27. Thursday
CHAPTER 27
THURSDAY
D aniel planned their collective five hours in the car, as promised, with all the enthusiasm for organized fun that you’d expect of a man who ran a summer camp for a living. He curated a playlist. He downloaded a selection of podcasts. He borrowed six new audiobooks from the library, across a variety of genres, each almost exactly six hours long (which, he explained, was really four hours, because they would, of course, want to listen at 1.5 speed, and four hours was ideal because probably they wouldn’t really listen to an audiobook for the entire drive). He even brought snacks and a bag of ginger chews.
Maggie was too nauseous to eat, particularly considering her tendency toward car sickness when she wasn’t driving, but she did appreciate the anti-nausea candies. For entertainment, they eventually decided on The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. It was Becker’s favorite Poirot. And Poirot, as Maggie had definitely known before Becker told her, was a famous detective who apparently starred in many but not all of Dame Christie’s books. As soon as Becker sniffed out that Maggie had never read an Agatha Christie and confirmed that, like any self-respecting millennial, she loved a good crime story, there was really nothing for it. Becker was so delighted to experience Maggie experiencing Agatha Christie for the first time that it made her a little anxious. What if she…didn’t like it? She didn’t want to disappoint him.
Fortunately, her concern was put to rest by the end of the first chapter. She was so engrossed that she almost forgot where they were going until Becker took the exit for the clinic and turned off the book so that he could focus on the GPS’s instructions.
The appointment itself wasn’t much better or worse than Maggie’s regular medical appointments. Of course, she did assiduously avoid medical appointments, generally, so that wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. A nurse did some labs and an ultrasound, which confirmed what she’d suspected — she was about eight weeks pregnant. There was more counseling (this time significantly less sarcastic and significantly more recognizable as actual counseling), and even though Maggie had not one single doubt that this was what she wanted to do, she was glad to know that the woman with the kind eyes and the basket of fidget toys was there for everyone who needed her. Finally, she was given the first of the two medications she would need to take. She swallowed it down with a paper cup of water, and a nurse packed up the second medication to go along with some written instructions on when and how to take it the following day. Maggie was told to expect cramping, nausea, and bleeding like a heavy period for an average of 9 to 16 days, though for some lucky people it could last as long as 30.
Bodies. Can’t live with them, definitionally can’t live without them.
When she returned to the waiting room, Maggie found Becker having an animated debate with the clinic’s receptionist and another woman seated a few chairs away about a controversial elimination on some season or other of a food truck competition show. The waiting woman stood and gave Daniel a hug when he rose to leave. Catching Maggie’s eye over his shoulder, she said, “This one’s a keeper.”
Maggie made it a full hour before she had to ask Becker to pull over on the side of the highway so that she could double over on the grass and throw up. It was fortunate for her that this ordeal had probably put her off sex for a good long while, because between the surprise pregnancy, the subsequent crying jag, and the roadside vomiting, she was pretty sure Becker’s interest in the benefits part of this friendship had run its course.
When Maggie had gingerly buckled herself back into the passenger seat, and Daniel slid back into the driver’s side, he reached into his bag of snacks, pulled out a tin of mints, and handed them to her before peeling out onto the highway. It was so thoughtful and so banal and so absolutely mortifying. And, for some reason, it was the last straw. Maggie completely lost it. She burst out laughing and absolutely could not stop. She wasn’t even sure exactly what was so funny. Nothing. Everything.
Daniel looked momentarily concerned that she’d had some sort of psychotic break. And then he was laughing, too, still looking slightly bewildered, as if the laughter was involuntary, as if it were somehow contagious. They laughed together for minutes, for miles. It was self-perpetuating and self-justifying. After a while there wasn’t even really sound coming out of either of their mouths. They were just driving down I-40 West, silently shaking.
They did manage to calm down eventually, which was fortunate because they had an audiobook to finish. Maggie had a theory about who the murderer was, and she needed to know if she’d gotten it right.
She had not.
Poirot gathered everyone up to explain precisely how wrong Maggie was (not that she was taking it personally) just as they rolled onto the gravelly edge of the Blue Harbor parking lot. In her defense, the constant nausea and the pulling over every half hour to dry heave on the side of the road did make the narrative details a little hard to track.
And yet, somehow, the day hadn’t felt like an unmitigated disaster. It hadn’t exactly been a delight, but it had had its moments. Probably, it couldn’t have been any less terrible.
The woman at the clinic had been right. Daniel Becker really was a keeper.
Too bad Maggie wasn’t playing for keeps.