Julie had spoken once all morning, mumbling a few words about feeling sick to her stomach again. The only sounds out of her since were ominous groans, emanating deep within her belly. More than likely, she was still upset about the chaos we had created at the store last night.
I passed by Lance, who leaned on the gritty counter, munching a spoonful of cold cereal, and settled at the table across from my sister.
Julie hoisted a slice of cinnamon toast from the paper plate and turned it in her fingers. She took a bite, nibbling at the sugary crust. A little pink tongue sneaked out of her mouth, cleaning the sugar crystals from two very dry lips. She flipped the toast back on the paper plate, scattering crumbs, and hopped out of the seat. She scrambled towards the bathroom without uttering a word.
"Did you have any trouble sleeping on the airbed?" Lance asked. To my great relief the morning's silence was broken.
"No, it was pretty comfortable. At first the vinyl was sort of chilly, but we managed to warm it up."
"I'll bet you did." He grinned knowingly.
"I'll pay you for the bed, just as soon as I cash my paycheck."
"Don't be ridiculous." Lance swirled his spoon in the cereal bowl. "Think of it as a gift for my favorite couple. Anyway, eighty dollars is a small price to pay to stop you from whining about the futon every morning."
"At least let me give you something." I reached into my hip pocket, pawing at my wallet. "A hundred bucks, to help with the rent." I offered him the last scrap of green paper tucked in my wallet, the hundred dollar bill my mother had given me the night I was thrown out.
His eyes narrowed behind his wiry glasses. "Rick, chill out, you paid your debts." He rattled the box of strawberry cereal I had picked up at the supermarket.
"A box of Frankenberry hardly makes up for taking Julie and me into your home. Without you I don't know what we would have done. We had nowhere else to go---"
"That's right, you had nowhere else to go." He tipped the bowl and slurped down the sweet, pink milk.
Copper pipes hissed in the ceiling, the sound of waste water being rushed away to the sewer.
"Is short-stuff planning to spend the entire day in the bathroom?" Lance asked.
"She's got a little stomach bug; she thinks it was something she ate."
Lance nodded and dropped his bowl in the sink. "And what do the Martins have planned for this muggy Labor Day?"
I leaned back in my chair. "A long day of house hunting or more appropriately, apartment hunting."
"Well, in that case I have some good news. I talked to the super last night. He said a place should be opening up in building number four next month; we could be neighbors."
"No offense, buddy, but Julie and I have had our fill of indestructible silverfish.
"She circled a few nice places in the classifieds last night. We won't be able to afford any of them, but it'll be nice to know what might have been, because, considering our salaries, we'll probably end up living in some glorified utility closet."
"Not everyone can afford this type of luxury." Lance waved his arm, emphasizing the apartment's messy, cramped confines. "I just hope living here hasn't raised your standards of living too high, because, to tell you the truth, it'll be nice to have some privacy again.
"Do you realize this was the first morning I didn't wake up to the sounds of you and Julie in the throes of passion. If I fucked the same girl that many times in one week my dick would look like a limp piece of macaroni."
Julie emerged from the bathroom. Her steps were imprecise as she padded across the apartment floor. She flopped on the half-inflated airbed, draping her bare legs over the side, drawing my eyes to those smooth, pale, femininely curved calves.
One leg stretched high above her body, the short hem of her nightgown afforded me a quick flash of white cotton panties. She waved at me with one compact foot and said, "Rick, come keep me company." Her tiny voice strained into a whine.
"You are such a lucky bastard," Lance said. He clapped my shoulder just as his cell phone rang. After digging it out of his pocket, he headed for the privacy of his room.
***
The airbed shifted as Rick sat on the mattress beside her. He touched her tummy, drawing spirals with the pad of his index finger in an attempt to quell her nausea.
"Why did I swallow your nasty stuff? I've been puking it up all morning." Julie moaned. The acid in her stomach churned and swirled.
"Don't be such a drama queen. You swallowed my sperm, not arsenic."
"It might as well have been poison, as sick as I feel."
"Are you sure that's why you're sick?" he asked.
She turned over on the bed. Propped up by an elbow, she focused her dark-ringed eyes on his handsome face. "What do you mean?" Her words trembled as did the lips that formed them.
"I mean that when I feel really guilty about something, I feel sharp pains right here." He pressed his palm to her belly, an action that forced her to gasp for air. "Sometimes it makes me feel sick for days." His palm stayed in place, resting on her pregnant stomach. She wondered if he somehow knew.
"If there's something you're not telling me, Julie, something you feel bad about, you don't have to keep it inside."
"I'm fine, really. I think it's just the stomach flu; it's been screwing me up inside."
"Should I take you to the doctor?"
"No!" Julie shouted. "We can't afford the doctor, not without insurance. It's nothing serious, really." She hated to lie to Rick, but knew he wasn't ready to hear the truth.
"You didn't have to swallow it," he said.
"I know, but I wanted to. I would do anything for you, Rick." Anything.
His hand felt so warm on her stomach, so comforting. It was a father's first contact with his child, even if he didn't know it yet.
Julie tasted saliva and phlegm and bile all rising in her throat. She gagged and started to rise. Fortunately, it was a false alarm, her stomach calmed and so did she. Her sweaty hand covered Rick's as she eased her head back against the malformed feather pillow.
Lance emerged from the bedroom. He was dressed for work, with the exception of a frayed black baseball cap turned backwards. His face looked even paler than she felt.
He folded his cell phone and stuffed it in his pants pocket. "That was Lucas." The words were slow and deliberate. "There was some kind of accident at the store." He struggled into a blue vest. "The backroom is...it's a mess. Every goddamned box...on the floor."
Lance ripped the cap off his head and crumpled it in his fingers. "He said that's the way it was when he opened, but you know what a klutz that fucking kid is."
"I guess we should cancel our plans for today," Rick said, hopping out of bed.
"No, you promised your sister that you would look for your own place." Lance's voice was harried but firm as he squeezed into a pair of canvas tennis shoes. "And I don't want to see the two of you show up for work tonight without a signed lease." Lance gave up on tying his shoes, settling for a pair of messy knots that he tried to not trip over as he scrambled out the door.
Julie crawled across the wilting airbed, rolling off the side to the floor. Every movement produced sickening pulsations deep within her stomach, rising higher and higher, too high to hold back. Julie raced for the toilet. Throwing open the lid, she kneeled before the white porcelain and retched.
A woman who introduced herself as Ms. Horowitz had precisely timed her meeting with Julie and Rick in the covered parking garage that adjoined the apartments at Shade Tree Manor. She regarded the young couple with a warm, toothy smile, giving Julie the impression that beneath the smart business attire was an amiable person who would treat her tenants like family.
They toured the facilities first, stopping in a coin-operated Laundromat, then moving on to the vigorously equipped gym before concluding with a stroll around the indoor swimming pool.
The apartment was every bit as lovely as the ad promised. The carpeting was new and lush, the kitchenette was downright airy compared to that elbow-buster of Lance's and the bathrooms were absolutely immaculate, not a silverfish in sight.
They followed Ms. Horowitz through the smallish apartment. Ironically it had been dubbed a budget apartment, ironic because the rent was twice as expensive as anything they had budgeted.
"As you can see the master bedroom is quite spacious, with it's own half-bath." The woman closed the simple oak door and opened another on the adjoining wall. "We also offer a second bedroom that our tenants tend to use as a nursery or a child's room."
Ms. Horowitz closed the second door and smiled again at Julie, lines creased her fine Semitic features. She seemed like such a nice older lady; she wore too much makeup but she would have made a great superintendent.
"Do you have any children Mrs. Martin? ...Mrs. Martin?"
Mrs. Martin? On instinct Julie glanced over her shoulder. Had her mother suddenly appeared? She was awkwardly silent for a moment before realizing that
she
was supposed to be Mrs. Martin.
"Not yet." She didn't say no or nope or not on your life, she said not yet. Rick was oblivious so she said it again. "Not yet but I hope---"
"We won't be having children anytime soon," Rick said. He draped a long arm around Julie's shoulders.
She recalled the results of her home pregnancy test and bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a frown. They would be having a child much sooner than he imagined.
