“Ben!” Was he fainting?
“Christ, girl, I’m right here,” he whispered, pulling away from me.
“Come on.” I wouldn’t let him pull away. I put my arm around his shoulders and half-led, half-shoved him toward his settee. Once he was sitting, I started opening up cupboards, looking for water glasses.
“Where are your cups?”
“In the sink,” he said. “I’ve got one in the sink.”
I filled the cup with water and set it down in front of him. With both hands shaking, he picked it up and managed to dribble half of it down his chest. “Fuck,” he breathed, setting it down. “I feel like shit.”
“It’s just a cold?”
“Flu maybe? Who the hell knows?”
“You got anything to eat?”
He pointed over to the stove, where he’d been pouring chicken noodle soup from a Tupperware container into a saucepan.
“You want this?”
“Yeah.” I put the rest of it in the pan and then turned on a burner.
“You made homemade chicken noodle soup?”
“No. I got a lady-friend that made it.”
From outside, a woman shouted, “Hey, you old fart, I got you some meds!”
You could have knocked me over with a pin when Joan walked into the trailer like she owned it.
I turned and lifted an eyebrow at Ben. Was Joan his lady-friend?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Well, well, you guys are cozy. Is his hacking all night keeping you up too?” Joan asked, stepping over to the table. She tipped a plastic bag out, dumping all kinds of cold medicine onto the table. Daytime formulas, nighttime formulas, sinus stuff, pain reliever. There was about a hundred dollars’ worth of over-the-counter medicine on that table.
“Something here should fix you,” Joan said, and then she turned to me and crossed her arms over her chest. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Making sure he’s not dead.” I stirred the soup when it started to bubble on the stove.
“Yeah, we can’t have Ben die, can we?”
“I’m alive,” he muttered. “Now both of you go away.”
“Later!” Joan said, lifting her hands up. “And you’re welcome. For the medicine.”
“Fuck your medicine.”
“Lovely,” Joan said. “You coming?” she asked me.
“Yeah, just…” I tested the temperature of the soup and then poured it into a bowl, turned off the stove, and put the bowl down in front of Ben. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked him. He really looked sick, and what was the deal with the weird dried blood on his shirt?
Not my business was what it was.
“Fine,” he said with a wan smile. “And thank you.”
“Right,” Joan muttered, “her he thanks. Let’s go, Florence Nightingale,” she said, nearly dragging me away.
Once we were outside and on the other side of her trailer, she turned.
“What the hell did I say to you?” she asked. “Stay away from the old man, Annie!”
“What were you doing bringing him a hundred dollars in cold medicine?” I asked.
“A hundred and fifty—that sinus stuff is expensive. He wakes up at six in the morning hacking away like he’s going to cough up a lung. I get home at three, I can’t fucking take it.”
“Right. Kevin asked me to look in on him,” I lied.
Joan heaved a big sigh. “Fine…just, honestly, Annie. Don’t get friendly.”
I wondered if Joan knew about the fire. The girl asleep upstairs. Probably, I decided. Joan seemed to know plenty.
“I gotta get to work,” Joan said, checking her watch. “I’ll see you later.”
Oh God, she would. She would see me later at The Velvet Touch. Or rather, maybe I would see her.
A lot of her.
—
What does one wear to a strip club?