Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Wes
After the orientation, Estelle—and the official paper schedule—dismissed them for the night.
Wes went back to his room and lay on his bed.
Estelle had given them free range of the grounds, but the sun had set more than an hour ago, and right now the only sightseeing he wanted to do was the back of his eyelids.
But again, it was only eight thirty, and he hadn’t gone to bed that early since he thought Tamagotchis were cool.
The bed was comfortable, with a forest-green duvet.
The same green echoed the leafy decorations of the room—botanical prints, as if from some ancient textbook on the subject, the kind with the hand-inked sketches.
There was always something sexual about the reedy flowers in those textbooks, or maybe he was a pervert who saw necks and slender legs in everything.
It had been a while since he’d had sex, to be fair.
The bed frame was deep mahogany, with a matching desk and bureau.
He placed his bag on top of the bureau and unpacked his laptop and manuscript on the desk.
The print shop had bound the book with those irritatingly fragile plastic rings.
It stared at him as if it too were restless.
He was about to fetch the laptop to bring to bed to peruse a client’s manuscript—he was nothing if not a workaholic—when he heard a tap on the door.
Maureen had changed from her dress into jeans and red Converse sneakers. She wore the same yellow cardigan, a jacket draped over her arm. “I’m going for a walk,” she said, “If you want to come.”
“You’re not still mad at me?”
“I am. I just don’t like to be alone in a new place.”
On one hand, he should get to know the woman he was competing against. On the other hand, he worried that knowing her better might dull what competitive spirit he possessed.
Wes hadn’t found passion in sports until discovering boxing as a teenager.
He never saw the point of winning at games that he wouldn’t remember tomorrow.
If he put something on paper, he could return to it, relive it.
Watching an old game never had that feeling, and his muscles forgot the strain of exercise after a few hours.
At least with boxing, there were bruises that forced him to remember the bouts.
Like in boxing, it might help to know his competitor this weekend. “Okay. Give me a minute.” He slipped on his gray pea coat and followed.
The stillness was unsettling, as was the darkness.
Gary informed them that the lights were on a timer system, set to turn off after the staff were usually gone for the night.
No one lived in the huge, sprawling residence except Gary, who had a main floor bedroom, and Estelle, who had the large room near the elevator upstairs.
They left through the French doors at the back of the kitchen.
It was strange passing from the gleaming chrome of the kitchen to the cold expanse of flagstone patio outside. The zero-entrance pool hadn’t been filled yet for the season and sat like an empty, white hand. Lights inside were also lit so the cavern of the pool glowed eerily.
Keeping pace beside him, Maureen buttoned her pale-pink coat. She had what Wes’s dad would have called “a classic figure”—shorter than he was by a few inches, with an hourglass shape accentuated by the cinched belt. “It’s hard to believe this is where she wrote the novel, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly humble beginnings.” He suddenly needed to prove to her that he had been here before.
“There are some new gardens around this way,” he said, gesturing.
The classic English gardens, with winding paved paths stretched out in the distance.
Wes remembered the side plot of peonies he had seen from Estelle’s office last week.
“Oh?”
“I was here with my mother last week,” Wes said.
“Is Ulla working on something with Estelle? How convenient for you.”
“No, no,” he said, glad for the confirmation that she knew. He didn’t post about his mother on LinkedIn, but Maureen still knew somehow. He decided to answer with a partial truth. “It was a personal visit. Something about these peonies.”
“How lucky for you, to know your way around here.” She glanced away. “Maybe you can give me the full tour. Or perhaps we could wait for Ulla to arrive.”
“It’s not like that,” Wes said.
“Of course not. I’m sure it means nothing that you’re probably neighbors. Am I right about that?”
Silence settled between them, him a step behind for a moment. She shook her head as if to free something. “Well, might as well enjoy the weekend away while I have it.”
The peony beds came into sight now, wavy lanes of buds.
They still weren’t in bloom, and he suddenly felt foolish for leading her this way, as well as for leading her into the conversation they were having.
He had wanted to see if her demeanor changed when Ulla’s name dropped.
Typically it did. He saw friends’ intentions change and dates’ eyes fill with calculations.
Even worse, if they had known before he brought it up, it was always obvious in their poorly feigned surprise.
From that point, there were soft asks for contact info, for ins, for a nudge to this department or that or for her to try this new product.
Instead, Mo was obviously angry. Frustrated?
Both? It didn’t matter, because he wouldn’t see Maureen after this weekend.
This was the big match. This was the chance to duke it out, and one author would bow out and go home.
Nevertheless, he wanted to win because he was good, not because of some impression that Ulla pulled strings.
In the still night air, he enjoyed the smell of freshly mowed grass and the peace of the scattered exterior lights. Maureen’s face was shadowed, but he wanted her to catch his eye. He wanted, he realized, for her not to hate him. “Peonies are traveling plants,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Like Ents?”
Her reply was so immediate that he had to laugh.
“Is Tolkien haunting you? Seriously. No, another client wrote about it, about how species of plants are sent all over the world. It was part a treatise on colonialism but part an exploration of the adaptations of nature and beauty. Peonies from China and Japan are more treelike—shrubby. Is shrubby a word?”
“It should be.” Her tone was now softer, almost sweet, and she almost had a smile on her face. “But maybe some of the Ents were peony trees. I bet they would still kick Orc ass.”
Was she messing with him? He hadn’t been thrown this far off his balance since, well, probably dinner tonight, but before that, it had been years.
She lazily touched a bud with a finger, the stem moving under her hand.
He did his best not to notice her arms, the gentle curve of her body.
He absolutely did not think about the botanical drawings upstairs.
When Mo pulled her hand back, she brought her wrist to her nose and sniffed delicately.
“Natural perfume,” she said, and extended that wrist to Wes.
Yes, she was messing with him. Wes found that he couldn’t help but be messed with.
He placed his nose near the base of her hand and took in that echo of a scent.
He also took in the scent of her skin. He realized what a forward gesture this was for a stranger and took a step back.
When she smiled crookedly in return, he had flashbacks of Penn and smoky frat houses.
Suddenly everything fell into place. “You took those weed gummies, didn’t you? ”
She pulled her hand back as if burned. “What?” But her voice held guilt in it, and so did her open expression. A thin smile, lazy and unaggrieved, caught in the partial light that bathed the garden through the wide glass windows behind them.
He laughed. “You thought you could sneak your high? Come on. You are less mad at me. And you’re talking about Ents.”
“Why don’t we talk about Ents more is the question.
” Maureen’s voice was wry enough that Wes thought she wasn’t too far gone.
Her next step faltered, though, and she touched his arm lightly for balance.
When he looked down at her hand on his arm, she said, “Nice coat. It’s a nice texture, like your sweater.
Sweaters and coats are so good when it’s chilly. ”
It was chilly. “Still want to walk? You look a little wobbly.”
She nodded and removed her arm from his coat. She took a few steps forward, then glanced back at him. “I feel—uh. Yes. Walk. So, I haven’t had weed gummies before. I needed some air in my lungs. Not an exact measurement of air, just some.”
And then she fell face first onto the dirt path.
Once he got her sitting up, Wes ran back through the kitchen door and retrieved a glass of water.
In the meantime, she had managed to crawl toward the patio.
He intercepted her halfway to the door. “It’s like my legs are asleep,” she said in what she must have thought was a low voice.
It was not. “Do you want some gummies? I have them in my pocket.”
With her safely drinking water and back within view of the house, Wes considered his options. He should find out what exactly he was dealing with here. “Sure. Let me see them.”
She handed over the bag, which had no markings on it. Inside were six gummy bears. He’d had edibles before and knew how little you needed to get the effect. “How many were in here before?”
“A clan. Is that how you measure bear amounts? A clan of gummy bears?”
He sat next to her. “Do you remember how many bears were in this clan?”
“Eight. Like The Brady Bunch . Oh my God, what if I ate the Greg and Marcia ones. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” she cried.
“That is a really old TV show.”
“I’m a really old soul.”
He looked at the remaining bears and did some mental calculation. One gummy usually had about 10 mg of THC, enough for any beginner—and she had to be a beginner, right?—to feel something. But with two?