by A. J. Downey
Our drinks came out and I raised an eyebrow at the glass. It was a rich brown at the bottom layered on top with white and between the two liquids it was a cascade of orange into the deeper brown coloring.
“It’s Thai iced tea,” Elka explained, stirring hers with her straw. “It’s a strong flavor and not to everyone’s liking, but if you hate it, I’ll be happy to drink it. I love the stuff.”
“Another one of your favorite things?” I asked.
“Ah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, I really do like tea. I drink it every day. Sometimes over coffee.”
“What? Now how you gonna say that?” I demanded. “Man, I ain’t had nothing negative to judge you on until you said that.”
She hid her smile and laugh with her hand and I stirred my drink like she did before I took a sip.
It wasn’t at all what I expected. Strong and smoky with a hint of sweet, it definitely was a rich and powerful punch in the mouth flavor-wise and I couldn’t immediately say it was unpleasant, but it was different. Sort of in that realm of where I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not.
“How is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m gonna keep drinking it, might be one of those acquired taste kind of a thing.”
“I definitely know all about that. There’s a few dishes here that I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first but finally realized I must after I’d ordered it for the third or fourth time.”
“Aw yeah? Nice.”
“Some of it is definitely an acquired taste,” she said with a bit of a giggle.
We talked about the food and she was surprisingly knowledgeable about it. I was getting the impression that she was smart about a lot of things but that it was all book smarts. It made me smile on the inside, thinkin’ that she had a good friend in my street-smart savvy self. That I might not be able to keep up with her on some things, but I could definitely give her a run for her money on others.
The more she talked, the more she seemed to relax. Opening up like a flower on a time-lapse video.
It was pretty sweet, and I was here for it.
10
Elka…
Our food came and we dished up. He made a few intrepid faces, daunted by some of the fare and I suppressed a smile.
“You don’t have to like any of it,” I said, “but I do insist you at least try a bit of everything.”
“I don’t know if I even want to try this,” he said pushing around a forkful of wet noodles on the edge of his plate.
“The Phad Thai? That is some of the most amazing stuff! You have to try it.”
“No offense,” he said, “but it smells like a whore that’s sat too long.”
I laughed and covered my mouth at the audacity of the statement and finally, shaking my head, said, “That’s probably the fish sauce in the sauce that you’re smelling. Just try it. I promise it’s amazing.”
“Alright, if you say so,” he said dubiously, but to his credit he tried a bite, his eyes widening in surprise.
“That’s good shit, Maynard!” he declared around his mouthful of food and I laughed.
“I have no idea who Maynard is.”
“Seriously old commercial,” he said. “Probably before your time. It was honestly before mine too, my mom and my pops used to say it back and forth all the time when I was a kid.”
“Oh, yeah? Where were you born?”
“Virginia.”
“Okay. I was born here in Indigo City,” I volunteered.
“Ever get anywhere outside it?” he asked.
“On family vacations and the like, yeah. I also traveled to Italy for school.”
“Oh, yeah? How was that?”
“Amazing! To see the greats in person was… I mean, seeing Michelangelo’s David in person?” I put my hands over my heart, the echo of that long-ago flutter in my heart dim but still there at first laying my eyes upon it. “Ah, there still isn’t anything like it.”
He chuckled and said, “You look like you’re in love over there.”
“I mean, yeah, I guess that’s not too far off the mark. Art will always be my first love, my passion.” I shrugged one shoulder and tried not to think too much about what I had given up to keep it in my life as fully as I had.
Except I really hadn’t… he’d given me up, had cited everything I’d loved and held dear as a problem and his betrayal had cut deep. I had already changed so much about myself for him and it had all been for nothing.
“You light up whenever you talk about it, you know,” Oz stated staring at me intently from across the table, sticking a bite of chicken and veg from the Ginger entrée I’d ordered into his mouth and chewing it with gusto. Except his eyes didn’t hold a smile. They held a calm, cool, and collected calculation as he observed me, and it thoroughly unnerved me.
“Yes, well,” I took a sip of my Thai iced tea, “I love it, so.”
“Yeah, and then it looks like your mind catches up and you look the saddest I’ve ever seen you. What’s up with that?”
“Oh, no… it’s nothing,” I lied. “I just think about my sister and…” I trailed off and gave a weak smile.
He nodded but the look in his eyes said clearly that he didn’t believe me, but he also didn’t press.
I tried to change the subject by asking, “What do you love to do?”
“Me?” he asked, surprised.
“No, the other guy sitting across the table from me,” I said dryly, and he raised his eyebrows, a sparkle of amusement returning to his eyes.
“Oh, again with the jokes. Alright, now. I’m really into fitness and bodybuilding. I’m into my club and riding. Pretty straightforward stuff.”
“How is any of that straightforward to someone like me?” I asked.
“What you talking about ‘someone like you’?” he asked.
I suddenly felt like I was caught flatfooted and didn’t know how to answer, knowing that any answer I had to give would sound really bad.
“Oh, well, you know, um… someone who’s boring.”
He jerked his head back and looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t know who you let fill your head up with that nonsense but you’re not boring. Far from it.”
“I’m not?” I asked, surprised.
“Nope,” he declared and went back to polishing off his plate with gusto.
The rest of the meal passed with idle chit chat about our days – well, mostly my day. Oz didn’t want to talk about his day too much, just kept it exceedingly vague with how many reports he had to write though not what they were about – that kind of thing.
I could only imagine that he was trying to somehow spare me from the worst of it, and I couldn’t really say I blamed him. It was how a lot of people acted once they found out someone close to you had died recently, though I couldn’t help but worry that part of it was due to the fact my father had shared the very privileged information about my fragile emotional state from years back regarding my break up.
I’d always felt strongly, passionately, and deeply about things and when it came to my ex… well… some doors were just better left closed.
I imagined it was much the same for Oz, who had mentioned a divorce in passing during our meal, but by the careful tone that’d crept into his voice, the way he’d squared his shoulders, and the way he’d sighed heavily after the mention – I quickly got the impression that it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, and so I avoided the subject despite my curiosity about how the event had shaped him. Curious about what the event had potentially taken away from him.
I know my ex had stolen things from me. My confidence chief among them.
We walked back toward my apartment, the sun just beginning to set, hanging lower in the sky, the shadows beginning to deepen between buildings and stretch into the street, but still everything was aglow enough to see clearly.
“How about we watch one of them movies you was talkin’ about?” he suggested when we drew nearer my door.
“What, now?” I ask
ed.
“Yeah, why not? You can’t tell me it probably wasn’t what you were gonna do anyway as soon as I left.”
I laughed and unlocked my front door. “Oh! I see how it is!” I scoffed.
“You’re just mad I’m right.”
“I’m not mad,” I said with a smile and then added, “So what if you’re right?” as I pushed through my door.
“That’s the spirit,” he declared.
“Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’m going to make a cup of tea, you want one?”
“Uh, sure, what have you got?”
I listed off several of the variants of loose-leaf tea I had in airtight and light tight containers on my kitchen window sill and he gave a long, low whistle of appreciation.
“You got a lot of shit,” he said stepping into the kitchen doorway and leaning a shoulder against the archway.
“I like tea,” I said and filled my electric kettle from the purifying filter on my tap.
“How about that Ruby Orange Ginger stuff?” he said nodding in the canister’s direction.
“An excellent choice.” I pulled the canister down. “Do you like sugar or honey with your tea?”
“Ah, nah,” he said at first but finally backtracked and said, “Honey might be nice.”
“Sure thing.”
One thing I hated about my kitchen was the cabinets were so freaking high. I wasn’t terribly short, but anything on the second or third shelf was pretty much painfully out of reach. I pulled the honey jar down from the first shelf, but the teapot I wanted and rarely used was on the second. It was clear glass and I stood on tiptoe to reach and Oz was suddenly there, right behind me, reaching over me and saying, “Here, let me.”
His close proximity sent unexpected shivers down my spine and I sucked in a silent but sharp breath. With the breath came the smell of him – clean man, a hint of clean laundry, and over it all the pleasant smell of his cologne. A slightly sweet, spicy affair that held hints of my childhood. Not that he smelled like my dad or anything, far from it. But there was something…
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking the teapot and its diffuser from his hands. “I need that metal housing, too.”
He smiled and reached up, obliging me and just needing a moment of space between us I asked, “Can you put it on the coffee table?”
“This thing?” he asked with a wolfish grin and I knew that he knew the effect his proximity was having on me. I didn’t like to be played with and I frowned slightly and nodded.
“Yes,” I said pointedly.
His smile gentled from wolfish and teasing back to easy and his posture eased. Message received radiated out from his being even as he asked, “What is it?”
“Patience is a virtue.” I smiled and said, “You’ll see.”
“Okay.” He went out into the living room and returned shortly to resume his place in the doorway.
I went about plucking the container of tea down from its perch and measuring two tablespoons into the diffuser. I dropped that into the top of my glass teapot and waited on the water to finish boiling and for the kettle to switch off. I waited as Oz looked on curiously.
“You want the water to cool just a bit from boiling before you pour for the best flavor.”
“Where did you learn that?” he asked.
I paused… “You know, I can’t remember. Seems like something you would, but I can’t remember where I picked that one up.”
I got out the serving tray I used for when I wanted to bring more than a couple items to the living room and set the pot with its waiting tea on it. I put my little honey pot on it and brought down two of my favorite tea cups and saucers.
“Mia bought me these,” I mentioned, turning so he could see the cups. Both of them porcelain, one a peacock, the other a phoenix, the handles of the cups the bodies and heads of the bird, the saucers teardrop shaped, the tails continuing from the cups onto the saucers. The look wholly unique to the both of them.
“Christmas, a couple of years in a row. She got me the peacocks, first. A set of two, and the phoenixes last year.”
“Sounds like she was up to something there,” he said quietly.
“She was always up to something,” I said with a bittersweet smile. “Christmas was her favorite holiday.
“Oh yeah? And what’s yours?”
“Mine?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I thought about it and for some reason was drawing a blank…
“I… I guess I don’t know. I never really thought about it too much.”
“You ain’t got to have one,” he said and smiled at me.
“Good thing, then, because I don’t think that I do. What’s yours?”
He gave a slow grin and said, “My birthday,” and I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The deadpan delivery was everything.
“Okay, well, I’ll have to remember that. When is it?” I asked.
“November twenty-third,” he said making a face.
“Oh, a Thanksgiving baby, not as rough as a Christmas Eve or Christmas baby but close.”
“Yeah, those guys get a raw deal,” he agreed. “I’ve had my fair share of ‘this is for your birthday and Christmas, though. It’s kind of bullshit.”
“I absolutely agree,” I said, pouring the hot water into the top of my teapot through the diffuser. I set my electric kettle back on its base and dropped the lid on the teapot and gave a bit of a melodramatic sigh of accomplishment.
“We good to go?” he asked, and I smoothly picked up the tray.
“Yes, we are.”
“Great.”
I set the tray on the coffee table and he dropped onto the couch. While things steeped, I went over to the DVD player and opened it up. I plucked out Persuasion and put it back in its case and then turned holding up the four Hollywood film versions I owned.
“Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, or Emma?” I asked.
“Uhhh, which one goes first?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “They’re all standalone, remember?”
“Oh, shoot, right, um, which one is your favorite?”
“I love them all, I don’t have a favorite!”
“Who’s in each one?”
“Um, Pride has Keira Knightley, Sense has a huge all-star cast –”
“That one, then,” he decided finally, putting me out of my misery.
I nodded and slipped its case out from between the others and opened it up. He settled on one end of the couch and waited patiently while I loaded the DVD in the tray and I finally looked up and said, “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
He laughed and said, “I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
“I’m just afraid you’re going to be bored stiff,” I declared and he laughed again.
“That’s my problem, and I doubt it.”
“Okay,” I sang out as I dropped onto the other end of the couch and took up the remote to my T.V. I turned it on and exchanged remotes for the DVD player remote and arrowed through the menu and hit ‘play.’
While the opening credits played and the gentle piano music drifted from my television, I doctored both of the waiting teacups with a dollop of honey in the bottom of each one and set up the tea warmer he had brought out to the table, slipping a tea light candle from the drawer in my coffee table along with a lighter.
“For real? Is that what’s that’s for?” he asked as I lit the candle and slid it into the base of the fat space between the metal discs. A whole cut in the top one to allow the flame of the candle to flicker below the bottom of my glass teapot, keeping the liquid remaining inside warm.
I poured the ruby liquid into our cups and set the pot on the metal stand and sighed saying, “That’s what that’s for.”
I handed him his cup, the phoenix, and took up mine stirring its contents with the little matching feather-capped spoon that came with the cups and their saucers.
“Okay, so I don’t get it…” he said after a few minutes. �
�It’s their house, why they gotta get out?”
I smiled and said, “Because the husband and father died, and women can’t inherit at this point in time. So, the father has asked that the son ignore his will which only leaves his current wife and three girls five hundred pounds a year and is beseeching him to take better care of them than that.”
“Yeah, he’s not, what a tool.”
I laughed and agreed.
“So current wife and three daughters have to move while the son and his shrew of a wife are already moving and settling in before they’re even out and they’ve invited the shrew wife’s brother to stay while they are still finding a place to go.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
The whole movie went like that. With Oz growing confused by the antiquated speech patterns and alien way of life, frequently needing to ask questions. Rather than be annoyed by it, I actually delighted in the fact that he wanted to know and wanted to understand. I’d seen these movies a thousand times and needed no help in understanding them, though I had read the books long before encountering the films and I loved history and had a soft spot for the regency era.
“Okay, do what now?”
“Remember, they have a rich uncle who has invited them to stay in a cottage on his land. His wife died and he remains a widower but still has a close relationship with his mother-in-law who lives with him.”
“That’s creepy. I don’t know about that.”
I laughed over the ruckus of the jovial mother-in-law and teeming throng of barking dogs on the screen.
“Wait, so that’s a cottage?”
“That’s what I said when I first saw it!”
“It’s bigger than my apartment building.”
I laughed. “You must have a tiny apartment building.”
“Yeah, it’s not exactly the Ritz but it’s alright.”
He was actually drinking the tea I’d made for him and he seemed to be enjoying it and the movie, so I poured him and myself another cup.
“So, who is this bitch?” he asked as I was about to take a sip and I snorted and almost had tea go up my nose. He reached out and thumped me on the back, shoving a wad of tissues at me from my Kleenex box and I shoved them at my mouth and nose to catch the few tea droplets threatening the front of my tee.
