CHAPTER 17 – NELLIE #2
“I know bats are essential. I’ve heard the bat speech before.
” She swatted Nellie away as if she were a fly buzzing in her ear.
Even so, Paloma was leaning forward, looking at the map with genuine attention, because she always did.
Because she might tease Nellie about the big tree face, but she’d also been the one on the phone every time one of the campaigns had gone wrong, crying along in a way that had nothing to do with amphibians and everything to do with understanding what they meant. “Go on.”
“There’s macroinvertebrate diversity in those lower riffles that I wasn’t expecting.
It’s not just species presence; it’s the distribution pattern that matters.
It tells you about water quality, bank stability, the whole upstream condition.
You can read the health of an entire watershed from a cup of creek water if you know what you’re looking for.
” Nellie smoothed the edge of the map and felt that familiar pride.
The feeling was impossible to put into words unless you’d stood knee-deep in a cold creek at seven in the morning with your fingers going numb and felt, despite everything, as though the world was telling you something important.
“This corridor is healthy. And it’s rare.
Old-growth associated, intact hydrology, and it connects across what would otherwise be a break between two protected areas.
” She looked up. “If it gets bulldozed for server infrastructure, that connection is gone. It doesn’t come back in a century. Maybe not in two.”
Paloma was quiet for a moment. “Your report is going to say all that?”
“My report is going to say it with twenty pages of data tables and a really compelling map.”
“Nice! Give her hell, Fuller.”
Nellie grinned and clinked her wine glass against Paloma’s offered one. She had lost count of how many she’d had, but she reached for the bottle again anyway.
The cake was, on reflection, the best cake Nellie had eaten in years. She said this aloud, at volume, after her second slice, and Paloma received the praise with deeply warranted satisfaction, having scouted several bakeries before decided on the perfect choice.
The third bottle was open soon enough. The fire in the woodstove had been tended and was doing its best work to stave off the lingering dampness in the air after the storm.
Somewhere in the late hour, the mood had shifted irrevocably into the warm, fuzzy territory that Nellie privately thought of as good wine o’clock.
This was distinguishable from regular wine time by the fact that everything Paloma said was significantly funnier than it had been an hour ago, and Nellie’s own thoughts had acquired a pleasant, manageable quality.
No sharp edges, no anxious inventories, just the agreeable company of her best friend and ten excellent balloons.
Paloma was mid-story about a disastrous date she’d been on a few days ago involving a woman who’d turned out to have deeply confident opinions about the geological record, despite being an accountant. Nellie was laughing so hard her eyes were watering.
“She said the Jurassic was”—Paloma made a gesture that encompassed the sheer cosmic scale of the wrongness—“controversial.”
“Controversial.” Nellie wheezed. “The Jurassic? What does that even mean?”
“Like it was a live debate. Like the dinosaurs were still in arbitration.”
Nellie dissolved again. She pressed her forehead against the back of the couch and shook with laughter until her ribs hurt.
When she lifted her head again, Paloma was smiling at her with the kind of affection that came from ten years of this: the late nights and the wine and the stupid, irreplaceable laughter.
“I love you.” Nellie sighed.
“I love you too.” Paloma tucked her wine glass into the crook of her elbow and closed her eyes. “This couch is extraordinarily comfortable, by the way.”
“I know. It’s served me well… if you know what I mean.”
No response. Nellie had expected a response to that one. She tilted her head. Paloma’s breathing had gone slow and even.
“Pal?”
A very soft, entirely dignified snore issued from the cushions.
Nellie looked at her for a moment—her wine glass safely tilted against her arm, her shoes still on, her expression peacefully slack—and felt only the purest, most uncomplicated fondness in the world for this particular human.
She extracted the wine glass from Paloma’s loosening grip and set it on the coffee table.
Then she wrestled the throw blanket from behind the couch and arranged it over her, tucking the end beneath her toes once she’d prized off her sneakers.
Satisfied that her friend would be warm and comfortable until morning, Nellie gathered her own glass, the last half-inch of Malbec, and padded toward her bedroom.
The ceiling was doing something mildly unusual in the low light from the bedside lamp.
Not spinning exactly. More like it had acquired a gentle, wiggly quality it didn’t usually have.
Nellie lay on top of the quilt with her phone balanced on her stomach and stared at it, letting her mind wander into the pensive, philosophical territory usually motivated by a bottle of red wine.
Nellie Fuller had turned thirty-five today. She had celebrated with her best friend, copious amounts of great wine, and a great cake. She had blown out her birthday candles and made a wish she couldn’t tell anyone about.
Before her foggy brain had caught up to what her clumsy fingers were doing, she was scrolling through her phone contacts and clicking decisively on one Sawyer Alburn.
Three rings. Four. The voicemail message was Sawyer’s voice—professional, brief, a sentence and a half before the tone.
Nellie took a breath. And then she simply started talking.
“Hi. It’s Nellie.” She huffed a drunken giggle.
“Nellie Fuller. In case you have multiple Nellies.” She frowned at the wiggly ceiling.
“That’s a weird thing to say. Ignore that.
Anywho, I’m calling because it’s my birthday.
Well, it was my birthday. It technically ended”—she squinted at the clock—“two hours and eight minutes ago. Paloma came. She brought balloons.”
She smiled to herself about the balloons and strongly considered bringing them into her bedroom, if only she could be bothered to stand up again. She had no idea how much time she had spent just breathing until she remembered she was supposed to be leaving a voicemail.
“Whoops! I’m still here. What was I saying?
Oh, yeah, birthday. I made a wish when I blew out my candles, which I’m not supposed to say out loud, but I’m…
I’ve had some wine, so I’m going to tell you.
My wish was that the very beautiful woman who is a very good kisser”—she let slip a small, slightly dignified hiccup—“will save all the trees that I love so much. That was the wish. All of them. The old growth and the understory and the riparian trees especially, because the riparian trees are essential to the… well, you probably don’t care that much but they’re really important to the whole thing.
The corridor. You should read the section I wrote about the corridor, Sawyer; it’s really good.
I think you’d like it. I think you like things that are really good. ”
She paused. Rearranged herself on the pillows. And continued.
“Speaking of really good. You were. And I’m a little sad I did not get any birthday sex.
” Nellie said this solemnly, her tone appropriate to a genuine grievance being entered into the record.
“Which is not your fault, technically, because you didn’t know it was my birthday.
But I’m also sad because I have this little tradition, and I can’t even…
” She sighed loudly, and then lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper.
“I can’t even use my vibrator to wish myself a happy birthday, you know?
Because Paloma is asleep on the couch, which is six feet from my bedroom wall, so…
She sleeps like a very alert cat. She’s woken up from a dead sleep before because I was opening a bag of crisps in another room.
” The ceiling received another long, considering look.
“Sorry, I’m rambling but yeah… that’s where we are. ”
The wiggly ceiling was starting to take on a somewhat hypnotic quality. Nellie’s eyelids started to droop, the phone still propped against her ear.
“Anyway,” she mumbled. “I just wanted to tell you it was my birthday. And about the wish. And about my sad lack of orgasms.” She chuckled to herself softly. “Goodnight, Sawyer.”
Without even hanging up the call, Nellie let her hand drop to the quilt.
And very shortly after, the birthday girl was fast asleep.