7. “Cranes in the Sky”
SEVEN
“CRANES IN THE SKY”
(SOLANGE)
I sat on Jacob’s couch shoving spicy chicken bites into my face while Alexis, Jacob’s girlfriend, flittered around me being caring and supportive.
Jacob stood off to the side with his hands on his hips and a ferocious frown on his face, and Javi talked to the two police officers that showed after Javi returned from going to inspect my wreck of an apartment.
Unsurprisingly, my adorable green and white striped glass mushroom hadn’t survived what looked like a tornado that had gone through my living room.
I bought that mushroom before I moved in. That was just months ago. I loved that thing, and I didn’t know if they had any left at the store so I could replace it.
On this despairing thought, I rammed another chicken bite into my mouth as one of the police officers said, “Alvarez is not gonna like this.”
“Alvarez can take a fuckin’ number,” Javi returned.
I knew to whom they were referring. “Alvarez” was Jorge Alvarez, Phoenix Chief of Police. We’d had occasion to cross paths with him on our last mission.
He was not the Angels’ biggest fan.
The two men shared a look that was clearly a meeting of the minds, then both the police officers stared at me like I had all my screws loose, this before they walked out.
Hang on a second.
Keeping a firm hold on my chicken bites, I stood, calling, “Hey, wait.”
They turned back to me.
“Don’t I need to make a statement or something?” I asked.
Their attention moved to Javi.
“I already made your statement,” Javi explained.
It might have been an explanation, but I was confused. More than confused. I was mad he thought he could speak for me. And I was confused about whether I should be more confused than mad, or vice versa.
Since I couldn’t come up with an answer to this dilemma, I pushed another bite into my mouth and chewed angrily.
The cops left.
The door was closing behind them, but then it didn’t, because Martha, Linda, Patsy, and worse, Jessie, Luna, Raye, Shanti and Willow were all of a sudden in Jacob’s apartment.
I loved Jacob and Alexis together (and separately). We’d all watched as they’d circled each other for-what-seemed-like-ever. Thus, it was a long time coming. Now, they were very together and cute as all heck.
But I didn’t know how she handled his pad.
There was an oversized black leather sofa, an equally oversized gray leather chair, and about fifteen guitars on stands (okay, only five, but that was a lot, wasn’t it?).
The TV was humongous and totally didn’t work with the space.
A fancy treadmill was scrunched in with all of this, and every surface seemed littered with mail, fliers, and what appeared to be laundry that was either clean and had yet to be folded and put away, or dirty and hadn’t made it to the hamper.
Alexis was really into Jacob, and he was really into her, as well as being nice, protective and gorgeous, so I could see maybe dealing with the massive TV that far from worked in that room.
And maybe the leather furniture, which I would never say out loud, but even so, not speaking it openly didn’t negate the fact it was ugly.
But the treadmill, the mess and the laundry?
No.
They’d been together for months. They both had places at the Oasis.
Alexis lived next door to Martha, who wasn’t thrilled with their sex-a-thons, which Martha shared with all and sundry could get loud, so they were usually at Jacob’s.
As such, with all that time in, it was my philosophy it was high time for her to instigate a woman’s touch.
But at that moment, there were twelve people jammed in and sharing space with all this stuff.
And this was impossible.
“Why were the cops here?” Jessie demanded to know, her gaze pinging from me to Javi to Alexis to Jacob, back to me and Javi. “And why are you guys in Jacob’s apartment?”
Martha, with difficulty due to the zero space allotted her, pushed center stage.
“To hell with that!” she yelled. “I’m contacting Bill and Zach.
We’re having an Oasis-wide meeting.” She jabbed a finger at me, then to Jess, Raye and Luna.
“Reporters clogging the entrances to the parking lot wanting to talk to Raye, Jessie being kidnapped, Harlow having her home broken into. Once and for all, we wanna know what you girls are up to.” She homed in on me.
“I looked in your door when Javi came out with the cops. Your pad is a disaster!”
“Your place is a disaster?” Willow breathed, the color draining from her face.
“It’s been tossed,” Javi grunted.
“It has? For heaven’s sake, why?” Luna asked.
“I don’t know, woman,” Javi drawled. “Maybe because she was out on a date with an asshole who got his throat slit last night?”
“Oh my goodness!” Linda cried.
“What the hell?” Martha demanded.
Patsy made the same gurgling noise the register guy did at Thai Chili 2go.
Javi ignored them and looked at me. “The boys are gonna go in and see what they can get out of the place. You’re with me.”
“What boys?” Raye asked.
“I’m with you?” I asked a far more pertinent question.
“You’re staying with me until we figure this shit out,” Javi answered my question.
My stomach dropped and it was both pleasant and terrifying.
“She can stay with me and Eric,” Jessie stated.
Javi turned on her, and when she and the others caught sight of his face, something, from their reactions, I was glad I couldn’t see, Linda’s eyes rounded, Patsy bit her lip, Martha narrowed her gaze, and Javi said in a vibrating voice, “She’s with me.”
“Okay, hermanito , I’ll back off,” Jessie muttered, exchanging glances with Raye and Luna, then sending another one that screamed I’m sorry! to me.
I knew she didn’t mean she was sorry about caving to Javi. She meant she was sorry about what happened at the motel.
She and I should have a chat about that, but at that moment I had to stay focused.
“I get to say where I’m staying,” I put in.
“No, you don’t,” Javi denied.
Before I could argue, Raye reiterated, “What boys?”
“Our boys,” Javi told her. “We just took over this case from you.”
Uh-oh.
“Did not!” Raye snapped.
“Talk to your man about it,” Javi said. “Or better, talk to Mace about it. See how he feels about you women wading into this shit, whatever this shit is.”
“It’s our case,” Raye retorted.
“Case?” Martha asked. “ Case? ” Martha shouted.
Needless to say, the other residents at the Oasis didn’t know about our Angels business.
“Not me you gotta convince,” Javi told Raye, ignoring Martha and going to our bag of food.
He snatched it up, then he snatched my hand up, and me and my chicken bites were being dragged through the packed-like-sardines people to the door.
I didn’t fight him. Too much was going on. I didn’t have it in me.
This meant, after I was in his truck, we were on the road for about five minutes, and my chicken bites ran out, visions of the state of my apartment started dancing in my head, and I said a shaky, “Javi.”
“Keep it tight and stay with me, baby, just a few more minutes,” Javi urged.
I really wanted to be strong and “keep it tight.”
But my cute little glass mushroom was broken!
And someone had been in my place !
And…
And…
Someone got their throat slit!
I deep breathed. I lamented the fact we didn’t get any utensils so I couldn’t dig into my pad thai right then and there. I tried to reconfigure Jacob’s space in my head so everything fit and looked nicer in it (this was a gigantic fail, the treadmill had to go…and the furniture did too).
Fortunately, this took us to a time when Javi had parked at a modern townhome complex closer to downtown than the Oasis. He got out. I jumped down. He took our food and my hand and walked me to a door. He released me to unlock it and ushered me in.
In order to continue to keep it tight, I hyper-focused on Javi’s space, considering I’d spent months hyper-obsessing on where he might live (and now I knew) and what it might look like (and I was about to find out).
He turned on the lights and I saw there wasn’t much to it.
A lot of white walls with not much on them, though he had a mounted TV that I was pleased to see was large, but it fit the space.
A brown leather chesterfield that was very long and pretty much kick-butt sat against a wall, facing the TV (though, the sofa needed a chunky throw tossed artfully in a corner, seeing as chesterfields eschewed the adornment of toss pillows).
A bunch of white floating shelves were mounted on a wall.
Some had a single athletic shoe on them (and that was kind of cool, considering I could tell all those shoes were the important collector’s edition type).
Rounding this out, in the open plan space, there were some stools at a bar to what seemed like a completely empty kitchen, save a coffeemaker and a toaster.
But, even empty, his kitchen was a decent size (which meant about twice the size of mine, though the kitchens at the Oasis were tiny, still, we could both cook in his without bumping into each other) and attractive with black hexagon tile backsplash and white cabinets.
And that was it.
I turned to him and blurted, “You don’t have much stuff.”
“Until recently, I traveled light,” he quipped, gazing down at me. He immediately dispensed with any chatter about his place and asked, “You okay?”
My shattered mushroom sprang to mind. I felt my face scrunch up when my hold on keeping it tight slipped. I heard our food bag hit the chesterfield, then my face was shoved into Javi’s chest, and his arms were tight around me.
In his arms, feeling his heat, his strength, my hold on tight obliterated, and I lost it.
I clutched at his tee as I bawled into the fabric and exclaimed, “They broke my mushroom!”
“What?”
I tipped my head (way) back to look up at him, catching his gorgeous crystalline eyes with my watery ones. “My cute mushroom. They shattered it.”
“Yeah, babe. They did. I’m sorry,” he muttered.
“Why would they do that?” I asked him a question he couldn’t possibly have an answer to.