I was startled awake by Evelyn’s increasingly agitated rapping on the front door. Groggily, I attempted to wrestle free of the tangled sheets, poking my disheveled head out the side of the covers to see yellow morning sunlight streaming through the large bedroom window. My alarm was on the floor near the other side of the room, as if violently thrown. Cursing at myself, I flung the covers away, sending the large flashlight clattering to the floor, then jumped out of bed, hobbled only slightly by my remaining cuts and bruises. The knocking was fairly thunderous by that point, and I grimly imagined Evelyn preparing to bring out the battering ram. On my way to the door, I tripped over the bucket on the floor, cursing as I kicked it into a far corner of the living room with a loud clang.
I must have been a sight for sore eyes when I finally opened the door: disheveled hair poking in all directions from the sheets’ static, one pajama leg hiked up to the knee, dark circles under both eyes. Evelyn’s facial expression contorted into a peculiar combination of concern, reproach, confusion, and – was she stifling a laugh?
“Are you… hungover?” she asked, the concern in her voice genuine.
“I – what? No! I—” I stopped myself, suddenly feeling very self-conscious about telling her the truth. What exactly would I say? Well, you see, Evelyn, I was sitting in front of the fireplace last night when it suddenly exploded as though I had doused it with gasoline, except I did nothing of the sort. And then, before nearly burning down my living room yet again, it died back down like nothing happened. So I’m pretty sure I either have malevolent poltergeists, or I’ve turned into a hallucinating lunatic. Or both.
I looked up, realizing an awkward silence had passed. Evelyn was looking at me expectantly, some of the humor in her expression replaced by worry.
“I stayed up really late last night, reading the next few chapters that come after the Crusades,” I lied. “I must have slept through the alarm.” Or thrown it across the room in a comatose stupor, I thought sulkily.
The concern seemed to disappear from Evelyn’s expression as she sighed, half in relief, half in giddiness.
“Wasn’t Robert’s lecture just marvelous?” she gushed. “I know he was detailing the barbaric sack of a city, but it just felt so…inspirational!”
She let herself in, untying the pale pink scarf from her head as she walked over to the couch to sit and continue fawning over the class. I hurried back to my room to change into my day clothes, half-listening as she enthused over the charming banter she and Dr. Borstein exchanged after his inspiring lecture. I grabbed some faded jeans and a turquoise t-shirt from the dresser at the foot of my bed, pulling the shirt over my head with one hand. My wrist was a lot better, but still tender, especially after frantically hauling a heavy bucket of water through the house the night before. I’d secretly considered approaching Gina about the possibility of returning to work before the end of the week, especially if I could get my bike in working order. I wouldn’t mention that to Evelyn just yet, though.
As I walked into my bathroom, Evelyn’s voice faded away. I splashed cold water on my face, quickly tore a brush through my bed-tousled hair and brushed my teeth with my left hand. I glanced in the mirror, noting the lingering scratches on my cheek, the dark circles under my eyes, and my irises, looking even more mismatched than usual. I sighed, resigning myself to my current unglamorous state, then turned away to meet Evelyn in the living room. She was standing with her back toward me, inspecting the blackened brick frame surrounding the fireplace.
“What in the world happened here?” she asked, gesturing to the scorch marks on either side of the fireplace. “I don’t remember seeing these burns here yesterday.”
I paused, half-wanting to tell her the truth, half-worrying she might have me institutionalized if I did.
“Oh, that? That’s been there a while. It’s just from when I, uh, loaded a few too many logs in there. It looks worse than it was.” She opened her mouth to reply but I quickly continued. “I don’t ever put that many logs in there at the same time anymore and I bought a fire extinguisher for emergencies.” Better not forget to pick up a fire extinguisher the next time you’re in town, I thought with a grimace.
She peered at me closely and I swallowed, immediately regretting the lie, but said nothing more on the subject.
“Come on,” she said finally, “I’ve got chocolate chip flapjack batter waiting for us.”
***
After a breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs, which I scarfed down greedily, we washed the dishes (well, she washed and I dried them with one hand), and then I spent the better part of the morning patiently showing Evelyn how to open up a browser window, log into her email account, and compose a new message. I didn’t have a computer at my own house, of course, but I spent plenty of time using the library computers for research and surfing, and thus considered myself fairly internet-savvy – at least for this basic tutorial.
“Okay,” I said tiredly, standing behind her as she sat in front of an old Macintosh desktop computer, which was perched on a small oak desk in the corner of her living room. “I wrote down your new password – ‘Constantinople’, capital C – on this sticky note. Just keep it next to your computer for safe-keeping, I don’t think you have to be too worried about any major security breaches here.” I grinned at my own joke. She wrinkled her nose.
“Okay, so, from your inbox – that’s this view with all the emails you’ve received – you have to click ‘Compose’. That button’s here, top left.”
“I don’t know why it doesn’t just open up automatically,” she muttered. The blue light from the monitor reflected on her reading glasses as she adjusted them on her nose.
“Because you might not want to write an email,” I repeated myself from earlier that morning. “You might want to read one first. Anyway, once the new email is opened, you go here, in the ‘To’ field, and type in Professor Borstein’s email address.”
She positioned her index fingers above the keyboard and hunted down the keys, one at a time. Click, click… click. I looked around her living room while she did that. The walls were painted a pale pink. There were a couple of brown velour love seats and a wicker rocking chair, all loaded with mismatched pillows of varying pastel colors. White floating shelves with lace doilies housed various tchotchkes and photos, most of her and her late husband, Donald, in their various travels. It had been a long time since his passing – eight years, she had told me. I was glad she’d found the chance to make a new companion in Professor Borstein.
“How do I make this squiggly ‘a’ symbol again?” she asked, furrowing her eyebrows at the keyboard.
“Hold down Shift – this key here – and then press the number two,” I instructed. “Not the two on your number pad, the two here, above the Q and W.”
“Why in the world would they put two characters on one button?” she lamented grumpily.
It continued like that for a couple more hours. But by late morning, she was reading and composing emails like a champion. I left her at her desk deep in concentration, hunting-and-pecking what I knew would eventually be a rich and captivating letter to her new friend, Robert.
“I’m walking home, Evelyn!” I called from the front door. “Thank you again for breakfast! I’ll ring you on the walkie-talkie if anything comes up.” No answer. I chuckled and zipped up my leather jacket. “See you Wednesday night!” I hollered. I heard an acknowledging grunt come from the corner.
Carefully shutting the door behind me as I inspected the pile of kindling by the door, I stuffed my hands in my pockets and began my three-mile walk home. The weather was crisp and beautiful, the sky a lovely robin’s egg blue. I hummed to myself, thrilled at the chance for some fresh air and exercise. As I strolled along, I did everything I could to push memories of the previous night from my mind. Instead, I thought about my motorcycle, and how I had the entire afternoon ahead of me to fix her up. I thought about work, how nice it would be to go back to the restaurant and have a bit of normalcy return. I thought about Wednesday night’s upcoming class, but I most definitely did not think of Aiden or his vexing stares.
I walked along the winding back road that led from Evelyn’s house to mine, carefree and content, imagining how, very soon, things would once again be quiet and ordinary and uneventful.
I could not have been more wrong.