He texts. “What are you doing weekends?”
“That’s your business how?” she answers, maybe an hour later. Then almost immediately. “JK.”
“?”
“Just kidding.”
“I was thinking.”
“Must be so proud!”
He smiles. “Rude and I are going 24/7. Alisha can’t keep up.”
His phone rings. She sounds out of breath. “You want me to work weekends?”
He can’t answer for a moment. “Only if—” he starts, but she says, “I can make it over Friday after school. Just one party I’ll have to miss.”
He has no idea if she’s serious, but she dashes on, asking about Midge, about Alisha, if he’s letting her do her work, and it seems she’s practically still talking when she blows through his door Friday night, huffing and puffing as if she’s run over the mountains. “Schmidge!” she crows, dropping to her knees, bracing for the collision, their reunion something that should take place on Russian steppes.
Taz can only stand and stare.
“Oh,” Elmo says, looking over to him only after Midge struggles away, runs off to her room. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Right,” Taz says, and turns for the kitchen, the back door, the shop.
“JK,” she says.
He turns back, not quite hiding a smile. “Really,” he says, “you’re right. More work out there than I can keep straight.”
“Can I see?”
“Not quite at install yet, but maybe next weekend they’ll have the library ready for it. It got so crowded half of it’s stashed at Rude’s, all the glass doors.”
She stands up. “Next weekend, too? Tazmo and Rude?”
Midge trots back in with her stuffed Elmo, considerably bedraggled since Christmas. Sometimes Taz talks to her with it. As Marnie. She brings it to him, but Elmo intercepts her. Wriggling her hand into the pocket at the back of the head, she works the jaw. “What do you think, Midge. Can you take two weekends in a row? Think your dad can?”
“I think we’ll bear up,” Taz says, and she waves him away.
“Girl time here.”
He watches a moment more, the two of them, and goes out, back into the grind. He barely sees her again for the rest of the weekend, just stands by her car as she climbs in for the ride back to Helena. She says, “Thanks, I missed me some Midge,” and he says, “Next weekend?” and she says, “Give a shout near the end of the week. Let me know where you are.” Then she backs up, Midge waving fiercely, Elmo rolling her window down to blow her a kiss.
She does come back the next weekend too, but there are no installs yet, the flooring guys holding everybody up. She seems disappointed, and Taz walks her through the shop, shows her what he can, and she asks about maybe taking a break. “You know, before you break down yourself,” she says, and he says, “I’d love it, but . . .”
“Like, even a walk. Though it’s maybe warm enough for one more swim before the season’s over.”
He pictures it instantly, nearly shakes with it. “I’m just too jammed—”
She turns and walks away, taking Midge back in, and, later, when he comes in for coffee, she’s gone with her somewhere, again when he comes in for lunch.
She knocks at the shop door that evening, tells him dinner is ready. He can hardly stand. Another cabinet set nearly done. He asks, “Midge?”
“It’s almost eight,” she says. “She ate an hour ago. So did I.”
“Could have told me,” he says, starting to smile.
But she says, “I did,” and turns back for the house.
Midge is in the Jump-Up. Hardly notices he’s back. There’s a meal. A bowl of something. On the table. Stew, maybe.
He looks around, Elmo in the swivel chair. “I’m heading back over tonight,” she says.
“Tonight?”
She looks away. Chews on her lip.
“But—” he starts.
She looks back to him, holds him in her gaze for a moment or two, waves him toward the bathroom. “Go wash your hands.”
He does what he’s told, forgetting there’s no sink in the bathroom, and when he opens the door he’s greeted with a wave of steam. He steps back, then in. The tub is full, the air fogged. “Bubbles?” he says.
“We went shopping,” she calls from the living room.
“I’ll just be a second,” he says.
“It’s for you.”
“The tub?”
“Even the bubbles.”
He closes the door. Looks at the twist latch. Every flake of paint picked off. Dentist tools. Stripper. Steel wool. The brass knob burnished with the oil of her skin.
He leaves his clothes in a pile in the corner. Winces when he steps in. She must have just kept draining, adding more hot. Waiting. Keeping it ready.
He closes his eyes. Fights the initial sting. Feels sweat pop along his forehead. Hears the bubbles’ tiny burstings. It’s like sliding into a new skin. He breathes. Blurs at the edges. Marnie says, We so should have finished this bathroom.
The door creaks. Elmo’s face in the gap.
“See what it’s like,” she says. “Taking a break?”
She steps in, a bowl in her hand. She leans back against the studs, watches him. His knees naked above the water. “If you’d locked yourself in here, too,” she says, but leaves it at that.
“Are you going to feed me now, too?” It’s the only thing he can think to say.
“If that’s what it takes to get you to stop hiding from everything.”
Taz looks down at the bubbles.
“I thought they’d make it easier for you. You know?” She sighs. “They never look like they do in the movies.”
“What can you do?” he says, lifting his hands in surrender, finding the bubbles cupped there. He spreads them over his chin, up his cheeks. A beard he hasn’t made since he was five. Six.
She shakes her head. “Nice,” she says. Then, “I’m not doing anymore weekends over here.”
“School?”
“No.”
He sits there with his bubble beard.
“I think you need some time,” she says.
“I know. A lot more.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“El.”
“Time for you to decide where you want to go.”
“Go?”
“Forward. Backward.” She shrugs. “Past? Present? Hell, future?”
She stares at him so long he has to turn to her. Is startled senseless by her tears.
She swipes at them. As if caught. “I can’t stand watching you creep out to your shop anymore.”
Taz wipes off the beard. First one side. The other. Like shaving.
“For christ’s sake.” She drops to her knees beside the tub. “Lean forward,” she says.
He sits up. “El.”
She pushes him forward. Starts rubbing his shoulders. Fingers digging deep. His muscles a knotted mess. “Do you even know what you’re doing to yourself? I mean, how long would you have stayed out there? What are you going to build? An ark?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to come back,” she says. “Wherever you are, you’ve got to leave it behind.” One hand leaves his shoulders. An emptiness. The other goes still as she swipes again at her face. “And I was even thinking maybe I should get in there with you,” she says. “My great big, stupid plan. Like some, I don’t know, human sacrifice. Like you and me screwing everything up would solve anything. Bring you back from the dead. Jesus, I should have brought candles. Drawn pentagrams.”
“El, it’s going to—”
“You just shut up. Please. I don’t want to hear one word from you.”
She starts again, both hands, but then gives him a shove. Gets up quick. “God. I have to go. I won’t get there till dark thirty as it is.”
“You can go in the morning,” he says.
“What, at four? Great plan.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“So we all three die flying off some cliff?” She picks the bowl off the chair. “I can’t even believe I’m in here. I mean, you’re in the bathtub. I’m the babysitter. Is it catching? What you’ve got?”
“We can—”
She shoves the bowl at him. “Here. Just eat your chili.”
“Chili?” he says.
“You got it. All No Biggie.”
She leaves the door open. The draft sweeping in when she opens the front door.
Marn, all awe, but sounding hurt somehow, sad, says, You made your Muppet cry.
He shivers. Listens to Midge, still bouncing, telling some sort of story. To nobody.