Delphine opened the hotel room door. She stepped into a mass of too still, too warm air. Crossing to the window, she lifted the first stiff pane in its track, and then the other, an ultimately futile effort to subdue the sweltering scorch of the desert day. The air simply refused to move. Everything, in fact, was static, despite a palpable simmering just below the surface.
She stood, arms crossed staring out the window at the river. It promised a sweet relief from the stifling climate; impulsively she crossed to her neglected bedchamber and made for the closet until she remembered that her entire wardrobe, including her bathing clothes were back at the ranch.
"Merde," she cursed. She called the front desk and asked for the concierge. After a brief and terse conversation, she hung up and dropped herself down onto the couch. She stared at her boots, which she propped up on the table in front of her, listening to the noise from the street below and waiting, though she would deny it, for the sound of the telephone. As she studied the wing tip on her toes, she could not help but feel each second as it ticked by. Every few moments, a rush of certainty that any moment Cosima would make herself known, and then a depressing realization that the moment had stretched too far and that she was still simply waiting. She wished she'd thought to bring anything back with her to occupy her mind. She wasn't uncertain how long she spent in that tense, but silent reverie. Eventually, the patterns of the traffic noise from far below lulled her into a semi-meditative state, so she jumped when there was a knock at the door. She stood quickly and straightened her clothes. She crossed to the door and gathered herself before reaching for the doorknob. She did not wish to betray the actual relief that she was feeling considering the gravity of the conversation she faced. Finally, she grasped the handle and, audibly exhaling one final time, turned it gently.
"Hello," she said, before the door was truly open.
"Your delivery, Mrs. Bowles." came a voice that was decidedly not Cosima's. Her mind started at the sound of her married name, and her heart sank at the masculine timber. The bellhop handed her the bag from Woolworth's. She retrieved a few coins, a small tip, from her billfold and sent the young man on his way. She called the front desk and asked that the staff use her maiden name from that point forward.
"Of course, Ms. Cormier. We'll make a note of that on the registry."
She took the bag back to her bedroom and removed its contents. The same suit in two sizes, a yellow halter-top and white short pants, both with sufficient rouching to be fashionable, but not gaudy. She'd have to compliment the concierge on his taste. She quickly disrobed and tried on the new suits. Satisfied with the fit of the second more than the first, she kept it on and threw her shirt back on over the ensemble, content to let the tails hang loose so as to disguise the fact that she had not re-buttoned her dungarees. She slipped on her boots again and retrieved a towel from the bathroom. She made sure to tuck her key into her pocket and then set off down the hall. As she approached the elevator she anticipated the doors sliding open and having to explain to Cosima that she was just going to go for a swim. When they slid open to reveal only an empty car, Delphine's anxiety started to rise again. Were there two lifts? Might she cross paths with Cosima on her way up to the top floor? When she departed the elevator in the lobby, she had to scan the entire place twice before she truly believed that Cosima still had not appeared. She walked to the front desk. Had anyone called for her.
"No messages, Mrs. Bowles." the man affirmed; she shook her head at the name again and asked him to make a note that the staff should address her by her maiden name from that point forward. "Yes, ma'am, let me just note that here in the registry." He made to write but stopped short, "Oh I see someone already has. My apologies Ms… Cormeer?"
"Cormier." she corrected. "It's French."
"Cormier. Of course, ma'am." He smiled stiffly.
She crossed to the Riverside's river side exit; turning, she watched a few patrons move in and out of the front door, but each silhouette was so unlike Cosima it frustrated her to watch. She walked out into the midday sun, but instantly began to dread being long absent. She made her way to the waters edge and quickly shucked off her ranch clothes and stepped into the river's chilly mountain water. The temperature shocked her flesh, but it was undoubtedly more pleasant than standing on dry land. She dipped her hands into the clear waters and bathed her arms and neck. Finally, quite on impulse, she bent at the waist and let her hair be dragged along by the cooling current. She gathered her tresses carefully in her hand and squeezed them dry a bit before slowly rolling up to her full height again. In her mind, she retraced her steps down the hall to the elevator and out to the riverbank. She'd been gone only a few minutes, but struggled with the possibility of being absent even a second too long. She grabbed the towel and wrapped her body in it. Assured again that there were "No messages, Ms. Cormier." Merci. She returned to the top floor retreat.
"Emily." Cosima grumbled. She grabbed the back of the chair in front of her, lifted it and slammed it down on the ground. She stormed out of the kitchen and across to the living room, in wide, loud strides. If Siobhan Sadler had owned a china cabinet the dishes would have rattled. She complained loudly to the air about know it all French scientists and false inferences. She paced the length of the house. "Of all the idiotic..." She seethed, her entire body wound tightly into coils of frustration. Her limbs felt cocked and loaded, ready to fire. "Who the hell does she think she is…?" She wanted to run. To fight. She needed to lay down. She threw herself back onto the couch hard, knocking her head against the wooden frame of the arm.
"Son of a bitch! God damn it all to hell!"
She shot back up to her feet holding the back of her head with both hands. Siobhan had alighted the porch, just in time to hear her daughter's spray of colorful language.
"Are you alright, love?" she cautioned, having made her way a few steps into the house. Cosima winced and inhaled loudly through her teeth.
"You're a fine one to ask." Cosima sniped back. "I might have been except for you and your god-damned interfering!" Siobhan's eye flew wide open; she cocked her head to the side and spoke.
"That's one."
"Stop it, S!" she shouted. "I'm not a damn child anymore."
"Well you're still my child and that, that is two." Her mother added. "Now calm down, Cosima." She spoke firmly and clearly.
"Oh, right? I can totally do that." Sarcasm dripped from her words. "Delphine just tore me apart and you want me calm the hell down."
"That's three." Siobhan continued. "Now stop cursing at me."
"Oh hell's bell's." Cosima threw her arms down at her sides. "Fine." She stomped passed her mother toward the door.
"That's four. Come back when those stalls are clean and you are ready to talk to me in a calm tone of voice."
She thundered into the barn. "Four stalls, my ass!" she yelled once she was inside. "I'm not a fucking child!" Her words likely didn't reach the ranch house, but she liked to imagine that they did. She grabbed a shovel and threw it in the wheelbarrow, then stomped the materials over to the first stall. She wrenched the tool out of the large bin; its uneven weight getting the better of her grip, she hit herself in the face.
"Dammit!" she yelled, gaining control of the unwieldy spade with both hands and slamming to the ground. Rage beat with the rhythm of her heart, wings of a raptor trying to escape her rib caging.
"Emily." She grumbled one more time and retrieved the shovel with more control now than less.
She stepped into the stall and began mucking. With each scoop of filth and saw dust, she vented an ungenerous and hateful thought to the air, each one landing away from her person like so much manure in a wheelbarrow. By the end of the second stall she was appreciably calmer. By the third, she began to feel sorry for how she had spoken to Siobhan; she cleaned the forth out of obligation, and a fifth because she felt badly about torrent of obscenities she had launched at her mother when she walked into the barn. Siobhan may have even given her six, but what her mother didn't hear… she laughed to herself.
When she exited the barn, she found Siobhan on the porch sipping a glass of sun tea; a second glass of ice sat waiting to be filled from the pitcher also on the table. She explained as she passed that she needed to wash up before she could actually relax.
"Well, I can't argue with that." Siobhan called after her, playfully. "You smell like shit, but don't forget your ice. It's melting."
Cosima stopped and leaned back out the ranch house doorframe. "Hey Siobhan," she smiled, "that's one." And with a wink she was back inside.
Delphine sat in silence on the settee in the hotel lobby; she had ventured down to find a magazine or a book to read to kill the mid afternoon doldrums; she had eaten lunch and dinner was too far off to be preoccupying. She found a copy of LIFE, the one she had been reading on the train. She opened it meaning to finish the article about the white haired woman in the wading boots, clearly on some holiday with her very important political husband, but instead the periodical lay open in her lap, neglected for the more captivating sight that caught her attention. A man had sat down across from her; he was reading. There was not much remarkable about the man himself; he was of average height and build, possibly in his late thirties or early forties, wearing a casual tan suit, also ordinary. His features were inconspicuous as well, but the book he was reading demanded her attention. On its cover a brunette stood, back to the viewer. She wore a brown slip slit at the left side. She was naked from the waist up, her matching brassiere dangled from her left hand. Across from her, a blond woman in a white negligée, head tucked and eyes cut to the side, stared suggestively in her direction. Anything Goes she read the block print itle. It was clearly a dime store novel, the kind her friends consumed in massive quantities at the beauty parlor or the beach. But her friends read westerns and detective novels. This she gathered was neither, but the poor print quality and 50-cent price point put it in the same genre, she was sure.
The image fascinated her, as did the fact that the man was reading such a book out in the open. She must have walked passed images like these before on books at the drug store counter, but she had no reason to take particular note of them. Her pleasure reading was most often a bit more high-brow. LIFE after all felt like a silly indulgence with its focus on celebrity and lifestyle. Yet as she stared at the cover of this book she felt at once drawn, and exposed and wanted very much to read it. With out realizing she had, she leaned closer over her lap to study the cover more closely. She squinted and tried to make out the tag line. The immoral story of a love-starved temptress.. was as far as she got when a voice made her jump.
"Have you read it?" he man asked. He'd caught her staring.
"No." she stumbled, her mind raced with questions. "I wasn't… I mean I haven't"
"I bought it at the Woolworths this morning," he remarked, "If you're that interested." And then he winked at her.
"I'm…" she barely knew how to respond. Her heart raced and panic flooded her system. "I'm not." She settled on and then stood abruptly and walked to the front desk.
"Still no messages, Ms. Cormier." The young man stated, clearly beginning to tire of the question she had not yet asked.
"No." she said in hushed but hurried tones. "I only wondered if it would be possible to get tea and croissant up to my room. Herbal tea please."
"Of course, Ms. Cormier. The tea won't be a problem, but I am afraid we don't have croissants available."
"Of course," she said, disappointed. "Well what is the Reno equivalent?"
"Biscuits and gravy, I'd say. The kitchen make great biscuits from scratch every day."
"Fine, then." She agreed. "Biscuits and tea. No gravy please."
"Right. Biscuits, no gravy," he made a note. "Give us 45 minutes or so; it's after 3 o'clock and these are usually breakfast fare."
"Merci." She answered and rode the lift back up to her room.
She could not get the image of the book from her head, or more specifically the thoughts they inspired, thoughts of her and Cosima and the love they had made in this room and Cosima's and by the waters of Lake Tahoe. Immoral story of a love starved temptress. She cringed at the words. Immoral. Love-starved. How grotesquely they made her feel. She replayed the moment in her mind. The myriad emotions she had felt, even the amusement, until he had spoken to her. When she had read the word immoral she hadn't felt that way. It wasn't until he spoke, until she felt exposed that she felt those words. Love-starved. Is that how people might see her? Might see them? Unclean, desperate, aberrant? She felt ill. She grew impatient for both her food and for Cosima.
When the phone finally rang she picked it up desperate to hear Cosima's voice. "Chèrie," she whispered quickly, "please come up. Now."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Cormier, this is the kitchen. These notes are unclear. Which kind of jam would you like with your biscuits."
More embarrassed than she could conceive of being, she agreed to the marmalade and hung up the phone. Tears began to well up in her eyes. She damned her naiveté and her pride. She did not know this man, and she had allowed him to make her feel afraid. She wiped the occasional tear from her cheek and sat, lost for how to explain her reaction. A few moments later, a knock came at the door. She straightened herself and sniffed back the sadness. She retrieved a dollar bill to tip the waiter. She spoke as she opened the door.
"Just leave the tray please and be on your way." She held the dollar bill out. A familiar voice answered from behind a domed lid.
"I already tipped him extra for letting me deliver your tray."
"Cosima!" she exclaimed.
She contained her impulse until her much anticipated, but unexpected guest put the tray on the dinette table, then she threw her arms around the woman she'd waited so long for and sobbed.
"I am so sorry."