Chapter 8
I t was two hours later by the time Dexter got all The Russians rounded up and deposited safely in their homes. He intended to slip back into a coma, but when he returned home his neighbor’s light was still on. He knocked on her door.
“It’s open,” she called.
“It really shouldn’t be. Not safe,” he said as he opened the door and walked inside.
“Who else would it be but you?” he asked.
“I don’t know, a murderer or rapist?” he tried.
“You’re right, they’re so polite and good about knocking,” she said. She stood at her kitchen table, rolling something into balls, the giant jar of cherries open and half-used beside her. She noted what was in Dexter’s hands. “Why are you carrying a giant jar of olives?”
“For you,” he said, placing it on the table beside the cherries.
“Thank you. Is that, like, a custom with your people?” she asked.
“No, I thought they’d go with the cherries,” he explained.
She grimaced. “Since when do olives and cherries pair well together?”
“No, not…You showed up at a bar to buy a giant jar of cherries. I thought maybe you had a raging cocktail addiction. It would kind of explain a lot, actually.”
“Thank you, but no. I was making chocolate covered cherries and, due to poor planning, ran out of cherries. I went to three stores that were all inexplicably out of cherries before realizing a bar would have the size jar I needed. Voila.”
“Why are you making chocolate covered cherries at two in the morning?” he asked, leaning against her counter as he watched her work.
“Can you think of a better time?” she asked.
“Yes, literally any of the daylight hours,” he said.
“I don’t really know if it’s day or night anymore,” she explained. “I’ve become one of the mole people.”
“Is this what you do to fight insomnia? Make candy?”
“No, making candy is why I have insomnia,” she said.
“Hmm,” he said. Watching her roll each ball was oddly soothing and hypnotic. “So about tonight. Sorry you got sucked into my crazy work nightmare.”
“Meh, it was fine. I figured it had an explanation I wasn’t privy to,” she said.
“You’re being awfully laid back about learning I told people you’re my fiancée,” he said.
“I’m a laid back girl, Robert.”
“Yeah…wait, who?”
“What?”
“No, who?”
“Are we doing a bit?” she said.
“No, you said Robert.”
“Right.”
“Who is Robert?” he asked.
“You are.”
“No I’m not,” he said. “My name is Dexter Niemen.”
“Why did you change it from Robert?”
“I didn’t. I have never been Robert.”
“Are you sure? You really look like a Robert.”
“I think I know my own name,” he said.
“Yeesh, settle down. It’s not like you know my name,” she said.
“Your name is Lainey Andrews,” he said.
“What? How do you know my name?” she demanded.
“How can you be outraged because I don’t know your name and then appalled because I do?” he asked.
“How do you know my name, Robert?”
“Dexter,” he amended.
“Where?” she said, turning to look behind her.
“I do not have the energy for your verbal shenanigans tonight,” he said, swiping a weary hand on his face. “I saw your name on some mail.”
“Ah, I should have remembered that tip from the stalker handbook,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “We share a proximity and I’m observant. Do you want some help with that?”
She froze. “Really? Why would you want to help me?”
“Why not? It looks fun, and it seems like you have a lot left to do.”
“I do, actually. Some help would be nice. All you have to do is roll each cherry in a bit of fondant to make one inch balls.” She held one up to demonstrate.
“Looks easy enough,” he said. “Do you have a dedicated sink for washing hands?”
“Why would I have that?” she asked.
“Health department regul…” his words trailed off as he regarded the absolute chaos of her kitchen. “Never mind. I’ll wash up at the sink.”
“I’m not exactly a clean as you go type person. I wait until I’m finished, and then I clean. Also spoiler alert: I’m never finished.”
“Right,” he said, trying not to elbow a leaning stack of dishes as he washed his hands. He finished and held them aloft like a surgeon, searching for a clean towel.
“Paper towels,” Lainey said, wrinkling her nose in the direction of the roll at the edge of the counter.
“Ah,” he said, secretly relieved he wouldn’t have to try and discern whether or not a cloth towel was clean or safe. He tore off a paper towel, dried his hands, and lobbed it toward the trash. It went wide. He sighed as he bent to retrieve it and tossed it into the can. Then he froze uncertainly.
“Did a trashcan kill your father?” Lainey asked.
Frowning, he spun to face her. “What?”
“You’re staring pensively at my trash,” she explained.
“I was wondering if I needed to wash my hands again, since I touched trash.”
“Everything is trash eventually, Robert,” Lainey replied.
“Dexter,” he reminded her.
“Where?” she said, turning to peer behind her.
“Not this again,” he muttered, moving forward to grab a glob of fondant from the bowl. It felt good, smooth, cool, and elastic. “This is like Play-Doh.”
“Who told you my secret recipe?” she said, watching with approval as he retrieved a cherry from the jar, placed it inside the fondant gob, and rolled it into a smooth ball. “Hey, you’re a natural.”
“Not my first time,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yes, of course it is. Do I seem like the type of person who rolls cherries for fun?”
“You could be anything. The world is your playground. And seeing you in your natural habitat tonight showed me there’s a lot about you I don’t know.”
“Ditto, and that is not my natural habitat,” he said with a grimace. “I go where The Russians go.”
“How very Bolshevik of you,” she said.
“How is your brain able to function like this in the middle of the night?” he demanded.
“It runs on a highly refined diet of sugar and maraschino dye,” she replied. “Hey, you’re really good at this.” He deposited his fifth perfectly rolled cherry on the tray.
“Don’t try to recruit me. The Russians pay too well.”
“I can’t actually offer you money, seeing as how I have none. But would you be willing to work for songs? Because I do an amazing Freddy Mercury impression.”
“You hit on a lot of random men?” he guessed. When she puffed out a shocked laugh, it felt like a victory, in an odd way.
“No, but I do have a prominent overbite and mustache, if you look closely enough.”
“Pretty sure I did that when you kissed me,” he said.
“Oh, so we’re going there. I thought we were going to pretend it never happened,” she said.
“It definitely happened,” he said. “And thank you for making it convincing.”
“I’m an all or nothing gal,” she said. “I never do a thing halfway. It’s my passionate nature. That’s also the explanation for my raging gambling, smoking, alcohol, and drug addictions. If I’m in, I’m going to be in until it kills me.”
He thought she was kidding about most of those things, but who knew? Something was driving her to stay up night after night, to lose too many hours of sleep. He felt himself beginning to worry about her, and he didn’t like that. The Russians took up too many of his worrying hours already. He could not add a crazy neighbor to the list.
They rolled cherries in fondant a while in surprisingly comfortable silence, until all the cherries had been covered.
“Now you sleep?” Dexter asked.
“Now I chocolate,” Lainey replied, squinting. “I thought I knew how to make chocolate a verb. Turns out I don’t. Thank you for your help with these.” She motioned to the tray of cherries he’d assembled. In sharp contrast to her haphazard arrangement, his were in tidy rows, seven by twelve. She noted the disparity with a smile that might have been self-deprecating.
“Do you need help chocolating?”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she said.
“You didn’t. I’m volunteering. I’m vested now, might as well see it through,” Dexter said. He sat, indicating that he was there for the long haul.
“All right,” Lainey said, happily, he thought. She dumped a few massive hunks of chocolate into the copper cauldron and turned it on.
“‘Double Double Toil and Trouble,’” he quoted.
“‘Cool it with a baboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good.’”
He stared at her, openmouthed and horrified.
“What?” she said. “That’s the rest of the poem.”
“What poem? That’s just the thing you say when someone pulls out a cauldron.”
“How many people in your life pull out cauldrons?” she mused, not facing him as she kept her focus on the chocolate. “It’s from Macbeth. The witches’ poem.”
“Okay, professor,” he said, embarrassed he hadn’t known. Had he vaguely been trying to impress her by quoting something some part of him knew was high literature? Perhaps. But now that it had failed spectacularly he felt annoyed by the unintended shame he’d heaped on himself by his ignorance. Lainey seemed not to notice, however, as she continued to stir. “So this is what you do, you melt chocolate and bring down men with your superior knowledge of Shakespeare.”
“Only on weekdays. On weekends I perform cabaret.”
“With chocolate?” he guessed.
“Is there any other way?” she returned.
He watched, mesmerized, as she stirred and stirred the brown concoction that was rapidly becoming a liquid. When she was satisfied with the consistency, she pulled out a giant marble slab and poured the chocolate onto it, using some kind of implement to spread it out and scrape it together again, over and over.
“What are you doing?” he murmured sleepily. Watching her work was better than counting sheep. He felt like he was about to plummet face first onto the table full of cherries.
“Tempering the chocolate,” Lainey said. After a while she scraped the chocolate back into the cauldron and returned to stirring, and then it was ready. He’d volunteered to help her dip the cherry balls, and he would, but for the moment he was caught up watching her hand swirl soothingly through the liquid. She held up a candy-covered hand.
“Impaired chocolate fingers,” she announced.
“Are you trying to tell me your nose needs itched?” he asked.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, nose freak,” she murmured.
He snorted a laugh as he stood to move closer, reaching for his tray of cherry balls. “Yes, truly the one with a giant chocolate hand is the non-freak in this scenario. Spot on.”
“You’re about to acquire your own chocolate paw,” she said, moving aside so he could dip with her. “Welcome to the club.”
It was three in the morning. He should be sleeping and he didn’t especially like being messy, especially when it was the sort of mess that oozed everywhere and got on everything. But as clubs went, it wasn’t so bad.
They dipped in companionable silence until the sun rose. Lainey went to check on something and didn’t return. When Dexter went to find her, he saw her asleep sitting up, one cheek mashed against the wall, drool running out the side of her askew lip.
He should go home and seek his own sleep. Instead he went to the kitchen and washed the towering stack of dishes.