Blue Smoke

going next door to grab a shower, and apparently I’m talking to myself,” he decided when he saw no sign of her in the bedroom.
    He heard a door open overhead and climbed to the third floor.
    “Hey, Reene, why do people like you and me buy houses where you have to climb . . . Hey, what’s the matter?”
    She was standing just outside of what he knew was a small bathroom. Her face was pale as glass.
    “You need to sit down.” Even as she shook her head, he was taking her arm, taking her weight and guiding her back into her office. “He called again.”
    This time she nodded. “I need a minute.”
    “I’ll get you some water.”
    “No, I had some. I’m okay. Yeah, he called again, and he got to me. I had control, I was pushing the buttons, then he got to me, and I lost it.”

    She’d barely been able to get through the follow-up call to O’Donnell before she’d been sick. Horribly sick.
    “I saw you pull up.” She’d had her head out the window, just trying to breathe.
    “What did he say?”
    Rather than repeat it, she gestured to the tape recorder. “Play it back. You should hear it for yourself.”
    While he did, she rose to go to the window. She opened that one, too, though the air outside was hot and weighty.
    “Not exactly what you signed on for,” she commented and kept her back to him.
    “No, I guess it’s not.”
    “Nobody’s going to think less of you if you decide to back off from all this, Bo. He’ll hurt you if he can. He’s already hurt you.”
    “So, it’s okay with you if I take off for a couple weeks. Maybe go visit some national parks, or do some snorkeling in Jamaica.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good Catholic girl like you’s going to have to go to confession with that big, fat lie.”
    “It’s not a lie.”
    “Then you’ve got pretty low standards in men.”
    “It has nothing to do with standards.” She pulled the window back down with an impatient snap. “I don’t want anything to happen to you. I’m scared.”
    “Me, too.”
    She turned around, looked him dead in the eye. “I want to marry you.”
    His mouth opened and closed twice, and definitely lost a few shades of color. “Well. Wow. Wow, there’s a lot of stuff flying around in this room. I’m just going to sit down before a piece of it crashes into my skull.”
    “What do you think, Goodnight? I am a good Catholic girl at the core. Look at my family. Look at me. What do you think I’d want when I finally found someone I love and respect and enjoy?”

    “I don’t know. I don’t know. The whole, let’s say ‘institution’ isn’t something—”
    “It’s a sacrament to me. Marriage is sacred, and you’re the only man I’ve ever wanted to take vows with.”
    “I . . . I—I—I. Shit, now I’m stuttering. I think something did crash into my skull.”
    “I didn’t care if I ever got married and had kids because there was no one I wanted to marry and have kids with. You changed that, and now you have to deal with the consequences.”
    “Are you trying to scare me so I’ll go visit those national parks?”
    She walked to him, bent down, gripped his face hard in her hands and kissed him, firmly. “I love you.”
    “Oh, boy. Oh, boy.”
    “Say ‘I love you, too, Reena.’ If you mean it.”
    “I do mean it. I do love you.”
    His eyes stayed on hers, and the fact that there was a trace of fear in them made her smile.
    “It’s just . . . I never completed this part of the plan in my head. You know, there’s the whole we’re-having-a-really-good-time-with-each-other part—despite fear and mayhem. Then there’s the maybe-we-should-move-in-together part. After a while there’s the where-should-we-go-from-here? part.”
    “That doesn’t work for me. I’m thirty-one. I want children, your children. I want to make a life, our life. You told me once you knew because the music stopped. I’m telling you I know, because the music started. Take some time.” She kissed him again. “Think about it. There’s enough going on right now.”
    “A lot going on.”
    “I’d still marry you if you went away for a while, somewhere out of all this.”
    “I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t know how you could . . .” He couldn’t quite form the word marry. “How you could be with someone who’d leave you to save his own skin.”

    “Your skin’s pretty important to me.” She let out a breath. “Well, all this detouring has settled me down a little. So there’s that.