by Anna Roberts
9
Gabe was staring into his second cup of coffee when Joe came in, slinking through the back door on big, silent feet.
“Hey,” Joe said, but his eyes were uneasy. He’d always had the keenest nose of any of them, especially where trouble was concerned.
“There’s coffee if you want it. You might need to refresh it a little.”
Joe shook his head, took a mug from the drainer and sloshed out the tarry dregs from the French press. “We got a problem,” he said.
“Just the one?”
Joe pulled up a chair, so close that his hip almost brushed Gabe’s. Gabe’s palms itched and he was still half hard in his pants, having been trying and failing to stave off thoughts of Blue. She was right upstairs and no matter how he rooted his ass to the chair, his mind kept flying up to join her, teasing him with thoughts of how her skin would feel when he skimmed his fingers up her thigh, how she’d breathe faster when he crumpled up her skirt and dropped to his knees. How she’d taste.
He could feel the warmth of Joe’s body from inches away and in different circumstances he might have done something about it. Funny how the desire to touch came bubbling to the surface like this in times of stress. That hunger for comfort and closeness so often blurred when the need to feel skin came into play. Joe leaned in, and Gabe could feel his breath tickling his ear, stirring lust anew. The thought of Blue was enough to make him nearly explode.
Joe breathed in. “Oh,” he said, his Minnesota accent turning the single syllable into something at once comical and tender. “Yeah - that’s a problem all right.”
“Tell me this is a bad idea.”
“It’s a bad idea.”
“I really like her,” said Gabe, moving his knee away from Joe’s.
“I know. I can tell.”
“Well, that’s mine. What’s your problem?”
Joe exhaled long and slow and took a mouthful of coffee. “The kid,” he said. “Stacy’s boy. I don’t think it’s drugs.”
Gabe sat back and stared at him for a second. Jesus, this night just kept on getting crazier. “Are you shitting me? I thought everyone had pretty much figured out he was Eli’s.”
“He is, I think.”
“I thought it was usually a thing you got from your grandfather, not your dad.”
Joe shrugged. “It doesn’t always skip a generation. Or Stacy’s old man must have been one of the gang.”
Gabe tried to take it all in. “Great. That’s all we fucking need. Like Eli was any help before all this happened...”
“There’s something else, too.”
“What?”
Joe shook his head and leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs under the table. “That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t know. Something else. Something big.”
That ill wind in Miami. Oh yeah. There was something there. “You feel it in your bones?”
“No. More like in the spaces between them. Like that feeling you get inbetween your back bones when - ”
“ – no. That’s like two weeks away.”
“I know.” Joe frowned and chewed his lower lip for a moment. “And don’t pretend like I’m being weird and wiggy, because I know you feel it too.”
Gabe drained his coffee cup. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t mention it.”
“Nope,” said Joe, tapping his nose. “You know me.”
They fell silent for a moment. Bugs chirped and the clock ticked in the brief, pre-dawn cool. “So what do you think?” asked Gabe, reluctantly. “Something big? Change of management?”
“Could be. I heard rumors that Lyle Raines was sick. Maybe I should go north. Take a look around.”
“Are you crazy? After last time?”
“I’ll sneak. Stay under the radar.”
“No way,” said Gabe. “Not alone. I’m coming with you.”
“That’ll be worse,” said Joe. “Come on – be sensible. We can’t afford for both of us to be out of work.” Trust him to frame it in common sense terms, even though he knew all the other reasons why Gabe needed to stay in the Keys.
Gabe sighed. “I guess,” he said. “And someone needs to be here for Gloria.”
“What happened to that RN Eli promised?”
“Oh yeah. Like that’s going to happen. Once the word gets out about the arrest.”
“They didn’t charge him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gabe. “That’s the kind of shit that sticks around here. You just wait - give it twenty-four hours and Eli’s reputation as the Keys Casanova will be gone like a werewolf’s daddy. Shit, give it forty-eight and they’ll be making out like he’s Jack the Ripper and Charlie Manson all rolled into one.”
Joe swilled the dregs around in his coffee cup. “See?” he said. “Another reason why you need to be here. Someone needs to look out for Eli.”
“Fine.”
“Don’t be like that. It’s not going to be a big adventure; like I said, I’ll keep it on the down-low. Besides, it’s not like you don’t want to stay down here.” Joe tilted his head towards the ceiling. He could obviously smell Blue loud and clear and for a second Gabe wanted to hurt him. Possessive. Stupid.
Joe was right. It was a problem.
*
Everything was going wrong.
Gabe was cool and strange when he dropped Blue off at work, and when she arrived at the hotel she found Kate yelling at the nympho waitress, Charmaine in the middle of a bad tempered phone call with the laundry service and Renee clench-jawed and quietly fuming as she tidied the supply shelves. Stacy, red-eyed from the night before, was sensibly lurking outside with a cigarette.
“Welcome to hell,” she said. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was the full moon. Everyone’s acting like a goddamn lunatic.”
“I know. Kate’s yelling at whatsername – the waitress. The dollar store Jenna Jameson.”
Stacy snorted. “Goody. So we can look forward to her having one of her stress binges and making the restaurant bathroom smell like puke. As if it didn’t smell bad enough already.” She ground out her cigarette and yawned hugely behind her hand. “God, did you get any sleep?”
“Not much.”
“Me neither.” She stomped back into the laundry, catching an enquiring look from Renee. “I’m fucked,” Stacy said, in answer to the older woman’s unspoken question. “Caleb still won’t sleep through the night and my degenerate eldest is into retro substances, possibly special-K.”
“End times,” said Renee, and stumped off to the other side of the shelf to finish her inventory.
Stacy narrowed an eye and took two sets of cloths from the stack, passing one to Blue. “Is Gloria okay?”
Blue shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Wait – she’s still missing? I thought she was home.”
“She is. Was.” Nothing made much sense anymore. “She wound up in Miami.”
“What? How?”
“She drove.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not. She drove up to Miami and came back...different. Lucid. She was totally together and saying things that made sense. Gabe said she had these moments before, but not like this. Not this long. It’s like some kind of miracle.”
Renee came back around the shelf. “Wait – did you just say Gloria drove to Miami?”
“Yeah.” And that wasn’t even half of what had happened last night.
“That’s impossible,” said Renee. “They took her license years ago.”
Stacy frowned. “She can still drive without one, you know. It’s not legal, but it’s possible.”
“I’m surprised she can even tell left from right, never mind read the traffic signs. And she didn’t get into an accident?”
“No,” said Blue.
Renee gave her a loaded look and took her own stack of cleaning cloths from the shelf. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” she said, and walked out.
“Goddamn it,” said Stacy. “They got
her again. I knew they would.”
“Who?”
“Her freaky-ass holy roller church. It’s their style; they bust out the hardcore Christian lovebombing when everything’s going to shit in your life. As soon as Greg ran out of toes to amputate I figured they’d try and recruit her back into the fold.” Stacy yawned again. “Okay, so you start in reception and I’ll start on beds. No point me doing the downstairs bathrooms until the Great White Queen has finished throwing up her breakfast.”
All through the morning Blue’s mind kept drifting off, snagging on the ends of Gabe’s eyelashes and the hard tips of his fingers. She found herself staring at shower screens, unable to remember whether she had cleaned them or not, and had buffed several sets of taps three times over, just to be sure. When she saw him crossing the lawn to the boatshed her head was so full of him that she almost jumped, as if surprised to find that he’d escaped from her imagination.
He looked once in her direction, turned quickly away and kept walking.
His car was gone again by the end of her shift, and Blue had worked herself up into a fine froth of indignation, her bad mood only intensified by her lack of sleep. She meant to go to Charlotte’s with Stacy, but on the way she saw Gabe parked outside Gloria’s.
She told Stacy to drop her there and stomped across Gloria’s weed grown yard to the blistered-paint porch. The wind had dropped from last night, but Blue’s slight weight on the rickety boards was enough to set the windchimes in motion. A shell and driftwood arrangement knocked softly alongside a heavily tarnished Ganesha, over half a dozen tiny metal elephants swaying on strings beneath his crossed legs. She thought it might have been silver, and thought it strange that nobody had stolen it, or broken the mirror that hung beside the front door. It looked like exactly the kind of thing that would present an irresistible target for trick or treaters, or just high school kids acting the fool.
There had been houses like that back in New Orleans – places said to be too haunted for even the most intrepid candy hunter to push back their squeaking, creaking rust-ruined gates. And Blue knew kids well enough to know they wouldn’t show pity to an old, senile lady. There was clearly another reason why they didn’t mess with Gloria.
The door frame was studded with nails, some of which looked new. They had been hammered in higgledy-piggledy and stuck out like jagged teeth in a broken jaw. Blue reached out and touched one, just to see how firmly it had been driven in. It wiggled under her finger and fell out, and she stepped back quickly, hoping nobody had seen.
Perhaps it was the self-consciousness of doing something wrong, but she had never felt so watched as she did in that moment, like a pair of unseen eyes was glaring at her through the screen and the door, sizing her up.
She quickly kicked the loose nail under the curling corner of the doormat - sending several large bugs scuttling - and knocked on the door.
Gabe answered it. “Hey,” he said, and just stood there. Blocking the way. She had been right all along, and she took no comfort from it; something was weird between them.
“Can I come in?”
He seemed to give himself a quick mental shake. “Yeah. Sure. Sorry.”
Gabe stepped by to let her in. The cool indoors was unexpected, especially considering that Gloria’s AC worked about as well as everything else in the house. Blue could feel the heat of Gabe’s skin as she passed him, but he didn’t reach out. Just closed the door behind her and waved her on through.
“I wanted to stop by and see if you needed anything,” she said. “Anything I can do to help.”
There was no sign of Gloria, but when they went into the kitchen the cupboards gaped empty, every square inch of the table stacked with dusty china and glass. In the sink was a bowl full of soapy water, so hot that the sun streaming through the window lit up the rising steam like fog. “Spring cleaning?” asked Blue.
“Something like that,” he said, and for an instant he looked puzzled, appealing, like she might have had the answer to whatever it was that was going on. She didn’t, but it didn’t stop her wishing she had.
“Gabe,” she said, taking her nerve in both hands. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”
He sighed hard enough to blow the dust off the crockery. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Everything. Joe’s got this big plumbing contract up north, Eli’s in bad shape and the RN he said he was going to find to help out with Gloria is probably not going to materialize any time soon.” He waved a hand around the kitchen. “And as you can see, ever since last night’s freaky-ass recovery, Gloria is actually more of a risk to herself than before.”
“I guess. So the grand theft auto - ”
“ - is new, yeah,” he said. “Along with the cleaning frenzy. She was climbing up on a chair when I came in. Thought she was going to break a fucking hip or something.”
“I’m fine,” said Gloria, walking back in with a molting feather duster in her hand. “And watch your language, before I give you a mouthful of dishsoap and something to cry about.”
She pulled the chair back towards the cupboard and slowly raised a bony old leg like she was going to step up onto it. Gabe gave Blue a helpless ‘see what I mean?’ look and reached out to help. Gloria swatted him away with the duster.
“Perhaps I could get that for you?” said Blue. “I’m taller.”
Gloria lowered her leg with a hiss of annoyance. “Well, shit,” she said, and handed over the duster. “Fine. Go to it, girl. I guess these bandy old legs ain’t what they used to be. Would you believe they used to stop traffic back in the day?”
Blue climbed up onto the chair and began to dust the shelf. Gabe stared up at her in confusion and then turned back to Gloria. “So you’ll let her dust for you, but not me?” he said. “Why?”
“Clue’s in the pronoun,” said Gloria. “Even the best trained man doesn’t have a woman’s eye for detail.”
“Hand me that bowl?” said Blue, as years of dust and old bugs rained down onto the kitchen counter.
Gabe did as he was told. “This is pure sexism. I hope you know that.”
“Cry me a river,” said Gloria, and wandered off muttering something about ant-spray.
Blue wiped down the shelf and bent to rinse the sponge. Cruddy brown water poured out, almost spattering Gabe. “She likes you,” he said, with an ulterior look in his eye.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you want something from me.”
“I thought you wanted me to want something from you. At least, you did last night.”
She scrubbed harder, attacking a congealed blob of something that might once have been jelly. “Yeah. Before you turned all weird.”
“Who was weird?” he said. “I’m not weird.”
Blue looked down at him. “You really want to be saying that to a woman who’s perfectly placed to wring this sponge out on your head?”
Gabe sighed. “Blue, listen - it’s not that I don’t like you, because I do. But it’s not like I’m a good bet right now. I’m not exactly Donald Trump, if you know what I mean.”
“So...you’re not a crazy, orange racist? That’s kind of a plus.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, as she stepped down from the chair. “I live paycheck to paycheck. On top of everything else. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do about Gloria?”
“The first thing?” Blue said, picking up the duster and starting on the next shelf. “I think you should take her to a hospital.”
He sighed. “Why did you have to say that?”
“Because. Something big has obviously happened in her brain, Gabe. It could be a clot on the move; something really dangerous.”
“I guess,” he said, but he was clearly thinking of medical bills he couldn’t afford. “And I agree with you, but - ”
“ - but what? This is a no-brainer.”
Gabe sighed again, hard enough to make the newly disturbed dust dance in the sunlit air. “She hasn’t had a stroke or
anything. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
“Um, I don’t know. I’m a hotel maid, not a neurologist.”
“She drove to Miami in her bedroom slippers. With no significant brain events, I might add.”
“Other than the miraculous recovery from Alzheimer’s, you mean?”
“Go ahead,” he said. “Go tell Gloria that feeling better is a sign that she needs to go to the hospital. Let me know how that works out for you.”
Blue stepped down from the chair. “I’m serious, Gabe.”
“I know. And so is she. If she goes to the hospital they’re gonna take one look at her brain scan and start the wheels in motion to put her in a home. Or worse. Some shithole state institution where she’d sit around drugged off her ass all day, drooling in front of reruns of The Simpsons. At her age and with her health it’s a one way trip, and she knows it.”
He made his case too well, reminding her how her heart used to want to leap out of her chest at the sight of piled papers, inky stamps so hard and definite that you could hear the thump - like an official echo. Denied. Irrevocable. She had always known there was no going back, even before she was old enough to understand what red tape was, let alone its kudzu-like capacity for tangling and throttling.
“Okay,” she said, drying her hands. “I don’t like it, but I can respect that.”
He was standing too close, his face and his shoulder turned towards her, his butt resting against the edge of the work surface. He moved his hand along the edge and reached out for hers. As she flexed her fingers to grip his she felt her dry skin stretch under its crust of soap, and she wondered if this was what being old would feel like.
“This is hard,” he said, his fingertips playing over her knuckles, his eyes on the floor. She thought there were girls in the world who might commit murder for eyelashes like his.
“It always is,” she said.
“Was it like this with your mom?”
“Something like it, yeah.”
Gabe drew in an audible breath, the pink tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. “So you have some...experience,” he said, with a tentativeness that made it all too clear about what it was he really wanted from her.
