Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,42

and snuck out of the apartment as quickly as possible; long goodbyes only made Marie more unhappy. With a final apology to Callie, who was picking up the wet clothes on the floor with the very tips of her painted fingernails, Laura ran down the stairs, filled with the feeling of having forgotten something vital. She had her keys, wallet, phone, and guitar, though; the feeling that nagged at her was the absence of Marie’s soft weight against her chest. For the first block of her sprint northward she fought back a dumb lump of tears that threatened to emerge from her throat, but soon she began to feel light and even a little bit free. It was extremely rare for her to be without Marie, and even though it was strange and sad, she couldn’t help but also feel that it was nice, for a moment, to be out in the world alone.

The first of the afternoon’s classes passed without incident and with a decent number of babies enrolled, and Laura decided to treat herself by going to the diner across the street to get a cup of soup to go. She even had a small break to eat it, about ten minutes. She thought about calling Callie to check in but decided that fewer distractions were probably better.

But as she opened the lid of the paper container full of soup and the warm, brothy smell rose to her nostrils, Laura was assailed by a wave of nausea. “Fuuuuuck,” she murmured aloud, and the toy store clerk, seated at the register a few feet away from the bench where Laura was crouching, gave her a schoolmarmish “There are children present” look, even though currently there were none. Laura sat very still, willing the feeling to subside, but there was no getting around it: she had been puked on, and she would not escape unscathed.

“I have to cancel the rest of the day’s classes,” she told the officious toy store lady. “I’m feeling sick, and I shouldn’t be around the babies.”

“I understand, Laura, but we really need someone reliable teaching these classes,” said the lady, who was quickly becoming Laura’s mortal enemy. “If you can’t teach, you know that it’s your responsibility to find a sub.”

“Of course. I’ll give it a shot. I’m just going to use the restroom first,” said Laura, hustling the words out as quickly as possible with the certain, doomy foreknowledge that there was vomit hot on their heels.

In the brief, illusory period of feeling shaky but okay that followed immediately after she’d emptied her stomach into the receptacle labeled “Tiddle-Tidy the big-kid potty,” Laura called Johannes, the only other children’s musician whose number was in her phone. Once she’d managed to ascertain that her afternoon classes would be covered, she pressed her hot forehead to the cool rim of Tiddle-Tidy for a moment before gathering her strength and wobbling back out into the store.

“Johannes is coming,” she said as she walked past the desk. “Thanks for understanding; see you on Tuesday.”

“You’ll definitely make it?”

Laura was too sick and enervated to even expend the emotional energy being annoyed. “Of course,” she said, and hurried to leave before she had to throw up again.

* * *

When she got back to the apartment, Marie was practicing pulling herself up on the coffee table and banging on it with a wooden spoon, and Callie was lying on the couch, looking as exhausted as Laura felt even though it had been only an hour and a half since she’d left.

“Looks like someone’s feeling better!”

“Oh my God, Laura, she’s relentless! If she isn’t trying to crawl into the bathroom to play in the toilet, she’s yelling nonsense at the top of her lungs and insisting that I try a bite of her toys. I have no idea how you manage to handle this twenty-four/seven. Hey, aren’t you home early?”

Laura sank to her knees next to Marie and felt her forehead, then kept sinking till she was lying on the ground. Marie crawled on top of her, pulled herself up, and started biting her shoulder, grunting with excitement. “Yeah, I had to bail. I think I’m coming down with Marie’s stomach flu. I really hope you don’t get it.”

“No worries. I made sure not to touch her.”

“You what?”

“I just shooed her away from places she shouldn’t be with my foot.”

Laura paused for a moment, willing herself not to be annoyed at Callie. “She probably needs a diaper change …” She paused and