Chapter Twenty-One
“Mom, Mr. Tim says if it stays warm this week, we can have outside time again.”
“That’s super news, buddy.”
Was it a postorgasmic hallucination, or did the sun shine brighter today?
Walking to Wegmans for a treat after church, Amos and Josie turned a corner and were hit with a wall of wind hard enough they had to grab their hats and pull them over their ears to keep them from flying away.
“Mom, Miss Alysha says there are only three more days until spring.”
“That’s cool, buddy.”
Everything Josie touched, smelled, and tasted today reminded her of what happened last night with Pax. What had yet to happen.
What she could imagine happening.
“Mom, one time Jalyn put his boogers on a piece of paper, and they turned another color after they dried.”
“No way, buddy.”
Stupid.
Sex made Josie stupid.
She should have remembered that.
She’d been naked with only two people before Pax.
The first time she’d had sex, it had made her stupid enough to believe in a boy who had promised to save her and ended up ghosting her.
After that, Josie had guarded her heart and her body until she met Dan.
Even then, a long time passed before sex made her stupid again.
If Dan had lived, Josie was sure she’d have let herself fall in love with him.
“Mom, if we had a dog, I could name him Jingle Bells.”
“You sure could, buddy.”
Given her track record, why was Josie tempting fate again? If she…
Wait.
What?
Before Amos could open his mouth again, she warned him, “Too bad we can’t get a dog.”
Shit. What else had she agreed to when she should have been listening to her child but was instead reliving what happened last night with Pax?
Pax from another world. Who managed a dimension-traveling hotel. A hotel filled with monsters and ghosts and mythological creatures.
Pax who touched her with reverence.
Pax who made her come so hard she’d seen stars.
Whoa.
Whoa, these were not the thoughts she should have while hanging out with her four-year-old son. She should be thinking about pedagogical enrichment and positive reinforcement, not orgasms.
“Grandma Gloria says when I come live with her, I can have a dog.”
“Grandma Gloria said what?”
Josie stopped in her tracks and stared at Amos, who, oblivious to the bomb he’d dropped, was blowing bubbles with his spit.
“Amos, did your grandmother say you were going to live with her anytime soon?”
Palms up, he shrugged. One of his red knitted mittens had a hole above his pointer finger, and the sight of his pale pink fingernail sent a crushing wave of protective love through Josie’s body.
She wanted to pick him up and hold him, breathe in the perfect mix of boy sweat and crayons and Nilla Wafers that made up Amos’s unique scent.
“I don’t know when. She said I can have a dog. Maybe college I’ll live with her? In like thirty-six years?”
“Right.” Josie took his hand in hers and they continued their walk, but now the delicious memories of last night were replaced with frantic calculations.
The last time Gloria spoke about Amos coming to live with her and Al had been after Amos had a series of fainting spells last year.
The pediatric cardiologist assured Josie the arrhythmia that caused them was often seen in children post cardiac repair.
Gloria had demanded Josie seek a second opinion with another cardiologist—a guy who called her “Mommy” and was way too scalpel happy for Josie’s comfort.
Luckily, the second cardiologist agreed with the first that there were no obvious leakages, but in the lead-up to the consult, harsh words had been spoken and doubt cast on Josie’s ability to care for Amos.
All the energy Josie had, she put toward being a good mother, a stellar coworker, and a model fucking citizen, and it exhausted her. Gloria, however, never got tired of calling out the very same flaws that kept Josie from living a louder, larger life.
If Gloria was going to put up another fight, Josie didn’t know how long she could hold out.
She and Amos rapped on melons and ate samples of salami while he tried out a series of knock-knock jokes. From the outside, they presented a picture of normalcy. Didn’t they? Could anyone passing by see an outward sign of her deficiencies?
Knowing she wouldn’t get a signal once they got to Number Five, Josie called Gloria on the walk home. The wind and Amos’s questions made it hard to hear sometimes, but the message was clear.
“…say he could have a dog. I said we could get him a dog and have the dog live at our house,” Gloria explained, as though she didn’t know what that would do to Amos.
As though she hadn’t mapped the consequences out in her head before making that promise.
“Since you insist on living in the city in an apartment too small for a dog and are gone all day…”
Gone all day working to support herself and Amos.
Living in the city so they didn’t have the expense of a car and could access the discounted childcare at work.
Too small for a dog because rents were up to 50 percent of folk’s after-tax income.
“…stay with us for the whole weekend. He will learn responsibility caring for the animal and…” Gloria droned on about intellectual and emotional development, companionship, and the twist of the knife “…spending time with other people, and not dependent on you.”
Josie had seen this coming but hadn’t wanted to admit it.
This was the first volley in Gloria’s battle to take Amos away.
Brilliant move.
“This is something we should have discussed together, Gloria, before you told Amos,” Josie said, hoping the intermittent connection would make her sound unruffled and determined.
“Yes, well. There’s a lot we need to discuss, I agree.”
The censure in Gloria’s voice came through clear as a bell and Josie closed her eyes against the memories of Gramma it conjured.
What the hell was Josie supposed to do now? Get a puppy?
Out of the question.
Sacrifice even more of her free time with Amos? The drive from Gloria’s suburban neighborhood was twenty minutes by car, forty minutes by bus. Commuting to see a pet would be nuts—one more arrow in Gloria’s quiverful of arguments against Josie and Amos living in the city.
If she and Amos were to move out to the suburbs, would Pax be able to get away to come and see them?
What if Number Five woke when he was inside and he had no time to warn her?
Worry had gnawed holes in her belly by the time she and Amos got home. Sunset lit the lobby with orange-and-reddish-gold light, and unwilling to let the rare cloudless day disappear yet, they went out into the courtyard to inspect the garden.
The garden boxes had been built according to Maddy’s dimensions.
The entire space was divided into perfect rectangles and squares, the soil measured evenly between the sections.
Each of the tenants had received a notice in their mailboxes earlier in the week that this month’s tenants’ association meeting would be about the common garden—specifically garden rules, regulations, and privileges.
They wandered past box after box. The basketball hoop was gone and hadn’t been replaced, and despite Josie’s request, the open space looked to be made of paving stones instead of grass.
“How I’m gonna run back here?” Amos asked.
“I guess there aren’t any other kids in the building, buddy,” Josie said. “They must not know kids like green space to play.”
She stumbled when they rounded a box and nearly stepped on a gargoyle. The gargoyle was bigger than Bert and lay unmoving on his back with an arm tucked under his head staring up at the sunset.
“Hi, guy,” Amos said cheerfully. He squatted next to the gargoyle and patted him on the forehead.
Josie held her breath, but the gargoyle remained frozen.
“Have a nice day,” Amos told the gargoyle. He wandered over to where the benches and tables had been mapped out on the ground by duct tape.
When nothing happened, Josie nodded to the gargoyle and followed her son but stopped when she saw a tiny sign posted in one of the beds.
Native Species Only
This made sense. They wouldn’t want to introduce plants from other worlds into the ecosystem. Who knows what damage they would wreak? They could let loose the next kudzu on the country.
But.
How much joy would flowers bring to the tenants if they didn’t evoke any memories? What if there was only one world on which the most beautiful flower grew? What if there was someone in the building who missed gardening as much as she did?
Like everything else about Number Five, the sign presented difficult questions without yes-or-no answers.
Josie knelt and put her hand on top of the soil. What flowers would the Fates plant if given the choice? How fantastical might the flowers be where the faeries came from?
The soil beneath her skin vibrated with the sensation of anticipation, and tiny spikes of blue and pink poked out of the dirt.
Holy crap.
“Josie?”
Pax’s voice was soft as velvet and curled round her neck like a shawl. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the scent of cold fresh air and dried orange peels that made her knees weak.
“Hi, Mr. Pax. I has some good jokes for you,” cried Amos.
Too soon, she thought. She needed time to organize the parts of her that had spilled out when he touched her. Time to steel herself against rejection or temptation, depending on what she could see in his eyes.
Too soon to lose her composure when Amos was nearby. What if her son could sense her attraction to a man he barely knew?
The anxiety about Gloria’s comments coupled with her fear and choked her breath.
“What happened here?” he asked.
Josie opened her eyes.
The pink-and-blue spikes had shriveled into tiny black curls.
Pax walked around to the other side of the box and squatted opposite her. His black hair was pulled back today, and he wore a blue cotton henley beneath his Carhartt jacket. A pair of work gloves hung from his side pocket, and his feet were hidden under a pair of work boots.