Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [18]
She pretended to restock the sugar packets at the next table. “He doesn’t care.”
“I care.”
“Throw the laundry under my bed, leave the dishes in the sink, and I’ll pick up something for dinner. Problems solved.” She smiled her best customer service smile, turned on her heel, and walked briskly away.
He arrived in a green Volkswagen van that rattled so loud it was remarkable I didn’t hear him until he appeared in my doorway. He was three and a half hours late.
“Sorry—I didn’t mean to scare you.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “The door was open. Zoë said to come on in.”
When I didn’t say anything, he extended his hand. “I’m Eli.”
I was taken aback by his appearance: He was the same man I’d seen at the poetry reading. He certainly wasn’t the man I was expecting. The Eli I knew from Zoë’s stories ran a gallery and a clothing drive, networked with artists, set commission, handled sales. He should have been shorter, heavier, dressed in khakis and a collared shirt, more like a thirty-year-old and less like a half-starved vagabond.
I accepted his handshake. “Amy,” I said.
“I remember—from the reading. We waved.”
“I saw you with Zoë. I just assumed you were a friend from campus.”
“I was only down for the night,” he explained. “Zoë meant to introduce us, but you disappeared with someone. A guy in glasses? Kind of balding on top?”
“That’s Everett. He likes to sit in the back for quick escape. He doesn’t do well at those things, for whatever reason. He’s a friend from the office.” I shut my mouth abruptly to keep from rambling.
“Not a boyfriend?”
“Oh—no, definitely not a boyfriend.”
There was an uncomfortable pause. I considered his empty hands. Loops drawn with pen in tightly winding patterns stained the length of his fingers.
“Where are your things?” I asked.
From the screen door we considered the large duffel bag he’d abandoned on the driveway between his van and the porch. He eyed the bag menacingly as if it were a misbehaving pet awaiting punishment. He insisted I not let it in the house; he was burning it as soon as he’d rewashed all his clothes.
He wanted to know where he could find a laundromat so he could treat his clothes before bringing them into our apartment. Bedbugs and their eggs traveled in suitcases. I could have given him directions and kept the rest of the afternoon to myself, but my mother had forever ingrained in me the utmost importance of being the gracious host. I was inclined to help.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “You really don’t have to.”
“They’re not in there, are they?”
“They’re in the bag if anything,” he said. “But I want to wash the sheets for eggs.”
He emptied the duffel bag of clothes directly onto the frozen driveway. Together we stuffed them all back into trash bags. His socks were worn at the soles, his jeans frayed, the fringe of each pant leg clotted with dirt. One by one I sifted through T-shirts that smelled of incense and turpentine. I also found a napkin on which someone had scribbled a phone number; a clipping torn from the newspaper in the shape of a heart; a Tupperware of buckeye nuts sporting drawn-on cartoon faces; and a tiny velvet string-pull bag that held two engraved silver rings.
“Are these important?” I held up the little cloth bag.
He tucked the jewelry in his back pocket, noticed the colorcoordinated piles I’d been making. “You don’t have to separate them.
Just throw them in the bag.”
“They’ll bleed.”
“The bugs?”
“The colors.”
He shook his head. “We’re not washing them. We want heat— just heat.”
I held up a black T-shirt that had been starched to the point of rigor mortis. “Not even fabric softener,” I stated.
“Not even fabric softener,” he repeated. He crawled on his knees to grab the farthest of my piles, cramming it into the trash bag. “You know we’ll have to be best friends forever now.”
“We will?”
“You’ve touched all my underwear,” he said.
That I blushed embarrassed me so much I blushed again.
At the laundromat he pulled an old Mason jar full of coins from his knapsack. When the last load had been stuffed into the dryer,