And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [35]
“Well,” she said at last. “You have the number if you do need me.”
“Burnt into my brain,” I said.
It turned out to be a long night.
After the Spiggs went off, I made myself a tin of soup and a toasted cheese sandwich and curled up on the couch to read about Virgo. I couldn’t really get comfortable because my back ached so much. No change there.
I concentrated hard on what the book had to say. It was pretty good news. Virgos are practical and down-to-earth. That sounded all right to me. Shanee was very practical and down-to-earth and I got on fine with her. Also, he’d be adaptable, which wasn’t a bad thing. I wondered if I should call him Virgil. Or maybe Vigil. I put them in my mind as definite possibilities.
I had a couple of spoonfuls of soup, but it started repeating almost as soon as I swallowed it. The cheese tasted off. My back was killing me.
I readjusted the pillows and put on a video I’d already seen. I just wanted to hear some human voices, I didn’t care what they were saying.
My stomach started to ache. I shuffled into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea.
It was hard to watch the film at all, because I was so uncomfortable and everything hurt so much.
I started thinking about Les.
He’d been gone four days, but I still hadn’t had a postcard. If I’d been Les, I’d’ve sent me one from the airport, you know sort of as a joke and sort of not as a joke. So I’d know that he missed melike I missed him. But guys aren’t the same as girls. It wouldn’t even occur to him. Guys live in the present, but girls live in the future. I’d read it in Cosmo.
I wondered what Les was doing right then. It was too late for swimming in the sea, but he might be in the pool. Or in the bar with his mates. The bar seemed more likely.
Maybe he was thinking of me.
He was sitting at the bar. I could practically see him. Usually Les drank lager, but because he was on holiday he had one of those fancy cocktails with three kinds of spirits, fruit juice, a cherry and a paper parasol stuck in the crushed ice. I’d always dreamed of sitting at a bar, sipping one of those. And Les knew it. He was thinking how much I’d like a drink like that. Since it was Greece, I reckoned there’d be little dishes of olives on the bar as well. And maybe crisps.
Les takes the postcard he bought in the village from his pocket. It’s a photograph of a Greek street, like the one Charlene sent me when she went to Greece with her husband. The houses are small and old and painted pink and blue and green. There’s a string of onions hanging outside one and a goat sleeping in the shade of a small tree.
Les borrows a pen from the barman and starts to write me a note on the back of the card.
Dear Lana, he writes. How are you and the baby? How’s the weather? It’s sunny here, but it might as well be raining. I miss you. You’d really like it here. The hotel’s well posh. Carpets and chandeliers, the works. There’s a hot tub and a jacuzzi and a whole room of arcade games. Plus, you’d love the food. And there’s a disco every night. I was thinking that we might come back here together some time. Like on our honeymoon or something. What do you think?
I thought the baby was trying to tear his way out of my body, that’s what I thought.
A pain ripped through me that was so strong I screamed out loud.
“Jesus,” I said to no one.
I didn’t want to go to the next thought. The next thought was that something was wrong. Pain like that couldn’t be normal. I would’ve heard about it. Madonna would’ve said something. Or Hilary Spiggs. She wouldn’t miss an opportunity like that.
Then the pain stopped. I reckoned that it was just some kind of glitch. You know, the baby got his feet caught in a corner or something like that.
I went back to imagining our honeymoon.
At