Lexie hesitated, staring up at the huge building. She didn't know there were apartments in this building. Her heart raced. She looked around, feeling conspicuous standing still like that. She rubbed a palm down her thigh, feeling the smooth velvet of her green dress. It was tight, clinging to her body, hugging her but for once, she felt good in it. She looked around and found a bench in the city square that was unoccupied and sat there. She was trembling.
"I'm excited. It's nerves. Adrenaline." She spoke softly, aloud, then glanced around to see if any one could hear. No one paid her any mind, well, except for the guy staring at her, at her chest, she thought and unconsciously arched her back. He looked away. She smiled to herself. Then the enormity of what she was about to do bubbled up inside her again.
Walton Chambers, Walt to his friends, had met her in the rain, at a grocery store of all things. She'd decided to carry the groceries to the car, thinking it would be faster but disaster rained on that decision. First, she dropped her keys, then one of the sacks broke and cans of corn and green beans rolled under her car. She got flustered and dropped her purse, bent to pick that up and dropped another sack.
It was just too much. She leaned against the car and wept, tears mixing with the rain as it soaked through her green dress, making it cling to her, then, in places, turning invisible. She didn't become aware until his voice fluttered through the pelting rain.
"Excuse me, Miss, having troubles? Let me help."
Lexie lifted her eyes, looked around and found the most gorgeous man she'd ever set eyes on. Well, not the most gorgeous, no he was the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen standing before her, in the flesh. It wasn't her usual taste, either. He was older, dressed in an dark but brilliant shade of blue suit, with short cropped gray hair and a tanned face with lines in it, like fault lines in a granite cliff. His blue eyes twinkled with interest and his brow knit; he seemed unaware that he was getting soaked, unconcerned about his expensive suit. He was utterly soaked and had surrendered to the rain, seeming to blend with it so the water on his face didn't detract from his expression or affect it.
"Oh no, please, you're getting soaked. I'm just, I just..." Lexie felt the surge of emotion clog her throat again. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to turn away. She felt him move, didn't see him but then she felt his hand on her elbow, stopping her turn away from him.
"No, please. Get in the car, I'll gather up your groceries and then sit with you for a while. It hurts so much more to cry alone and if you let someone listen, it heals instead of remaining raw inside you."
When he smiled, Lexie's heart fluttered in her chest. Her mind wasn't working but her body was.
"I, thank you, kind sir, but you really, you're getting soaked."
"I am soaked. Soaked is soaked, more water won't matter now. Besides, you don't even have a coat. Get in. Let me do this for you." He smiled again.
His eyes glittered, seeming to twinkle in the midday gloom under the lowered, weeping clouds. Suddenly, a bit of sunlight escaped the clouds and all the colors around her lit up, like they were incandescent or suffused with some magical, inner light. Then the sun vanished and the rain pelted on.
"Yes, okay." She said.
She climbed into the car. After closing the door, she realized her purse was still on the ground. As if he read her mind, the man opened her door and handed it to her.
"Your purse. You'll need that." He said and closed the door. She wanted to twist but used the side mirror but then he disappeared out of her vision. She turned around to the left and peered down for him. He was lying flat on his chest, reaching under her car, straining, and wriggling on the asphalt. She noticed something funny. He had on expensive shoes but his socks were white, visible on one leg where his pants pulled up.
Lexie twisted around, a little horrified but something else, too, something she didn't name until later, thinking about it. She turned back to stare out the windshield, her neck tickling with his presence, even outside the car. He opened the back door of her sedan and put the groceries on her back seat. Later, she called that feeling skittering along the skin of her body, being charmed. Maybe it was what the old use referred to when it was the stock and trade of witches and mystics. Now it was the savoir faire of the modern world, displayed without arrogance. Her mind had wandered so when her door opened and he climbed into the passenger seat beside her, it startled her. His pants were pulled up his legs so both white socks glowed in the footboards of her car. It was ridiculous but it seemed like they shone, with actual light.
He adjusted his pant legs, pulling them down and the light went out. When he was comfortable and the fidget was gone from his fit, angular body, he turned to her and extended a hand.
"I'm Walton Chambers, but my friends call me Walt." That smile appeared again and the colors in her car seemed to get brighter, reminding her of something, something recent.
"I'm Lexie Harcourt," she whispered. She cleared her throat. "Let me try that again. I'm Lexie Harcourt." She said, her voice made stronger by sheer will and determination. Her eyes brushed over his rumpled suit, now fouled with the detritus of the parking lot and dark, ugly smudges of oil from the asphalt. "Oh mercy, your suit is ruined!"
"It was ruined already. My car broke down and I didn't want to be left there, so I walked and walked, and then the rain came."
"Do you want me to take you somewhere, or back to your car? Surely you don't want to leave it there?"
"No. My driver's taking care of that."
"Oh. Oh!" Lexie said, her voice revealing that she comprehended what he'd said and it's implications. "Your driver?"
"Wally." Chambers laughed. "That confuses people, me having a driver I call Wally. A girl friend of mine made that mistake once, before she knew me, before we...got together. She thought Oscar was me and when she found out, it was so embarrassing, so funny, I took to calling him Wally all the time. She called me that and it irritated her because she thought I was mocking her, calling Oscar that, but I was only trying to hold onto that lovely thrill from our first meeting." He bowed his head. "I'm talking too much." He looked sidelong at her, not unbowing his head but still able to look at her. He smiled a little again, and again shades and hues of colors shifted, brightened.
"Let's go have a cup of something? You drink coffee?"
She shook her head. "I'm a cocoa girl." Suddenly, her mouth watered at the thought of the taste of cocoa on her tongue but her body shivered, telling her it was cold. She realized she'd looked away so she looked at him, directly in the eyes. "That'd be nice. But you must let me buy. After all...." She gestured at his suit.
He looked down at his dishevelment and shrugged a little. "No worries. I have a dozen more where this one came from. I'm about ready for a new color so I'll ship them all off to the Goodwill pretty soon anyway."
"But the blue looks so good with your silver hair and catches your...." Her voice faltered as she realized what she was going to say and that somehow made it all worse. "...eyes." She said much too quietly, her sudden discomfort lurid in her tone. She had trouble getting breath and turned to look out at the blurred world through the windshield. Her mind went blank. If Walter hadn't spoken, she'd not have moved, perhaps ever.
"There's a neat little shop up here on the right, easy to get to, that has good coffee and I am sure they'll make you a sterling cup of cocoa." The smile came on again, like street lights during an eclipse, or in the rain.
"Direct me." Lexie said and the decision was made. She touched the fob and her car started. She drove and he directed her through the traffic, lumbering along like wet cattle, silent and careful in the rain.
The cafe was warm, not cheery but warm and the cocoa was rich and delicious. Walter sat across from her while she broke completely down. Her younger brother had been killed, she was getting food for the dinner after the funeral. She hadn't wept and it suddenly hit her that Gary wasn't coming home again. Talking to him, it came clear that she'd been blindsided by the grief. Her focus had been on her father and sister, their obvious devastation, their collapse, their inability to cope. She handled it all, all the arrangements required for a modern death, a costly and complicated process that was once as simple as planting a seed in your garden.
She clicked through the process, not once feeling a tear trickle down her cheek until she sat down for a cup with Walter Chambers. In that time with him, in that cafe, it was like something stalled inside her and in that inner silence, all she could feel was the grief. Her husband Gustave had been a great help but strangely, little comfort. He and Gary hadn't gotten along. It's hard when someone you dislike dies who is close to someone you love. Lexie could see the strain on her husband and had released him from as much of the responsibilities as she could. She felt his appreciation as relief and not from his words. He kept wanting to justify his dislike for her deceased brother and she wanted to scream at him that her brother was dead, gone and she'd never see him again and how could he care about his feelings about him in the face of her terrible grief, but that wasn't his fault. She'd sealed it away from all eyes so that no one saw it, felt it and eventually, she made it easy for them all to forget that she loved her brother and...he was gone. Not killed, he died, or worse, he killed himself.
Gary died of a drug overdose. Everyone knew it but no one mentioned it. He'd suffered the curse and it had haunted him and finally consumed his life completely. Her father, Terrance Harcourt and her sister Sophia, Sophi had feared this day would come and tensed against it from the horrible beginning of his addiction so when it arrived, it shattered them both equally, equally but not the same.
All this spilled out into Walter Chambers' lap after he asked why she was crying. The question released all of that pent up emotion, and Lexie talked and wept through three refills and finally a piece of hot apple pie with the best vanilla bean ice cream she'd ever tasted. Through it all, Chambers listened and nodded and murmured small words that eased her into the next paragraph, the next subject, the next jag of tears.
