“You saw a pod of killer whales?” Jerry was astounded. “While you were just walking down the beach?”
“Yeah. We were collecting shells.” She carefully placed the Blake book down on the coffee table.
Rolf nodded and took a sip of his beer. “I see them all the time, man. Orcas, greys…”
“Grey whales?! Where can—?” A headache bumped into him, interrupting him. He put a hand to his temple, massaging.
Rolf leaned in. “Jerry?”
“Just a bit of a headache.” It drilled a hole in his skull. His two-drink limit was down to zero for the rest of the holidays, he decided. He closed his eyes for a second. He felt Lee-Anne’s hands on his shoulders, rubbing slowly, sensuously, and opened his eyes abruptly. She leaned closer and her breasts caressed the back of his head. His eyes went wide with shock.
“Here, Jerry. This’ll get rid of your headache, hon.”
“Uh…” He was stumped. He had to stop her, but maybe this was what happened at parties on the West Coast. He tried to pull away, even though the rub actually seemed to be helping his headache. Not only was she married, but Jerry was pretty sure her husband, Tom, was still somewhere in the loft.
Manny saw Jerry’s discomfort and came to his rescue, quietly. “Down, Lee-Anne. Good girl. Sit. It’s late and you’re massaging under the influence again.”
Lee-Anne ignored her boss’s boss and kept rubbing, forcing Jerry to lean forward to escape her reach. But, even tipsy, she was faster than he was and pulled him right back again. The rest of the group was starting to notice and, as Jerry feared, they were curious how he’d respond. Lee-Anne’s husband decided for him.
“Lee-Anne!”
Mika chuckled. “Lee-Anne, I think your husband is calling.”
“Let him take a number—I only have one set of hands.” She held her hands up to show them and Jerry lurched up and out of reach.
He stood up too quickly and the headrush made him wobble a bit, with the headache slamming back in. One hand returned to his temple, feebly trying to squeeze the pain out. The headrush passed in a flash and he was able to ignore the headache for a moment.
“Yes, you do, Lee-Anne, and I think Tom is holding a coat up for them.” Jerry gestured towards a slouched, push-over of a man standing by the front door with a long, supple, red leather coat in his outstretched hands. Tom stepped over with Lee-Anne’s coat and shot Jerry a hard look as if Jerry had been the one to start the flirtatious interchange.
He kept his voice low and Jerry could hear that he was pissed off, but Jerry could also tell that this was probably not the first time Tom had had to stop Lee-Anne from rubbing the wrong shoulders. “Time to go, Honey. The sitter has to be home by 11:30.”
Manny stepped up and gently steered Lee-Anne towards Tom. “That’s a good cue for the rest of us, too. Jerr… great party, lad. Sleep that headache away, and we’ll see you when we get back from the mainland in a couple days.”
Jerry smiled through the headache, forcing it back by sheer will. “Thanks for coming out, everyone. Those of you who have time off, enjoy it. Those of you holding down the fort, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The guests all wished each other Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanza, and even Happy Festivus-for-the-rest-of-us, and thanked Jerry for the party, amidst hugs, cheek kisses, and gathering up of coats and sweaters.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Jerry was alone, having scooted Manny and Carmella out the door when they offered to help him clean up. “You’ve already done enough. Please, go home, have a Christmas Eve nightcap and get some sleep.” Their hugs and warm farewells made Jerry feel like he had family for holidays for the first time in too many years. He smiled to no one in particular, and then, as he passed the picture of Isis, he kissed two fingertips and placed them on the forehead of her image. “You’d like these people, Munchkin. I’m in good hands.”
Chapter Seven
@TheTaoOfJerr: “Love is friendship set to music.”
JERRY LOOKED AROUND at the cluttered loft and realized that Carmella must have been picking up all along because there were only the glasses and coffee cups each of his guests had been using when the party broke up. Dean Martin continued on in the background, a bit louder to Jerry’s ears now that the place was empty of conversation. As he went around picking up the dirty glasses and coffee cups, he sang along with Dino’s smooth version of “White Christmas”.
The headache had receded briefly, but when Jerry picked up a long-stemmed wine glass on the coffee table next to the book of Blake’s poetry, the pain slammed back in like a boxer’s fist. He spasmed and fell to his knees, the wine glass stem snapping in his hand and slicing open his palm when he reached for the support of the table.
“Son of a… ! Shit!” The rolling wave of pain receded enough so that he could see again, but was still intense enough to keep him down on his knees. He slowly and deliberately placed the wine glass remnants on the table as the pain of the cut intruded on the misery of the headache. When he opened his hand to let go of the glass, blood flowed freely, dripping onto the tabletop. Sighting a stack of paper cocktail napkins, he grabbed at them, needing to staunch the bleeding, but unable to keep a few drops from landing on the book of poetry. He jammed the entire stack of poinsettia-decorated napkins into his damaged palm and dragged himself to his feet, aiming for the kitchen and the stainless steel countertop.
IN SPITE OF the pain, Jerry moved fast and didn’t notice that the blood, which dropped onto the book, was absorbed quickly into the dark, century-old stain already there. As he stood over the sink, peeling back the crimson-soaked paper napkin, he missed the blue glow that pulsed from the combined stain. In the bright light over the sink, he was too busy washing what had turned out to be a shallow cut and resisting the urge to slam his bloody hands to his forehead to compress the pain of the raging headache to notice when the blue glow enveloped the book, flowed up and out from the stain, and expanded in the air above the coffee table.
SOMETHING WAS VERY different. What had previously been a weak, almost casual force inviting her out of the darkness and into her dreams, was now a powerful, insistent, welcoming pull she simply could not resist. It was such a wonderful feeling she didn’t want to resist. She flowed and ebbed and finally remembered her own shape after so long without anything but pure thought and emotion. This was like no dream she had experienced before. Life flowed into her and a deep memory of her self caught at her heart. She thought of a photo of herself, one she took facing the big mirror in her bedroom at the Winter Palace, but it was an old photo, when she was just a child. She then remembered one of her and her sisters, much more recent, all standing tall and smiling. She felt herself slip into that shape, so familiar.
ONCE HE WAS sure there was no glass in his palm and it was thoroughly washed, Jerry grabbed a fresh, clean dishcloth from the drawer with his free hand and jammed it onto the cut. Gripping it with as tight a fist as he could manage, he went in search of painkillers and the first aid kit in the bathroom. He rummaged around in the medicine cabinet, oblivious to anything but the pain and the blood. He found the ibuprofen, fought with the child-proof cap, got it open, dumped a handful of capsules into his shaking palm, tossed four of them back and dropped the rest back into the bottle. He stuck his face under the tap and gulped hard to get enough water to wash the pills down. While he was hunched over the sink, he splashed cold water on his face with his good hand. After a moment or two he stood up, dried his hand on the towel and, from the first aid kit on the counter next to the sink, took out a tube of antibiotic cream and squeezed a small amount into the cut. He slapped a large adhesive bandage over it all and returned to the living room where he could sit in comfort and let the painkillers do their job.