Blooming All Over (25 page)

He glanced at the clock built into his wall oven. Midnight. Jesus. How had it gotten so late? And who the hell was visiting him at midnight?

He pushed back his chair, crossed to the intercom panel by the kitchen door and lifted the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Casey, it’s me,” Susie’s voice slid through the wire. Susie’s voice, which did not dissolve into neighing and snorts when she laughed. Susie’s voice, which belonged to the only woman he’d ever asked to marry. That voice had said no to him, and she’d walked out of his life. “I’ve got a lobster for you,” she said.

“I’m not hungry,” he retorted.

“It’s not that kind of lobster.” She paused, then asked, “Can I come up?”

Christ. She had an inedible lobster and she wanted to come up to his apartment at midnight, while Eva, among other people, was here. Not that he gave a crap what Susie thought of Eva. The moment might get awkward, but so what? She’d said no. Things couldn’t get more awkward than that.

“Okay.” He pressed the button to release the locked vestibule door that would admit her to the building.

“Who’s that?” Mose asked as Casey hooked the receiver into place.

“Susie. And a lobster.”

“Oh, shit,” Mose said, expressing Casey’s sentiments rather nicely. “Why’d you buzz her in?”

“It’s midnight. She’s here. What am I going to do, make her sleep on the sidewalk?”

“If you hadn’t buzzed her in, maybe she would have gone away.”

“What if she left the lobster behind?”

“What lobster? Are you crazy? That bitch bashed your balls. You don’t need her in your life.”

All right, so he didn’t need her. He didn’t need coffee, either, but a steaming cup of strong, freshly brewed black coffee warmed him like little else. He didn’t need beer, but those cold, sour bubbles sure felt good going down.

Susie sure felt good going down, too—and he’d better not let his mind wander off in that direction. They weren’t a couple. They weren’t even pals. And she was armed with a lobster. He’d better keep his defenses up, high walls protecting him not just from her but from his memories of how good she’d felt going down, among other things.

“It’s midnight,” he repeated. “She must have come here for a reason.”

“Yeah, to bash your balls again.”

The doorbell rang. Casey sighed, grabbed his bottle of Pete’s and trudged out of the kitchen and into the living room. Eva and LaShonna smiled up at him from the couch where they lounged, their feet propped on the coffee table and surrounded by—he did a quick count—five beer bottles and the soggy white box from the pepperoni pizza he’d ordered out for a while ago.

“You got company?” Eva asked, giving him her loveliest doe-eyed look. He noticed the metallic pink enamel adorning her toenails, and her casually tufted hair, and the cross glinting on its gold chain just above her cleavage. Her jeans were tight and her top was
skimpy, her exposed shoulders smooth and tawny beneath the narrow straps.

Maybe having Susie see Eva in his home wasn’t such a bad thing.

Sending the women a half smile, because he lacked the enthusiasm for a full one, he passed through the living room to the foyer and squinted through the peephole.

He saw a very large lobster.

The sight ought to have annoyed him—what kind of idiot would show up at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment at midnight with a humongous lobster?—but instead, it made him laugh. Damn. His defenses could obviously use some serious fortification.

He opened the door. The lobster was nearly as tall as he was, and a whole lot uglier, its plastic surface chipped and faded to the color of overcooked salmon, its feelers trembling as Susie maneuvered it through the door. She wasn’t visible until both she and the lobster had crossed the threshold. The creature towered over her.

She was out of breath, but she managed a smile. “Hi.”

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s a lobster,” she said. “I told you I had a lobster. Its name is Linus.”

“I don’t want it,” Casey said. What Casey
really
didn’t want was the balloon of heat Susie’s nearness inflated in his gut. He didn’t want his gaze to lock onto hers, and to see those big brown eyes dancing with amusement and hope and the flakiness that made Susie who she was. He didn’t want to think,
There’s arguably a more beautiful woman in my living room right now, but this is the woman I want to share a laugh with.

Actually, the more arguably beautiful woman was no longer in his living room. She, LaShonna and Mose had all gathered in the doorway connecting that room to the foyer. They gaped at the lobster. “What is that?” LaShonna asked. “Susie, what the hell is that shit?”

“It’s not shit,” Susie argued, her gaze veering to Eva. “It’s a plastic roadside lobster from Maine.”

“You brought that thing all the way from Maine?” LaShonna cringed and eyed Mose. “Don’t you ever take me to Maine. I don’t wanna go someplace where they’ve got things like
that
—” she gestured contemptuously at the lobster “—on the side of the road.”

“It’s a work of art,” Susie asserted, her attention still on Eva. “It’s also a movie star. It appeared in a lot of scenes in my cousin’s movie.” With a brave smile, she extended her right hand to Eva while holding the lobster upright with her left. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Susie Bloom.”

“I’m Eva Robinson,” Eva said, shaking her hand. “And I think that lobster is…” She stared at it, then threw back her head and emitted her trademark laugh.

Casey scowled. Susie’s smile faltered slightly at the raucous sound, then grew wider. “Well,” she said brightly, “where should I put this?”

“Put it where the sun don’t shine,” Mose muttered, pivoting and stalking away.

Apparently, Mose wasn’t going to be friendly to Susie because Susie had bashed his buddy’s balls. Casey appreciated Mose’s loyalty. LaShonna and Eva stared at Susie for a moment longer, and then LaShonna clamped her hand over Eva’s shoulder and said, “Honey, you got lipstick on your teeth.”

“I do?” Eva sounded startled, but LaShonna’s only answer was to steer Eva out of the foyer and down the
hall to the bathroom, where LaShonna would either scrub Eva’s tooth clean or else explain to Eva who Susie was.

He and Susie found themselves alone in the foyer. Or nearly alone. That creepy plastic lobster kept them company like a chaperon.

He glared down at Susie, who looked too damn wonderful. Her eyes were rimmed with shadows and smudges of eyeliner, her hair was a mess, her clothing was black—no surprise there—and her lips were kiss-ably free of lipstick. She looked as if she’d been through a war but had spent the past six hours doing R and R and popping speed to spike her energy level.

Susie didn’t do speed. She was probably high on adrenaline.

“What are you doing here?” he asked a bit more gently than he’d intended.

“I had no room for Linus. And I couldn’t find a parking space. I’m sorry, Casey—I didn’t know you were hosting a party.” Her smile was so sad it chiseled at his defenses, gouging the imaginary wall he’d thrown up as a shield.

“It’s not a party.”

“She resembles Halle Berry,” Susie said, nodding toward the hall down which Eva and LaShonna had disappeared. “Her laughter is kind of…equine.”

Casey said nothing.

“Is it serious between you and her?”

He wasn’t going to lie to Susie, but he wouldn’t mind letting her reach the wrong conclusion. She’d said no to him, after all. It would serve her right if he was serious about Eva. “We’re friends,” he said, pleased that it was the truth.

“Okay.” Susie propped the lobster against the wall,
then lowered her gaze to her polish-free toenails, visible through the straps of her sandals. “I came here because Julia told me you were leaving Bloom’s.”

He didn’t speak. Susie was nervous, and he suspected his silence would make her even more nervous. She deserved to be uncomfortable. In truth, she deserved a romantic migraine like the ones he’d been experiencing on a regular basis lately—blinding pain, blurred vision, the sensation of someone driving spikes through his skull. She didn’t seem to be suffering nearly enough, but the longer he said nothing, the more she squirmed.

“So, are you? Leaving Bloom’s, I mean.”

“Is it any business of yours?”

“Of course it’s my business,” she said, anger flaring. “I wrote you up as the employee of the week in the
Bloom’s Bulletin
just a few weeks ago. And now you’re going to quit?”

“You can write up my replacement,” he said.

“I don’t want to write up your replacement. What replacement, anyway? Who could replace you? Who could come up with fig-flavored bagels, huh? Who could come up with a rhyme for
stroganoff?
”

“What are you doing here?” he asked again. “Besides bringing me the lobster.”

“I’m here because I’m an idiot,” she mumbled, still eyeing her toes. “I shouldn’t have come.”

He wasn’t going to argue. He didn’t think she was an idiot, of course. He thought she was one of the smartest women he’d ever known. And a part of him—the masochistic part—was far too glad she’d come, far too grateful for the chance to see her mussed black hair and her stubborn chin up close, to smell her spicy scent
and hear her unequine laughter and imagine himself reaching out and cupping her cheeks in his hands.

Which made him an idiot, too, because she’d said no, and she sure as hell hadn’t come here so he could cup her cheeks—either the ones shaping her face or the ones shaping her ass. She’d come here to dump a plastic lobster on him, and because she couldn’t find a parking space, whatever that was about.

“I’d better leave,” she finally said.

“Suit yourself.” She’d hurt him, she’d left him, and he was under no obligation to make life easier for her.

She sighed, lifted her face and gazed into his eyes with such intensity he had to exert himself not to fall back a step. “Well,” she said. “I’m home.” With that, she spun around, yanked open the door and marched out.

Christ. She shouldn’t be heading outside alone this late at night. His neighborhood was safe, but still. He ought to accompany her back to whatever vehicle she couldn’t find a parking space for, just to make sure nothing happened to her.

He swung open his door and stepped out into the hallway in time to see her disappear into the elevator. “Susie!” he shouted after her, but the door slid shut and she was gone. Two of his neighbors cracked their doors open and glowered at him for yelling in the hallway after midnight. “Sorry,” he said, ducking back into his foyer and closing the door. He twisted the bolt, turned around and found himself face-to-face with a freaking six-foot plastic lobster.

Damn,
he thought as another of those psychosomatic migraines began hammering inside his skull.

N
ico’s was nearly empty—just a customer who’d come in for an eggplant Parmesan hero to go, and Rick and Anna huddled at a table, sipping root beers and nibbling on single slices of Sicilian with pepperoni. Susie was glad to be stuck behind the counter, slicing and wrapping the sloppy sandwich. Eggplant was one of those vegetables she didn’t get: purple until you cooked it, then green and brown, slimy in texture, with a flavor that made her think of mildew. And she had yet to figure out a way to slice a roll full of breaded-and-baked eggplant bleeding tomato sauce and liquefied mozzarella without the sandwich’s innards oozing out along the edges.

Still, if that was what the customer wanted, that was what he’d get. The first law of retail was to satisfy the customer, and Susie Bloom, erstwhile poet and free spirit, had become quite an expert when it came to retail.

She wasn’t positive, but she suspected Rick and Anna were talking about her. Not that she blamed them. She was such a hot topic, after all—Susie in meltdown, Susie in love, Susie showing up at Casey’s apartment at midnight to find him entertaining his new sweetheart. Susie abandoning her lobster statue and making an ass of herself. Susie in a million pieces, every single shat
tered piece glowering at her in the knowledge that she and she alone was responsible for the debacle that was her life.

She wasn’t used to being responsible. Shit happened; sometimes she was the shitter and sometimes she was the shat-upon, but she’d always wiped herself off and moved on. No big deal. Life was for living, not for worrying about your bowels.

This time, though…She was ready to sign up for a colonoscopy on her emotions. This time she’d managed to shit on herself.

She hadn’t revealed to Anna or Rick every miserable detail of what had happened the night she’d driven the rental van to Queens three nights ago. She’d told Rick she’d left Linus with Casey. She’d told Anna that the new sweetheart had been at Casey’s apartment and had brayed a laugh that reminded her of some of the more nightmarish scenes from
Equus
, and that she’d felt like a fool and left as quickly as she could. As Anna and Rick noshed on their midafternoon pizza slices, they were probably comparing notes, filling each other in.

The eggplant man—thin, bearded, earringed, probably a vegetarian—handed her his credit card and she ran it through the machine. No tip for a take-out order, of course. Yet she believed she deserved some sort of bonus for creating such a neatly wrapped hero out of such disgusting ingredients. The vegetarian signed the charge slip, handed it to her and carried his take-out bag to the door. Once he was gone, she turned to discover Anna and Rick staring at her. Anna waved at her to join them.

No other customers occupied tables. Nico was in the kitchen, using the lull between the lunch and dinner surges to prepare fresh pots of sauce and fresh mounds
of dough. Susie couldn’t count on him to call her into the kitchen. She was stuck.

Sighing, she filled a glass of water for herself, wiped her hands on her apron and trudged across the scuffed checkerboard-tile floor to their table. She could have heated a leftover slice of pizza for herself, but what little appetite she had evaporated as she settled into a chair facing these two people who supposedly adored her and who, she knew, were about to give her a very hard time.

“You have to go to a poetry slam,” Anna announced. “Rick and I decided.” She tossed back her long, black hair, revealing the row of earrings that trimmed her lobe.

Susie had trouble getting around the idea of Anna and Rick collaborating on a plan for her. “You decided,” she muttered.

“The only poetry you’re writing these days is that crap for the
Bloom’s Bulletin
,” Rick said.

Self-righteous anger flared within Susie. “Those poems aren’t crap. They’re carefully wrought limericks. Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with a rhyme for
stroganoff?
” It had been so hard she’d telephoned Casey for help, so hard she’d been forced to admit she was in love with him when he’d provided her with the rhyme. Limericks had proven to be an emotional minefield for her.

“There’s a poetry slam at that scuzzy coffeehouse around the corner from my apartment this weekend,” Rick told her. “You should write something for it. Anna’ll be there.”

Susie gazed at Anna in surprise. Anna shrugged sheepishly. “For once in his life, Rick is paying for our
food,” she said, gesturing at the discarded pizza crusts resting on their plates. “How can I say no?”

“She’s got a price, just like all of us,” Rick said with a grin.

Susie was discouraged to think Anna’s price was a whopping five dollars plus tax. She wondered where Rick had gotten the money to splurge on this midafternoon snack. For him, even five bucks was a lot. “Are you paying for this out of the film budget?” she asked, disapproval coloring her tone.

“Stop spying for your sister,” Rick retorted. “She’s the one who’s got you writing those dumb-ass limericks. She’s no friend of yours.”

“The limericks were my idea,” Susie said. “And besides, Julia
pays
me for those limericks. She pays me to write the damn bulletin.”

“So? Writing a poem for the slam would pay you emotionally.”

Great. Just what Susie needed: emotional compensation.

“Let it all out, Suze, that’s all I’m saying.” Rick patted her on the shoulder, then drained his glass, his straw making obscene slurping noises as he sucked the dregs of root beer and crushed ice from the bottom of his glass. “Look at you. Your life stinks.”

“Thanks,” she snapped.

“He’s right,” Anna chimed in. “You need to get past this.”

Get past what? Blowing off Casey and then seeing the error of her ways in time to get blown off by him? Giving her love to him when he no longer wanted it? Chasing the train down the tracks with her heart in her hands and no sign of him even waving from the win
dow, because he was off having a drink in the club car with Halle Berry?

“Poetry would be good therapy,” Anna said. “It’ll get you out of the pits.”

“Or at least keep you company while you’re in the pits,” Rick added. “I’ll be scheduling you to do some voice-over stuff for the movie. But we can talk about that another time. You’re working now.”

Yeah, she was—for real money, not the emotional kind. She took the ten-dollar bill Rick extended to her and carried it to the counter. “Keep the change,” he said as he and Anna rose from the table.

Big tipper
, Susie thought, unable to shake her suspicion that he was tipping her with money from the film budget.

As if his generous tip would make or break anything—including her. She pocketed the change and waved limply as Anna and Rick waltzed out of the pizzeria. Given the lack of patrons filling the place, now would be a good time to sweep the floors and tidy up a bit.

Instead, she grabbed her order pad and pen and wrote,
Losing Linus
.

She stared at the title for a moment, clicking the pen open and shut a few times on her chin, then continued:

Maybe she wasn’t hollow, ravenous and needy, but she
was
hungry. She tore off the top sheet of her pad
and tucked it into the hip pocket of her black jeans, then cleared off and wiped down the table where Anna and Rick had been sitting. Once it was spotless, she sauntered into the kitchen. Pots simmered on the stove, filling the room with the blended fragrance of Romano tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and basil. Susie liked to imagine that Italy smelled exactly like Nico’s kitchen.

She spotted Nico hovering just outside the back door, enjoying a cigarette with Orlando, a Puerto Rican kid fresh out of high school whom Nico was trying to turn Italian by revealing for him the mysteries of pizza and pasta preparation. They smiled and nodded at Susie, who returned the greeting before yanking open the heavy aluminum door of one of the industrial refrigerators. She grabbed a handful of pitted black olives from a tub, tossed them all into her mouth and chomped down on their flimsy flesh, letting the salty juice bathe her tongue. While she was still chewing, she tore a chunk from a large, knotted wad of mozzarella. Chocolate would have satisfied her more than cheese and olives, but Nico didn’t keep desserts in that refrigerator, and she wanted to stuff her face quickly and get back to the front room.

Detouring to the sink, she wedged the cheese between her jaws, freeing her hands so she could rinse the olive juice from her palms. Once she’d dried them, she carried the cheese back to her post behind the counter in the front room. No one had come in, so she picked up her pen, grabbed a to-go paper plate and scribbled:

Two tottering old men with matching duck-head canes entered the restaurant. She hid the plate on a shelf below the counter and shaped a welcoming smile for them. The men were adorable, one a few inches taller than the other, one sporting a faded Yankees cap and the other hatless, his fuzzy gray hair circling his freckled scalp like a laurel wreath. Both had age spots on their hands and wore cardigans, even though the afternoon air had reached the midseventies. The men bickered for a few minutes about meatballs versus sausage. “We buy only one hero and split it,” the taller one explained.

“It’s too much, one of those sandwiches,” the shorter one said. “I can’t finish it myself.”

“My grandson could finish it,” the taller one noted. “My Danny, he can eat everything. And does.”

“He’s the monster that ate Pittsburgh, your Danny.”

“
Oy
. Fifteen years old and almost six feet tall, and he eats all the time.”

“So we’ll get the sausage?” the shorter one said.

“I hate the sausage. It makes me
fortz
.”

“Everything makes you
fortz
,” the shorter one complained. “You’re an
alter fortzer
.”

“If you’d like,” Susie offered, just because these men amused her and she didn’t want to give the taller one gas, “I could make two half sandwiches, one with meatballs and one with sausage. How would that be?”

The men looked stunned, then ecstatic. “You would do that for us?” the shorter one asked.

“It’s not a problem.”

Their expressions changed from ecstatic to transported. Smitten. They were in love with her because she could make two half sandwiches with different fillings. And neither of them appeared like the sort who
would force her to change her life for him, to move in and settle down and marry him.

She went into the kitchen to assemble their two-part sandwich. Slicing the roll was therapeutic; she pretended the hard crust was Casey’s thick skull as she sawed the knife blade through it. She filled each half with the requested filling, slid the sandwich into the pizza oven for a minute to warm it up, then wrapped each half separately, glancing behind her to make sure Nico wasn’t watching. He’d probably have a fit if he knew she was going to so much effort for a couple of geezers.

They tipped her generously, even though they’d ordered the sandwich to go. Once they’d shuffled out of the restaurant, she grabbed her pen and a napkin and continued her poem.

It felt good to write, she realized. Rick and Anna had spoken the truth. Whether or not Susie went to the slam, she needed to write something real, something deep, something that exorcised her pain. Something that didn’t entail finding a rhyme for
stroganoff
.

The lobster,
she wrote,
is all. The lobster is gone. The lobster is red and chipped and hiding within its shell, like my heart.

Her cell phone started ringing as she climbed the stairs to her apartment, but she couldn’t answer it because her hands were full. She carried a large pizza box filled with paper plates, napkins, order slips and a straw wrapper, all with bits and pieces of her poem scribbled onto them. This was a huge poem, an epic, one that required assembly. Once she got upstairs and emptied and unfolded the box—which had several fervent stanzas written inside the lid—she could put it all together
and figure out if she’d created a masterpiece or
dreck
. She was a little worried about whether she’d be able to read her handwriting on the straw wrapper, but despite that concern, she was pretty sure what she’d created was magnificent.

She’d left Nico’s early tonight—ten-thirty—because she’d worked the lunch shift. Even lugging her poem-in-a-pizza-box, she’d arrived at her building only ten minutes later, so the chirping of the phone in her purse at this hour didn’t alarm her. She wasn’t going to stop halfway up the stairs to her apartment to put down her box and answer it, though. Whoever was calling her would have to wait until she got inside.

Balancing the box while she unlocked the three bolts on her door was tricky enough without the damn phone nagging at her to hurry. She shoved the door open with her hip, nodded toward Caitlin and Anna, who were both seated on the sofa simultaneously polishing their nails and watching a VH1 rerun about the Milli Vanilli scandal, and set her box down on the dining table near the window. The kitchen was too small to contain a table. It was practically too small to contain a refrigerator, which was one reason they had such an undersized refrigerator, the other reason being that their landlord was a cheap bastard.

“Did you bring us leftovers?” Caitlin asked, motioning toward the box with her nail-polish brush.

“No,” Susie said, tugging at her purse’s drawstring to get to her phone. “It’s a poem.” She found the noisy little gadget and pressed the Connect button. “Hello?”