Yours, Mine, and Ours (24 page)

I laughed at him. “You only managed a double for the big game, not a triple? Your soufflé only won First Place, not Grand First?”

He scowled … a first, I thought. “Don’t make fun. Just because I don’t waltz bad guys into ER wards doesn’t mean I haven’t had to handle my own shit.”

“And I am sure you did so beautifully.”

“Are we having a fight? Is this a fight?”

“If you have to ask,” I sighed, “most likely it is not.” What had I been thinking, toying with this pretty uncomplicated rich boy? I—
we
—needed a grown-up. Someone with a few lines on his face. Someone who knew the world could turn and bite you whenver it liked, with no warning at all.

Max Gallo, I presume?

“Regardless of what
we
decide,” he said in a tone I’m sure he meant to be warning but which I found unimpressive, “Olive the Dawg, you can bring her over to my place while you’re looking for a pet-friendly apartment. The whole backyard is fenced in, remember? So don’t worry about it anymore. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Wrong. That was not your mistake.

I stared at his earnest face and saw, for the first time, the face of the enemy. Olive shivered at my feet while my thoughts raced ’round and ’round like a cheap metal car on a go-cart track.

You should never have made me think there was a place for me in your home. And after you did that? You should not have taken it away. Before you came, I would never have dreamed. Before you came, I would not have dared picture my shattered life in someone else’s life. Someone else’s house.

You should not have done that, Patrick.

And I will not give you the chance to do it again.

“But about this other thing. I’ve been meaning to tell you, I’ve just been too…” He stared at his hands, large and strong. “… too chickenshit, I guess. I
like
that you guys think of me as a good guy. I’m not, though. A long time ago, when it was never more important to my family to be the good guy, I dropped the ball. And I’ve been living with that—Shiro?”

I had left. Olive saw; Patrick, too busy bleating at his hands at whatever dreadful thing he thought he did, did not.

chapter fifty-six

Shiro can’t come to the phone right now Shiro is crying

      
Shiro NEVER CRIES Shiro never what did you DO? What did you do with the geese what did you do with the Shiro

       
Don’t! Don’t! you are a

BAD Baker Boy you turned

Turned the wheel

The wheels on the bus

The wheels on the bus go

Poor Shi-ro

Poor Shi-ro

Poor Shi-ro

      
Shiro we should fly

      
Shiro Dr. Max will teach you to fly

And you won’t cry anymore anymore you can’t cry and fly

           
The wheels on the bus go

Poor puppy! Looklook! She’s happy she’s happy to see me she KNOWS me she knows I’ll never I’ll

never

let her get hurt

       
she knows I

       
she knows me

puppy is George

    
I will hug her and pet her and call her George

No one gets hurt no one hurts or gets hurt and I promised and George

  
George loves me and I

love Shiro and she never cries she never and she never hides so why is she doing things why is NEVER not true anymore?

It’s YOUR fault, Baker Boy!

Dr. Max would never bake!

You shouldn’t have

Baker Boy

             
But you did

And now I have to now I must now you are dead now you are because I will I will

I will!

I can’t.

I can’t hurt you, Baker Boy, I can’t hurt you

am I broken, too?

You need to go away, Baker Boy! You need to go away before I remember

how to hurt you because I can

You know I can

You know I will

(I won’t!)

Am I crying?

           
Am I crying with Shiro in the dark?

Don’t cry don’t cry see? I’ve come

   
To keep you company

We’ll hide

(no not hide we are not hiding we are NOT HIDING)

NOT NOT!

    
We’ll hide here

Until you feel better.

Poor Shiro

Shhhhhhh …

chapter fifty-seven

The bell woke
me. I was in my own bed and … naked? I flipped up the sheets and peeked. Yup. Naked. But no tattoos, no bruises, no casts, no Ace bandages. No body glitter … gah, I was so happy when that silly shiny trend died out. No henna … but to be fair, the henna designs on my hands those other times were actually pretty cool. They were so intricate and gorgeous, and lasted for days and days. Still, they were
my
hands, darnitall. It would have been nice to have been asked.

No temp tattoos, no treasure map scribbled upside down on my belly so I could read it while looking down at myself (Adrienne’s logic can be … convoluted). No mysterious Japanese characters on the underside of my arms. No piercings, no sunburn, no frostbite. Annnnnd … I felt my face. The mirror was in the bathroom, but it didn’t feel like I’d had my face painted.

Nope, I was fine. The tinkling of a bell,
that’s
what woke me up. I tossed the covers back, pulled the top quilt off the bed and wrapped it around myself, plucked my cell phone off the bedside table, then followed the tinkle.

Dawg was sitting in front of the sliding door. A bell on a string had been tied to the door handle; it was still swaying. The bell had been hung so it was level with her nose; she poked it again, then heard me and trotted over, wagging her tail.

“Does that … you want to go out?” Dawg had a red collar, I saw, and was looking sleeker than usual. No, not sleek … clean! She’d been thoroughly washed and brushed, and smelled terrific.

I knelt to pet her and … whoa! “What have you been eating?” Her little belly was practically distended, and she was more alert and bright-eyed than I’d ever seen her. Full of dog food and treats, I was betting. For the first time in her life she was getting fed more than what a turd-faced poopie-brain remembered to toss her way.

I popped the lock on the door, then on the screen door, and slid them both open. Then gasped … aaggh! Still December. Dawg trotted out, headed straight for a small grove of trees twenty or so feet away, squatted to do her business, then came trotting back. Which was great, because too late, I’d realized I didn’t have her on a leash and she might run off without one.

No one ever came back here … when there was snow it was unshoveled and depressing. When there was grass, it teemed with wood ticks.

Bemused, I shut and locked the door after Dawg finished and docilely came inside. While she was doing her business I’d taken a quick-and-dirty look around the place. There weren’t any clandestine poops, or mysterious wet spots on the carpet.

And Dawg had accumulated a lot of stuff in my absence. There were a couple of dog toys in the living room, a leash hanging up beside the coat closet in the entryway, a food and water dish just inside the kitchen … and that was just the stuff I’d spotted in a glance.

“Wow,” I told her, stooping to pet her sleek (and clean) head. Dawg nuzzled my palm and then frisked around my bare legs. “You caught on really…” Fast. Yeah. She had. But maybe not. How long had I been gone?

I looked at my phone, afraid. One push of a button and I’d know the date and time. And that wasn’t all. Shiro had loaded all sorts of helpful apps into the thing (I mostly used it for calls and feeding koi).

If I hit the right buttons, I could also find out where I was in location to BOFFO’s office—imagine my surprise once to wake up with the Mississippi River on the wrong side, until the app told me where I was. And that wasn’t much of a complication compared to waking up with the
ocean
on the wrong side.

I could also find out what the weather was like (which always seemed like an “oh, duh!” move, but a weather forecast could be surprisingly helpful) and what it would be like for the next few days.

My phone would also assist me in finding the closest drugstore, grocery store, post office, hospital, car rental, airport, gas station, and bar. Or spit out voice memos from Shiro (“Do not be alarmed, but you are in South Vietnam and you have promised to marry the man who is trying to kill you in an honor duel. Also we are low on milk.”) or Adrienne (“Duck duck gray duck! Duck duck gray shotgun! Oooooh, the shotgun! Shiny. Where’s the milk?”).

I could also track flights, Google the Earth with Google Earth, translate languages (my Spanish was workable, my German only fair, my French nonexistent, my Arabic was a joke), and … eh?

I squinted and saw a brand-new app; it hadn’t been on my phone the last time I looked. It was a white cross against a red background: Dog First Aid. “Wow,” I said to Dawg. “Shiro’s not taking any chances with you.”

All this to say Shiro had gone to a lot of trouble to make our cell phone more than just a phone, stuffing it with apps that would help us when we woke up on a strange continent.

I had been so grateful to her for that. And so angry it needed to be done at all. Cadence Jones: when she’s annoyed, she’s annoyed. And when she’s grateful, she’s annoyed.

I should nip this referring to myself in the third person thing in the bud,
now
. And stop asking myself questions when I say, do you know what I mean?
Now.

I took a breath and pushed the button. December 6th, 9:00
A.M.
So, one day. One whole day. Gone.

I trudged back to my bedroom, tossing the blanket on the bed and pulling open drawers so I could get dressed. I don’t know why the date bothered me. Sure, I’d lost a day, but there had been times I’d lost days, even weeks. Once I was gone for two months.

Imagine: in my head, it was still hot-dogs-on-the-grill time when I went to bed, but when I woke up it was twenty degrees cooler, the trees were riots of red, orange, and yellow, and everywhere I went there were school buses full of children annoyed summer had gone so quickly.
Oh, children, I can absolutely feel your pain.

I’d gone to bed wondering if the humidity was ever going to let up—the shortest of shorts still felt like overdressing—and woke up needing a sweatshirt just to walk from my building to my car.

That had been a lot worse. Much, much worse than one lousy day.

Telling myself that wasn’t helping. I sighed and renewed my lethargic closet poking. This? I didn’t want to wear a skirt to work. This? No, not even a super-cute skirt. Okay, how ’bout this? No, I’d bought the khaki slacks because I’d loved how they looked on the mannequin and refused to admit the slacks made my waist disappear. No matter what top I wore, be it blouse or sweater or crisp T-shirt with blazer, I looked like God had finished my legs and just dumped my head on top of my thighs as an afterthought. The stupid things had been too expensive for me to feel good about packing them off to Goodwill. Of course, I wouldn’t wear them, either, so they just sat in my closet.

My phone began playing Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” Adrienne had changed my ringtone again. I made up my mind to suck it up; the last time she’d done it, she’d replaced Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died”—the most wonderful romantic scary song ever—with some dreck by Maroon 5.
That’s
insanity.