“She did, Dick,” I said icily, locking eyes with him, not daring to look away.
“I know she talked to you about a promotion, making you a partner. I know you’re likely the only person on staff right now who is even remotely qualified for such a position, but I also know that right now we don’t need another partner. But next year, after things have settled down?” He closed his file. “There will most certainly be an opening inside The Empire Group. Provided that employee has proven she can be a team player. Embrace the changes we’re asking everyone to make. Sacrifice now, and be rewarded down the line.”
I said nothing. I could say nothing.
“One week, Clara. Then I want you bidding for that Oakmont job down South, and I expect you to get it. We can talk details after that.”
He rose up out of his chair, and shook my hand, hard. “Nice to have met you, welcome to The Empire Group.”
Sonofabitch.
My mind was reeling the entire drive back to Bailey Falls. My stomach, however, started reeling right about the time I pulled onto I-90 West. I’d felt a little off while I was meeting with Dick Stevee, felt a little more off while I was navigating the parking lot that was driving in downtown Boston, but by the time I hit the turnpike I was just hoping to make it back to Bailey Falls before all hell broke loose.
But apparently luck wasn’t on my side today. All hell broke loose at a truck stop somewhere between Ludlow and Chicopee when I vomited everything on my shoes in the ladies’ room. I threw up so loudly that when I came out there was a little old lady with a sympathetic look who handed me a bottle of water, which I took gratefully. It’d been ages since I’d had the flu, and for one brief and terrifying moment my brain galloped away with the idea that I was pregnant and that life as I knew it would forever be changed. I was halfway to the feminine care aisle to pee on a stick when my brain galloped back with the news that I’d started my period two days ago and was still currently enjoying the miracle of womanhood, so no, that wasn’t it.
Luckily I was only halfway to the aisle, so it was only twenty steps or so back to the ladies’ room when another round of let’s-reexamine-your-breakfast hit.
I was blazing hot yet freezing cold, I was shaky yet my back seemed locked in place, and my hands were dry while my elbows, somehow my elbows were impossibly sweating. But if I was dying, there was no way I was doing so in a bathroom at Stuckey’s. I splashed some water on my face, stumbled out to the store, bought Gatorade and a bottle of Pepto, climbed back into my stupid red convertible that I just had to have all those weeks ago, and pointed my car in the direction of Bailey Falls.
It took me another three hours to drive what should’ve taken me ninety minutes. I’d had to pull over two more times to throw up, and by the time I saw the crenellated stone roofline of Bryant Mountain House, I was pretty sure I had a fever that was high enough to concern the legions of leprechauns that had invaded my car.
I left the keys in the ignition, nodding weakly at the valet guy, took three steps inside the lobby and realized that I really didn’t need to go any farther, the sofa just to the left of reception was a lovely place to take a nap if I could just lay my head down for a . . .
I’ve been told that I face-planted on a hundred-year-old fainting couch. You couldn’t write this stuff, honestly, and that’s where Beverly from the front desk found me before my shoes had even fallen off my feet. Beverly called Jonathan, who called Archie, who whisked me away to my room like Prince Charming while I moaned and groaned wildly about red convertibles and a boss named Dick.
Bryant Mountain House is like The Love Boat. And like The Love Boat, they have an in-house doctor. Kind of. They’ve got Dr. Carlisle, a retired internist who comes up to the hotel every afternoon to play pinochle and steal tea cookies when he thinks no one is looking. He was there, in the middle of pinochle, when I face-planted, and followed Archie and a boneless me up to my room to make sure everything was okay. I don’t remember much of the conversation, but when he heard I’d been vomiting for about four hours, and other issues we do not discuss, then heard me vomiting once more when I made a run for the bathroom, he pronounced me down with a rather violent strain of the stomach flu that had been popping up all over the area, recommended rest and fluids and a bucket within splattering distance of the bed, and to let my body heal on its own.
For the record, vomiting in front of anyone is embarrassing. Vomiting in front of your kind-of boyfriend as he holds that damn bucket gallantly while whispering soothing words of encouragement is a fresh kind of hell.
Archie wouldn’t leave. He refused to. He put me to bed, he took me out of that bed when necessary, called down for extra pillows, extra blankets, a portable heater and an oscillating fan, three different kinds of chicken broth and four different kinds of Popsicles. And at least a gallon of Lysol, which gave the room a nice hospital scent but was undoubtedly better than the smell of sick.
I couldn’t fathom ingesting even a thimbleful of chicken broth, and when he tried to tempt me with a cherry Popsicle I vaguely remember telling him a very particular place he could hold it while I made yet another mad dash to the bathroom. I ended up curled up on the cool tile, convinced that I was going to die and that the last thing I was ever going to see were tiny bottles of shampoo lined up like soldiers and launching an attack on a stack of defenseless washcloths.
That bathroom floor delirium led to a confusing episode where I was convinced Archie was walking on the ceiling and had been sent by Jesus Christ himself to deliver the message that Mars could be made hospitable for human life if only Matt Damon could get the plants to grow.
Sometime around three thirty in the morning my fever broke, and I can remember a man with wonderfully cool hands tucking the comforter tightly around my shoulders and smoothing back my sweaty hair, the weight of his hand a lovely thing as it rested just above my closed eyelids. I remember the faint scent of pancake syrup and the tiniest freckles dancing just in front of my eyes before I slipped blessedly into an unbroken sleep.
Chapter 22
Birds chirped. A newspaper rustled. Then a low intermittent hum began . . . maybe a tune from South Pacific? Whatever it was, it only made the pounding in my temples worse. I tried to open my eyes, but they felt like sandpaper. Thumbing one eyelid open, I winced at the bright sunlight pouring through the wooden blinds. As the world slowly came into view, I put together the sounds I’d heard with the pictures I was now seeing and began to realize a few things:
1. I’d lived. I didn’t die on that bathroom tile after vomiting up my kneecaps.
2. It had been Archie who took care of me for the last however many hours as I puked and cried and whined and . . . oh boy.
3. I was sore.
4. I was cranky.