Six, p.2
Six, page 2
“Night!” she called out, but only got more man-grunts in return.
She entered the relative oasis of the bedroom, a nice, white, blocky cave of unadorned drywall and fluffy beige carpeting. Cal had courteously only left laundry on half of the bed. Unfortunately, it was the side by Paige’s nightstand and half-finished book. Her bland smile strained as she took in the mountain of towels and jeans, but she just took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and hunted for the remote for the little TV in that room. Once she had settled on a pay cable channel that promised her shirtless Spartan warriors within the hour, she began to sort and fold an entire week’s worth of clothes to the tail end of Animal House.
“It’s better than paying for the Laundromat,” she chanted a few times as she took in just how much a high-capacity machine could spit out in a day of loads.
It was easy to sort out the pile of tiny pastel items versus the mountain of black T-shirts and jeans. She took extra care to neatly fold and tuck away the few white jackets that had made it to the pile and moved them over toward the ironing board that had been left out by the bathroom. Bit by bit she uncovered the pretty pin-striped comforter, and by the time her movie was finally queuing up and the last towel was tucked away, the dinky brunette plunged face-first into her pillow and passed out in her clothes.
Paige woke to the sound of nasal log sawing at the frightfully early hour of six. She rubbed her eyes and noticed her skirt and hose had been pulled off and tossed next to her shoes, while her blouse had made it halfway over the ironing board. Next to her, a buzz of dark stubble shuddered with each snore, but the vast majority of the beast remained hidden under a mess of covers, with only a shoulder and edge of a tattoo showing.
She fumbled a bit to untangle her legs from the sheets and grab clean clothes from the drawer. Somehow one set of Calvin’s day wear managed to cover most of the walkway to the bathroom, and she nearly tripped as she made her way toward the shower and toilet.
“Seriously,” she whined, as the sink was full of hair. She waited till after she peed to finally clean everything out so she could even wash her hands. The attachments for his trimmer filled the rim of the vanity, and he hadn’t bothered covering or moving the toothbrushes before he had shaved last night.
“I live with an animal,” she complained to her reflection, but she ended up cleaning the mess anyway. She wandered back to check her phone, and sure enough, a reminder was already flashing to tell her that her Saturday morning was already promised. Paige rushed about to get a change of clothes before tiptoeing out to the living room to survey the damage.
Luckily she had put on clothes before heading towards the kitchen, as both Dave and Bobby were still sprawled on her sofa, each one trying to outdo the other in volume as they snorted and bellowed in their sleep. More cans had managed to replace the ones she had removed last night, and a lovely tawny stain had appeared next to the coffee table. She glared at the likely perpetrator—a puffy white hand hanging off the couch and the telltale can of Bud Light peeking out from under one of the wooden table legs.
She tiptoed over to the sleeping beasts and blotted the mess as best she could with some paper towels before scooping another round into the bins. Then it was a simple matter of tucking her key into her MP3 holster, double-tying her shoes, and slipping out the door.
The Memphis heat hadn’t burst into its full glory on this early weekend morning, but it was already wet and sticky as she started her run around the apartment complex. A few other brave souls either walked or jogged around the central lake, but overall the area remained vacant and calm. Paige let her feet take over and her mind wander as she puttered along the shore. A few cantankerous geese honked at her as she rounded one corner, but most of her three-mile jog remained blissfully calm and uneventful. As her sides started to stitch and her quads complain, she huffed and puffed her way back into her little corner of the world. This time as she entered, one of the stray beasts had disappeared, and the other was sitting up on the sofa, drinking soda and munching on one of her English muffins.
“Mornin’,” Dave grunted before crunching through the crust and sending little dribbles of butter and jam onto the carpet. “Bob said bye and headed out to work.”
“Morning,” Paige said before grabbing her water and heading for the shower. She practically turned green from the smell wafting from her master bath, but she dug out a can of air freshener and did the best she could to exorcise the ghostly remnants of a night of pizza and beer from her poor beleaguered toilet.
“At least they didn’t block it this time,” she muttered before getting her clothes and a towel. “I must summon my inner William Wallace and just Braveheart through this,” she declared before going back in.
Ten minutes later she emerged with damp hair as she ran from the smell. She hustled to get her purse and keys and scribbled a little note to leave on the fridge.
“Hey, Dave, if you see Cal, can you let him know I’m off? I promised Mom I’d do the rounds with her,” she said before hurrying out the door. This time instead of taking the beastly truck, she jimmied her way into a baby-blue hatchback and prayed under her breath that the old Honda would start.
After a few pumps on the gas and a prayer to the Saint Christopher medal dangling from the mirror, the slightly rusted Civic sputtered to life. She beamed at a nearly full fuel gauge and a darkened check engine light before she started her Saturday morning crawl west into the older part of town. Neither the AC nor the radio really worked in their secondary vehicle, so Paige amused herself by rolling down the windows and watching the insanity of Mid-South traffic as she made her way down the zoo of Poplar Avenue.
Her destination was a particularly cavernous strip mall in East Memphis full of a natural market and a movie theater, as well as all manner of little shops and diversions. She could already see a familiar van with an enormous decal of a bowl of pasta even as she made the first turn into the rapidly crowding lot.
She pulled up next to it and smiled as she heard a rapid-fire chain of expletives pouring out of a pair of voluptuous, perfectly made-up lips. Paige waited for the tirade to finish before waving.
“Oh, sweetie, you’re here!” the woman drawled as she flung open the door. She shared Paige’s oversize chocolate eyes and luscious curls, but her hair and skin were a bit darker, and she would tower over the young woman even if she wasn’t wearing four-inch heels.
Paige gave her a big hug. “Hi, Mom,” she said.
“We have so much to do!” her mom said without missing a beat.
Paige ended up grabbing tote bags full of all shapes and sizes of fresh noodles and padding dutifully after her mother as they dropped off their small lots to a nearby Italian place. Paige half listened to her mother’s morning struggles of getting fusilli formed and gorgonzola ravioli shaped as they puttered about.
Finally, once the last bag was handed off and they had rendezvoused back at the grocery store for tea and pastries in the café inside, one Maria Lucia Carmichael turned her intense motherly gaze upon her pint-size daughter.
“So, how is Cal?” she asked, looking over the edge of her croissant in intense anticipation.
“Fine,” Paige said noncommittally as she hunted for a napkin.
“Still working at that East Side Grill?” she asked, still hunting for her daughter’s gaze.
“No; he’s, um, picking up hours at a few places, trying to get more experience with different cuisines,” she said between sips.
“Interesting,” Maria said before picking at the edge of her pastry. Paige watched at how methodically her mother nibbled on each layer.
“Mom, just spit it out,” Paige finally sighed.
“You know me; I don’t want to seem like I’m intruding on your life—” she started.
“But you are about to totally do just that,” Paige finished.
Maria let out a little laugh. As she shifted in her seat, she gave a little smile to one of the younger and better looking baristas behind the counter. Paige tried her best to look away, but she took stock of her mom’s tight-fitting black T-shirt with the neckline that showed off just how kind Mother Nature could be to a woman in her forties.
Maria set down her breakfast and took her daughter’s hand. “I just know that some men are wanderers, sweetie, and I don’t want you to end up like me—”
“A wildly successful small business owner?” Paige laughed.
“Divorced at twenty-six,” Maria corrected.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Mom, to be divorced by twenty-six, I’d kinda need to be married first, and I don’t think that is happening in less than two months.”
“That’s my other point, sweetie! You’ve been with him for what, two years now, and he hasn’t proposed—” she started.
“Mom, Cal doesn’t need some piece of paper to say he loves me—”
“I’m telling you, I know these chef types,” Maria said with a little nod. “They work long hours and are full of ego.”
“Mom,” Paige sighed.
“I’m just saying, there are a lot of pretty young waitresses out there—”
“Mom!”
Maria leaned back in her seat and let go of Paige’s hand. “I know you think I’m always too hard on him. I do like him—”
“When is the ‘but’ coming into play?” Paige asked.
“I really do like him! Remember, he worked for me when he was just a kid right out of school, back when we still had the restaurant. I introduced you.”
“Yeah, and you also said that none of your staff were allowed to date your daughter, so he kind of had to quit, Mom,” Paige reminded her. “He’s a nice guy, and I don’t think either of us is ready to get married or divorced, OK? Want to change the subject maybe? How have sales been?”
“Paige,” she said with that certain tone only a mother could summon, “you know your father is in town.”
Paige dropped her own croissant. “Oh?” she said.
“Yeah, we bumped into each other here of all places. He’s peddling his new book and was buying gluten-free, vegan biscuits or some nonsense like that. What is the point of a gluten-free, vegan biscuit? That is like caffeine-free diet Coke!”
“I think he said something about Tara being gluten intolerant—” Paige offered weakly.
“Your half-sister is everything intolerant,” Maria snorted. “This is why I took you and didn’t want you to live out on a commune with him and Rainbow—”
“Sunshine,” Paige corrected.
Maria rolled her eyes. “I know I shouldn’t speak ill of your father in front of you—” she started.
“But you will anyway,” Paige whispered under her breath.
“But, I’m telling you, that man has seriously lost the plot. Did I tell you what his latest theory is? It’s so ridiculous you will die with laughter, sweetie. I mean, has he told you any of the latest exposé he’s drafting to shine a light on the ignorance of humanity?”
“Mom, you know I don’t talk to Dad if I can help it,” Paige muttered. “I guess you taught me well.”
Maria furrowed her brows, causing a slight crease in her makeup. She tapped her short but perfectly polished red nails on the counter and searched for words. “Your father does love you, you know,” she offered. “You and Tara are the only women I can say without a doubt he’s never screwed over. He just has a problem with commitment, you know, and nothing in his life is ever going to interest him as much as his damn writing or his crazy causes.”
“You used to support those crazy causes,” Paige reminded her mother.
“I also used to have pink hair and wear shoulder pads, sweetie. I wised up at some point,” she said. “But his theories now put all of the aliens and other conspiracies to shame.”
Paige finally took the bait. “OK, I have to know. Did he find Atlantis during his last book tour in the Bahamas?” she asked.
“He thinks that there is a secret organization trying to dictate our very lives and that they are fighting a shadow war all across the world.”
“Mom, I knew what the Illuminati were supposed to be before junior high. This is nothing new,” Paige sighed.
“But now he thinks that our secret overlords are vampires, sweetie.” Maria laughed. Paige even had to snicker a little. “Oh, it gets better,” her mom continued. “He even says that he found this out because secretly—” She disintegrated into shudders of laughter.
“Mom!” Paige prompted.
“Your great-grandfather is apparently one of them!” Maria snorted.
“Pawpaw was a vampire?” Paige asked incredulously. “He sure hid it well.”
“Oh no, not my mom’s pop.” Maria laughed. “His claim is that my Grandpa Steve, who totally died in World War II, is actually a vampire and just walking around wreaking havoc and controlling the masses.”
“Wow, so Great-Grandma Jean married a vampire,” Paige said, shaking her head.
“Apparently so,” Maria sighed. “He wanted to warn me and you that we could be in real danger since he had it from good but unnamable sources that this vampire war was heating up, and quite frankly, I tuned him out at that point. He was so excited about the subject that he actually helped me carry and break down the half pig I bought just so that he could babble for a half hour more.”
“Dad got near your kitchen?”
Maria nodded. “Wonders never cease,” she sighed. “You know, I should have figured out he was a little bit bonkers when he refused to get you vaccinated as a child.”
“Yeah, thanks for that one, Mom,” Paige said. “I remember all those forms we had to fill out. I did get most of them done before I went to college, you know. Maybe one day I’ll even get chicken pox.”
“I am sorry for all that nonsense,” Maria sighed. “Your father may be a loon, but he can be a charming loon, and because he liked to run around with every sweet young thing he met in a bookstore—”
“You think every guy wants to run around too,” Paige offered. “Cal is a nice guy. The only thing he runs around with is a bunch of hairy dudes and few smokers.”
“Speaking of smoking—”
“He quit, Mom,” Paige said.
Maria returned to her breakfast and took a few long sips of tea. She waited until Paige’s mouth was fully occupied by baked goods before she continued.
“It’s just you’re so sweet, Paige. You bend over backward for everyone, and I don’t want you to be walked all over.”
“Mom, I’m fine,” Paige said. “I swear. I’ve got a steady job, a steady boyfriend, a nice apartment—”
“A car that’s falling apart—”
“That is paid for,” Paige protested. “Aren’t you the one always telling me to save as much money as I can?”
“Well, yeah,” Maria admitted. “I know I may not look it, but I do want to be a grandma someday—”
Paige quickly pushed back from the table and gathered up her wrappers and crumbs. “We are not starting down that conversation,” she said before rushing to the waste can. She cringed as she heard heels clattering after her.
“What can I say?” Maria laughed. “I may have grown up down here, but I’m still Italian at heart. I do want to be a nonna while I’m still young and hip enough to have fun with it.”
“But you hate my boyfriend,” Paige countered.
“I said I liked him!”
“Mom, you sent me a picture of your dentist with the caption of ‘Wouldn’t he be nice?’” Paige said.
“Do you have any idea how much money a dentist makes around here with all the sweet tea and soda?”
“Come on; let’s just look over the books back at the kitchen, and then I’d like to enjoy the rest of the day. Please, Mom?”
“OK, sweetie,” Maria said, pinching Paige’s cheek, “but I need to get a few things before we head back there. That asshole from Mississippi forgot my cavolo nero. I’ll meet you by the registers in a few minutes unless you want to go shopping with me.”
“You know what, I’ll wander around and see if I can find anything for Cal’s latest creation. He’s been focusing on smoked chicken, you know.”
“And you know that Memphis is saturated with BBQ joints,” Maria scoffed. “I hope he has a plan B. Anyhow, be careful; you never know if that shadow conspiracy of vampires will come after you!”
Paige finally smiled again. She pointed to the huge bank of windows in the café area. “I think we’re pretty safe since it’s about ten o’clock in the morning, but I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Oh yes, if you see your Great-Grandpa Steve, tell him hi and then smack him for faking his death and breaking my grandma’s heart.” Maria laughed before giving her daughter a quick hug.
Paige just shook her head and wandered off to find a basket and start meandering through the wondrous aisles of the local Whole Foods. She picked and sniffed a few pieces of fruit as she could barely hear a strident voice demanding to see more boxes of greens. Finally, as the conversation became louder, she darted toward the inner aisles and grabbed some chips and snacks to take home and surprise her boyfriend with. She even puttered over to the meat counter to see if she could find something else to excite her wannabe chef of a housemate.
Just as she was peeking at row upon row of plump, air-chilled chicken parts, she heard a shocked, “Paige? Paige Carmichael, is that really you?”
Paige looked to her left and stared at a very blonde, very tan woman in skinny jeans and a tank top. The poor little brunette squinted a bit as she took in vaguely familiar features but couldn’t quite place this athletic woman among her list of current acquaintances.
“Um—” Paige started.
“Oh my heavens, I know you don’t recognize me, but you haven’t changed a bit since Miss Miller’s twelfth-grade English, Paige,” the stranger gushed.
Paige squinted again and listened carefully to the eager drawl. “Tina?” she asked weakly. “Tina Mayweather?”
The woman burst into a dazzling grin, showing off two rows of shining, unnaturally straight, pearly whites. Paige had to gawk at this relative stranger in stilettos and diamonds, who wore an expensive-looking black and gold choker around her skinny little neck.
