Jackie
I slept through lunch.
I slept through dinner.
If Cass hadn't knocked on my bedroom door, I probably would have slept until breakfast the following day.
It was dark again outside; the last ditch attempt at a New York snowstorm from the previous night was still coming down outside the windows.
He was wearing that annoying hat again. You know, the one that looked like someone had sat on it. Still stubbly, still wearing those stupid sunglasses indoors.
"It's gettin' late, thought yeh'd like to get on with it." He handed me a burger - "Don't know how yeh likes 'em, but I didn't wanna wake yeh before I went out."
There was dried blood on the corner of Cass's mouth. He noticed my stare and wiped it off with the back of his hand, "The big hooer landed one good punch on me gob, but only one!" he grinned nastily. "He won't be doin' that again."
Against my better judgement, I took the burger.
The microwave was already packed deep in the bowels of the U-Haul, so I ate it cold.
Ugh.
Nibbling at breakfast, I wandered around the apartment looking over the previous night's damage.
The sitting area still looked like the aftermath of a tavern brawl.
Lucky I'd had the place soundproofed when I'd moved in five years before on Paolo's recommendation or the cops would have been all over us on a Domestic Disturbance #1.
"Yeh slept in yer clothes. Don't worry, go clean up an' Cass'll put all that shite in the truck." He waved at the last of my bagged possessions.
"Thanks," I mumbled and wandered into the spare bathroom which still had soap in it to take a shower, my last clean towel and fresh clothing over one shoulder.
There was a grubby sleeping bag that I didn't recognize on top of a mound of sheets and towels in in the tub. I tossed it all onto the floor next to Cass's kit, turned on the water, undressed and stepped in, letting the pulsating shower head pummel me into consciousness.
This was going to be a bad one; was there time to make an espresso?
Not if it meant fooling around with the big Italian monstrosity of an espresso machine that Paolo would get after I vacated the apartment for just one lousy cup of fancy coffee. Was there any instant left or had Cass maybe eaten it?
He looked like the kind who would, when he wasn't eating asprin dry like candy the morning after. With a spoon right out of the jar.
Wish I'd found that $500 wine before Cass had.
Why was my last bottle of nail polish remover laying empty in the trash can which I'd just emptied yesterday? And the rubbing alcohol? Come to think of it, where was that big 500 count bottle of genaric asprin that I bought yesterday and left out on the counter?
Who cares.
I turned off the water and stood there, steam rising around me as the last of the water gurgled down the drain. Outside the bathroom, I could hear things being shifted around, then a knock, "Just the bags, aye?"
I grabbed the towel off the back of the toilet and wrapped it around me before answering. For some reason I felt exposed even though I'd locked the door.
"Yes, and the bed. Wait, it's heavy, wait and I'll..." He'd moved off before I could finish.
When I came into my bedroom drying my hair, the bed was gone and Cass was sitting on a window sill, hunched down in his coat and scarf, watching the snow falling through the beam of the nearby security light, smoking.
"I see you got the bed without my help."
Cass jumped a little, looking at me with a disreputable smirk before he pinched out the cigarette and tucked it behind his ear, laughing a little to himself. "I got all the bags too - want any of the other shite?"
I wandered out into the living room with the open kitchen with its wine racks, its industrial sized refrigerator, the entertainment center, the demolished sitting area. I looked up at the Italian tapestries, the folk art from India, the white jade statue of Quan Yin in its glass case.
It was then that I realized though I'd paid for all of this, it had never been mine.
It had always been Paolo's.
I took a coat out of the hall closet.
It wasn't the expensive designer coat that Paolo had insisted I buy last Fall, but a patched Navy pea coat that smelled like mothballs and was now too big for me. It was the coat I'd worn all through college and was same one I'd worn the day I wrote the first check for this place.
Paolo hated it and wanted me to throw it away.
I pulled my eyesore on, buttoned it up, found a pair of frayed gloves in the pockets where I'd left them a little over two years ago, turned and looked back at Cass where he was still roosting on my, no, Paolo's bedroom window sill and said, "Let's get out of here."
