Singe (11 page)

It’s like something out of a bad sitcom. Eli swivels around toward Jill’s voice then follows her gaze right back to Addie, his stupid, nice-guy face registering panic. The way he lets go of the blonde and curves both hands around his pint glass is almost slapstick. Classic
Everybody Loves Raymond
stuff. Addie would laugh if she wasn’t having an out-of-body experience.

She will say this much for the guy: he looks right at her. He doesn’t try to play it off.

But Addie isn’t interested in looking at him. She’s looking at the blonde, a skinny, tall drink of water, to the point where it’s the first thing that registers. Addie can see her collarbones. She’s one of those girls who doesn’t need a bra, can wear halters and tops that show off half her bony back and never have to worry about a single thing.

Christ.

Jill Buono is still waving, up out of her seat. “Hey, Ads!” she calls, gesturing to an empty chair she must have fought to save. The Perfect Pint is always busy on Thursdays and Fridays, the only nights it has a live band and halfway-decent service. Addie swallows, marching straight past Eli to Jill’s table.

“Hi,” she says brightly. It’s only Jill and Sharpie and the candidate, Parker probably off with his wife and the new babies. Eli can’t say a thing in front of everyone, Addie reminds herself. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, it’s going,” Sharpie says helpfully, pushing the pitcher and an empty glass in Addie’s direction. She fills it up and downs half in one long gulp. She’s stone sober but slightly nauseated all of a sudden, this hot flush creeping up from inside her T-shirt that’s got nothing to do with the heat.
This is what you get
, reminds a voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like her mother’s.
You knew better and now you feel foolish, and that’s what you get.
“Gaarder’s drunk.”

“He can go buy the next round then,” Addie says, passing the pitcher along. Her voice sounds brittle and too loud, but Gaarder nods gamely and toddles off in the direction of the bar, right past Eli. Addie deliberately doesn’t watch him go.

He catches her on her way back from the bathroom later on though, Eli does, is waiting underneath the
Guinness is Good For You
sign when she comes through the door. “Hey, princess,” he says, grabbing her by the wrist as she passes by. He’s drunker than Gaarder even, Addie’s pretty sure, those dark eyes not quite focusing on hers. The blonde left alone a while ago, the elegant pleats of her naked shoulder blades visible as she wove her way through the cluster of tables. Addie ordered potato skins for spite. “Lemme talk to you a second, okay?”

Addie snorts, mocking and derisive as she can manage. “Oh my God,” she says, eyebrows crawling. “Please don’t be a huge unbearable girl right now, I beg you.”

Eli’s forehead knits. “Come on.” His hand is warm and sweaty on her arm. “Don’t be mad.”

“Don’t be
mad
?” Mary Mother, it really is like a script out of
Everybody Loves Raymond,
and Addie’s been cast as Patricia Heaton with her hands on her hips. “Whoa, buddy, I am not mad. We hooked up, okay? It’s cool. Just let me know if I need to get tested for anything.”

Eli drops her wrist. “
Tested
? Jesus, Addie.” He’s wearing jeans and his station undershirt, the plain white T-shirts that come in bulk packs from their NFPA-certified retailer. Addie wishes he didn’t look so stupidly good.

“It’s a fair question,” she says, crossing her arms. She pictures the blonde again, her shiny curtain of hair. Addie yanked her own curls into a bun less than ten minutes ago, and already she can feel it frizzing. When she was small her mom used to rake it all into a braid for school, then secure it with an avalanche of bobby pins. Jenn called her metal head. “Look, let’s not do this, okay? We said we’d keep it out of work.”

“We aren’t
at
work though,” Eli insists. His t’s aren’t quite lining up on the way out of his mouth.

Addie sighs. The band is playing a cover of “Under Pressure”, heavy on the strings. It’s embarrassing that she knew how this was going to end all along. “Well, I’ll
see
you at work then, how about,” she tells him, and heads back out to the table to say her goodbyes.

And that, she thinks, is that.

Not for Eli, apparently. On Sunday, he shows up on her doorstep as she’s getting ready for church, bold as you please.

Addie blinks. “What are you doing here?” she asks him, when she comes downstairs to answer the bell. The buzzer doesn’t work in this apartment. Neither does the cold water tap in the bathroom sink or the back two burners on the stove. Addie kind of likes it that way. It adds character. Last night, the club downstairs played ’NSync mash-ups for three hours.

“I wanna take you out,” Eli says.

Addie gapes at him, his khaki shorts and a summer-weight button down rolled up to his elbows like something out of a Land’s End catalog the silvery scars on his arms. Then she laughs out loud. “Well, I’ve got a date with God right now, so you’re kind of gonna have to take a number.”

Eli shakes his head. “I’m serious,” he tells her, and the weirdest part is how he actually seems to be, those dark eyes locked on hers. “I was an idiot the other night, I was drunk. Let me take you to dinner.”

“The other night nothing. I told you it was fine.” She’s picturing it though, his solid arm curved around Bird Bones McGee at the bar, her expensive-looking clothes and artily tousled hair and the way she was leaning into him. Addie tries to make her face into the face of someone who hasn’t thought about it at all since then. She’s dressed in her church clothes, an A-line skirt that’s kind of teacher-y. Chicken Cat darts out between her feet. “You came to my house to ask me on a
date
?”

Eli smiles at her then, shrugging. God, he’s so effing dumb. “I don’t have your number,” he says.

Addie rolls her eyes. “You could have gotten my number from somebody,” she informs him.

Eli nods. “I know.” His hands are in his pockets, clean-shaven as a choirboy. He’s wearing leather flip-flops. He’s a stupid bro, and Addie wants not to find him attractive anymore. “Look, let me drive you?”

“To Mass?” Addie shifts on the landing. She left her sensible heels upstairs, she needs to grab them and some lipstick, fix her hair. “Eli, no. I need my car afterwards.”

His face sags. “Yeah,” he agrees, looking lost. “I guess you do.” He rubs the back of his neck. “So that’s a no on the date too, huh?”

Addie sighs. He’s
good
in bed. Christ. “Yeah, Eli. That’s a no on the date too.”

After he’s gone, she drinks another cup of coffee, standing beside the AC unit, and tries to forget about the whole thing.
That’s what you get,
she reminds herself. It’s not a mistake she’ll make again.

Mass feels longer than usual. All the babies are on the pew beside her, Paulina and the tiny second-cousins, each of them equipped with coloring books and baggies full of Cheerios to keep them quiet and well-behaved before God. Addie gets lost in Paulina’s swirling flowers and neat, geometric houses. When it’s time for the sign of peace and communion, her mom has to nudge her to rise.

“Peace be with you, Adelaide,” Diana says, her brow furrowed.

Afterwards, Addie decides she’d better stay for confession.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been three weeks since my last…

She’s assigned a rosary as penance and leaves the booth feeling no lighter at all. The church parking lot is bright and harsh as she scurries to her car, mercifully parked in the shade. The sun burns the back of her neck.

Eli drives back to his apartment feeling like an idiot of the first order. He drops his keys on the hall table, cracks a beer and sacks out in front of the Sox game. Next inning, he opens another one. By the time the sound system plays the opening bars of “Sweet Caroline,” he’s got something of a buzz on. When the Sox finally win the thing at the bottom of the eleventh, he’s good and drunk.

He
likes
her, fuck. She’s the first woman he’s really liked since Chelsea, he
likes
her, and he screwed it up by being himself. No big deal, she said, absolutely, but the dig about him passing her something did a pretty good job undermining her cool-kid act. He never even learned that blonde girl’s name.

After the game comes a Sunday afternoon infomercial for exercise equipment. Eli’s mostly asleep on the couch by that point though, waking up with a start when his cell phone jangles next to his head. The sun’s low in the sky outside the window. He slept away the whole fucking afternoon.

The phone rings again, insistent.
Chels
, the caller ID reads, and Eli blinks in bleary surprise. He hasn’t talked to his ex-wife in months.

“Hey,” he croaks when he answers, the hangover already pulsing behind his eyeballs. He should have used Addie’s water-chugging trick before he passed out. “Everything okay?”

“Not really,” Chelsea says. “It’s about Hester.”

Dread bubbles up from Eli’s stomach, mixing toxically with the alcohol. “What happened?” he asks, gripping the arm of the couch to shove himself to sitting. The floor tilts uneasily, like the whole world drank a six-pack. “Chels.”

Chelsea’s crying now, Eli can hear the wet gasps. “She got hit by a car.”

Eli throws up all over the dingy rental carpet.

He only has time for a half-hearted cleanup before stumbling down to the parking garage and hauling himself up behind the wheel of the Outback. For a minute he just sits there in the bucket seat, trying to decide if he’s too far gone to drive. Hester loved this car, used to ride shotgun with her tongue hanging out the window. Eli remembers the very first time he laid eyes on that dog, picking her up from the breeders’ at a farm way out in Rochester. She came with a pink blanket and a certificate listing all her shots, and her squirmy body fit right in the palm of his hand.

She was still moving around after the accident, Chelsea said. She could lift her nose. Eli leans his forehead against the steering wheel, fighting another wave of nausea.

When he drives, he does it slow and careful, his hands fixed at ten and two. The roads are empty, after dinner on a Sunday night, and without any distractions Eli’s imagination works overtime, chasing itself in useless circles. In his mind’s eye, Hester dies at every red light.

Hurry
, Chelsea said, right before they hung up.
Eli, please.

The animal clinic is out toward Stockbridge, a cul-de-sac off the side of the highway with a neatly lit sign. The building looks like a large house from the outside, gabled and friendly, but when Eli pushes through the glass doors he arrives in what is unmistakably a waiting room. The receptionist looks up helpfully.

“Hester?” His hands are shaking. There might be vomit on his T-shirt. “She’s a retriever, she was just brought in? My wife—my ex-wife—she said—”

The receptionist holds up a finger. She’s wearing scrubs like a nurse, which Eli guesses is what she is. “Hester, yes. One second, sir. They’re going into surgery.” Her pen clicks officiously. There are reading glasses on her nose.

Eli steps back. The whole room is uncomfortably hospital-like, bright lights and tiled ceilings. It reminds him of a pediatrician’s, only with dog toys in the corner instead of abacuses and dollhouses. Eli hasn’t been in a hospital for any significant period of time since the summer Will died. His brother didn’t go quick, all those years ago. Eli was in the burn unit for almost a week but Will held on for twice that long, fighting like all hell until his organs finally gave out. Eli remembers reading comic books next to his bed,
Storm
and
Wolverine
mostly. He also remembers the pain.

(His dad though, later that August? His dad went quick.)

“Eli!” There’s Chelsea rushing in through the side door, dark blonde hair streaming out behind her. She’s wearing a starchy blue button down tucked into khaki shorts, and her face is red from crying. Eli feels a rush of dumb animal relief at the sight of her. “She’s in surgery,” Chelsea says, wrapping her lean, muscular arms around him and squeezing. She’s almost as tall as he is. “They don’t know anything yet.” Then she backs off, eyebrows furrowing. “Are you okay?” she asks. “Are you drunk?”

Eli shakes his head. “Was out with the guys,” he lies, not sure why he’s doing it. “When you called.”

Chelsea nods. “Okay,” she says, seeming to take him at his word. She’s got both hands on his face, an old gesture from when they were married. It’s so familiar that Eli doesn’t even register it as odd until the door opens again and Dave hurries in.

Dave, as in the guy Chelsea left him for, Dave.

“Hey, Eli,” he says, his face a knot of friendly concern. He’s wearing slacks even though it’s a million fucking degrees outside, plus close-toed dress shoes. Eli doesn’t think he’s ever seen Dave in shorts. “I’m so sorry, she darted out. There was a squirrel or something, and she just—went.”

He doesn’t so much as blink at Chelsea’s hands on Eli’s face. But then he wouldn’t, Eli supposes. He’s probably real fucking secure in that victory.

“There was,” Chelsea confirms, letting go. She yanks at her hair instead, full of all her old tics. She’s a pacer, his Chels. Eli remembers her wearing a groove in the floor after each of her college finals. “I had her off-leash, Eli. I’m sorry.”