Chapter 11-3
1287 Words
They sat quietly in his car. Bill had pulled up in front of the store, parked the car, and turned out the lights. He made no move to get out, and Perrin waited with him in the dark silence. A lone streetlight was shadowed by the trees leafing out along the sidewalk. A few other cars were parked along the block, but there was little traffic.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” He kept his hands on the wheel.
Perrin didn’t move, suddenly still as a frightened child.
“No, that didn’t come out right,” he reached out and picked up the hand he’d held most of the night. “There’s just so much inside me. It’s all so jumbled up that I don’t know what to do with it. It’s good, Perrin. I swear to god it is, but it’s big. So big.”
She slowly slipped her other hand over his, trapping his fingers between her hands. Her tension eased, but her silence didn’t.
“I… ” He looked up at the trees, down the street, over at the out-of-business tattoo parlor. Right back where he’d started. “I don’t know what to do with all that’s going on inside me.”
“Welcome to my world,” her voice was soft. “I’m smart enough to know what’s going on inside me. But I can never seem to straighten it all out. Like trying to build a costume that keeps falling apart because a key seam was never sewn, but by the time I fix it, another three have unraveled.”
He turned to face her. Her face but a pale oval in the dim light.
“Can you be smart for me tonight, Perrin? I honestly don’t know what to do with it all.”
“Me?” He’d shocked her. Himself a little too.
“Don’t see anyone else in the car volunteering.”
That roused her laugh.
“I love your laugh so much.” The words just came out of him. He did. It was like a thousand stage lights come alive. Her laugh shone into the darkest places and shone pure, bright light.
“You want me, of all the loony people on the planet, to be smart for both of us?”
He could only nod.
“Okay,” she huffed out a breath. “Okay, I can try, but understand that you only have yourself to blame if this comes out all stupid.”
“Understood. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
She looked away and studied her darkened shop for a long time.
He waited, one hand clamped to the wheel, the other still wrapped so warm between her two hands.
“Okay. Looks as if it’s going to come out as a series of questions.”
“Like I haven’t had enough of those tonight. Talk about the Italian inquisition, it was a tough room.”
“Hey, you asked me to take over here.”
Bill nodded, “I did. Go for it. I trust you.” That snapped her attention back to him. He hadn’t expected those words either. Maria’s words. But who else would he trust in this situation?
“Me?” her voice was a whisper.
“Yes, I do. You. The scary smart lady sitting here beside me like a blessing. So ask. Please?” He actually begged a little. Everything was so mixed up inside him.
“Okay…” her voice was shaky. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s start with a key one. After meeting with everyone, do you still want to be with me?”
“So much it’s killing me.”
“That’s a good answer, Bill. That’s a really good answer. I like that answer too. So if that’s not the problem, then let me think what’s next.”
Bill sat in the dark and waited. He had kissed this woman a half dozen times, total. They hadn’t had a proper, just-the-two-of-them date yet. His kids were half mad for her. And his own feelings?
“Are you afraid that if we make love, your life will never be the same?”
“Yes.” The answer dragged out of him.
“Okay, we’re tracking so far.”
“Tracking?”
“We’re both being scared silly by exactly the same shit.”
That reached him. That finally punched through whatever knot had been slowly winding tighter and tighter in his gut all night. It wasn’t the answer yet, but it was the first strand, broken rather than merely loosened.
“Keep going. You’re doing great, Perrin.”
She let go of his hand, “I can’t think while we’re touching.” Then she grabbed it back between hers, “No, not touching you is even worse.”
“That’s not a question, but yes, I feel the same way.”
Perrin smiled over at him.
“Okay, I think this is the final question of the first round.”
“Fire away.”
“Could we go inside to finish this before I freeze to death?”
“s**t!” Bill scrambled out of the car and hurried around to open her door.
She didn’t lead him to her shop as he’d expected, but rather around the corner. She stopped at a door on the side street. A half dozen mailboxes hung along the wall for the various apartments above her shop and the one beyond. Perrin unlocked a door that led to a flight of stairs.
The stairway was hung with a beautiful series of quilts. It was as if he was following a stream through the seasons. Working his way upstream, the first quilt led him from ice winter to red-and-gold fall. The second stream, appearing to flow out of one quilt and into the next, followed the summer colors and included a pool with a bear pawprint and a golden flower. The third quilt started the stream flowing between banks the color of spring, eventually rising to where it flowed out from under blue-white ice, just as it had ended down below.
“Are these yours? The four seasons. They’re beautiful.”
“I quilt sometimes, not often.” They left them behind at the head of the stairs and Perrin led him down a hall that made his eyes water. It had a green ceiling, a zebra stripe wall to one side, a yellow wall to the other with a purple-lettered poem painted on it in tall letters.
He read a few lines, it was a really bad poem.
“These however, are so not me.”
Bill considered remarking that was a good thing, but wasn’t sure of how good the sound insulation might be. Besides, he remembered the last time Perrin had used those words while standing in a pile of confetti. At least the floors were a rich, if hard worn, hardwood. None of the residents had applied “their art” to improve them.
She led him to the door at the end of the hallway.
Perrin’s apartment was neither neat nor messy, it was lived in, but perhaps not very much. Clearly, her life was downstairs in her shop. There were nice coverings on the couch, a television, but no computer. Several fashion magazines. A wall of reference books on types of art: architecture, fiber, painting, sculpture of a dozen varieties, early Japanese, Italian Renaissance. It was all about art forms and they looked well used. This is where she obviously found many of her out-of-the-box ideas. He couldn’t decided if it was an incredibly focused collection or astonishingly unfocused. Assuming the former, it was immensely eclectic within its range. She moved into the kitchen while he inspected the books.
“I don’t see any on opera.”
“They have books on opera art?”
“About a thousand: lighting, costume, sets, you name it. I’ll get you a couple.”
“Thanks.”
A totally mad quilt, clearly done in one of her gonzo frames of mind, filled the wall above the couch with a dozen blocks, each in a different style with different fabrics. Yet the colors tied it together into a cohesive quilt. A wild one, but cohesive.
He found her making tea in a small kitchenette with a table that could seat only two. She still looked cold and he moved to hug her.
“No,” she fended him off. “You touch me and we’re going to go straight to s*x, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. And as good as that sounds, it’s not what you asked for.”
“I was being an i***t. Come here.”
She didn’t. So he tossed his jacket aside, dropped into one of the chairs, and just enjoyed watching her move about the kitchen fetching mugs and digging out a box of blueberry tea.
“Sorry, I think this is all I have at the moment.”
“Kids’ favorite. I’ve learned to like it.”
She poured the hot water and sat across from him. “Ready for round two?”
“No. But let’s see where we go anyway.”
- Writer
