Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,58
Barn rocking chairs, I had a hard time remembering that monsters were real, and that one of them had nearly killed me just a hundred yards from where I was.
“Please come inside,” I said.
“I should get home.”
“Please, Dag. Richard’s gone, and I don’t want to be alone, and I feel awful for lying to you, and I’m sick about Ray and Mason and Tamika and David.” I blew out a breath. “I’m trying really hard not to, you know, throw a fit like I normally would, so I’m just going to tell you I really want to fuck myself up, and it would mean a lot to me if you would overlook all the shitty things I’ve done to you and hang out until Richard gets home.”
“Ok,” he said. He turned off the car, but he didn’t reach for the door. “One condition.”
“I will apologize on my hands and knees.”
“Nope. Let’s hear one thing that you like about Eli.”
“I go by Elien now.”
“I know,” he said. “But your name is Eli.”
“What if there’s nothing I like about Eli?”
“I guess I’m going home.”
“Can I have a few minutes?”
“Sure.”
“Can we go inside?”
“Is that a trick?”
“No tricks,” I said, my mouth dry. “Can we please go inside?”
Dag nodded. His eyes were very brown and very soft.
He carried the laptop; I took the banker’s box. I let us in through the front door, and we set up a workstation in the breakfast nook.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Pretty much always.”
“You’re missing your mom’s bacon cheese knots for this,” I said. “I can’t compete with that. She’s going to kill me after she worked so hard on dinner.”
“Honestly? I think they’re just happy I’m out of the house.”
I opened the refrigerator and took out a chicken, a lemon, and a bundle of herbs. Then I grabbed potatoes and onions from the pantry. “One thing I like about Eli,” I said, and I knew I was barely loud enough to be heard over the clatter I was making with the food, “is that he is a pretty good cook. Or he was, anyway, before he got so weird about food.”
Dag leaned against the counter; he was breathing normally, but for some reason, it sounded like the only noise in the universe. I imagined I could feel each breath ghosting over my skin. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Go ahead and sit down,” I said. “Do you want a drink? This’ll take about an hour.”
“A drink sounds nice.”
“Bar’s over there.”
“What do you want?”
“God, I don’t know. Those rum and Cokes nearly destroyed me.”
For a while, Dag was at the bar. He examined the bottles and said, “You’ve got good taste.”
“Richard does. I couldn’t drink while I was still on my meds.”
Dag hesitated, his hand stopping in the middle of reaching for a bottle of Bywater.
“I guess I shouldn’t have said that,” I said.
“Are you supposed to be off your medicine?”
“No,” I said, stripping the packaging from the chicken. “But I was sick of feeling dead all the time. This is better.”
“Eli—”
“Please don’t make this a thing tonight.” I got a knife and began halving the lemon and onions. “I’ve got enough people in my life taking care of me, and I’m so fucking sick of it I could scream.”
When Dag came back, he had a tumbler of Bywater; I could smell the bourbon. He slid past me to the fridge, and bottles clinked. He set a glass next to me.
“Vodka tonic,” he said.
“That’s so civilized.”
“Why don’t we see how one goes?”
“That’s very smart.”
He sipped his bourbon.
I brought the knife down hard through another onion. “Sometimes I get fucking sick of doing things the smart way.”
“That kind of stuff, you’ve got to cut it out if I’m going to stay.”
“Ok,” I said, bringing the knife down hard again. “Ok.”
He took a seat at the breakfast table, opened the box, and began sorting the papers. “He kept everything,” Dag said. “Electric bills, water bills, rent payments for the lot in the mobile home community. Medical. DuPage Behavioral. Have you heard of them?”
“Once or twice,” I said. “That’s Richard’s practice.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s not his exclusively. Him, Zahra, Rodney, Joe, Irene, Muriel. Um, they have some regular nurses, too, I mean, not NPs like Muriel. And they’ve got administrative assistants, people who handle the appointments, the billing. But the five doctors and Muriel.”
“That seems lopsided. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to have one doctor and several nurse practitioners?”
“Cheaper? Definitely?” I stripped rosemary; the bruised needles left their