Harold joined her about an hour later, but not before he and Rich dragooned me into his office to smoke a vile cigar. Even a glass of whiskey from a dusty old bottle wasn’t enough to make it taste better.
Rich and I kept drinking after Harold called it a night, and I finally staggered to bed well after midnight. Then, of course, Rich woke me before six.
“Hit the deck. Time for PT,” he said, disgustingly chipper.
I muttered a curse, and he chuckled with sublime indifference.
“I mean it,” I moaned. “Leave me alone.” A Viking raiding party had just marched up to the city gates in my head, and my mouth tasted worse than their boots. “Jus’ let me die. Tell Christy I love her.”
“Come on,” Rich said in a normal tone, “you need to get up. Fifteen minutes. Or I’m leaving without you.”
He didn’t leave without me, the son of a bitch.
“Shouldn’t say that,” I muttered aloud. “I like your mom.”
“What’re you talking about? Never mind. Here, drink this. And take these.” He hauled me upright, held a glass to my lips, and then forced me to swallow four Tylenol. “Now, get your ass up. We’re going for a run.” He looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes. I mean it this time.”
“Fuck off.”
He chuckled. Again. And then he returned, fifteen minutes later.
“Thought I tol’ you t’ fuck off,” I mumbled into the pillow. It was wet with drool. I didn’t care. Neither did the Vikings. They were too busy hammering away at the city gates.
“Get up,” Rich said. “You don’t wanna fly with a hangover. It makes it worse. We’re going for a run. Is that clear?”
“I don’ like you very much.”
He barked a laugh and then said mildly, “I’m sorry to hear that. But… who’re you trying to convince, me or you?”
Even the Vikings heard the irony. They roared with laughter.
“Sons’a bitches,” I muttered. “I can say it to them.”
Rich ignored me and hauled me upright. “Come on. Can you get dressed on your own? Or do you need me to help?”
“I can do it. An’ why do you care, anyway?”
“Because Mom’d kill me if you miss your flight. Besides, I feel responsible. I know you don’t have my metabolism. Now, get your ass in gear.”
I resigned myself to my fate. Then I found my running shorts, although I turned them several times as I tried to find the right hole. Rich left me alone to finish getting dressed, and I eventually stumbled into the hall.
“’Bout time,” he said. “Let’s go.”
We stretched outside and then ran to the end of the oceanside park, where I finally lost it. I threw up in the parking lot and dry-heaved until my stomach was empty. Then I tried to wash away the taste of vomit, bile, and stale cigar at a nearby water fountain.
“Not too much,” Rich warned.
“Yeah, I know.” I rinsed and spat, although it didn’t help.
“Better?”
“No,” I said resentfully.
He chuckled. “The only easy day was yesterday.”
“Hooyah.”
“I suppose you earned that,” he said. “But don’t push it.” He checked his pulse and then pressed buttons on his watch. “Come on, creampuff, you can do it. Let’s go.”
The raiding party in my head had finally broken through the gates. Now they were simply chanting, “Tyr! Tyr! Tyr!” I could live with that.
We ran another three miles, and I felt almost miserable by the time we finished. That was a vast improvement from before. I didn’t think I’d feel human again until December. At least the Vikings had settled to a dull party, with only an occasional victory cheer.
Back at the house, Anne fed me toast and orange juice. Harold commiserated over toast and coffee. He had a higher tolerance and had quit earlier, but he wasn’t feeling his best either. We both watched with a mixture of envy and nausea as the other two ate a full breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast, fruit, and muffins.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” he said.
“You can say that again.”
“Get used to it,” Rich said cheerfully.
“Be nice, dear,” his mother said.
“That was nice. This melon is delicious. Is there any more?”
* * *
We left for the airport an hour later. I carried the ring box in my front pocket and kept patting it to make sure I hadn’t lost it.
When we arrived at the gate, the flight to Atlanta was so empty that the agent had already moved me from standby to the manifest. She even said I could board with the regular passengers.
Rich and Harold said goodbye and shook my hand. Anne gave me a long hug.
“Be good to her,” she whispered. It was her usual farewell, made extra special by the ring and her unwavering support.
I boarded the plane and found that I had a row of seats to myself. After takeoff I raised the armrests and stretched out. One of the flight attendants covered me with a blanket. I was a rumpled, hungover, miserable representative of the company, but no one called me on it.
Unfortunately, I had to sit up and buckle my seatbelt for landing. My sinuses were parched, my mouth was a desert, and even my eyeballs felt gritty. Worse, the Vikings had returned. They thought my temples would make good battering ram practice. Wait, did the Vikings even use battering rams? The ones in my head did. Repeatedly. Damn them.
I found a water fountain in the terminal and drank as much as I could stand. I began to feel better almost immediately, but I needed food as well. I’d slept through the meal on the plane, so I stopped at one of the restaurants in the main terminal.
The waitress was a world-weary Florence Nightingale with henna hair and kind eyes, and she’d probably seen more than her fair share of hungover travelers. She brought me an egg salad sandwich, plain potato chips, and a Coke. I left her a generous tip and trudged out to my car.
I hadn’t gone twenty miles before the Land Cruiser’s air conditioner succumbed to the July heat. It was a blessing in disguise, since I was still wearing my dress shirt and khakis. I’d taken off my jacket and tie, but I didn’t look like I’d spent a couple of days working on the house.
I stopped at a gas station and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. Then I hid the ring box in the bottom of my backpack. I set it on the seat beside me and drove the rest of the way with one hand on the wheel and the other on the pack, in case I hit a bump and it flew out the window or something.
I arrived at the Retreat about an hour after sundown. My hangover had faded to a dull memory, and I was mostly tired from a long day. I was hot and dusty too, and my clothes stank of exhaust fumes. I’d driven two hundred miles with the windows open, after all.
Christy and the others were sitting at one of the tables on the patio. They’d spent the weekend clearing the quarry access road—the original plan for how to keep Christy from accompanying me—and they looked as tired as I felt. They were a lot cleaner, though, and Christy looked beautiful, even with no makeup and her hair tied up.
Just the sight of her made me forget my troubles. Then I thought of the ring in my backpack and wanted to shout for joy. Unfortunately, I had to pretend I’d spent the whole weekend working on the sewer.
“Welcome back,” Trip said.
“Thanks. It’s good to be back.”
“Did you save the house?” Christy asked. “From the river of you-know-what?”
“Yeah. The de— um… decrapifier—”
“The decrapulator?” she corrected, and Trip had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. I couldn’t even glare at him.
“Yeah, I… um… had to install a new one,” I lied awkwardly. “The Decrapifier 2000. It replaced the sewer float and… the other thing. It wasn’t made for a pipe like ours, though, so I had to use Trip’s record collection to hold it up. I hope you don’t mind, buddy.”
He knew I was lying and didn’t bat an eye, damn him.
“Not at all,” he said. “As long as you, ahem, got the approval you needed.” He didn’t actually wink, but he might as well have. He was having fun at my expense, and Wren wasn’t any better. She pursed her lips with smug amusement.