean him up when his daddy gets means and drunk and beats on him? Who’d hide him when the beatings are bad?”

  “You ever think maybe it’s us that gets Papa Simoneaux mean? You ever think that crazy white man beats on Dempsey because he don’t stay with his own people?”

  It might have been that. God knows I’d heard that hateful man screaming at Dempsey about being with the likes of us before. I’d heard the nasty things he’d called us and the things Dempsey’s mama sometimes said about my Bastie and my mama. Hateful, all of them, but especially when they’d catch us swimming near the dock that splintered our two properties. Especially when Dempsey would run off to keep from getting beat on—and he always ran to us.

  Sylv knocked my arm, pushing me a little, a tiny movement followed with a smile as we walked through the crowd. I knew then that his fussing was over. For now.

  “You kiss him yet?” He didn’t want to know, I could tell with how he rolled his eyes and made smooching sounds with his puckered lips. “Dempsey and Sookie sitting in a tree…”

  “Oh shut up.” I messed his hair, popping him on the back of the head. “You tease me and maybe I will go tell Mama about you and Lily.” My brother’s frown was hard and his eyes went all funny, like he was scared if Mama knew what he’d been up to there’d be a whipping in his future. But he tried to play it off, act like my threat didn’t bother him none.

  “Tell her.” I didn’t buy the way he shrugged or how he brushed me off with a toss of his hand.

  “Okay. I’m going.” And as I took off, jogging through the crowd with my fussing brother running behind me, I tried to stay tickled. I tried to not worry so much over Dempsey being hurt again. I tried something fierce to keep from reminding myself that the best thing for him, for all of us, would be to let him be.

  If only I could muster the strength to do that.

  Willow

  Nash called me a witch. He didn’t know I heard him, but I had. It came in a mumble, something low and quiet as I rubbed his temples, as he drifted off and I knew why. He floated, went where you’re supposed to when you meditate. He could call me a witch all he wanted. I wasn’t, by the way. I liked to think of myself as a healer. Someone who touched and held and wanted nothing more than to help.

  But Nash struck me as the type of man who needed to put a name to things he didn’t understand. Usually, the wrong name. He was a man of science, of things concrete, that could be broken down and explained away. Numbers were his thing. They moved in and out of his head, sang to his soul because they made sense to him.

  Two days after I helped him get some rest, and he was still having vivid dreams. I knew he was. I heard him calling out in the middle of the night. But the sleeping itself hadn’t remained, at least nothing restful. I heard him for the past three nights, moaning and whining, though he’d never own up to it.

  It was Nash that took up most of my thoughts that day. Sunday and the farmer’s market had been packed. I'd been doing pretty well selling my cupcakes to folks ambling by, their bags full of organic vegetables and sweet, sweet berries and plums. Everyone was in high spirits, at least until the skies opened up. Things thinned out pretty quick then, it came down in buckets, and each one, it seemed, right on the top of my head. Cabs passed me by and so I ran, darting under awnings as much as I could and then, God help me, I spotted that poor cat.

  He limped toward my building, all skitterish and slinky, like he was doing his best to not be spotted because bad things happened to him when he was. I hadn’t fussed much about the weather—it was only water, after all—but then the rip of thunder cracked bright white lightning against the sky and the thought of a poor little critter caught out in this storm had me worried. Skinny guy was alone in the world and hurt, from the looks of him, and now soaking wet.

  The rain came on like a broken wave; sideways, horizontal, it seemed to splatter and fall in every direction against my face, soaking into the small white boxes of what Nash called “prissy-looking cupcakes” when he caught me in the elevator the other night on my way to deliver said prissy cupcakes to a client. The prissiness of them sure hadn’t stopped him from trying to sneak a swipe of icing.

  The rain came so thick, so violently I had to squint as I looked down the sidewalk, trying to catch sight of that poor scrawny limping cat. My thick Columbia hoodie was soaked through by the time I spotted him ghosting around the corner and I jogged after him to the back of our building. There was water collecting quickly into puddles, so much that my feet and toes were soaked by the time I made it mid-way down the alley. I dropped one of the sodden white bakery boxes when I tripped on a submerged crack in the pavement, cringing when two yellow-colored cupcakes floated down the gutter, leaving behind a cakey trail as they bobbed and twisted away. I dropped two more empty white boxes before I spotted the cat, who had scrambled up a tall pin oak tree which sat in the smallest speck of green space beyond the property gate. The poor thing had probably been looking for shelter from the rain, but seemed to be having second thoughts, given his soddy look, ears down, tail snapping. Determined to help him, I set down the rest of my boxes and tried to move a nearby dumpster with my hip toward the crooked limbs, intending to climb up and rescue the
damned cat.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I jerked, twisting around with a small yelp, brushing my thick hair matted and tangled off my face. Of course it was Nash. “What are you doing out here?”

  We had to shout. The rain spattered and crashed against the row of metal trashcans and three dumpsters that lined the back of the alleyway.

  “I asked first. Damn, Willow, you’re a fucking mess.” Behind me the cat meowed, a loud, pathetic sound that tore at something inside my chest. Nash went on gawking at me like I was crazy, clueless, but that sad meow sounded just like “help” to me and I had to do something. But when I glanced up at the poor creature, then at the distance between the limb where he sat and the dumpster, I knew that it was too high. Too high for me anyway. I looked around, looked back up at the cat, considered trying to coax it down, looked for any other way up, but there was nothing, all while Nash watched me, both of us drenched to the skin.

  I am capable of a lot of things. My mama definitely didn’t raise a dainty damsel watching out for a prince, but even I knew my limitations. As much as it pained me, I exhaled, turning back to Nash as his wet face scrunched up in a hard glare.

  “Can you help him?” I came closer, pulling on his wet jacket, imploring. There was something in his eyes—hesitation, irritation, like he hated how drawn to me he was, yet still worried, wanting to pull me inside, to protect me from the mess I’d gotten myself into. But I didn’t care how he looked or what he thought. He could look at me like that all he wanted. As long as he helped the poor cat. “Please, Nash, look at him. He’s just a baby.”

  Okay. That might have been an overstatement. Even I knew the baby in question was the ugliest cat that ever walked the earth and was no baby either. He was small, but scrappy with a thick rat’s nest of a tail that broke into a weird angle in the middle. And one of his ears looked to be eaten clean off with mites or some other disgusting mess alley cats got into. And he was filthy. And pissed off. Still, at that moment, more than anything, I wanted to help that cat.

  My mother had taught me not to rely on my looks for anything, but come on, sometimes being a woman gives you the upper hand. I adjusted my expression, working up a look that was worried and sad, because I was worried and sad, at least about the lost day and the sad little hurt kitty. But yeah, I laid it on a little thick, because I knew it could and still make it work.

  And it did work. Oh, he looked me up and down, looked for a way out, but when he finally admitted to himself that my shorter arms and smaller-than-his legs wouldn’t help me climb up that dumpster to rescue the ugly meowing little cat, he sort of gave up the ghost and resigned himself to helping out.

  And I didn’t plan it, but suddenly, without any warning, I sneezed, a racking loud sound that made the cat jerk in alarm. “You okay?” Nash asked, and I knew I had him hooked.

  “I’m fine,” I promised, but I wasn’t going to make it sound as sure as I felt. “Please. I’d get up there, but I’m too short to reach. You’re a good three inches taller than me.”

  I did the sad eyes again just as yet another sneeze hit and Nash moved over to the dumpster, climbed up it in a side to side motion while gripping the busted up back gate in one hand.

  “I swear to God, if this cat fucking scratches me…”

  But the poor cat didn’t do anything but stare right at Nash with a thick, raised tuft of hair standing on end straight down his back. From this angle I realized the cat’s hair wasn't gray like I initially thought. The baby was white, completely white by the look of him, but he was so filthy with greasy streaks of grease or mud or something smeared all over its coat that he had looked gray from a distance.

  “Easy,” Nash said to him, leaning close with a hand outstretched. He teetered close to the edge of the dumpster, bobbing a little on his feet and I actually got scared, imagining a scenario of Nash falling and breaking bones and how it would be entirely my fault.

  “Be careful, Nash!” I blurted out, which was stupid, because it caused him to jerk, which in turn caused the cat to growl, a low, warning hiss that got louder and more threatening the closer Nash got. “Nash? Make sure you don’t…”

  “Will you hush, woman? You’re gonna spook him!”

  Turns out, the scrawny cat didn’t want rescuing. Nash caught him by the scruff of his neck and the stupid animal hissed twice and scratched at him. When Nash let go, the “baby” leap-frogged from the limb without any assistance and down back onto the alley where he turned and for good measure hissed once again at both of us before darting.

  “Unbelievable,” Nash said under his breath, navigating away from the tree and gate, then stepping gingerly on the dumpster before he jumped onto the pavement. “Happy?”

  “I…” I started to say, but a sudden sneezing fit came over me and Nash pulled me away from the nasty dumpster, and guided me back toward the alley. “Damn cat” I muttered, suddenly sad and soaking and in danger of breaking down into a crying jag. Nash must have heard the hitch in my voice because he tried to pull up my thin jacket over my head, but made a piss poor job of it. We headed back towards the front of the building, but when we got to the boxes I had dropped, I stopped, bending to try and scoop up some of the cupcake mush.

  “No matter how good they might have been, you’re not gonna save them, either.”

  “They were good. These were my first attempt at Irish car bombs.” I sneezed again and Nash wiped the mash of cake from my hand.

  “Come on, before you get pneumonia.” I listened, following him down the alley without a backward glance at the cupcakes or the echo of the renegade cat. “That happens and I’ll be pissed about you not baking for me.”

  Willow

  “When do you think Mickey will be back?”

  “It’s bingo night, remember? He doesn’t ever call it early on bingo night unless he wins and he never wins.”

  I liked Nash’s place almost as much as my own, and that was saying something because I had totally fallen in love with my apartment. I still couldn’t believe my luck when one of my Mom’s old university buddies needed someone to take up the place when he decided to retire to New Hampshire. Rent control in Brooklyn? Hell, yes. I was never going to leave, unless forced to. I suspected Nash wouldn’t either and with how clean and comfortable he had made his place, I couldn’t blame him.

  I had no idea who some of the posters on the walls were, except Gaiman, of course. Everyone knows Gaiman, and I guess I knew Einstein and Dizzy, too. I didn’t mind that many of the other faces were unknown to me. It was like walking into some post-modern techie world that itched to be explored.

  There were framed posters of musicians and writers, scientists; beautiful men whose faces told stories, said things with one look. They contrasted against the utilitarian feel of the rest of his place—the clean, mint scent that wafted from his kitchen and the books organized on black metal shelves by color and size. There was very little in the way of personal items, only a few pictures of Nash and a girl who looked so much like him that she had to be his twin. They couldn’t be more than eight in the picture, but there was a smile on his face, honest and open, his hazel-glinted eyes sparkling when he smiled at her. No photos of parents or friends. I couldn't help but wonder why only his sister warranted a frame on the center console of his entertainment center, but I didn't feel like I could ask. Not yet.

  The last time I’d been here there’d been little time for exploration. Nash had been sleep-deprived and worn out. My focus had been on centering him and getting him to sleep.

  Now though, I was stuck here, at least until the Super came back from bingo. “I can’t believe I locked myself out.” Another stupid sneeze. At this rate I’d pass out from lack of blood to my heart. Did you know when you sneeze, all your working parts, just sort of stop? No heartbeat, no nothing. Sneezing is hazardous to your health.

  “Here,” Nash said, handing me something that smelled like the whiskey my great grandfather used to drink, but it steamed like hot tea and
felt good against my cold fingers.

  “What is this?”

  “Hot toddy. Old family recipe.” He pulled the towel from my shoulders and started to dry the ends of my hair, all familiar and sweet. Definitely not like him at all. I liked it—Nash Nation, tough-looking, techie guy taking care of me like he wanted to.

  “Mmmm.” The small, satisfied noise slipped out, without my permission, but I didn’t try to cover the slip. It felt nice to have Nash fussing around me, in this quiet, almost but not quite intimate way. It felt…familiar and I wasn’t sure why that was.

  “Drink,” he said when I stared off into space, humming like an old woman when he worked that towel through my wet hair.

  I listened to his demand, making a deeper, more satisfied noise when the toddy warmed me from the inside, a sensation that left me a little punch drunk.

  “It’s good, right?” he asked and I could hear the humor in his voice. I must have seemed ridiculous to him, needy and pathetic, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Willow?”

  There was too much sensation and my head felt fuzzy; a fog surrounded me, and now Nash combed his fingers through my hair, sweet and soft, too tender and yet welcome. What was in that drink anyway? I stifled a yawn, but Nash caught me up, tugged me onto the sofa with him and I let him, liked how it felt to be tousled around because I felt weak and helpless. I never had let a man do that to me before, but just then the warmth that surrounded me made me careless, left me stupid to warnings that might normally come into my head when I was alone with a man I didn’t really know.

  “Is Mickey back yet?” I said absently through another yawn, but Nash shooshed me, pulled me to the cushions with his arms easy around me. The room became silent in that space between fever and rest, right in the center of dreams and alertness. I nestled there, comfortable, free, and wondered where I’d landed; I wondered how long I’d stay there. It felt safe. It felt so familiar and so, I let the dream take me.