Chapter 9 – Anna #2
Except then he opened the wall, and it wasn’t a wall as much as it was a refrigerator.
He pulled a bottle of orange juice, and somehow, like the coughing, it helped me to focus.
Orange juice. Bad cough. E.G. Those were things I could relate to.
I set the bag on the counter and tried to keep my jaw shut.
“What is all that?”
“Stuff you need for a cold,” I said, spilling the contents of the bag. “Have you eaten anything this morning? You shouldn’t take this stuff on an empty stomach.”
“You didn’t need to come out here. It’s just a cold.”
Then he started coughing again. The heavy rattle in his chest sounded like a ‘he was about to die’ kind of coughing. He was bent over, leaning on the kitchen counter – I guess we would call it that – and breathing slowly.
“I’m going to make you some tea,” I said, feeling utterly useless.
His head bobbed once, then again.
A sure sign he was in distress if he was allowing me to stay and also allowing me to fix him tea.
I looked around the sterile kitchen with the brown walls and the sink and nothing else.
An action that might prove to be my greatest challenge.
“Go back to bed,” I told him. “I’ll figure this out and bring it to you.” He started to pad his way out of the kitchen when I realized if he left, I might never find him in this sprawling mausoleum he called his home. “Wait! Which direction are you headed in?”
“For fuck’s sake, Flowers. Just follow the hallway back towards the bedrooms. Mine is at the end.”
That sounded like a reasonable direction. Almost as reasonable as making tea.
Except, this was going to sound insane, but there was no stove top.
Just flat counter as far as the eye could see.
There was a massive copper structure that hung over the island but fuck me if that was the cooking vent.
I looked directly under it and there was no range, no round spaces to indicate where a pot should go.
There were buttons along the side of the island and I had images of one of those hidden televisions popping up, but that didn’t seem to make sense for a range top.
Fortunately, I found a microwave at hip length on the other side of the kitchen island.
That would have to do. I opened nearly every cabinet (you had to push them in first and then they automatically opened) until I found a mug.
With the mug in hand, I looked for some type of lever on the faucet that would bring the flow of water.
It was only after a few minutes of searching, that I got annoyed and hit the thing with my hand, that I realized how this worked.
Seriously? Some designer was going to have to sit me down and explain the point of a cabinet with no knobs, no stove top, a hidden refrigerator door and a touch happy sink.
Rich people.
But once I had water and a tea bag and could figure out how to set two minutes on the microwave, I was set. I also sorted through my bag of supplies and came up with a chest decongestant that would reduce his fever, and hopefully, help him sleep.
The microwave beeped and I could tell the water was ripping hot, but it would have plenty of time to cool on my journey across the Land of House to E.G.
I left the kitchen the way we’d entered and I kept my eyes on the pattern of tile in the floor.
The mosaic pieces did seem to change upon transitioning into what were open solariums?
Living areas? If I followed the path, I wandered to another part of the house where many of the doors were closed.
I was going to guess, these were the bedrooms and E.G. said he was at the end.
I stopped. I was going to enter E.G.’s bedroom?
He was in your motel room. And he helped you move into your apartment.
Both of those things were true. Nothing had felt overly familiar, either. This wouldn’t either. I would drop off his tea, watch him swallow some cough medicine, and consider it done.
His cough echoed off the high ceilings and it was easy to determine which was his room.
Squaring my shoulders, I moved forward with a bravado I didn’t necessarily feel but was prepared to fake.
Pushing open the door he’d left ajar, I was once again overcome with the magnitude of the room.
The bed was the biggest I’d ever seen, with no fewer than twenty pillows butted up against an ornate carved headboard.
There was some kind of mural painted on the wall above it.
On the opposite wall, there was a mounted large screen TV.
In the corner, two comfortable chairs and an end table between them.
In another corner, some type of half-couch.
The room was bigger than my entire one-bedroom apartment, and while I was positive the archways led to a closet and a bathroom, it seemed crazy to me that there were no clothes at all to be seen.
No pictures either.
Here too, the ceilings were at least two stories high, and the windows to the right of the bed ran the entire length of the room.
A shade was drawn to keep out the light, so the effect inside the room was of a cavernous den. Like one of those places in the movies where the bank robbers could hide out with their horses under the dripping stalagmites.
Stalactites?
“Are you going to stand there gawking, or are you going to bring me my tea?”
“Both,” I admitted.
E.G. was in laying on his bed, but not under the covers, which, oddly, made things less awkward.
I walked toward him and handed him the mug.
Then I set about putting everything else he needed on the table next to his bed.
He already had a box of tissues, so I focused on getting the cap open on the decongestant.
“You know you don’t have a stove top?” I asked him, while I tried to follow the directions on the childproof cap. Down and to the right.
Down and to the right.
“It’s there,” he said, and took a sip of his tea. “What kind is this?”
“Herbal,” I offered, still struggling with the cap.
“All tea is herbal. Why didn’t you go home when I told you?”
“Duh, I wanted an opportunity to crash your place.”
He scowled at me but kept sipping. “Mission accomplished.”
I finally got the cap to turn and was dismayed to find a seal on top. Usually, I took a knife to these things.
“You should have let me know you were sick,” I said, as I picked the foil off with my thumb nail. “I was worried.”
“Worried about what?”
“You.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
There was no point in responding. I peeled the seal off and measured out a capful of syrup.
“Take this,” I told him. “It’s horrible, but it works.”
He took the cap and swallowed it in one gulp. Then he stuck out his now blue tongue and made a face that made him look like he was ten years old. I couldn’t stop my smile.
He coughed again and I thought it really did sound awful. “Maybe I should make an appointment for you to see a doctor. Do you have a primary I can call?”
“I have a private physician on call. If things get worse, I’ll call her.”
“Really? She’ll just come out here, like for a house visit? Fuck me, you’re rich. Is it just you, in this entire house? Alone?”
“No, I have a day staff, obviously,” he said.
“Obviously,” I repeated, only slightly mocking him.
“But I didn’t want them to catch whatever I have, so I sent them home. And look at that, they listened to me.”
“I’m impervious to germs,” I assured him. He was already getting tired. The effort of having to get out of bed and walk all the way to the front door was probably enough to suck up his energy.
There was more art along the wall. The kind with small lights mounted above them. I pointed at one. “I’m pretty sure that should be in a museum.”
“It is, when I lend it to them for a special showing. Now, are we going to sit here and chat, or are you going to let me rest?”
He was getting under the covers. Some kind of silky looking duvet in a jeweled maroon color.
He was a king. A sultan. A warlord. Ruler over all he surveyed. Surrounded by the spoils of big tech war. But his face was flushed with fever, his eyelids were starting to droop, and he looked so human, I had the urge to run my fingers through his messy hair.
“You want me to stay and read to you or something?”
“Fuck no,” he sighed, his head sinking into his plush pillow. “Go home. And take tomorrow off. This way you won’t worry about me if I don’t show up at the office.”
“You could prevent me from worrying with a text that says you’re doing okay.”
He lifted his hand in a motion that possibly signaled agreement.
“Promise you’ll text me or I will return tomorrow with more tea.”
“Fine,” he mumbled, his eyes already closed.
I nodded. “Good. I’ll find my way out. I don’t suppose you have one of those golf carts that you can ride to get to the front door?”
“Flowers,” he growled.
“Okay. I’ll walk. Going,” I whispered, backing away from his bed. By the time I got to the door, he was already asleep. Mouth ajar to help him breath because his nose was stuffed up. That weird urge to ruffle his hair came over me and I clamped it down.
This was my boss. I’d done him a solid by hooking him up with some meds.
That’s all. Nothing any other assistant might not have done.