Chapter Six: Her Mind Is Tiffany Twisted
I wake up and wonder three things. First, who sand-papered my eyeballs. Second, how and why someone has crawled into my head and started swinging at my forehead with a ball peen hammer. Third, why it's only about 20 degrees in this room.
The night before comes back to me in a succession of thoughts that flash rapidly across my mind like lightning, making a momentary mark in my consciousness before fleeing. Waffle House. Thunderstorms. Silent Night. Headlights. Flats. Broken Toes. Garden Shears. Wine. Advil.
And this strange red room. A nightmare.
And Toby.
Another nightmare.
And Toby.
Toby easing his hand across the sheets toward me, a reassuring squeeze against my upper arm. In a moment, his fingers had loosened but remained, with all the weight of a comforting friend.
And now it's dawn, or I think it is, because I can see a square of lighter gray outlining the heavily draped window. Toby is still here with me, and he's moved closer. I imagine it's the cold that's driven him toward me, his guard dropped in dreaming. His arm is a dead weight across my stomach, one knee nudging my bare one under the covers. I can feel the warmth of his breath against my neck in an even rhythm.
I am not prepared for this kind of intimacy.
"Oh my God," I whisper, mortified. Unable to believe that Toby is here. It had been so easy to reach out for him last night. In the darkness. Morning is going to color everything so much differently. In daylight, I don't think I'm ready to face the staggering weakness I have shown.
I ease my wrist across my throbbing forehead, and try not to breathe, not to disturb him. Eventually he's going to wake up, and he's going to look at me, and I don't know what is going to be in his eyes.
What in the hell am I going to say to him? What is he going to say to me? We are going to have to address this, obviously. There isn't a chance he's going to let this go.
Unless I kill him in his sleep.
Three minutes crawl by on an ancient-looking grandfather clock, and I'm having trouble thinking of the bad side of that particular coin.
"You're the only person I know who can think loud enough to wake a man out of a sound sleep."
"Christ!" I gasp out, and his arm quivers a little against the CCNY emblem across my…or rather, his…sweatshirt as laughter runs through him.
"Well, apparently you were thinking about something you shouldn't have been," Toby reasons. "Then again, I can't say I'm not doing the same right about now. You look good like this, CJ."
I glance at him and he gives me a sort of sleepy, mischievous smile that I never would have imagined could come from him, and I disturb myself by thinking that maybe I can understand why my college roommate enjoyed waking up next to him for quite a few years.
My cheeks get warm, and I get snappy. "Actually, I was just thinking of smothering you with a pillow."
"Why? Was I snoring?" he asks, comfortable waking up next to me. And I'm pissed that he is. His nerves should be as on edge as mine right about now. I'm shocked that they are not. I've been anticipating Toby's reaction for quite a few minutes here, and he's thrown me by this casual acceptance of the fact that we are laying here, entwined.
The man has the ability to throw me like this whenever he sees fit, and not many other men do and that's just annoying.
"You were snoring. Yes." I lie.
"How's your foot?"
"It's broken, thank you."
"Not a morning person," he guesses.
"You're just now figuring this out?"
"You'd think you weren't sleeping well at night," he says pointedly. I figured he'd give me five minutes before jumping on this.
"Toby..." I warn.
"CJ," he responds calmly enough. I shake my head but he says, "CJ, we're gonna do this now."
"You can do this now. I don't think I will," I growl, and if my foot wasn't held together by broken #2 pencils and gauze, I would stalk off in a huff worthy of a soap opera.
"Okay, I'll do this now. You can join in when you want," Toby shrugs. I notice that he hasn't really moved. His hand is still splayed across my ribcage, just under my breast. I have a strange feeling of being held down by the whisper touch.
"This should be interesting," I say in a nasty voice.
"CJ...you can't pretend like all of this isn't happening. Whatever you were dreaming last night--whatever it was--I've never seen you like that before. I'm worried about you. I'm lying here, and I'm saying that I, Toby Ziegler, am showing concern for my fellow man. You have to give me credit for that."
"I really don't." I try to interrupt him but he charges forward as if I haven't spoken at all.
"CJ, it isn't my business. I know it isn't. But I won't let it go now. You can't ask me to. My mind has gone to the worst places, and I need to know if I'm right."
"You're not making--"
"You said you were in a prison. For three days."
"Toby, you don't--"
He's tired of my stalling. His voice becomes less patient. "CJ! Three days? In a Qumari prison?"
"Yes," I hiss. "Three days."
"I have to ask, CJ. Did they...did the guards there..." he hesitates forever on the word, then spits it out quickly as he winces, "rape you?"
"No!" I shout and am surprised by the indignant tone of my voice.
His fingers have tightened around the fabric of the sweatshirt I'm wearing, digging just slightly into the skin underneath. The fire is in death throes but it shoots out one last beam of light that glitters off Toby's wedding ring.
"CJ..." he begins and I realize he doesn't believe me.
"Toby, think about it. Those men hate their own women. Can you imagine how much they hate American women? Particularly American women who've been trying to help their women? Do you think there's a man in Qumar who would touch me in that way?"
"Yes, I do. If for no other reason than that very one," Toby says quietly. "Rape isn't about desire. You know that as well as I do."
"Well, they didn't do it."
"Do you swear it? They didn't...you know?" I don't think he can bring himself to say the word again.
"I swear it," I say, and feel very weary. It seems highly unusual that Toby doubts me enough to ask me to give my word.
"Okay." He sighs and his fingers loosen their hold on my shirt and he finally rolls away, onto his back.
We lay there, shoulder touching shoulder, for a few minutes, silently staring at the canopy above.
Why the relief in his voice? Why is that the darkest place he can think of to go to? I wonder for perhaps the first time, what if rape had been the worst of it? I'm not about to minimize the horror of rape. I can't even imagine…but there are things that are worse, I'm certain, because I've watched the women who live with them every day.
"They beat you, then." His words are raw and troubled and laced with certainty.
In my peripheral vision, I see him look at me, and I close my eyes and turn my head away. It shouldn't be so hard to tell him. Maybe it is right that I do. But I have no idea how to tell him what I know now, what I have known all along in these years since.
I know what fear smells like. It's a dark, musty hole with rotting straw and unclean bodies. Sweat, bile, excrement. Blood. Urine. And something else that isn't so easily defined. Something sickly sweet and desperate.
I know what fear sounds like. It's the sound of blows upon flesh. Solid, surprisingly deafening blows that never, never stop. It comes closer and closer, louder and louder. And then the sound of fear is the heavy latch on the outside of my door, clanking. Followed by creaking hinges. It's a foreign language, rough and unfamiliar, but threatening, and growing more agitated when I can't answer back. It's low moans down black corridors, through dirt walls, from my own mouth when they are gone. It's my own soft, soft sobbing joining the others after the thin strip of sunlight falls off the far wall.
I know what fear tastes like. It's metallic blood and bitter adrenaline and hot, sour bile that scorches up as dirty knuckles or booted feet drive into my jaw, my stomach, my legs. It's the taste of the gritty dirt that flies in my mouth as my lip rips away from the teeth I've clenched across it to keep from giving them the satisfaction of a cry.
And I know what fear looks like. It's what lives in the eyes of those women I tried to help. It's what was in my own eyes when I turned my back on all of them to come back to safety.
"Yes, they beat me. They hit me; they hit all the women there. They raped some of the others, and I listened to it and I wondered if I was next. And I was, with the beatings, but not the other. And I was so glad. But yes, they beat me. Until I wondered if they would stop until I was dead." I say, ragged and bitter. Exhausted as when a Qumari guard, one that had broken ribs the night before, came and dragged me from the cell.
I'd been confused and frightened, and despite the hell that was my prison, I'd panicked at being taken from its familiarity. Delicately boned hands had reached through tiny slats in the dark walls as I passed and I learned where the other voices had been coming from.
My captor had been cruel, even on the walk upwards, out of the bowels of the Earth. He'd cursed me and taunted me, and knocked me to my knees twice. Prodded me into blazing, disorienting sunlight with the barrel of his machine gun. I stopped dead, trying to open my eyes and meet my fate, but the light was just too painful following the darkness.
I remember thinking I was being pushed to my execution. Wondered if it would be a firing squad, stones, or beheading. Recalled not caring as long as the endless hours of waiting for monsters to walk into my hole would stop.
Instead, an American soldier had dropped a blanket about my shoulders, because I'd been shivering violently from shock and fear despite the desert heat, and he had mostly carried me to a waiting helicopter. There I'd been reunited with my group. Some sporting bruises and cuts. I could tell by the way they'd looked at me that my own injuries were much more severe. I could also tell by the side-long glances they'd given one another that they thought I deserved whatever treatment I got. It had been my video footage that had gotten us into the prison.
Toby's hand comes to my shoulder again, and I don't think he's going to let go. He moves closer to me, until he's nearly flush against my side, but I still won't look at him.
"We had to leave the country," I say.
"I'm sure you did."
"I was so glad to go. So glad," I say, and my nose starts stinging as tears scald my eyes, and I'm glad that Toby's at my back, that he can't see this—this shame I feel and have always felt at the mention of Qumar.
"Were you hurt badly? Physically?"
"I lost a few back teeth. Some broken ribs. Dehydration. A few cuts that needed stitches. Nothing too serious. Nothing like they've done to other women there. Mutilation. Torture. I heard them doing it. I'm sure they were a little scared to do much worse to me with the government already demanding we be returned unharmed. It was kept quiet, you know. The U.S. was forging a diplomatic relationship with the country. Needed to get to the oil and the base. It would have been bad press. I'm not entirely unsure I wasn't traded for some promise of hastened negotiations."
He sucks in air, and his fingers tighten about me. "CJ, I didn't—I didn't know any of that."
"Of course you didn't," I say. "How would you?"
"By the look on your face when I told you about the arms sale to Qumar. It was written all over it."
"Toby, I'm telling you this so you know…I really don't blame you for Qumar. But maybe now you can understand why I acted like I did. I'm not sorry for it."
"I blame myself for Qumar. For asking you to do it."
"God Toby!" I say sharply. "It was my job to announce it. You didn't make the deal. And you didn't hold a gun to my head—" I wince at my choice of words there, but continue, "and make me get up there. It was mandate from the Oval Office."
Toby then reveals something that floors me in a thousand ways. "I knew it was going to cost you something. CJ, I knew that you'd hate it. And I have to tell you this…The President offered to pass it down, to bury it in another department's briefings. He was worried about asking you to make the announcement, but I told him that it wouldn't be a problem."
"Why would you do that? I had an out?" This is news to me, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet, but if he doesn't explain himself quickly, he's going to need to remove his hand from my shoulder or suffer much the same treatment Lumberjack did.
His fingers tighten against my arm. "I…honestly? I wanted to pull rank on you."
"Pull rank on me? Then? With that! Why?"
"I don't know, CJ. I didn't really know before and I know less now."
"Yeah, well, I know and I'll tell you why. It's because you think I try to walk all over you. It's because you think I take advantage of our friendship. It's because you don't think I know where the line is. It's because lately we've had a few very public disagreements in the West Wing and because you thought I needed to be put in my place."
"Is that it?"
"You tell me," I growl, daring him to deny it.
"You're right," he all but whispers. "I was picking a fight I thought I could win."
"And so you interrupted my meeting and you stood in the doorway of my office and you dropped Qumar on me. Toby…" I break off because I don't know what to say to him right now. I'm too stunned to be furious yet. But I'm getting there, so I add, "fuck you, Toby."
"CJ, I'd honestly forgotten you were ever in the Middle East. I really…I had no idea about what happened in Qumar. I wish you'd have told me. I would have made the recommendation to pass it off. Gladly."
"And what difference does it make that I was ever in Qumar? Why is it suddenly more acceptable that I was outraged by the treatment of the women there? Why does it become worse when you find out that I was treated like those women are treated every day? I was there three days. Some of those women have been in that prison for years, Toby! And the ones outside of it don't live much better!"
"Because I care about you. Because the thought of anyone laying a hand on you like that makes me crazy, CJ. I can't…before, when I was thinking it was, you know…it was rape, I was---. Now, the idea of them beating the hell out of you…CJ…of them knocking teeth out of your head—" his voice breaks, and he pauses, then growls, "it makes me burn."
"Yeah, well, I care about those women, Toby. And when the men there told me never to come back to Qumar, you know what I should have done? I should have chained myself to the wall. But I didn't have the guts to do it, and I got the first plane out."
"And you think that if they'd stoned you to death, things would be better for the women there? You think that would make you somehow a better person? You were twenty-one years old!"
"Those women don't get a plane ride out."
"You aren't those women, CJ."
"No, I'm not, thank God. But I owe them something. And I failed them before, and I failed them now."
"How did you fail them?"
My voice starts to climb in a steady crescendo. "Because, Toby, I stood up and, on behalf of the United States Government, screwed them! I just said to them, 'oil is more important that the unimaginable abuse you suffer every day, and we're not going to help you at all, because we want the air space!' I said to them, 'there's not the slightest hope that we're going to come and help you in the next 10 years because it's more convenient to deal with your men than not! So, instead, we're going to give the men who torture you more methods of doing just that. Sound good? Well, we don't care because you have no voice at all! And you certainly don't have a vote!'"
My voice has now climbed to a level where it's uncomfortably echoing in my own aching head, and I stop talking abruptly.
"How would you not making the announcement have changed any of that? How would passing it off have given them any more hope?"
"Those women are so far outside of hope right now, that—never mind. It wouldn't have made any difference to anyone but maybe to me. But I was too afraid to stay in Qumar, and I was too afraid to say what I really felt about it a few weeks ago. I should have gone up to that podium and said exactly what I said to those three veterans earlier in the day. And I resent the hell out of myself for not doing it."
"Resent me for it, CJ. Don't resent yourself."
I snort with contempt. "Oh don't you worry, Toby. I resent the hell out of you too. I don't need your permission for that."
"CJ, I am sorry. If you would have just told me this…it would have been different."
"Really? You think you could fix this? You want to know what I dream about? I have a nightmare about those bastard guards who beat me walking the halls of that prison with American-made weapons. And I have a nightmare about them watching CNN and remembering when they made me kneel before them and held a gun to my head and laughed while I waited for them to pull the trigger and begged for my life. And I did Toby. I begged, and I never would have thought I'd do that. But that isn't even the worst of it. Mostly, I have a nightmare of about a hundred women's hands reaching out through their cells as I was given my freedom back. I dream of answering to them."
My throat is getting tight now, closing off around anything else I want to say…and I have plenty to say. I turn onto my side, clinging to the edge of the bed and not even really noticing the protest my toes issue at the movement. Toby's hand leaves my shoulder only so he can roll closer, pressing himself along my length and putting his arms around me.
I shake my head violently but don't pull away. I'm torn; wanting him there, wanting him to go away, wanting him to go to Hell.
"We can't…we can't stop Qumari men from beating their women," Toby murmurs, some time later. "There's nothing you could have done. Then or now."
"Maybe we can't. But when did we stop trying, Toby? Someday we're all going to have to answer for it."
"Okay. But in the mean time, you're going to have to do something about this sleeping problem you're having."
There's a quick knock at the door and Toby and I both spring apart, but while we're doing so, Sam and Josh barge into the room, and catch us in the process of looking surprised and, I'm certain, very, very guilty.
Josh stops so abruptly that Sam plunges into his back, and they both stumble around for a second, fighting for balance. When they find it, they both freeze, eyes on the bed. I'd be hard put to say who looks more horrified to be here. Josh or Toby. I imagine I might be in the running too.
Josh is holding his phone to his ear, and after a moment of staring, he starts and seems to remember it's there. "What did you say, Leo? Yeah. Toby's up…er, awake. Okay, yeah, look, I'm gonna have to call you back." He ends the call immediately and his hand falls lifeless to his side. He purses his lips, averting his gaze from me and blushing bright, bright red. He's doing a good job of looking scandalized and disapproving.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and say in a voice that sounds altogether unconvincing, "this is, in many ways, not what it looks like."
"Well, people owe me money," Sam says nonchalantly, staring at me and Toby and making no effort to hide the fact that he's doing so.
Josh's mouth is still hanging open. It gives me some satisfaction to have rendered him speechless.
"Owe you money?" I ask Sam, by way of conversation.
"Yeah. There was a pool."
"A pool?" I follow-up politely, although I have a feeling I don't want to know what he's about to tell me.
Sam gladly explains. "About how long it would take before you two took a little roll in the hay, so to speak."
"There was no rolling…no hay," Toby snaps at Sam. "And can we expect more of these delightful cliches from you soon, I hope?"
"What the hell!" Josh's voice has leapt nearly, if not completely, an octave. In all this time, I suppose he's been conjuring an answer to my first comment, because he shrieks, "what it looks like? Do you have any idea what this looks like?"
"Josh," Toby mumbles, and I think he may actually be blushing right here. Toby Ziegler is lying in bed with me and blushing like a schoolgirl. This is so bad.
But Josh isn't done. He's just getting started. "For the…What if we had been a couple of reporters?"
I look at Josh's face and see that it's getting very red and know that right now is the worst possible moment to invoke the sarcasm…but then again, that's never really stopped me before. "Yes, Josh. I'm sure Rose and Ernie keep a couple of gossip columnists in the closets around here…just in case White House senior staffers decide to drop in one night, and you know, get in bed together. It's that kind of a swinging place."
"Do you…are you kidding me? With the closets and the swinging place thing? Are you really doing this now? Right now?" Josh screeches.
"Josh, seriously. Dogs can't even hear you anymore," I say. "You need to calm down. There's an explanation. Be more like Sam. Hmm. There's something I thought I'd never say."
Sam looks over at Josh. "Hey, want to come clean about you and Donna? That would be double the payoff."
"Donna! What?" And now Josh has reached a little thing I've come to call howler-monkey mode as he turns on Sam. "You think this is funny?"
"Josh, shut-up," Toby mutters, which actually does the trick for once.
"Okay, well then you both need to get up out of the bed before I go blind," Josh responds.
Toby obliges him; I remain where I am. They look at me, amidst the disheveled sheets, and they all cringe.
"CJ, couldn't you just, I don't know, get up so we can go out of this room forever?" Josh wonders.
"No."
"Why not?" He pushes.
"She's got broken toes, Josh," Toby says.
"I'm not wearing any pants," I say at the exact same time.
All three of them pause to stare at the blanket covering my legs. Especially Toby…who apparently had no idea I wasn't wearing any pants as he was sleeping in the bed with me. I feel blood rushing into my face and add sheepishly, "you see…Toby's explanation would have been the better choice for me just then."
"You're. Not. Wearing. Pants." Josh repeats very slowly. Trust Josh to focus on that.
"That's partly true," I say.
"Which part is true?" Josh asks.
"The part where I'm not wearing pants," I answer.
"Did you sit in paint again? Or is it the usual reason this time?" Sam puts in, and I give him a look that says he's not helping the situation at all. He gives me a look back that tells me that he has no intention of helping the situation at all.
"Do you know what needs to happen right now?" I suggest. "All of you need to get the hell out of this room. Someone should probably find my pants, and someone else should get us a car or fix a tire or something like that. We do actually have to work today."
"Not only are you not wearing pants, but you don't know where they are?" Josh groans.
"What time is check-out?" Sam asks. "I couldn't find Rose or Ernie this morning."
"'You can check out any time you like, but you can never le-eave,'" I sing softly.
Josh looks like he's approaching a stroke, but he chooses to ignore me. "I called the rental car company pretty early this morning. They're having someone drive a car up from San Francisco. I got all charges to us waived by the way, and you're all welcome. We're about two hours north of the city. They should be here soon," Josh reports. "The President is feeling better. He'll get there about the time we do."
"So basically," Toby says, "this was the most pointless night of my life."
"Well, I seriously doubt that," I say a little sharply and see Sam and Josh's head swing toward me and realize that they have taken it, as they do everything, in a completely different context.
"Can I just point out that Toby and I did not sleep together last night?" I wonder.
"Please, stop. Really," Josh says, lifting a hand between him and what I assume is the image of Toby and I sleeping together.
"Do you know that if you'd sleep with Donna…at the same time Toby slept with CJ, that I could very nearly be a wealthy man?" Sam murmurs, partly to Josh, mostly to himself.
Josh turns to Sam and snaps, "do you know that you slept with a call girl?"
"Get out," Toby growls.
"Seriously, if Leo knew about this…" Josh begins.
"Get out," Toby repeats and this time they both wisely go.
He walks to the door and shuts it with finality, and I see a glimpse of Sam's surprised face when it registers that Toby is staying inside with me.
"Well, that was bad in many ways," I offer as he leans against the back of the door. "And I'm not sure that you locking them out after I mentioned I wasn't wearing pants is really going to help."
"We weren't done, CJ."
"I think we were, Toby."
"Do you accept my apology?"
"I'm tired of fighting with you," I say.
"That's not an answer."
"Toby…you were—I'm sorry, are—an ass, but Qumar was not your fault. All right? The pulling rank on me thing is a different story, but I'll let you make it up to me."
"How?"
"I'll probably take it out in humiliation and such. That'll be fun for me really."
He sighs and walks over to the bed, sitting on the edge. He watches me for a second, and I blink a few times in surprise when he leans down and kisses my cheek. His beard rasps against my cheek and it's a strangely pleasant feeling. He leans back and fixes a dark look on me. "You'll talk to someone about the dreams?"
"No, I won't, Toby. Those are personal. Those are mine. I won't share them with a stranger. They'll go away. They always do. And someday, they'll come back again, and then they'll go away. I am okay with that. It's good to remember, I think…if that's all I can do for those women, then maybe it's something."
"But in the mean time…maybe you could talk to me about them?" Toby pushes.
"Maybe I could," I nod.
"I'll go find your pants," Toby offers.
"Yes, please do." I say and he smiles and turns around and just before he gets out the door I call out to him, "you're not really as much of a bastard as you'd like to be, Toby."
"Yeah, well, I'll work on that," he assures me and closes the door behind him.
*
"What am I supposed to do with this, exactly?" I say, holding the rusty old rake Josh has just handed me at arm's length. My pants have still not been returned, so I'm sitting on the edge of the bed, the sheet wrapped around my legs, my heel resting on a red velvet ottoman.
"It's a crutch," Sam explains when he appears in my doorway.
"It's a rake," I disagree, and science is on my side here.
"Use your imagination," Josh shrugs. "It was the best we could do."
"I'm afraid it'll give me Lock Jaw."
Josh sighs, "well, then the benefits are two-fold. We have to get you to the rental car. It's here."
"Couldn't Ernie, you know, just carry me out?"
"You want to hear something strange?" Sam tempts me.
"You mean something stranger than two Ivy Leaguers who can't tell the difference between garden and medical equipment?"
"Yeah, something stranger than that," Sam nods, nonplussed.
Josh can't wait for Sam to tell me. He breaks in. "We can't find Ernie and Rose. There's no sign of either one of them."
They are looking at me expectantly, and I'm not sure what reaction they want here. I try unconcerned, which I am. "Maybe they are still asleep. Neither one is very young, you know, and we kept them up late."
"It gets weirder," Josh interrupts me. "We went out to Ernie's car this morning…Sam was going to drive up and make sure that we didn't leave anything in the rental car, and the damned thing wouldn't start."
"So?" I say, annoyed because they are both wide-eyed and impressed with this knowledge, and I'm apparently—thank God—not on the same brain wave as them.
"Don't you get it? It's creepy. It's bizarre. It's twilight zone. It's like we stepped into a time warp last night. Maybe it turns out that Ernie and Rose have been dead for years."
"You both have issues with which I cannot help you at all," I say. "Could someone please find my pants?"
"You know what Donna would call you right now, CJ?" Josh asks me.
"I am pretty sure I have no idea."
"Deputy Downer. That's you now. The torch has been passed."
"I'm not a Deputy," I point out.
"Secretary Sourpuss then."
*
"There's no way I'm going into San Francisco like this," I say firmly as Toby makes sure most of my limbs are tucked into the replacement rental…a nice mini-van that Josh is still smirking over scaring the "fascist car company" into giving him. Toby slams the door and I sit, undeterred, and wait until he climbs behind the wheel before continuing. "You're gonna have to find somewhere to stop and buy me real clothes. I mean it. And don't think that you aren't going to buy me a new pair of boots…and if you have to go to the edge of the world to find them, you will do so. I look ridiculous."
"I think you look fine," Toby says, and I see his eyes dart up to the rear view mirror and the corner of his mouth twitch as he looks at Sam and Josh. Sam snickers in the back seat, but I sit very straight and proud, defiant even.
It's really quite obvious that I do not look fine. The search for my favorite pair of jeans, taken away by Rose—or the ghost of Rose—the night before, turned out to be as fruitless as the rest of this trip. I have to admit that the vanishing of Rose and Ernie has started to creep me out a little bit. In the end, we could do nothing but leave what we thought might be a fair amount for the night's stay on the little bar in the dining room and wonder what the Hell happened to them.
Furthermore, when we went to leave out the same front door that we came in, the white cat was sitting on the stairs again, head through the railing, watching me. There had been a moment of alarm among us when Josh tried to open the front door, only to have it stick like it hadn't been opened in some time. It had taken both Josh and Sam to open the door.
Now, driving away, I can see the hotel in the side-view mirror. I would have thought daylight might have stolen some of its mystery, but sitting as it does on those black cliffs, wreathed in a fog thicker than anything else near-by, the old inn looks more haunted by day.
I imagine I look worse by daylight too. I glance down at my ensemble. I'm wearing Toby's sweatshirt. In my bag was a pair of black nylons, which I was forced to put on because no one had a spare pair of pants. Of course, the leg of the tights had to be cut off at the ankle to allow for my splinted foot.
Sam has loaned me a pair of his boxer shorts, which are black, bedecked in little red lipstick prints. I don't even want to know where he got them, and I can only hope to God someone bought them for him as opposed to him choosing them for himself.
As for shoes…well, apparently in some closet somewhere in the hotel, Toby found a pair of monstrously big sandals. They are brown and dusty and hideous, and when I think of my ruined boots in comparison to them, I could sob.
"I look like a freaking clown," I growl, under my breath, and Toby, Sam, and Josh all stifle little laughs of delight.
"I think you look sexy," Josh pipes in from the backseat, and I hear him unclick his seatbelt the moment before his head appears between me and Toby. "So let me ask you something, Claudia Jean. On this trip, you've kissed Sam in Waffle House, slept with Toby…so I'm wondering what do I get? Isn't it my turn?"
I look at Josh for a long moment. Quietly, I tell him, "Josh, I swear to God, if you don't get away from me right now, I'm going to have to pull your eyes out of your face."
He sits back, considers it, and says, "oh," and then a beat later, "kinky."
*
It isn't far to San Francisco and the miles are rolling by fast in a yellow streak under our hood. Radio stations are starting to come in clearly now, but for once I'm not singing along as I watch the Pacific surging toward the shoreline and think about the world on the other side of it.
From time to time I feel Toby's gaze on me, and I know he's concerned. And that he's remembering last night and this morning. Remembering how bad things have been between us lately, and noticing how much better they feel after this trip. Remembering waking up in the same bed, and how okay he was with that.
I remember it too. And more. I remember how easy it was to give to him words I haven't given to anyone else in twenty years. How easy it was to forgive him for what he'd done. How easy to see that the apology he gave me was full of the echoes of my own pain.
This man is very dear to me. My closest friend. And so much more that isn't even definable. We've been at odds for so long that I have forgotten how right it feels for us to be as we are now. At ease. Companions.
Josh and Sam are in a heated debate about the ethics of downloading music on the Internet and have been for some time. They aren't paying any attention to us, and we're not paying any attention to them.
Toby's arm is resting on the console as he drives. I reach out and lace my fingers with his, holding hard to him. He doesn't look away from the road and neither do I. We both know where we're going now.
We don't need Sam or Frederick to tell us the way home. As it turns out, it was always written in the stars.
THE END
Feedback is the highlight of my otherwise not fun days of studying: If you're still with me here, I'd love to know what you thought.
