Chapter 5 An Unnamed Side Character in a Scorsese Movie
An Unnamed Side Character in a Scorsese Movie
Thursday night marked the end of the crow-hunting season in Wisconsin and the beginning of the Crow Closer, a potluck put on by the Timber Creek Crow Hunting Society (TCCHS) at the VFW that blessedly served just about every Midwestern delicacy aside from crow, as the TCCHS was notoriously bad at bagging the very bird they’d sworn to defeat.
Town events weren’t really Lainey’s thing—she was always turning down Bree for a carnival this or a fire muster that—but the Crow Closer was a free meal she wasn’t responsible for cooking herself.
“For names, I’m thinking something original but sort of Parisian,” Bree said, pouring herself a pink lemonade from the spigot of a fluorescent cooler.
In a black column maternity dress, she looked exceedingly chic for a room filled with folding chairs and men wearing shirts that read Will Do Anything for a Buck.
“I’ve narrowed it down to Navette, Pastille, or maybe Céloise. What do you think?”
Bree had reached the point in her pregnancy where conversations were merely opportunities to crowdsource opinions on everything from baby names to the practicalities of cloth diapering.
Lainey’s attention was briefly commandeered by a group of bearded men who began to assault the room with unsolicited bird calls like a college a cappella choir under a stone archway.
“Why are we here again?” Lainey whined, grabbing a plate at the start of the buffet line of Crock-Pots and casserole dishes.
“Because we are part of a vibrant and exciting community—” Bree shuddered at a bald man’s squawk practically piercing their eardrums. “I don’t know. Just shut up and eat your free meal.”
“Corn casserole?” Lainey offered from an aluminum tray.
“What do you think of my names?” Bree demanded impatiently.
Lainey inhaled. “Navette means ‘shuttle,’ as in an airport shuttle, and a pastille is sort of like…a lozenge? A medicated lozenge.”
“Ah, shit.” Bree shook her head while plopping a spoonful of macaroni and cheese onto her paper plate. “I always forget you’re, like, a French citizen, or whatever.”
“I’m technically a French citizen,” she corrected. It was odd to be a citizen of a place she’d never been simply because her estranged mother had been born there. Lainey had hardly left Wisconsin.
“I think that technically counts. I always think back to when we canceled that trip to France as our Sliding Doors moment,” Bree said innocently.
Lainey’s spine straightened, as though someone was tugging a string between her shoulder blades.
“What do you think we’d be doing right now if we’d gone through with it?
I’m sure I would’ve ended up back here eventually, but I think you’d still be in Europe.
You probably would’ve gone to art school.
You’d be living this completely different life. ”
Lainey laughed, not because it was funny, but because it seemed like one of the few blow-off responses Bree would accept.
It was ancient history. In Bree’s single act of defiance ever, she’d applied to graduate school in Paris.
Lainey had been twenty-one, with a steady job and no real problems to speak of.
All the other Davis women have gotten to have their adventures. It’s your turn, Gran had urged her.
Then everything fell apart. Not all at once—it so rarely does—but in a series of small postponements.
At first it was an awful headache. Then another, and another.
Then a male doctor who convinced her it was hormones and prescribed her birth control and an Aleve.
Then several other, better doctors. Lots of medication that helped a little or not at all.
Add a bad relationship somewhere in there and several Maybe next semester conversations.
Suddenly, it had been two years, and Bree’s window of rebellion closed.
She was headed to Vanderbilt for business school, and Lainey was still in Timber Creek, but now she was drowning in medical debt and struggling to hold down a job.
Lainey flicked her wrist dismissively. “Or I would’ve gotten fired from every food service job in the EU while waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to invent the only medication that’s ever worked for me.”
Bree didn’t understand how much it hurt Lainey to daydream like this. To Bree, money was air. She’d always had enough of it, and she never really concerned herself with the specifics of how it came to be. Money was as abundant as oxygen.
Gran was the opposite. She’d always been broke, so the second she had money, she immediately spent all of it, as though it were a wild animal that could get up and walk away.
The moment the chain restaurant settled with her, she promptly gave Lainey the house and moved herself into a pricey retirement community she couldn’t really afford.
Money was never allowed to accumulate on Gran’s watch.
As for Lainey, she’d never had enough money at any one time to develop her own philosophy. Owning something that someone else wanted was an entirely foreign feeling.
“I’m sure I would’ve wound up right back here with you. Dining from a communal ball of soft cheese and naming your baby after household objects. What does Colin think of Navette and Céloise?” Lainey itched to change the subject, and luckily, Bree took the bait.
“I haven’t asked him. We’re more or less roommates since I saw him run with a backpack on last week. I can no longer see him as a sexual creature.”
Lainey placed her hand on Bree’s shoulder and forced her to meet her eye.
“Let’s be real with each other for a second.
Do you want to leave Colin in the middle of the night without a trace?
Because that’s totally fine. I know a guy who can make any passport you want, even obscure ones like the Vatican. ”
“Dear god.” Bree shook her off with a brusque roll of her shoulders. “You move through the world like an unnamed side character in a Scorsese movie. A law-abiding citizen shouldn’t have this many ‘guys.’ ”
“If you’re worried about the quality, don’t be. He’s top-notch,” Lainey added, unaffected by her friend’s obvious deflection.
“The quality was never the issue. Colin and I are great. We’re good. We’re totally fine. It’s just…” Bree’s face twisted up like a Midwesterner fighting the urge to send back their food in a restaurant. “He says ‘aluminum’ weird.”
“Well, he’s British. They all say it weird.”
“No, he says it weird for one of them.” Bree’s attention shifted to someone over Lainey’s shoulder. “Do you know that guy?”
“What guy?” Lainey swiveled her head to find none other than Elliot Hodges leaning against an upturned whiskey barrel doubling as a high-top table. He was looking right at her, his eyes like laser beams attempting to drill through her skull. “Oh god. That’s the guy.”
“The nephew guy?” Bree squinted conspicuously. Subtlety wasn’t one of her many strengths. “The one you had a crush on? Did you invite him tonight?”
“I did not have a crush on him,” Lainey objected too fervently. “He’s contemplating suing me. Why would I bring him here?”
Bree arranged her teeth into a wide smile. “I don’t know, but he’s coming right for us.”
Lainey felt her face get hot. She set her plate down on the table and blew her bangs out of her eyes before turning to face the man across the room who was in fact Elliot, today in a navy jacket. The development unsettled her. Dear lord, this man had to be haunting her.
“Oh my god. Why didn’t you tell me he looks like Superman?”
“Because he doesn’t,” Lainey protested out of the corner of her straight-lipped expression. Her cheeks burned as he made his way to the spot directly in front of her.
“Lainey Davis,” she greeted him, pointing to her chin. “Your neighbor. We exchanged candlesticks for cash at a Pottery Barn yesterday. Lainey.”
“Ha ha. Hilarious,” he said dryly, removing his jacket to reveal a gray cardigan with wood toggle buttons, providing him a slight advantage in his two-person race against Bree to look the most out of place at a function serving rice pudding from a trough.
“This is my friend, Bree.” Lainey gestured to her emotional support companion. “Bree, this is Elliot Hodges, the man who’s unjustly attempting to unhouse me.”
Elliot’s eyes widened. “That’s…dramatic.”
“Of course. Elliot. EZ Gas’s only loyal customer, I hear.” Bree extended her hand for Elliot to shake. “How’s the Shore Thing treating you? Have you figured out what to do with the turtles yet?”
His smile twitched. Lainey tried very hard not to squeal in delight.
“Not exactly,” he said in a tone that sounded appropriately defeated.
Lainey pointed behind her head. “Did you see the TV behind the bar?” She faced Bree. “He doesn’t do places with TVs. Which is a shame, because this would’ve been so much fun.” She grinned like a madwoman.
“It’s actually more of a ‘TVs that are playing sports’ thing, and that one is playing Antiques Roadshow. So is crow hunting a thing out here?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Sort of…” Bree answered with a tilt of her head.
“A few years ago, the mayor’s son and his friends started throwing batteries at the crows on the front lawn of the middle school.
But crows actually have sophisticated communication networks, so when word spread about the kids at the middle school, crows descended on the town in droves.
After that, the mayor enacted the Timber Creek Crow Hunting Society, who created the Opener and Closer potlucks. ”
“We only come to show our support for the crows,” Lainey explained. She raised her lemonade to her lips, enjoying the tiny spark in her chest as Elliot’s eyes tracked the movement of the cup.
“Shit!” Bree ducked behind Lainey, which was impressive, because Lainey was about six inches shorter than her. “I didn’t know Larry was going to be here. He’s looking right at us. He’s gonna corner me about his stupid tours again.”