Chapter 4 (or whatever)
“Oh Hell, no!” Was the first thing I heard as Eve preceded me into Cain’s apartment. She whirled on her heel and ran smack into my chest as she made for a hasty exit. “I am NOT going to be in the same room as that self-righteous son of a bitch, and that’s all there is to it. I don’t know what kind of shit you think you were gonna pull, Adam, but I will have nothing to do with that angelic motherfucker. Period.” She continued to try to push past me as her diatribe bounced off the walls, and finally I bent at the knees, put my shoulder into her gut, and carried her into the apartment like a bag of dog food. A kicking, cursing, spitting bag of dog food. I deposited her in an armchair across the room from Michael, and stood between the two of them.
Eve quickly sprung up out of the chair, and I just as quickly pushed her back into it. “Sit.” I ordered, and when she looked around and took stock the situation, she stayed where I had put her.
“Michael, maybe this would be a good time for you to take a walk.” I suggested.
“Yeah, like off a levee.” Eve spat.
“Behave. Now, like I was saying, this might go more smoothly if we just ease into things and bring you in at the end. Whattaya say?” I smiled at Michael in my best let’s all be buddies smile, and was honestly amazed when he looked at me and smirked a little.
“No. I think I’ll just sit here and watch the show.” He said, crossing his legs at knee and settling back into the sofa.
“What?” Once again with my eloquence.
“I don’t get to observe honest human interactions that often, and this promises to be quite enlightening. I’ll stay.” He leaned back and sipped from a glass of ice water on a side table.
“You’re a dick, Michael. Did I ever mention that?” I said as I turned back to Eve and tried to gather my thoughts.
“Now, Eve. I’d like for you to just hear me out before you react, and especially before you do anything rash or particularly hard on the furnishings.”
“Thanks, Pop. Some of this stuff is hard to replace.” Cain said as he threw a couple of extra deadbolts.
“Alright. I’ll listen. But before we get going, can I ask a couple of questions? And I’d really like a beer.” Eve said sulkily. Cain went to the fridge, a nice vintage number with magnets on the front from hundreds of different cities all around the world. I guess a body needs some way to track the travels.
“Sure, Eve. What would you like to know?” I said, sitting on the bench in front of the upright piano Cain had along one wall. I kept a position near the door in case Eve decided to bolt, and between Michael and Cain, they had the French doors out to the balcony covered.
“First, who’s the kid?” she started as she cracked open a Blackened Voodoo on the edge of an end table that had obviously seen such use on more than one occasion.
“My name is Emily, it’s nice to meet you.” Em held out her hand and crossed to her, but Eve just stared past her at me.
“Who. Is. The. Kid?” she repeated levelly.
“Emily is my youngest daughter. But I’m pretty sure you knew that already.” I answered, looking Eve straight in the eyes. I figured this would come up, and we might as well get it out of the way.
“Well, it’s so good to see that I’m remembered. No offense, Emily, I’m sure you’re as nice a person as you could be, given your parentage.” She shook Em’s hand and the shaken girl returned to sit next to her mother on a love seat.
“I never forgot you, no matter how hard you tried to make me.” I said.
“But you didn’t hesitate to knock up a floozy in every town where you spent more than fifteen minutes, did you? Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t your sole responsibility to propagate the species?” She was starting to get nasty, and I knew that the venom would really start to flow in a few minutes, so I made an effort to abate as much bloodshed as possible.
“Emily, would you and your mother please excuse us for a few minutes? Eve, Cain and I have some things that we need to discuss, and you might not want to be around to hear them.” I knew the second the words left my mouth that I had made a tactical error, not my first of the evening.
“So this is the latest floozy? And what is your name, dear?” Eve turned her attention to Myra, and all my senses went on red alert.
“I’m Myra. And while I might be the latest, I think the one in the sequined thong might think twice before she calls anyone a floozy.” Myra crossed the room to Eve and extended her hand. Eve stood to take it, and looked Myra up and down slowly as the two women evaluated each other like prizefighters at a weigh-in.
I looked over at Cain, who shrugged as if to say, “I didn’t sleep with either of them, what do you want me to do?”
“Touché. I like this one, Adam. She’s got claws of her own.” Eve smiled at me and I suddenly thought I knew what that canary felt like when it caught sight of the cat a second too late.
“And I’m not afraid to use them, sweetie. Now you might have had him first, but I had him last. And if you want to exercise some prior claim, we might need to step outside and have a little discussion.” Myra looked Eve right in the eye and didn’t flinch. I’d never had two women fight over me before, and thought that might be interesting, if hard on the décor.
Eve looked Myra up and down once more and let out a long laugh before pulling her into a big sisterly hug. “Prior claim? Good Father, honey, I’ve been done with that one since before your ancestors crossed the friggin’ land bridge! He’s all yours, although why you want him is beyond me!” All my thoughts of the two of them in a wading pool full of pudding vanished with Eve’s laugh, but on the bright side, no one was likely to get kicked in the head while she was amused.
“Well. I’m glad we got that situated.” Myra said, looking a little confused as she sat back down next to Emily.
“You said a couple of questions, Mom. What was the other one?” Cain interjected before the evening could get any more surreal.
“You. How is it that the two of you are in the same room and no one is bleeding from every orifice?” She asked, looking from Cain to me and back again.
“We talked. A lot. Then we got drunk together. Then I think we might have gotten in a bar fight, or played pool, I can’t remember which. Then we drank some more. By the time we got sober, we were alright again.” I said. She looked at me for a long moment, realized that it was just stupid enough to be true, and took another long pull off her beer.
“I bet I’m gonna need another one of these before you get started on the rest of it.” She said to Cain, who went to the fridge for another round, and brought out a bottle of tequila and a couple of limes to go with it.
“Alright, spill.” She said after we all did a shot and tossed our limes over the balcony rail. Well, all of us except Michael, of course, who had another glass of wine. Prig.
“So I was playing blackjack in Las Vegas when all of a sudden…” I started, and recounted the whole deal to Eve, from my hauling ass out of Vegas to meeting Myra again, to punching Michael in the nose, to Cain and I trying to kill each other, to Emily calling us on our shit, to getting to New Orleans. There were a few moments where I was pretty sure she was going to try to kill Michael, and at least one or two real tears throughout the story, but we got through it without any broken furniture or bloodshed, which told me I was getting better at this sort of thing. The sun was coming up when I finished our little tale, and Eve looked up at me with eyes that had seen centuries of sunrises and said to me “Now what?”
“What do you mean, now what?” I asked. I was a little confused from the booze, the late (or early) hour, and the kick to the head.
“Now what do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I want you to go with us to find this guy, whoever he is, and be there when the Choice is made.” I was a little puzzled by her question, frankly.
“No.”
“Huh?”
“No. I’m not going. It was great to see you again. Well, not really, but that’s what we’re supposed to say when we see someone we don’t like to see because they dredge up too many bad memories, so I’ll go ahead and succumb to the social mores that I live nearest.” She said as she picked up her bag and headed towards the door.
“Wait a minute. You can’t just leave!” I grabbed her arm as she passed me and she whirled on me.
“Oh yes I can. Remember, I’m the fucking poster child for free will. I’m the one who made the last big Choice, and I’m not going to pass that torch to some poor schlub who has no idea what it’s all about. I can live with what I’ve done. Father knows I’ve had plenty of practice, but I’m not going to put that on anyone else. And if you think, after all these years, that I’m going to go dancing to the tune of some hoity-toity angel again, maybe you never knew me after all.” With that, she tore her arm loose from my grasp and headed out the door with the morning sun making a golden silhouette of her hair.
I watched her go, again, and felt the same sense of loss that I had all those years ago when she looked me straight in the face and told me she never wanted to see me again. She walked out in a blaze of golden hair and sunlight then, too. Eve always knew how to make an exit. I leaned on the doorframe as she walked down the stairs, and I felt a hand in mine. I looked back at Emily as she pulled me into the apartment.
“It’ll be okay, Dad. She’ll be back.” She soothed.
“I don’t think so. You don’t know her like I do.”
“I know more than you think. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen the last of Eve.” I just patted her on the cheek, kissed the top of her head, and went back to Cain’s guest room where Myra lay curled up in a sheet. I closed the door, turned on the ceiling fan, stripped down to my boxers, and lay down beside her for a few hours sleep. She grabbed my hand as I draped an arm over her side, pulled it into both of her hands, and wrapped herself around my arm. I smiled a little as I drifted off to sleep.
The latest floozy?
I love it!