Chapter Nineteen
“I don’t know, Josephine.”
Gloria stood outside the running car holding Amos’s overnight bag with two fingers, mouth twisted into a spiral of disdain.
“Given the vomit incident a few weeks ago, I am having second thoughts about this whole endeavor.”
When Gloria and Al came this morning to pick Amos up for his regular day with them, Gloria had—without any advanced notice—asked that Amos spend the night with them.
The woman couldn’t possibly know Josie had plans for dinner. Expecting Josie would say no, Gloria immediately backpedaled when Josie had surprised her with a yes.
Not because Josie thought anything would happen with Pax, just because Gloria’s reaction had been funny.
Nothing to do with Pax at all.
“Well,” Josie pulled the word out like a bite of taffy. “If taking care of Amos for an overnight is too much for you two at your age, I unders—”
“Get in the car, Amos,” Gloria interrupted.
The only thing Gloria disliked more than telling people her age was acting it.
Josie waved goodbye to Al and Amos until the car drove out of sight, then walked back into the building. Bert sat in his alcove reading while Ernie’s niche sat empty. He looked up at Josie when she walked in and gave her a terrifying smile.
Not on purpose. Gargoyles in general looked pretty scary.
“What an unhappy woman,” Bert said, pulling the reading glasses from his nose. “If you’d like, I can make her disappear.”
The offer stopped Josie dead in her tracks. For a long, shameful second, she envisioned life without Gloria breathing down her neck.
“No, thank you,” she said. “Gloria is Amos’s grandmother. I genuinely believe she wants the best for him. It’s not okay to disappear someone because they’re not nice. Not on this world, at least.”
“If you say so.” Bert sounded unconvinced.
Josie had become better acquainted with Bert yesterday when she ran home during lunch to pick up a book for Jenna. He struck her as kind and somewhat of an overthinker.
“What are you reading?” Josie asked now, squinting but unable to make out the title along the paperback’s spine.
Ironically, Bert’s frown was far less intimidating than his smile.
“I’m reading The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,” he said, holding up the books so she could see the cover. “It’s for Miss Nekesa’s Tuesday-night book club.”
Josie had heard of the book but never read it. “How do you manage to attend a book club without blowing your cover?”
Despite Bert’s well-intentioned attempt at pretending to be a dog during the snowball fight earlier this week, the disguise would never fly if he wasn’t twenty feet away in a blizzard.
“It’s on Zoom,” he said. “You usually can’t get reliable Wi-Fi in Number Five, but Tuesday nights she grants an exception.
There is a big group of us who do it together in the games room in the basement, where the discussions don’t disturb anyone.
” Bert paused and looked over at Ernie’s spot.
“Some people have strong opinions about the difference between an allegory and a fable.”
Trying but failing to visualize a group of zombies, faery cheerleaders, and gargoyles getting heated over semantics, Josie decided not to probe further.
“Last month we read Charlotte’s Web,” Bert said.
“That was a disaster. The Kokopelli in 5D still isn’t speaking to the chupacabra in 2C because they disagreed violently about whether Wilbur was the hero, and Nuwa, the dragon in 4E, was so devastated by Charlotte’s death her tears flooded the apartment below her. ”
Every time Josie thought she’d wrapped her mind around this place, that mind was reblown. “There is a dragon in 4E?” she asked. “Like, a real fire-breathing dragon?”
Bert cast a curious glance her way before putting the reading glasses back on. “Never heard of a dragon breathing fire.” He settled back and opened the book while shaking his head. “Your Mr. Disney has a lot to answer for.”
By the time six o’clock rolled around, Josie had left aside the question of where the fire-breathing rumor started and picked up the all-important question of what she was going to wear for dessert and water.
Hopefully, Pax was not a man of his word and had cooked an actual dinner. Josie planned to eat heavily and drink nothing, thereby ensuring she’d be home in fleece pants and in front of the TV by eight.
Why wait until your thirties to live the good life?
Standing in front of a closet that was miraculously full of clothes and at the same time contained nothing to wear gave Josie’s brain a shot of lightning-like energy.
That dress?
Slutty.
Those jeans?
Pooch-projecting.
That top?
Forever way past twenty-one, why did Josie think she could pull off anything white anymore?
The longer she stood there, the stronger the stench of Pall Malls.
Once she was dressed, it was time to open the bathroom cabinet.
What a treat.
Josie’s brain began to spiral in a familiar loop.
Foundation made her look as though she were the sixty-year-old Handy Andy cashier from back home, which made Josie sad, because no one had ever explained to Brenda, the cashier, the importance of blending, which made Josie think of Barbara, because both women still read the Enquirer in its hard copy at lunchtime, which made her think about the fact she hadn’t had any lunch and thus was hungry and would embarrass herself by eating like a heathen (that last word pronounced with three syllables, like her gramma), which brought her brain back to the subject of Pax.
Josie’s brain pointed out she was attracted to a man from another world, for Pete’s sake, and if that wasn’t enough, he was searching for a way to leave this world as soon as possible.
How many ways can you spell “emotionally unavailable”? Josie’s brain asked.
Her libido vehemently disagreed, but Josie’s libido had gotten her into terrible circumstances in the past, so its vote counted for less.
Way less.
In the end, Josie opted for plain black panties instead of her pretty lace ones and a pair of loose jersey pants instead of a skirt.
Nothing special happening tonight.
Nope. No siree.
No reason for her skin to tighten or her heart to pound way too hard. By the time the elevator doors opened on the basement level, Josie had halfway convinced herself she was experiencing a stroke and not the jittery anticipation of a date with a handsome man.
She would just let him know she was stroking out and take a rain check.
Relief at this decision lightened her step as she walked away from the laundry room and games room and toward a part of the basement she hadn’t yet seen.
Unlike the games room, which looked like a rec room from the 1950s, or the laundry room, which could have jumped out of a Martha Stewart article from the 1980s, this part of the basement seemed to be furnished in the style of an Old West bordello.
The walls were papered in a crimson paisley print, and beneath her feet were warped wooden floorboards covered with a narrow Persian carpet runner.
Brass candlesticks affixed to the wall lit the way, each holding fake candles topped with pink fabric shades adorned with red-and-pink tassels.
“Who decorated the basement?” she asked Pax when he opened the door to his apartment before he could greet her. “Was that you or Number Five?”
“Neither,” he said. “Welcome.”
Since she was still standing upright and her heart had calmed, Josie supposed she couldn’t wimp out with the stroke excuse, so she girded her loins—as in told her loins to shut the fuck up and stay quiet tonight—and walked past Pax into his home.
“Thank you for having me.” Josie fell back on her manners, holding out her host gift.
Pax took the bottle of wine and examined the bow. “This isn’t water.”
Josie’s laugh died on her lips at his shocked expression.
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want.” Had she insulted him somehow? “It’s a human tradition to bring wine when you are invited to someone else’s house for dinner.”
He looked relieved. “Oh. It’s a tradition on my world that you bring a bottle of wine to a person after you’ve assassinated a relative.”
Pax showed her where to leave her shoes and brought her through a narrow corridor.
Unlike Josie’s apartment, there were only four rooms off the hallway.
One might have been a bedroom and another one a bathroom or a closet—she couldn’t tell from the closed doors and Pax didn’t elucidate.
At the end of the corridor stood an entire freaking suit of metal that looked like beaten gold.
To the left was a small sparsely furnished living area and to the right of the freaking suit of gold was a slightly larger kitchen.
“Whoa,” Josie said. “This is…Is everyone’s apartment like this? I mean, like the resident’s home world?”
Unlike her kitchen, which came complete with a refrigerator, oven, sink, and counter, Pax cooked in what looked like the kitchen you’d find in a castle.
The floors were made of a reddish stone set amid earthen-colored grout.
Against the back wall stood an open fireplace with a sculpted wrought iron grate decorated with tiny iron salamanders, which held four burning logs.
Above the grate, an iron arm held a cast-iron pot, the contents of which released rosemary-scented steam.
Instead of a granite or Corian countertop, Pax had a waist-high wooden chopping board table next to a deep ceramic sink.
Cast-iron and copper pots and pans hung from a thick beam overhead and the plaster walls were painted a deep burnt sienna hue.
A wooden shelf held a set of pottery dishes, cups, and bowls, and in the center of the room next to the fire was a round table—about the same size as hers—holding two place settings and a squat clay vase filled with cabbage roses.
Pax pulled a chair out for her and Josie took a seat while he went to a small door set in the side of the fireplace and used a wooden peel to remove two beautifully browned loaves of bread.