Chapter 25 Orange Crush
Orange Crush
Hi.”
Jack jumped about a foot when Blair entered the kitchen the next morning. He had no idea why. It wasn’t as if he had forgotten she was here. No, despite the fact that he hadn’t had to share his bed, he had spent the night tossing and turning, hyperaware that Blair was in the next room.
“Hi,” he said with his back to her. He finished depressing the plunger on the French press, taking the excuse to gather himself before he looked at her. When he turned and set a mug next to her, he thought he was ready.
He was not ready.
He considered her. She was wearing the cherry-print dress.
He pressed his hands on the island and let it hold some of his weight.
“Is this your favorite mug?” she exclaimed.
It took him a moment to catch up with the question. “Uh, yes.” At least they weren’t going to have to talk about last night.
“Then you use it! Give me a different one.”
His first instinct was to insist that she use it. She should have the best mug. But he didn’t want to be the kind of person who thought that hard about mugs.
“I can see why you like it, though.” She picked it up and stuck her fingers through the handle. “It’s a snug fit. Very ergonomic.”
He paused, the words Keep it on his tongue, but he didn’t want to examine why he wanted her to have the best mug, so he wordlessly went to the cupboard to get a different one.
“That was… fun last night,” she said while his back was turned.
Oh, Jesus, they were going to have to talk about it. He’d rather saw his own arm off.
“It was.” He wasn’t sure fun was exactly the word he would use, but he wasn’t about to tell her it had in fact been transcendent. Gutting. Simple agreement seemed the best move.
Bracing himself for the We should just be friends speech, he forced himself to relax his shoulders. Why brace for an outcome you were hoping for? They should just be friends. In no universe was it wise to dally with Blair Kellermoon, as fun/transcending/gutting as said dallying had been.
“I think we should do it again.”
He started to drop the mug but recovered himself and righted it. “Excuse me?”
“I think we should do it again.” She paused. “And by ‘it,’ I mean have sex.”
“I got that.”
“I just think—”
“OK.”
Her eyes widened. His easy agreement had disarmed her. “Unless you think it would be weird to do it at your friend’s place.” They were staying at Allie’s cabin for the next night or two while Blair poked around the area.
“It wouldn’t be weird,” he said with a speed he was subsequently embarrassed by.
She smiled. “OK, then.”
This was the part where they should probably discuss terms. Was this going to be a regular thing while she was in town? How long was she staying, anyway?
Did they have to wait till tonight? Could they do it again right now?
He looked at his watch. No. Allie was meeting them at the cabin, and she needed to head back to the Cities at three—it was Sunday, and she had to get the household ready for school and work on Monday.
He shelved his real questions in favor of a mundane one. “You want some eggs?”
“Sure.”
Jack, for whom breakfast was usually coffee and an apple, got out a frying pan and prepared to make eggs, as if that were a thing he did.
Jack had spent a lot of time with Blair, most of it indoors or by her pool. With the exception of their jaunt to the Watts Towers, he hadn’t spent time with her out in the regular, non-Hollywood world. So he was somewhat unprepared when Allie, upon meeting Blair, lost her shit.
“I know I’m supposed to be cool,” Allie said after they pulled up to the cabin to find her waiting out front, “but I just need to get this out of the way. Hidden Gems was extremely formative for me. I did a business degree because of Hidden Gems.”
“Aww.” Blair went in for a hug as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She had such a way with people. “I wish I could take the credit, but I only acted in that. I didn’t write it or produce it or anything.”
“Yeah, but it was the whole idea of the film, that you can transcend your circumstances, be what, and who, you want. I don’t know if Jack told you, but I grew up here, lived here year-round.
It was a great childhood, but it was isolating.
We didn’t have cable, and the regular reception was terrible, but we did have a VCR, and we’d get movies from the library.
I never imagined myself even going to college, much less getting an MBA, until I saw Hidden Gems toward the end of high school.
Now I’m a partner in an accounting firm.
You were the face of the idea that I could aim for more, if that makes any sense. ”
“It does,” Blair said, “but I still think most of the credit goes to the writer or the director.”
“Or the producer,” Jack said, drawing her attention. “You know, the person who makes the whole thing happen.”
He wasn’t sure what his point was, as she hadn’t been producing back then.
Allie must have wondered what his point was, too, because she shot him a bewildered look. “I have to hit the road soon, but let me give you a tour.”
Jack was unprepared for the wave of emotion that hit him when they went inside.
The outside of the place had looked different.
It was the same structure, same wood siding, but whereas it had always been painted beige, now it was a slate blue and had black shutters that hadn’t been there before.
And there were window boxes full of impatiens.
He’d wondered if the place was looking too good for Blair’s purposes.
But inside.
He prayed the women, who’d gone in ahead of him, weren’t noticing how he’d stopped in his tracks, how he had to put his hand on the wall to get his bearings.
It was all the same.
And it was all still there, inside his head. It was a strange sensation for the two pictures to match up so suddenly and so thoroughly. It was as if the place itself had reached inside his mind and yanked out this heretofore dormant memory.
The wood-paneled walls Blair had wanted. The rough wood kitchen cabinets Mr. Jensen had built with help from Jack’s dad. The sleeping loft at the far end of the space, where the air was always hot and stale.
All that rummaging about inside his head was giving him vertigo.
He went over to the familiar Formica table and sat.
Ran his fingers along the chrome edge. Was jolted by another memory, of the way the table had a leaf.
It used to be kept in the closet in the bedroom.
He and Allie would struggle to install it when they wanted to play pick-up sticks.
“You OK over there?” Allie asked.
Jack shook his head. Both women were standing by the fireplace, facing the fish mounted on boards on the wall above the mantel.
“You remember we used to play pick-up sticks on this table?” he asked Allie, wondering why he was having such an outsize reaction. He’d seen the photos Allie had sent, but somehow this was… more. Bigger.
“Yep. We still have them.” Allie pointed to a shelf holding a bunch of board games. “My daughter used to play with them, but now she’s a jaded modern child who cannot be entertained with mere sticks.”
“Why didn’t we play on the ground?”
“Because we only played stuff like that when it was raining. And the carpet was really thick and gross, remember? Orange shag. The sticks would get stuck in it.”
A sense memory of the orange carpet barreled down on him even as he looked at the low-pile gray beneath his feet.
“Dad recarpeted a couple years before he died, so it’s not as bad, but carpet in a lake house is still gross. It’s too humid for carpet. Not to mention all the wet and sandy feet.” She pointed at him. “Foot bucket is still out back, you hear me?”
He nodded. Foot bucket—there was another memory that exploded to the surface.
“It’s funny to think of Jack as a kid,” Blair said. “What was he like?”
“He was really serious.”
“Color me shocked. Did he watch the movies you were talking about with you?”
“No. He wasn’t into movies.” Blair performed a snort. “He was here in the summers, and we spent most of our time outside. When the weather was bad, we played board games, or read.”
“Or sometimes we stayed outside anyway,” Jack said, another memory overtaking him. “You remember that time we took the canoe out in the storm and your dad came after us?”
“Sure do.” She turned to Blair. “Metal canoe. Height of stupidity to take it out in the water when there’s lightning. We were grounded for a week.”
“We were?” Jack didn’t remember that part.
“That’s when we first started writing letters, remember? I got so bored, I wrote you a letter. My dad let me go to the library, so I gave it to Mary and asked her to give it to you.”
“Really?” He remembered corresponding with Allie, but he remembered it as a school-year habit, a way to keep in touch when he went back to the Cities. Oh, but wait… “Did we put letters in that hollow tree out near the old Newland house?”
“Yes! We decided to keep it up even when we weren’t grounded, and that tree was the letter box. Which was dumb because it took longer to get there—for me, anyway—than it did to canoe to your dad’s.”
Jack was aware that Blair was riveted by their conversation. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could feel her attention. He had to get his act together.
“There are more fish than I remember.” He walked over to the wall where Ed had mounted the skins of his prize catches.
“Yeah, he started driving up to Mille Lacs for walleye, entering tournaments there.” She turned to Blair. “No walleye in this lake, mostly just muskies and crappies.”
“I know you’re speaking English and yet… What is walleye?” Blair asked.
“Have you never had walleye?” Allie turned to Jack. “What kind of host are you?”
“I’ll take care of it.” He turned to Blair. “Walleye is a big thing in Minnesota.”
Allie turned back to the trophy wall. “I used to be embarrassed by the fish when I was a teenager.”
Jack didn’t remember that. It was hard to imagine Allie at any age being embarrassed by anything.