Читать книгу When Demons Float - Susan Thistlethwaite - Страница 13

Dark chocolate may not be proof of the existence of a benevolent God, but it’s a definite indicator.

—Susan Thistlethwaite

Monday evening

I walked home in the early evening eddy of the rest of the university community, all of us streaming down the sidewalks away from work or study.

To my surprise, nothing ghastly had happened during the afternoon. Not as far as I knew, anyway. I had managed to remain at my desk undisturbed, working on clearing my incessant email and even starting to revise my plan for class the next day. Aduba never came back to the office.

I had called Alice at about 3 p.m., just to check in and see if there had been any progress in discovering who had hung the noose and the leaflets.

“Nope,” she said in response to my query, her voice clipped. “Nothing.” She’d paused. “Well, nothing but the yak, yak, yak about those photos and that piece of shit flyer. So God damn stupid. Makes me want to spit.”

That was a lot of swear words in a row for Alice. The fact that she still sounded so raw made me keep my own views to myself. I thought the whole thing hadn’t been stupid at all. It had been very smart and effective precisely because everybody was yammering about it. Just keep quiet about that, I told myself.

“Yeah, well, keep me posted, will you?” I’d asked instead.

“Sure. Okay. And if you get any bright ideas, call me.” Alice hung up.

So at 5 p.m. I’d closed my computer and headed home. We had martial arts class tonight after dinner.

✳ ✳ ✳

The boys had raced upstairs to get into their Tae Kwon Do uniforms and Giles, Carol, and I were finishing up the dishes.

“I wanted to run something by you both,” I said as I dried a big platter.

Carol turned her calm brown eyes on me, assessing. I was trying to sound casual and pretty much failing. Giles continued to face the sink, rinsing the dishes and stacking them for Carol to put in the dishwasher. But he hunched his thin shoulders a little.

I labored along.

“Well, I know we’ve agreed that we’ll talk about weekend plans in advance, but, you see, today was so crazy awful that I just went ahead and invited Dr. Abubakar and his wife and child for dinner Saturday night. And, well, some others. You know my colleague Adelaide, and Tom and Kelly, and then, well, the five of us if you can make it. I’d like you both to join us for the whole meal, so Giles I thought I’d get a caterer so you won’t get stuck in the kitchen, you know?”

I ground to a halt.

Carol silently stacked the rest of the dishes in the dishwasher while Giles dried his hands and turned. But he looked more at Carol than me.

“I cannot attend. I have an engagement and must be out most of the afternoon and evening.” Then he glanced over at me. “I hope it is a good occasion,” he said quietly, and he left the kitchen, his flip flops making a rapid staccato beat on the hard tile floor.

“I don’t think I can make it either, Kristin, but I’ll let you know,” Carol said in her quiet way, but she sounded a little strained. Then she bent and hit the start button on the dishwasher. It was so old that the clanking, gushing noise it made would drown out any further conversation.

I hit pause on the elderly machine. It gurgled to a halt.

“Carol, is something wrong, I mean something besides my rushing ahead with a weekend invitation before we’d all discussed it?”

She turned and wiped down the counter again. It was already clean and dry. She didn’t turn.

“No, I don’t think that’s it. But as I said, I’ll let you know.” She hung up the towel she’d been using to dry an already dry counter and also left the kitchen.

I hit the start button and pondered while the machine labored into the wash cycle again. What was up with Giles and Carol?

Well, it had been a terrible day, I thought. There are bound to be emotional reactions for a while. But was that too simplistic? Was Giles upset that I’d invited the Abubakar family who were Muslim? I knew very little about his life in Senegal, but I did know that his father was a Protestant pastor, and the whole family was very devout. The small Christian population in Senegal was still persecuted by the Muslim majority, I thought, though I’d never heard Giles say a word about it. I realized I may have blundered more seriously than just asking people to dinner without consulting Carol and Giles first.

The boys came thundering down the back stairs into the kitchen, their uniforms on, though Sam’s belt was already coming untied. I retied it properly despite Molly’s jumping around from the excitement. I have often thought there should be martial arts classes for dogs, they love jumping around so much.

I told the boys to let Molly out for a few minutes while I got into my own gear.

Just then my cell phone rang. I hurriedly pressed “accept” and ran up the stairs to get changed.

“Kristin, it’s Kelly,” said Tom’s daughter.

“Hey, Kelly. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, sure, fine.” The litany every teenager knows. “Yeah, sure, fine,” means, “no, not really, not fine.”

“Like, I wondered if you could like pick me up on the way to class and give me a ride? Dad was supposed to, but he’s not home, and like I thought since you were going anyway . . . ” She trailed off. Kelly and I have a complex relationship. She resented her mother dying and her Dad having a relationship with me, but she also was longing for some attention. And she and I had been through a crisis a few months ago, and we had gotten closer. In fact, she’d started Tae Kwon Do after that and was doing really well.

“Yep. I can,” I said briskly as I struggled to get my sweater over my head while still talking. “I’ll text you when we get to your building. Ten minutes, tops.” I hung up before I strangled myself with the sweater and jumped into my uniform.

Kelly was waiting in front of her building when the boys and I pulled up. She really was looking better these days, I reflected. She was about my height, and I knew all too well what it was like to be six feet tall and a teenage girl. When I had met her the previous spring, she had been overweight and had slouched to try to appear smaller. It had just made her look like a huge lump. Now she was slimmer from all the exercise, and she stood up straight. She jumped in the front seat, and we took off.

“Thanks,” she said to me. “Hello, dorks,” she said to the boys, strapped in their boosters in the back seat.

“Hi, Kelly smelly!” they chorused, clearly having rehearsed it. Then they laughed uproariously at their own wit. Kelly ignored them, already checking her phone. Naturally.

All was normal. Well, except Tom as a no-show again for Kelly. I glanced over at her. Her eyes were riveted on the little screen. I thought Tom left her alone too much. I knew a surgeon’s schedule was really demanding, but Kelly needed his attention.

Well, nothing I could do about that right now. I thought we’d all benefit from kicking and punching the blue pads. And we did.

✳ ✳ ✳

When we got home, the boys were so tired they dragged themselves upstairs without my telling them it was time for bed. When I went to check on them a few minutes later, I found they had flung themselves fully clothed on to their beds and were deeply asleep. I just pulled off their uniforms and covered them with their comforters. Molly settled down between them on the floor and resisted all my efforts to get her to go with me so I could let her out into the yard one more time. I gave up. She could be very stubborn, especially when she’d been separated from the kids. She was letting me know she considered them hers, not mine. I’d ask Carol if she or Giles had let her out recently.

I started down the hall toward the door to their third-floor apartment, and Carol came out. She was carrying something and smiling a little.

“Kristin, this came for you while you and the boys were out,” she said, moving closer to me. I could now see she was holding a small FedEx package. She passed it over.

I looked at it for a second uncomprehendingly.

“The return address says ‘Dr. Grayson,’” Carol said, her freckled face breaking into an even wider smile.

“Oh,” I said, gazing down at the little white box. Then I felt a jolt of pure terror. Little box?

I think Carol took pity on me then.

“The corner says ‘Reinhardt’s,’” she said, with a soft chuckle. “You know, that expensive Chicago chocolatier?”

Chocolate. I looked down at the small package in my trembling hand. Oh. Phew. It was chocolate.

Then my tired brain kicked in. Hey, Reinhardt’s made really good chocolate.

I thanked Carol and turned to go, but then remembered I needed to ask her about the dog. Carol assured me that Molly had already been out, and she went back upstairs.

I walked slowly down the hall, the little box almost burning a hole in my hand.

Open it, you idiot, an inner voice advised me. It’s wonderful chocolate.

I went downstairs to the kitchen for some scissors and opened it.

Four perfect, dark, chocolate truffles each sat in a little nest of gold tissue paper. There was a note. “Bonsoir,” it read. “Tom.” That was it. Actually, I thought it was plenty.

I reached into a high cabinet and pulled out a bottle of excellent red wine I had been saving for a special occasion. I thought this qualified. I poured myself a glass and clutching that, and my precious chocolates, I went upstairs to my bedroom and locked the door.

I got my cell phone, my wine, and my truffles, and climbed into bed. But I didn’t call Tom right away. Instead, I took a bite of one of the truffles and let it melt on the back of my tongue. Then I took a sip of the wine and its dense, velvety flavor filled my mouth and throat, blending with the deep chocolate flavor. I shivered.

I leaned back against my pillows, savoring the tastes and smiled. I picked up the phone and opened text messaging.

“Are you home?” I typed and pressed send.

“Yes.” Tom’s reply came back quickly. “Talk now?”

“Got your chocolate truffles,” I typed. “In bed with them & some wine.”

“In bed?” he replied. “Relaxed?”

“I’m getting there,” I typed.

And then I texted some ways I thought I could get even more relaxed.

He texted back some excellent ideas of his own.

Pretty soon I thought we were both very relaxed.