by LS Hawker
“Hey,” Otto said gently. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have called you and asked if I could come by. I just . . . wanted to make it up to you for missing my shift. I’m sorry.”
Nessa realized she’d just given her professional adversary a salacious glimpse into the peep show that was her anxiety and stress. Into her weakness.
She stood straight and gave him the most imperious look she could manage. “Right,” she said, folding her arms in front of her. “No need to let me know that you weren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
He grinned a little. “You were worried about me?”
“You’d know that if you’d listened to any of the dozen messages I left you last night.” She pointed at the bags. “What’s all this?”
“Like I said, I want to make it up to you,” he said. “I’m going to cook you dinner.”
She stared at him. “But what the hell happened?” She crossed her arms again like some scolding housewife.
“Can I come in and put this stuff down? Then I’ll tell you.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was curious what sort of dinner he would come up with. Would it be better than delivery pizza? Maybe. But she was too tired to argue. “Fine,” she said.
“Kitchen this way?” he said, walking past her with his grocery sacks. “Can you grab the cooler?”
This guy. Still trying to be the boss. She sighed and picked up the blue and white cooler and followed him into the kitchen.
“You won’t believe it,” he said, opening the cooler and pulling out two PBRs, and offered her one of them.
She shook her head and leaned back against the counter. PBR. Of course.
“Do they actually give you a handbook when you become a hipster?” she said. “Like you must drink this shitty beer because it’s so ironic?”
“I’m not a hipster,” he said, offended.
“Really. How would you describe yourself?”
“A free-thinker,” he said, almost triumphantly. “A progressive with good taste.”
That you had before anyone else.
She needed to cut down on the nasty thoughts. He’d extended an olive branch, and she was still being a jerk.
“Sorry,” she said. “You seem to bring out the worst in me.”
“Why?” he said. “Is it because you were a hipster before I was?”
“How meta of you,” she said.
“Well, I brought some wine too,” he said. “You have a wine bottle opener?”
“Nope,” Nessa said.
“No wine for you, huh?” he said. “Let me guess. Only Cristal for the star.”
The back door opened and in walked Isabeau and Daltrey, fresh from exploring in the forest out back.
“She doesn’t drink,” Isabeau said. “Hey, Otto.” She turned to Nessa. “We had a couple of classes together at K-State.”
Daltrey ran out of the kitchen when he saw Otto. Isabeau ran after him and brought him back in.
“Daltrey, this is my friend Otto. He works with Mommy at the radio station.”
Daltrey covered his eyes with his hand.
“Hi, Daltrey,” Otto said.
Without uncovering his eyes, Daltrey waved at Otto with his other hand, and Otto laughed.
“You want to watch Arthur until dinner’s ready?” Nessa asked Daltrey.
He nodded, still blindfolded. She carried him into the living room and turned on the television.
“You don’t have to be afraid of Otto,” she said. “He’s a nice man.”
Nessa tried to say it without sarcasm and mostly succeeded. She returned to the kitchen.
“So, Isabeau,” Otto said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m Nessa’s nanny and aide-de-camp. She told me she worked with an Otto. Didn’t know it was you.”
Otto cut his eyes at Nessa. “Oh, yeah? What did she say?”
“That you’re a brilliant producer.”
Of course Nessa hadn’t said that, but Isabeau was the queen of encouragement. Maybe Nessa should try to be more like her.
Naaah.
“So no bottle opener,” Otto said. “Well, no problem. I’ve been wanting to try this thing I saw on the Internet.”
He took off his left Doc Martens boot and removed the foil from the wine bottle. Then Otto slipped the wine bottle into his boot, bottom first—eeewww—and said, “Which wall should I smack this against?”
“How about you go outside and do it on that oak over there?”
Isabeau made a follow-me motion and headed out the back door. Nessa watched out the window as Isabeau led him to the tree and he smacked the heel against the trunk of the oak several times. She could see Isabeau talking while Otto worked. Finally, he held the bottle up triumphantly and worked the protruding cork out of the bottle neck.
Nessa’s mouth watered. She missed wine.
They came running back in like a couple of kids who’d just caught tadpoles.
“Success!” Isabeau said, her arms in the air. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Where are your pots and pans?” Otto asked Nessa.
She opened the cabinet and showed him where everything was.
She fought to push away her disdain for this guy that she didn’t really know. When had she become so judgmental? Was it inevitable after marriage and kids? Her mother had been judgmental of everyone, commenting on people’s choice of clothes, car, language, hairstyle. Maybe she’d turned out just like her mother after all.
OTTO MADE PAELLA, and it was actually quite good. He and Isabeau drank the wine he’d brought while Nessa stuck to iced tea.
He proposed a toast. “Here’s to a better working relationship.”
The three of them clinked their glasses together, and Daltrey thrust his sippy cup forward. They clinked his too.
After dinner the four of them walked the property as Nessa explained the hops farm idea. Otto grew excited.
“You should totally keep going with it,” he said.
“Now that my husband is . . . gone, I just don’t have the time or energy.”
“Are you getting a divorce?”
Nessa and Isabeau exchanged glances.
“Long story,” Nessa said.
“Oh. Hey, Daltrey,” Otto said. “You like playing hide-and-seek?”
He nodded, all smiles.
“You want to play right now?”
He nodded more vigorously.
Daltrey was “it” for the first game, and the three adults made sure they were just visible enough for him to find them.
Nessa was impressed with Otto’s easy manner with Daltrey. Not that she’d ever tell him that, but it was nice to observe Otto out of context. When Daltrey chased him, he pretended to run fast, and Nessa caught a glimpse of Otto as a little boy before the irony bug bit him.
“Bedtime,” Nessa called.
Daltrey got limp, slumping as he walked reluctantly toward her.
“Hey, Daltrey,” Otto said. “We’ll play again sometime, okay?”
Daltrey nodded and signed “Good night” to him.
“I’ll put him down,” Isabeau said.
“Let’s go in too,” Nessa said. “I can’t take any more of this heat.”
“Good call,” Otto said.
They all trooped inside, and Isabeau and Daltrey went upstairs.
“Another beer? More wine?” Nessa said as she washed her hands at the sink in the kitchen.
“I’ll have another beer,” Otto said, pulling a PBR out of his cooler.
“Mommy,” Isabeau called down the stairs. “Come say good-night!”
“Be right there,” she said, drying her hands.
“Where are we going to hang out?” Otto said. “Kitchen or living room? Where do you normally?”<
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“Living room,” she said, and went upstairs.
Daltrey was all jammied and toothbrushed and all tucked into bed.
“Good night, Daltrey,” Isabeau said.
Nessa hugged and kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
He held up his hand in the abbreviated ASL “I love you” sign and closed his eyes. She turned on his night-light and sound machine, turned out the light, and followed Isabeau out of the room.
Down in the living room, Otto occupied the wingback chair and Isabeau sat on the floor with her back against the couch holding a glass of wine.
“That is one cute kid,” Otto said.
“Thank you,” Nessa said, plugging her phone into her minispeakers, then set iTunes to shuffle. “Ideal World” began to play.
She sat on the couch
“Is that . . . Girlpool?” Otto said, incredulous.
“Yeah,” she said.
“I thought you were strictly a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company midseventies classic rock type.”
“Have you ever heard me play either of those bands? Ever?”
“Well, no, but—”
“She’s turned me on to a whole bunch of music I’d never heard of before,” Isabeau said. “She’s a very interesting person.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Otto said. “Nessa doesn’t talk about herself.”
“I’m a very private person,” Nessa said. She didn’t like where this was going.
“You can’t be a private person nowadays,” Otto said. “Everyone is out there and exposed, and there’s nothing you can do about it. So you might as well just let it all out.”
This was truer than Otto could possibly know. She needed to steer the conversation away from herself. “Right,” she said. “So what about you, Otto? Where’d you grow up?”
“Mulvane, near Wichita,” he said. “My dad’s a farmer. Mom’s a schoolteacher.”
“Did everybody pick on you when you were a kid?” Isabeau said.
He drew back, shocked. “No,” he said, drawing it out, which Nessa took to mean “yes.” She saw in his face the younger version of himself that no one liked. And she imagined her own oddball son, and how it felt when he was shunned or shut out by other kids at the park because he didn’t talk.
This and the way he was with Daltrey were what she needed to see to stop hating him.
“Everybody picked on me,” Isabeau said. “I was the tallest girl in my class. It sucked.” She yawned and stretched. “I can’t keep my eyes open. I’m going to bed.” She stood and stretched again. “See you, Otto.”
“Good night,” he said, looking panicked.
Nessa wanted to laugh. Was he afraid to be left alone with her? They worked alone together twice a week.
“I’ll help with the dishes,” he said resolutely.
“I’m going to just leave them,” Nessa said.
“I’ll just do them for you. You can go on to bed, Nessa.”
“What, and let you dig through my stuff? Not on your life, princess.”
His laugh sounded nervous, as if he thought she believed he’d really do this. He stood and walked into the kitchen.
Isabeau winked at Nessa and went upstairs.
Nessa joined Otto in the kitchen and put Otto’s leftover food into his cooler while he rinsed dishes. She loaded the dishwasher.
“What do you think,” Otto said. “Think I could do your job?”
“Sure,” Nessa said. “A chimp could do it.”
He leaned back against the counter. “That’s always been the goal,” he said dreamily. “To get an Altair satellite show, but I’d do it right. I’d play super-obscure stuff that only a handful of true connoisseurs would know.”
“That is antithetical to the business model, which is actually to get people to listen, not to drive the larger audience away, you dumbass.”
He laughed. “I know. I can’t help it.”
“Sure you can. You don’t have to be this way. You can be a real boy.”
“ ‘I got no strings to hold me down, to make sad or make me frown,’ ” he sang in a surprisingly good voice. He smacked himself in the forehead with a wet hand. “Shit. I can’t believe I just made an Ultron reference.”
“And a Pinocchio reference at the same time. A two-for-one! What you just said? Can’t you see how many antihipster points you hit there?”
He smirked at her and dried his hands on a dish towel. “I gotta use the bathroom. Be right back.”
Nessa wiped the counters, waiting for him to return, and thought about how pleasant this had been, how nice of him it was to show up and make dinner. Which didn’t seem like him at all. But maybe she’d misjudged him.
When he returned, he’d obviously been mulling over their conversation.
“You know, although I don’t self-identify as a hipster, I believe it comes from a sincere place,” he said earnestly. “In a world that so desperately cherishes the super-popular and conformity of values, there’s significance in seeking out the talent that maybe the masses don’t quite recognize because it doesn’t cohere to the norm, to the elite-approved idea of what’s good. Our taste has been developed by corporations desperate to sell products. It’s all manufactured for us and shoved down our throats. It’s fast food for the soul, for the mind. It’s not good for us, you know? We’ve lost the ability as a species to declare what we like instead of having it done for us.”
“Although it’s corny as hell, that may actually be the best unironic explanation of hipster I’ve ever heard,” Nessa said. “Okay, I’ll grant you all that. But what really bugs me? It’s the smugness. The sense of superiority. That you’re better than the masses, the sheeple, as your people so compassionately call them.”
“But isn’t that what we all do, on some level? Try to elevate ourselves to drown out the chorus of self-hatred that threatens to destroy us all on a daily basis?”
“What just happened?” Nessa said, straightening and fixing him with an astonished gaze. “Did you just . . . say something real to me? Did you really just peel back your veneer of bullshit to give me a glimpse into your existential fears?”
He looked away from her.
“You’ll have your own show one day,” she said. “After a millennia of being the joke of humanity, the tables have turned and nerds now run the universe. Maybe the year of the hipster is coming, and you’ll have your supreme day in the sun, where you run everything—organically and sustainably, of course—and turn the world into a flax-wearing, beard-growing, locavore-arama!”
Otto barked a laugh. “My real name is Jim,” he said.
“Of course it is,” Nessa said.
After Otto left, Nessa realized he’d never told her what had happened to him Thursday night.
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday, June 18
NESSA FELT AS though she’d been sleeping with her eyes open because it seemed like she’d been staring at the same dark object for hours. It was like the ceiling fan. Since they’d lived in this house, she’d awoken several times, and upon seeing the ceiling fan, each time she’d thought it was something different: a seagull, a cross, Superman.
But this time her mind was making it into something sinister. It was just a shadow from the window, moving with the wind, trees, maybe.
She blinked in the dark.
But the image resolved into the shape of a man.
John? And she almost sat up.
But then a strange scent met her nostrils. It was Southern Comfort and cigarette smoke. A spear of terror impaled her chest, cutting off her wind.
John was not a smoker.
Nessa did not know this person.
The man stood next to the dresser, unmoving. Nessa resolved not to move either. If she pretended to be asleep, he could take what he wanted and leave.
He turned slowly toward her.
A second sharper wave of panic rippled through her body.
Pleaseleavepleaseleavepleaseplease. . .
The man lunged toward the bed and clamped a large hand over her mouth, bearing down and mashing her lips into her gums, pressure under her nose.
A dark face lowered to hers and whispered, “Don’t make a sound. If you fight me, I will kill you.”
She saw that the darkness of the face was due to a black knit ski mask. His lips touched the skin of her face and the revulsion she felt was so extreme she thought she might faint. His saliva dribbled down her forehead.
A hoarse whisper. “I’ve got a gun, and one way or another, I’m going to use it.”
He raised up and she saw a gun-shaped shadow above her face. He put it in his pocket and leaned back in. “I know you want this, bitch. You want it hard, don’t you? Tell me how you want it.”
Nessa felt pressure on her stomach moving southward. Everything slowed down.
It was happening again, this time in her own house, with her son sleeping next door.
“Nathan?” she whispered. She had to talk him out of this.
“Shut up,” he said, but the shape of him was all wrong. He was shorter, had thin arms. This wasn’t her rapist from California. This was a new rapist.
“Please,” she said.
“Please what?” he said. “What do you want me to do? Say it!”
Her breathing came in ragged gasps and her heart battered the inside of her chest. When his hand reached her crotch, without any agency from her, her arms and legs began flailing wildly, as if restraints had just popped off of her. Her left hand caught the man in the nose.
“Ow!” he howled. “What are you doing?”
The absurdity of this question made her freeze again momentarily.
“That wasn’t part of the deal!” the man yelled.
Nessa’s door flew open and Isabeau stood there, all five foot ten inches of her, with a slim purple knife in her hand.
“Get off her, motherfucker,” Isabeau said. “Or this knife is going right into your back.”
The ski-masked asshole looked back over his shoulder, and Nessa took the opportunity to wind up and punch him right in the balls. He pitched over, gasping, clutching his crotch and groaning.
