Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
That night, I pondered the fact that I’d been avoiding speaking with Nico about his Fancy Stalker.
It felt like an unpleasant, heavy topic, like a rusty car or unmanageable box of poo.
Whenever he asked me how I was doing in relation to the pressure of paparazzi or the stalker, I changed the subject. I didn’t want to talk about it.
But we were having such a good time during our conversations. I loved them.
In fact, it dawned on me just as I was drifting off to sleep on Sunday night that I loved hearing about his day—not because it was exciting but because I loved being there for him.
I loved being his sounding board, offering support and helping him reason through issues and problems. I loved giving him that part of myself.
All of this added together meant that I was letting him in. In fact, he was already in. He’d breached my fortress walls, he had a man cave in my citadel of seclusion, and we were picking out curtains for the barred windows. The thought was both thrilling and terrifying.
I needed to decide what to do, what to say to him when he returned.
Instead I rolled over in my bed, pulled the covers with me and, again, ensconced myself in avoidance.
I justified my avoidance by reminding myself that we were just friends.
I didn’t need to make any decisions because there were no decisions to make.
I could just enjoy the conversations for what they were: two friends talking on the phone.
And that was a load of horse manure.
I didn’t want anything to change. I also loved how much we laughed together; we shared the same sense of humor, as sick and twisted as we were. I loved that jokes that might make others cringe sent us both into long, breath-stealing, stomach-cramping bouts of laughter.
Therefore, I didn’t particularly want to dwell on any modification to our relationship that would likely ruin it; and I didn’t want to discuss the stalker while we were joking about the phallic qualities of pasta.
However, on Monday, I saw the Fancy Stalker again, and this time I knew for certain that it was her.
She was sitting in the ER waiting room, and I spotted her from behind the discharge counter.
Sure enough, she was wearing fancy shoes, fancy sunglasses—which was really weird, considering that she was indoors—and a fancy trench coat—also weird.
I hurried to the doctor’s lounge, the only place in the ER with cell phone coverage, and dialed the direct line of Detective Carey Long, the officer who’d come the last time.
I also paged my guard, Dan. By the time I made it back to the discharge desk, the Fancy Stalker was gone.
In the chair where she’d sat was another envelope.
I didn’t touch it and I didn’t open it. I waited for Detective Long to arrive and gave her the honor. She picked it up with official looking tweezers and placed it in a plastic bag then promised to let me know the contents as soon as she could.
Before she left she suggested to Dan that he follow me all day—stand outside clinic rooms—rather than walk the halls of the floor.
She also recommended to Dan that Quinn’s security team alert the hospital security team about the issue and circulate a picture of the Fancy Stalker so that staff and providers could keep an eye out.
Dan informed Detective Long that they’d already taken that precaution but would circulate her picture again.
Before she left, she reminded me to tell Nico about the incident.
I decided to notify Nico of this latest episode in person. He would be home Tuesday, just one more day, and I would be able to draw him aside and describe the situation face-to-face. I didn’t want him to become twisted in knots about it while he was in New York, as he was prone to do.
My Monday shift ended at 4:00 pm. After trying but failing to reach Nico on the phone, I decided to take Rose up on an earlier offer of dinner and a movie with her and Angelica.
It gave me an opportunity to give Angelica her new sweater, and Rose, although crazy as a loon, was still an amazing cook.
I was hoping to pick up some tips. Since my father had never cooked, I’d never learned.
But I wanted to. Marie from my knitting group had taught me to make Belgian waffles and a few simple dinners. I could always use additional instruction and practice. Rose did not disappoint.
She was making ravioli from scratch. Angelica was sitting at my elbow, seemingly perfectly at ease.
This was remarkable because I wasn’t typically a kid magnet.
In fact, kids seemed to sense my apprehension and usually—from a radius of at least six feet—cast disapproving and/or suspicious glares in my direction.
But, with Angelica, we’d developed an easy rapport since I’d shared my inventory of kids’ jokes and given her the pony purse a few weeks ago.
She was easy to like. In fact, I noted with some reluctance, she was easy to love.
The fact that she adored the sweater I knit her didn’t hurt matters either.
“What is that?” Her little munchkin voice pointed to my poorly constructed square of pasta.
“It’s ravioli.”
“No it’s not.” She shook her head, reached for a slice of pineapple, and popped it in her mouth.
“Well, what does it look like to you?”
“It looks like Pinky Pie’s alligator.” Her mouth was full of pineapple and a little juice dribbled down her chin. Instead of gross—which is what it should have been—she pulled off effortless adorableness.
Rose was making two kinds of ravioli. The first was your traditional wheat and egg pasta filled with ricotta cheese plus other top secret ingredients.
The second was a wheat-free, egg-free, dairy-free dough filled with a rice cheese substitute and vegetables.
Angelica’s disease meant that every meal was full of substitutions and omissions.
But pineapple was always on the menu.
I blinked at her. My eyes moved back to the pasta. It did indeed look like the shape of an alligator. “You mean Pinky Pie from My Little Pony?”
She nodded, then wiped her hand on my shirt as though it were the most natural thing in the world. This caused me to blink at her again. “Did you just wipe your hand on my shirt?”
Angelica turned her wide, green eyes to mine and then she laughed.
It was an answer of a sort. It was a yes, I just wiped my hand on your shirt, but, more than that, it was a yes, I wiped my hand on your shirt, but I’m sure you don’t mind because now I’m going to giggle with extreme cuteness and make your forget about the impropriety of using people’s garments as hand towels.
It worked. I opened my mouth in mock outrage. “I can’t believe you just did that!”
This caused Angelica to laugh harder, her eyes bunching at the corners, which made her look even cuter. More pineapple drool tumbled from her mouth.
Rose watched our exchange with an approving smile up to that point. Her smile morphed into an expression of mock outrage—mirroring mine—when Angelica leaned over and wiped her mouth on Rose’s shirt.
“Angelica!” I could tell, and so could Angelica, that Rose’s indignation was as bogus as mine. “That’s a no, Angelica!”
The small girl’s giggles only increased with our fake reprimands. This game of human napkin continued for a while and ended with me pretending to use Angelica’s hair to dab at the corners of my mouth. At this point Rose sent her off to the bathroom to wash her hands and face.
We both watched her go with a smile on our lips. But, as soon as she was gone, I felt Rose’s eyes shift to me.
“You know, that is a sign that she likes you; she’s comfortable with you.”
I quickly glanced at Rose then refocused my attention to the butchered ravioli I’d abandoned. “I am glad. I want her to be comfortable with me.”
“For the study? So she doesn’t fear the visits?”
I shook my head. “Well, yes. I don’t want her to fear the visits. But that’s not the main reason I guess.” I frowned at the pasta, finally decided it was beyond repair, and tossed it in the trash. I cut out a new square and tried repeating the filling procedure.
“Then why?”
I responded although I was somewhat distracted by my previous pasta-fail as well as my current attempt, which was also shaping up to be a pasta-fail.
“She is so easy to like. She’s brave and sweet and smart.
She’s also illegal levels of cute; that smile of hers could melt metal. And she’s important to….”
I swallowed the end of the sentence, realized a little too late what I’d been about to say. I tucked my chin to my chest and redoubled my effort to focus on the ricotta cheese.
“Yes. She is very important to Nico. That’s true.”
I discerned the teasing behind Rose’s words, and I struggled against the heat of embarrassment. Luckily, Angelica chose that moment to reappear. She held her hands out in front of her as though to prove she’d washed them.
Surprisingly, Rose said no more about my slip, and we spent the rest of the time in lighthearted conversation.
Angelica had a great time laughing at my sad attempts to make the pasta.
Most of my shells ended up torn, wonky, or in the trash; regardless, Rose was patient and kind and kept the red wine flowing.
I may have purposefully disfigured a few of my attempts in order to sustain Angelica’s giggles. She had a great laugh.
We were feeling pretty happy and loose by the time dinner ended. I cut myself off at two glasses around five thirty, conscious of Angelica’s looming infusion at ten.