STELLA
We were alone together in a log cabin, made of knotty pine. Nick was bare-chested, wearing black-and-red flannel pajama pants, putting wood into a fireplace. Outside, the snow was in big drifts, so pretty that it didn’t look real at all, but like something from a made-for-TV Christmas special. Snowflakes the size of grapefruits fell in perfectly spaced patterns outside the window. In my hands was a mug of mulled wine, with a cinnamon stick. Nick stoked the fireplace, and a handful of sparks shot from one of the logs. As he bent down to put the poker back in its place, I admired the curves of his muscular buns. Flannel. God bless it. He made his way across the cabin, keeping his eyes on me. He took my mug of wine from my hands and put it on the bedside table. I placed my hand on his abs and slid my palm down, down, down. I hooked my finger over his waistband, inched it down his lower abdomen, and said, in my sultriest, most sex-kitteny voice, “I have to pee like a racehorse.”
I shot straight up from my pillow and looked around my darkened room. We weren’t in a cabin. We were in my apartment, and I could hear the garbage trucks outside. He was asleep next to me, on his back with his hands clasped behind his head, like he was sunbathing.
At that moment, I was sure of only two things:
There had never been a sexier man on earth.
And my bladder was about to explode.
Rubbing my eyes with my knuckles, I stumbled off toward the bathroom. It was strange, not having Roxie and Ruth in the house. No soothing wave machine noise from Ruth’s room, no snoring from Roxie’s. Then I remembered through my sleep haze all that had happened, and my heart hurt from missing them, which made me especially grateful that Nick was staying the night.
Sitting on the toilet, I stared at the moonlight rippling through the bathroom window, making a distorted rectangle on the bath towels. As often happened, my midnight thoughts spiraled into worry. About the job, about the girls, about Mr. Bozeman. About whether or not the Big Wide Open would still be for sale when I woke up in the morning. About whether I was really and truly bananas for taking this huge chance hand in hand with Nick.
With all my might, I forced myself to get off the worry merry-go-round. In my head I heard Ruth’s voice, calm and steady, saying, “Stay here, in the here and now. Here, in the here and now. Here . . . in the here . . . and the now.” Like haunted-house ghosts leaping from closets, unwelcome thoughts sprang in on the mantra. Police. Handcuffs. Never seeing the girls again. Never seeing the Big Wide Open again. Never seeing Mr. Bozeman again. Never kissing Priscilla again.
Never seeing Nick again.
I flushed and rinsed my hands, then splashed my face with cool water. The terry cloth was warm and plush as I dried my cheeks. Usually, it calmed me down. But this time the merry-go-round kept on going.
Returning to bed, I crawled in beside Nick again. Though he was sound asleep, he still reached for me and pulled me toward him. As I became the teaspoon to his tablespoon, I realized I’d never been with any man I wanted to be so close to as I slept. Or who wanted to be so close to me, either. He drew my hips against his and cupped my breast with his hand. It was as if we couldn’t get close enough to one another. As if skin-to-skin wasn’t good enough at all.
All tangled up with him like that, my worries slowed down. I began to drift off to sleep, imagining us back in the cabin. Mulled wine and his flannel pants on the ground. Right as I was starting to hear the soft taps of the snowflakes on the cabin windows, I was catapulted back to reality by the grr-grr-grr of my phone, buzzing on the bedside table. My heart leaped up into my throat. All manner of worst-case scenarios unspooled in my head. My panicked logic was messy and irrational: Ruth had broken her leg, so she must have a blood clot. Roxie was on pain meds, so she must have had an allergic reaction.
But when I looked at my phone I saw that it was much worse than all that.
The caller ID said: MR. BOZEMAN
At 3:59 a.m.
No. No, no, no, no, no. Nick’s arm thumped on the mattress as I sat up. I found to my absolute horror that my room was no longer dark. There were thready pulses of flashing lights, red and white, sending watery patterns spinning wildly around the room.
I’d have known them anywhere. The lights of an ambulance.
I answered the call, but Mr. Bozeman wasn’t there. Instead I heard all manner of banging and clacking. I sprang up from the bed and looked outside. There I saw them—not one ambulance but two, sitting in his driveway.
In a panicked rush, I flew out of the bedroom. My usual robe was behind my bedroom door, which was leaning against the wall in the hallway, so I opted for a different robe from my closet. “Mr. Bozeman?” I said into my phone. “Are you there?”
The ominous sound of two-way radios came over the line. I shoved my feet into my shoes and bolted out the front door, shuffle-running around the corner of our building and across the empty lot toward Mr. Bozeman’s house.
Still, he hadn’t answered me. I clapped my hand to my mouth and listened to the radio’s kssshhhhh, followed by its bloops and bleeps. The dispatcher said something, and I heard the rattle of what sounded very, very much like a gurney.
This could not be happening. This could not be happening. I’d seen him only a little while ago, and he’d been absolutely fine. “Mr. Bozeman?” I said again into the phone. “Answer me, please. Mr. Bozeman!”
Still, nothing.
I flipped up the latch on the metal gate to his yard. On the back porch, beneath the flickering, moth-filled light, sat Priscilla, panting in the dark. I scooped her up in my arms and slid open the sliding glass door. I stumbled into the kitchen, and a cluster of EMTs turned around. They seemed utterly astonished to see me. Looking down, so was I. Instead of my regular robe, I’d managed to grab an ornamental kimono that Roxie found on sale at TJ Maxx, which had exotically long sleeves and was way, way too short. On my feet, I was wearing one purple high-top and one regular black sneaker. Coming down my shoulder, my braid was messy, fuzzy, and very unkempt. But none of it mattered at all. “Please don’t tell me . . .”
Just as my heart was about to split in two, Mr. Bozeman raised his head from the gurney, his fine white hair pointing in every direction. “Stella!”
Oh, the relief. The relief. It made me almost dizzy. “Thank goodness.”
He craned his neck to try to turn to face me as I hurried to his side. “I tried to call, but you know how I am with this damned phone!” He held it up in frustration. It was an ancient old clamshell model with extra-large buttons, but oh how he hated that thing.
Slipping his phone in my kimono pocket, I searched for any sign of an injury. He looked a bit frail and tired. His usually baby-smooth face was rough with white whiskers, but there was no oxygen tube in his nose and no IV in his arm. The EMTs were surprisingly calm.
“It’s a hernia, honey!” he said, hollering without his hearing aids. “I’ll be fine! But they’re gonna have to keep me for a while!”
Never in my entire life did I think the word hernia could sound so sweet. I had to brace myself on the edge of the gurney; my knees were unsteady with a second wave of relief. “Do you want me to come with you?”
He shook his head and fastened the very top button of his old-fashioned nightshirt so it was snug against the crepey skin of his throat. He reminded me of some old-timey pioneer. “Don’t worry about me! It’s the little lady I’m worried about!”
In my arms, I bounced Priscilla, who was nestled against me, her paws to my shoulder, staring at all the people in her house. “Might be a week or more!” Mr. Bozeman hollered. “I’m old! Everything gets real complicated!”
All that mattered was that he would be all right. I patted Mr. Bozeman’s hand and told him, “One sec!” Still carrying Priscilla, I went to the bathroom, where I found his hearing aids in a small bowl by the sink. I brought them out to him, and he placed them in his ears.
As his hearing returned, so did his normal voice. “Do you think you could look after her?” Mr. Bozeman asked, giving Priscilla’s tummy a little tickle.
She looked at me, almost worried. She didn’t actually have eyebrows, but she kind of did. Or a ridge and whiskers where eyebrows would have been. “We’ll have a wonderful time, won’t we?” I said, rubbing her tiny paw between my thumb and first finger. “And you tell your dad that Stella isn’t gonna let him pay her this time either, OK?” I said to Priscilla.
Which she answered with a bite of the air to say, OK!
Mr. Bozeman’s cool hand patted my arm. “You’re a treasure, Stella,” he said as the EMTs wheeled him away. “You really are.”
I stayed with him until they closed the ambulance doors, and I watched it disappear down the street. Priscilla and I stood alone on the sidewalk under the bright, clear moonlight. I gave her paw a kiss, and only then did it occur to me that everything Nick and I had talked about had just gotten a little more complicated. Because Priscilla was definitely coming along.