The dawn comes up like wonder. Ivy is not asleep when light begins to leak through shade. Almost six. It’s raining again—not a downpour, just a steady-seeping sleep-inducing sound that doesn’t break the spell of night. Wide-eyed, she lies under Hugh’s arm, flung across her chest. His skin on hers, the whole substance of the lover’s person: she had not believed it was true. He is the person of her person.
How can he be so loving and clear of heart, when on his last legs in every other respect? She lies wondering as long as her restless brain will let her, and then slides slowly, slowly, out from under his arm and softsteps off to the slightly brighter bathroom.
Hugh wakes to the sound he hates most: water running down window-panes, down the downpipes and the downspouts, down into the damned drowned basement. He shudders up in bed, but crossing the warmth of Ivy’s side he remembers. Did she leave?
His ear sorts out sounds: shower, rain, falling light. Six-ish. Too early to get up.
Except: the basement, the rain. Coffee.
Okay. Okay. He hauls the covers back. Gets his bearings. Not bad. Turns out, evidence is, you don’t feel so bad in the morning if you slept beside Ivy. He finds pants, a clean shirt. Has she locked the bathroom door? No. Not nervous, good. “Coffee?”
“What?” (Her silhouette turns under the water, slicking her hair back to hear better.)
“Coffee?”
“Oh, please.” She sticks her head out, holding the curtain round her chin like a movie vixen. “Did I wake you up?”
“I woke from joy. And then I heard the rain.”
“This is a good shower.”
“I put that rain-head on last month. Probably brought the weather down upon us by that one foolish act.”
“It’s worth it. Coming in?”
He leans forward to kiss her shining cheek. “Coffee, and I have to check the basement, see if the walls are worse.”
Not worse, per se. But wet. All the buckets full—one spilling over, farthest from the drain. He finds a plastic scoop and ladles three cups out before moving the bucket to pour the whole thing through dirt-smeared drain holes. Old basement, old bricks and concrete, muck beneath. One day you will all be gone, you human mites, the water says, chuckling down the drain. Back to water and dirt. And what’s so bad about that?
Ivy comes down the wooden stairs, re-dressed in the same clothes.
Hugh smacks his head with the non-bucket hand. “I eloped your bag from your room last night, and then I forgot about it!”
Interested, Ivy cocks her head. “Up that ladder again? Yikes. Where did you put it?”
Hugh blanks. Just … blanks.
“Did you leave it in the van?”
“No, I was on foot—I— Shit.”
“Was it the big one or the little one?”
“Were there two? It wasn’t very big.”
“Oh good, then just the little one. Nothing much in there I need.”
He can see her flipping through the contents in her mind, and says, “No, no, it’s here somewhere. I put it— Oh! I left it, because you had my keys—it’s on the back porch, under the seat. I hope it isn’t wet.”
“No matter if it is, it’s just shampoo and socks. Nothing I need.”
By the single inadequate basement bulb he looks at her face, a beacon in a damp dead world. “You are the easiest person to love,” he says. She blushes, blushes; she puts up her hands to cover her face. “But you could help with the buckets here.” A task, to cover her confusion.
They’re all empty when the phone begins to ring. Hugh takes the stairs three at a time, unable not to think Mimi. He doesn’t really think she’s dead—he dekes to hit the button on the coffee machine as he goes by, so he must not think it.
It’s Dave on the line, Ruth’s tame repairman, at Ivy’s apartment and already working at seven. Dave talks so loud that Ivy hears it all, even before Hugh hits the speakerphone. The floor is salvageable; her worried look lightens. The ceiling in the apartment below, not as bad as it looked: say, three-fifty for the ceiling, about six hundred for the kitchen floor and dishwasher repair.
“No need for a new dishwasher,” Dave announces to the general air. “That was human error. Maybe work on that kid rinsing his dishes? That’s a good stainless dishwasher—don’t let her get a new one, you’ll just be buying trouble.”
Hugh gestures to Ivy to take part, but she shakes her head. “I’ll tell her. That’s all good. And what about my basement?”
“Buddy, that’s a bigger job. We’re going to have to dig a trench all the way around your store. That’s the only way to do it.”
“Jasper’s side too?”
“Afraid so. Dig down, put in the weepers, seal her all up again, gravel, dirt, pack, you name it. It’s not, like, fifty grand, but it’s going to set you back.”
“I can just imagine.”
“And you need better windows in the basement, now’d be the time to do that.”
Ivy is looking bleached. When the coffee machine begins its self-cleaning cycle, she goes into the framing room to catch the water, missing the rest of the back-and-forth about when, how long, etc. Not soon enough, too long, is the short answer. But Dave says he’ll start on Monday. “Ruth says I got to.”
“Whatever she says goes,” Hugh says, acknowledging the iron contract of obligation, fondness, and loathing so many people have with Ruth. Especially now she’s old.
Empty cup in hand, Ivy is staring at the machine, perplexed.
“It’s complicated,” Hugh says, instead of thinking about forty thousand plus the windows. “Watch and learn.”
Slanted half-conscious in his gaming chair, coming or going from sleep, Orion still feels some bad thing looming. That childish feeling: I am in so much trouble.
Oh. Right. Right, he is. And no text.
No text.
What is important, anyway? To work. Not to antagonize fucking Burton. The play is the most important—but what play are they actually doing, after all?
So did he buy that leaves thing?
What is jealousy? Same as it means to say polyamory but not mean it.
Don’t dare to text now.
Fucking fucking fucking shit.
Well fuck school, anyway.
No text.
Orion gropes for the keyboard, checks email—checks Facebook. Nothing to quell his sick uneasiness. Somebody (Nevaeh, of course, Queen of Darkness that she is) posted a Tumblr of famous photos, and Orion clicks through to it.
Disasters, cruelty, poverty, war. Guys getting shot right in the photo, bleeding out on slanted streets so the blood runs downhill. Climbers, fighters. Stuff he should be doing with his life instead of all this art shit.
Photo after photo. Tears come without bidding. The monk in the bus station, oh man, bending over the dead guy to bless him. Orion cries and clicks through all the hundred shots, like fucking God watching how fucked up we are in The Fifth Element or some fucking thing, unable not to look, unable to shut it down, compelled to see what shits we fuckers are.