Chapter 1 #2
The dryer played its hilariously long ditty to indicate it was finished.
Amethyst scooped her clothes into a basket and moved some finished wash into the dryer.
Then she started folding the dried clothes on the kitchen table, intermittently tossing warm towels at Thora.
She dutifully folded them exactly as Amethyst had once instructed her.
She was very persnickety about towels for someone who let tarot cards guide her life choices.
Amethyst spoke as if Thora and Cody’s marriage was already dissolved. Cody, before he left, held her face in his hands and
said everything would be okay. She should have felt the tenderness and sincerity of that gesture in her body somewhere. A
swoop in her belly, or a tingle along her skin. What she experienced was a pang of grief. Although she did believe everything
would be okay, she and Cody were peering into very different crystal balls.
Thora tried to envision what working on her marriage would even look like. She and Cody met freshman year of college working
on their school newspaper, The Townsend Times. He had a science explainer column and she had an anonymous campus gossip column, “Talk of the Townsend.” Lee Halliday was
there, too, drawing comics for the paper. Lee was always fucking there.
As compatible social engineers, they made a college power couple. He made dazzling conversation at every party she attended
to eavesdrop on fellow students. She could extract valuable information from even the most staid faculty members Cody was
trying to impress. Late nights in dorm rooms turned to sleepovers. Their plan to rule campus morphed into dreaming of a shared
life.
But now? As adults in a city? She loved going to the movies.
He fell asleep ten minutes in. Same for theater.
He’d love to take Metro North to the Appalachian Trail stop and backpack for a few days.
Thora would sooner lick the floor of the train car.
He delighted in picking out a complex board game and spending three hours optimizing a strategy.
Her brain played circus music when someone started explaining complicated game rules.
Not to mention their temperaments. Cody was perfectly polished and professional in even the most casual social setting. Decorum was a foreign word to Thora. They both loved holding court, albeit in different styles. Cody stifled every feeling he ever
had, while Thora was an open bottle of Diet Coke waiting for some Mentos. He was obsessed with his work; she was still figuring
her career out. All the money in the world was never going to buy them compatibility.
Amethyst threw another towel over her head. “Wait! You should follow the plot of that book Bryony Brooks wrote about you!”
Thora blushed under the warm terry cloth. She’d never told anyone that Bryony’s book Fossilized was clearly inspired by her and Cody. But Amethyst was both incredibly sharp—some may say clairvoyant—and a huge Bryony Brooks
fan. As for Cody, he never read a single Bryony Brooks novel, including the one that lampooned him.
“I didn’t know you’d read that one.”
“The one about a boring and dusty old paleontologist with a hot bombshell of a wife? She inherits a fortune and then fakes
her death using someone else’s bones but her own fucking molars? And then writes scandalous novels under a pen name? All while
getting railed by her bodyguard? What was his name?”
“Lucien.”
“Lucien,” Amethyst echoed in a sexy tone. “You gonna go find Lucien and make eyes at him? Indigo eyes?”
Indeed, in Fossilized, the character based on Thora had “indigo” eyes, an upgrade from her real-life grayish blue.
Bryony had never met anything—some eyes, some prose—that she couldn’t turn purple.
And she gave her “chestnut” hair. Bryony always told Thora to dye her hair.
Bryony said, “The only word for yours is mousy, you can’t have mousy hair and those dull gray eyes.
” Thora liked her brown hair, which was long and wavy with a mind of
its own, and had no intention of dyeing it.
At least Bryony made Fossilized’s woman lead fat. She even received accolades for writing a main character who was fat and undeniably hot, after decades
of pairing waifs with beefcakes. Thora would gladly take that credit. Even if Bryony changed her hair color, she left the
tits and ass and stomach and thighs alone. A win is a win.
“That wasn’t one of her best books.”
“Not one of her best!? She wrote a whole book begging you to get a fucking life and you’re going to say that? That is no way
to speak of the dead.” Amethyst crossed herself, a remnant of the Catholic school education her parents insisted on. Walt
Whitman had nothing on the multitudes Amethyst’s family contained.
Maybe she did owe it to Bryony to get a life. Really, she owed it to herself.
“Cody will still let me do laundry here, right? I assume he’ll keep the apartment after you fake your death.”
“I’ll take the easy way out and get a divorce. I like my molars too much. And I’ll make sure one of the terms is that you
keep your key to the apartment.”
“This is why Bryony gave you that money,” Amethyst said, pointing at Thora. “She knows you’re a loyal one, and she rewards
loyalty.”
Thora wasn’t so sure. She was supposed to be loyal to Cody above all, and here she was joking about the terms of their imminent
divorce. She had to admit, though, the marriage had fossilized. If it was ever alive to begin with.
Thora reflecting on her first and only love brought her back to Lily’s recent travails. “You have to tell your daughter not to get too serious with that boy. If she marries the first person who ever shows her some romantic attention, she could end up like me.”
“Oh, she knows. I’ve told her that she won’t know what she wants in a partner for many years. Because her mom made this mistake,
too. Her mom married a man before she realized his mother was still running his life, and now she pays much closer attention
to people’s boundaries.”
“You’re a wise woman and a good mother.”
“It’s a gift. You should go upstate and stay with Mack for a while,” Amethyst said. “Your auras go bananas when you’re in
a room together. She will absolutely help you get a life.”
Whenever Thora’s cousin Mackenzie visited the city, Amethyst loved to hang out with them. Thora, Amethyst, Mack, and her wife,
Jade, once ended up on a Latin dancing cruise around lower Manhattan that became the stuff of legends. Cody was in town for
that visit, but he didn’t want to go dancing. Thora was so touch-starved that dancing merengue and bachata with many lovely
and helpful partners brought her to tears by the end of the night. She’d tried to initiate sex with Cody when she got home,
but that went nowhere. She hadn’t tried again.
That was over a year ago.
“That’s a great idea.”
“I’m going to miss you,” Amethyst said wistfully.
“Mack inherited a huge house on a lake. It needs a ton of work, but I can pay for that now. You two can come up for a visit
sometime while I’m there. Don’t you think Lily would enjoy canoeing?”
“She’s always said she wants to go fishing. Not to eat what she catches, but to make a list of species. Like Animal Crossing.”
Thora laughed. “Perfect. We can do that with bugs, too. Plenty of bugs up there.”
Amethyst shivered at the thought. “If you want. But no fossils. We’re done with fossils.”
“We’re done with fossils,” Thora echoed.