The Bride of Catastrophe by Heidi Jon Schmidt

Author:Heidi Jon Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466886100
Publisher: Picador

Six

I’D GOTTEN The Moosewood Cookbook because the most upstanding of our last dinner’s recipes seemed to have come from there, and settled on a “Comprehensively Stuffed Squash” for its enormous number of wholesome ingredients. Lee was behind me, quiche in hand, as I carried this masterpiece up the makeshift steps at Reenie’s. I didn’t dare turn to look back at her: she’d see I was casing her, planning to break and enter. She’d probably call the police.

The house was a shell, really, with a piece of plywood laid across two sawhorses for a table and a bedspread tacked up as a bathroom wall.

“You came!” Reenie said.

“’Course,” I replied, stricken with shy happiness. So, it was scenario C: my favorite. I dared flash a smile at Lee, who looked as if she’d been run through with a bayonet. The others spilled in with their offerings while Lee busied herself setting out forks and knives from the drainer, with, I thought, a touching little officiousness, demonstrating what a very good little girl she was.

“Do you need help?” I asked, and she glanced up in irritation, wishing I’d go away.

“I could use some,” Reenie said. She was sweeping up a pile of fresh sawdust, which smelled of pure hope, and I rushed for the dustpan.

“You did this all yourself?” I said. “It’s amazing.”

“She’s an apprentice plumber, you know,” Lee said with pride.

“You did the plumbing yourself too?” I said. Reenie nodded and offered to show me the bath/shower installation, and I was so happy, knowing this would trouble Lee, that I forgot whose heart I was pursuing, and bolted up the stairs behind Reenie with a thrill of expectation as if we were planning to kiss at the top.

Reenie, however, wanted to show off the plumbing. She demonstrated the valves and faucets while I staved off a terrible urgency; Lee was downstairs, this was my one chance to be with her and instead, I was accidentally learning the difference between copper and PVC. In the midst of it, Reenie caught her own eye in the mirror, pulled a comb out of her pocket, wet it, and slicked her hair back with a gesture she must have learned from the movies. No one had actually done that since the midfifties, when my father, in his high-motorcycle phase, had worn his hair that way. My blood jumped: she was so thin and long-limbed and her movements so boyishly utilitarian, but her throat was long and smooth and white as milk, no Adam’s apple—that sign of a man’s secret vulnerability.

“Paper cups?” Lee said, standing in the doorway. “Do you have any?”

“Oh, God, I don’t know,” Reenie answered, jumping up and brushing by us as she went down to look for them. Lee and I stood facing each other. She seemed to reproach me: she had dibs on Reenie, hadn’t she made that clear? I did feel guilty—not for trying to steal Reenie’s affections from Lee, but for allowing my own to waver. And out of that guilt, a thin tendril of sympathy began to grow.

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