Just Pru

by Anne Pfeffer

  I pulled up in front of the theater, hitting the curb hard but luckily not popping a tire. I hated when I did that.

  “Would you go back and let Adam in?” Ellen said. “Some of the crew are coming to our dinner tonight, so they’ll drive me home.”

  “Are Blake and Becca coming?”

  “I think so. They’re at her place right now, rehearsing.” Ellen frowned as she opened the car door. “Supposedly, anyway.”

  “Supposedly?”

  “It’s a nightmare.” Ellen confided. “On top of everything else, I’m pretty sure they’ve started sleeping together. I got some hints of it a few weeks ago.”

  “Is that allowed?” My throat burned with a strange disappointment. Don’t be stupid, I scolded myself. What does it matter to you if Blake and Becca are together?

  “Well, you can’t forbid actors from hooking up.” Ellen chewed the side of her lip. “The problem is you never know how it’s going to affect their work.” She slid awkwardly out of the car, her cast leg preceding her, then pulled her crutches up.

  “Does your leg hurt?” I asked, suddenly feeling guilty. I’d never even thought about that. Ellen hadn’t voiced a word of complaint.

  She gave me a crooked smile. “I’m deferring all pain until after opening night.” Brave and powerful, as always, she crutched off to work.

  ##

  Adam showed up at Ellen’s apartment with two bags of groceries. He grinned down at me. “Hey! You gonna help me cook?”

  “Do you trust me?” I asked.

  “I brought a fire extinguisher.”

  I was pretty sure he was joking but took a peek at his bags just in case. No fire extinguisher poking out of the top.

  As I let him into the apartment, I remembered that it was time to make a preventive phone call to my parents. Darn it. Wednesday afternoons, you could count on my mom to be home doing laundry. I called, steeling myself.

  “Darling!” she cried. “I’ve been so worried! Did you get a new cell phone?” Muffled sounds in the background of the washer and dryer going simultaneously.

  “Not yet. I’ve been too busy.” I cringed as Adam dropped a can of beans, which rolled across the kitchen floor.

  “Too busy to get a cell phone! Prudence, you know better than that!” Her voice took on her reproachful tone. “You should be reachable at all times, not to mention able to call for help in an emergency.”

  “Mm, hm.” I’ll be there in a minute, I mouthed silently to Adam.

  “As a matter of fact, did you get the clipping I sent you?”

  “About the cashews? Yeah.”

  “No, this is a different one. It’s about a product called The Pouch. You keep your cell phone in it. It’s a small pouch on a strap that can be adjusted to wear around your waist or neck night and day, so you’re never without your phone!” My mom’s voice rose in excitement. “Isn’t that a great idea?”

  “Why would you want to wear your phone around your neck night and day?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? What if you fell down the stairs and were unable to move? You could lie there for days. But if your cell phone is with you, you can call for help!”

  “I don’t have stairs.” It wasn’t me talking. It was the evil twin that came out whenever my parents got going on stuff like this. “Anyway, how do I know this thing wouldn’t wrap itself around my neck one night in bed and strangle me?”

  That stopped her in her tracks. “That’s a real danger! Perhaps I should write to the manufacturer.”

  “I gotta go. I’ll keep in touch, and I’ll get a cell as soon as I can.”

  Adam had changed from work clothes into jeans and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. As I hung up, a ring tone floated out from his shirt pocket. He pulled the phone out and flipped it open. “Adam Sanford…. Hello, Mrs. Landry!”

  I unloaded groceries from the bags while he took the call. “I say we emphasize income and tax protection. Speculative stocks might be right for Ed, but not for you.”

  I lined up the chili ingredients on the counter while he took his time with her, listening to her questions and giving short, clear answers. I liked the way he explained things—patiently, yet without talking down to her. He hung up, grinning.

  “So that’s a client?” I asked.

  “She was my first. Her son Ed was my college roommate. When her husband died, Ed suggested I manage her estate.”

  “He knew you were good!”

  “Actually, I was a gamble. I was right out of college. But he knew he could trust me. Some of the operators out there would pick her bones clean if they could get near her.” Using a brush and water from the tap, Adam scrubbed the top of a beer can. Standing at Ellen’s sink, he practically filled her small kitchen. Six foot four and solidly built, his waist was at her counter, his head halfway up her ceiling cabinets.

  “You mean, steal from her?” I asked.

  “Yep. Or lose all her money in shady deals.” He scrubbed off a second can.

  “If I ever have two million dollars, I’m going to hire you.”

  “Good decision.” He held a beer can out to me. “Want one?”

  “Sure.” I’d never had alcohol in my life. My parents didn’t keep any at home, and since I was always there, that pretty much settled things.

  The can was frosty under my fingers. Slowly I lifted the tab and popped it open. I went to take a sip, then stopped. I wanted to ask Adam if it would taste sour, but I didn’t want him to know I’d never had a beer before.

  I plucked up my courage and drank. It tasted like fertilizer. Sparkling fertilizer. I took a couple of big swallows, then came up for air, a million tiny bubbles exploding inside my nasal passages. “Woah!” I wiped my hand across my nose.

  “Don’t drown just yet.” He handed me a large chopping knife and an onion. “Wash your hands first!” He lined up a series of cans and began washing the tops off.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “To remove dust. You don’t want it to fall into the food when you take off the lids.” He began to run the cans through an electric can opener. “Also, you should really tie up that hair of yours.”

  I found a rubber band and pulled my long, heavy curls back into a knot. I washed and dried my hands. The onion rolled around on the counter in front of me. Adam seemed to believe I knew what to do with it. “So I just cut this up?” That much I had figured out.

  His back was toward me. “Yeah.”

  I took the knife, cut the onion into a ragged half, then cut the halves into lopsided quarters. It didn’t seem right. Plus, the onion was making me cry. “Adam? How do you want it cut exactly?”

  Adam perused my handiwork, his face holding the same expression it had the other day, when I’d told him about my wet money in the backpack. It was a look of fascinated wonderment, as if he’d never seen anything quite like the peculiar thing before him right now.

  “Taking the peel off would be a good start,” he said gently. “And then maybe cut it in smaller pieces.”

  I could do that. I would do the best job ever done on an onion. Painstakingly, I began to peel away the brown papery outer skin. It was annoyingly dry and hard to handle. I began to sweat. I stopped to sip my beer. “How long have you lived here?”

  “In this building? Six months. Before that I was living with my girlfriend, Melinda.”

  This was news. I’d seen a lot of romances, break ups, and reconciliations on TV, but had never had a real conversation with a person who had life experience in these areas. The opportunity was too good to pass up, especially now that a few sips of beer were making me brave.

  “But you moved here alone?” I asked.

  “Yeah, after we broke up. We went together for five years.” He stopped to watch my tearful attempt to hack through an onion wedge. “Why don’t we trade? I’ll chop onion and you open cans.”

  “Okay.”

  The only can still unopened was a little one containing tomato paste, which I attempted to fit into the jaws of t
he electric opener. So Ellen did have one. I wondered where Adam had found it.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “I had proposed, bought the ring, the whole enchilada.” He deftly chopped the onion pieces into perfect little bits. “I should’ve known something was up when she started going out with her friends a lot, picking fights, that kind of thing.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t care, but the discouraged line of his shoulders said otherwise.

  The can opener screeched as the small can caught in the mechanism and stopped turning. “Did Melinda break your heart?” I asked.

  “Did she… I guess. Yeah.” Adam gave me a quizzical look. “Then I moved in here and met Ellen. I thought maybe she and I could give it a go, but… I don’t think she’s interested.”

  I wanted to ask him if Ellen was his rebound girl, but I feared it might be inappropriate. I’d seen this exact thing happen in Love Strikes Twice, and it all turned out fine in the end. You just needed that rebound person to take your mind off the one who hurt you. That way, later, when you met the real person of your dreams, you’d be ready.

  I made just a tiny burp. “I’m not sure beer agrees with me,” I told him.

  “So let’s switch to wine. We don’t have to tell anybody.” Adam set the onions to frying in a large pot and tossed in the beans, tomatoes, and other chili ingredients. He extricated my mangled can from the opener and managed to scrape some tomato paste into the chili.

  After washing his hands three times, he pulled out a corkscrew and wiped it off with a clean towel. He buffed each glass shiny with the towel before filling them with the rich red liquid. We sat down on the sofa.

  I took my goblet carefully, twirling the stem slightly between my fingers. I had never done anything so sophisticated and romantic. The wine was yummy, way better than beer. I took a few long sips. “I never had wine before,” I confessed. The beer must have loosened me up.

  “Really?” Adam stared into his goblet like he was trying to understand something written in the bottom of the glass.

  “Adam?” I was still thinking about Adam and Ellen and Melinda. “If you met the exact woman of your dreams, what would she be like?”

  He cocked his head, considering my question. “Well, she’d have to be cool with all my neuroses.”

  “What neuroses?”

  “Hah! Good one!” Adam’s laugh rang out spontaneously.

  I laughed merrily and cluelessly along with him. I was glad Adam found me amusing, even if I didn’t know why. He had kicked off his shoes and put his feet up on the coffee table, next to mine. His legs were way longer than mine were, which made me feel small and feminine.

  “Don’t you want someone hot? Isn’t that what all men want?” The wine made the room seem to revolve slowly around us.

  “Jeez, Pru, say what you really think.”

  “That was what I really think.”

  “Well, okay. It wouldn’t hurt if I thought she was hot. And if she thought I was, too.”

  “So you want passion in your life.”

  Adam shrugged. “Well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone?”

  “I do!” I sang out, officially drunk for the first time ever. I reached for the wine bottle.

  Adam gently took it out of my hand. “Let’s get some food into you.” He propped me up against the sofa cushions and returned a few minutes later with a platter of cheese, crackers, and olives.

  The doorbell rang. It was beach-babe Krista and, soon after that, a parade of people who supposedly lived in the building, although I’d never seen them before. Then Ellen showed up with a gang from the theater who immediately began passing around newly arrived baseball caps bearing the words Ellen’s Felons.

  I stood close to Adam, clutching the stem of my wine glass, thrilled at the novelty and excitement of it all. The hugs and greetings, the good smells from the kitchen, the laughter, the music, the feeling of belonging.

  Someone handed me a cap, which I put on at a jaunty angle. My first dinner party ever was beginning.

  Chapter Eleven

  From Pru’s Journal:

  Experiment, Dr. Abbot told me. Try new things.

  **

  It was eight thirty. I was in the kitchen doing dishes. The evening, by my standards anyway, had gone well. After some quick internal self-coaching, I had plucked up the courage to introduce myself to a few of the neighbors. Everyone had smiled at me, and no one seemed to mind that I’d said almost nothing and had at one point monopolized the apartment’s only bathroom for forty minutes. Most of them had their own facilities nearby anyway.

  I figured no one would recognize my generic jeans and T-shirt as belonging to Carrie. If I wore them for another day or two, though, they’d be walking around by themselves. As much as I hated to, I would have to go back for more of her clothes.

  A couple of early departing neighbors had come into the kitchen to pick up their pot luck dishes. “Have they figured out the cause of the fire?” one of them said. He sported a shiny, bald head and khaki pants that strained against his perfectly round posterior.

  “It wasn’t the electrical wiring,” said the other, an emaciated woman in a turtleneck sweater that hung on her like a sack. She was the man’s exact physical opposite. “It was probably human error: a cigarette or a kitchen fire.”

  That made sense. I’d thought the same thing when I first heard the alarm. I scrubbed the inside of a large casserole dish, to which someone had welded cheese. Or maybe attached it with PermaGlue.

  “It originated on the fourth floor along the middle of the west hallway,” the man said.

  Meaning right where my apartment was. No wonder I’d had so much damage.

  “Do you think they’ll press charges against whoever started it?”

  I stopped scrubbing.

  “Probably. Arson’s unlikely, but maybe criminal negligence.”

  Queasiness swept over me. What had Adam done with that burned potholder?

  It didn’t matter, I told myself. I hadn’t set that fire. And Adam had believed me. I put the issue out of my head.

  Ellen poked her head in to say her goodbyes to the people leaving. “Leave those dishes for now,” she told me. “Everyone’ll be gone by nine anyway.” It was a work night.

  “It’s okay.” I’d exhausted my tiny reserve of energy for things like human interaction, and I wanted to pull my weight. Washing dishes was on the exceedingly short list of things I could do competently. Therefore, I would do dishes.

  Daily.

  Hourly, if it meant I could stay here with Ellen forever.

  I finished scrubbing the casserole dish and rinsed it. The kitchen looked pretty good. Maybe I would go out and try to have a conversation. It’s just that so few people were as easy to talk to as Ellen was. Or Adam, for that matter.

  Dr. Abbot would have told me to go for it. As I dried off my hands, I heard greetings being called. I stepped out into the living room.

  Blake stood in the open front door in a white oxford shirt, black jeans, and black leather boots. His green glance swept over the room with something like weariness, or profound boredom.

  Beside him, Becca wore a tiny wildly-patterned dress. At least, I assumed it was meant to be a dress. It could have been a long shirt with no pants—I wasn’t sure. Her perfect legs glowed and curved like two amber candlesticks.

  The building residents stared, dumbstruck, at the physical beauty before them. The theater people gave limp waves and turned back to their apple pie.

  Becca clutched Blake’s arm, flashing a pageant smile, as if to say: Look at us! Look at how much fun we’re having! “Hi all! Sorry we’re late.” She playfully poked him in the ribs. “Aren’t we, Blake?”

  Irritation crawled across his features.

  She hung on his arm, pulling his body to the side.

  “Get off me!” Blake kept his voice low, but I heard him. He yanked his arm, hard, out of her grasp and strode away, while Becca struggled to wipe the shock and humiliation off her face. She quickly regrouped with another one of
those perfect Miss America smiles, even though her eyes were hooded, looking down.

  A couple of people sucked in their breath.

  Oblivious to all of them, Blake caught my eye. His sunbeam smile from halfway across the room would have lit up a stadium. He made another Count Blackstone bow, with a flourish.

  “There’s my muse! Where were you today when I needed you?”

  Horrified, I backed into the kitchen.

  Out in the living room, Becca had lost it. “You saw that?” she hissed at Ellen. “You heard him just now. The disrespect!”

  I crept forward to peek around the corner and see what was happening.

  The voices went back and forth, Ellen’s low and soothing, Becca’s shrill. Blake watched them both, clearly amused, his eyes following the voices like he was at a ping pong match.

  “What are you gonna do about him?” Becca pointed to Blake, who pulled out a cigarette.

  He smirked. “What is she gonna do about you?”

  “No smoking in my home,” Ellen snapped.

  Blake put his cigarette away.

  “There. See?” Becca faced Ellen, her voice trembling. “He does what you tell him to. But me? I’m nothing!”

  “You said it, not me.” Blake stared off at the ceiling, supremely bored.

  “Ooooh, you low-life!” Becca seemed about to burst apart, quivering with rage and hurt.

  These two were having intimate relations? I’d watched enough cable TV to know that sexual relationships could be complicated, but I’d always assumed that people who had them at least liked each other.

  Blake’s and Becca’s little display set all the guests scrambling for the exit. I helped a couple find their pot luck dishes, which I’d washed for them. When I looked into the living room again, only Adam had refused to leave, planting himself on the sofa, arms crossed over his chest, like a stubborn bodyguard.

  The two actors were still bickering.

  “Stop it! Just stop talking, both of you!” Ellen leaned forward on her crutches, her face drawn, her eyes burning.