3. Decide to see each other again:
a. Right then and there
b. Another time
If the answer is 3.a then we:
i. Add in the talking, or
ii. Keep staring at each other for a while.
What’s the worst that could happen? Things stay as they are. We finish the project, of course, be professional, of course, be courteous, more than of course, and etc, etc, etc, of course.
We have tons of questions. Don’t you want answers?
We have the chance to put this to bed. Whatever bed that is. Maybe it’s a friend bed. That’s fine. It’ll be a bunk bed. You can have the top.
OK. Insomnious hath spoken.
Me
SEWANEE WAS IN a booth, long after all the other studios had emptied of people, attempting to get ahead on her recording and trying not to think about Brock’s latest e-mail–succeeding at neither–when her phone lit up with a call.
She immediately, if cautiously, picked up. “Blah?”
“Dollface!”
“Everything all right?”
“Right as rain! What are you up to today?”
“Just recording.” Sewanee readjusted herself in the booth, removing her headphones and cracking the door for some air. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, fit as a fiddle!”
Right as rain. Fit as a fiddle. Suspicious, Sewanee tried again, “You sure everything’s okay?”
“Can’t an old lady call her granddaughter? That a crime now?” Definitely something in her voice, right there beneath the teasing. Tentativeness like an undertow. Sewanee sensed the pull of an impending conversation. There was a pause as each waited for the other to start it.
Blah finally said, “Read any good books lately?”
“That supposed to be funny?”
“I didn’t hear you laugh, so no.”
Which made Sewanee genuinely laugh, which made Blah laugh. But when it subsided, the undertow remained. So Sewanee asked, “Do you remember calling me last night?”
Blah sighed. “No. Well, sort of. Goddamn it. I’m sorry, Doll.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“Tell me what happened. I want to know.” Though she sounded as if she didn’t, not really.
Sewanee left the booth. She needed space to breathe, to think, to talk. “You were upset. And frustrated. You said you were late for something. You thought I was Bitsy.”
“Well, shit,” BlahBlah said thinly.
Sewanee sat on the floor, back against the outside wall of the booth, and tucked her knees into her chest. “Are you aware of . . . do you know when it’s happening?”
“Not a clue. There’s some kind of before and after, but the middle? Black as night.” She exhaled. “I hate it, Doll. I need a prescription for Dumb Pills.”
Sewanee snorted. “I don’t think that’s what they’re called.”
“Well, that’s the generic.”
They both chuckled at that. Then, there was such an extensive pause Sewanee was sure she’d lost her. That the next thing Blah would say was, “Did you see Mitzi’s face-lift?”
“Betty Lou McCarthy lived in the hollers.”
Dammit. Sewanee hated being right. “Who’s that?”
“School friend. And if I was out there when the fog rolled in . . . I wasn’t going nowhere. Happened in an instant. Like God poured gravy over everything.”
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Blah hadn’t veered as far off track as she’d thought.
“You could barely see your hand in front of your face. And shapes you knew were out there–the old oak, the mailbox, her daddy’s truck–all those comforts would get . . . sinister. They moved around. Weren’t where they were supposed to be.”
Sewanee didn’t dare interject.
“It feels something like that when it starts. Then people are born out of that fog. Some I recognize, some I don’t. Everything . . . shifts.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“It’s kinda like being on a soundstage, doing a big dance number. Stagehands take up a backdrop and lower another. A desk flies in on wheels, a soda fountain disappears, and now there’s a door, and in comes Gene and we’re tapping away in an office building instead of a diner.”
“God,” Sewanee murmured quietly, not wanting to break this spell of clarity.
“And then . . . well, uh . . . what the hell was I . . . dancing, wasn’t I?”
Sewanee swallowed. “You were talking about everything shifting around you, what it feels like in your mind? Did you want to say something else about it?”