Love's Little Instruction Book (20 page)

He smiled against her. “I don’t care.”

“Me either, but let’s see if I can‘t warm us up a little anyway.” She turned the engine over and turned the heater up full blast, then reached up and unzipped his jacket, before undoing her own and leaning across the center console to lean into him. He shifted and she nestled as best she could against his chest, and he held her there with her arms around her. He grunted.

“The next time one of us buys a new car, let’s make a point of getting one with a bench seat in front, okay? I don’t care if it’s a station wagon, this is just too awkward.”

“There’s always the back seat,” she told him.

He pulled back and looked down at her. “Let’s go.”

• • •

They got back to his apartment in the wee, small hours of the morning. The white lights on the ficus tree still shone merrily, but Dave and Denise were a little rumpled, a little tired, and Dave’s hand was starting to throb just a bit. Not that he really minded, all things considered. He took their coats and tossed them into the bedroom. Cookie, Dave’s pet cockatiel, chirped sleepily at them and then went back to sleep. Dave came back into the room and looked at Denise. “Can I offer you something to eat? I mean, I invited you over for dinner and now it’s — ” he glanced at the clock on the wall “ — quarter past two in the morning and I still haven’t fed you yet.”

Denise looked at his face. Now that they were back inside where it was lit, it was easy to see that he looked just about wiped out. He had shadows underneath his eyes, his clothes were well rumpled, and he was cradling his bandaged hand with his good one. “That would be great,” she told him, lacing her fingers through his. They walked hand in hand into his kitchen and stopped.

“I guess last night’s meal is pretty much shot. All I have left of it is a couple of cannolis, a probably warm bottle of champagne, and a single truffle.” He grunted. “What do you suppose you can do with a single truffle?”

“Well, I had a really good truffle omelet at the Cordon Bleu in Paris once. Do you have any orange juice?” She suddenly knew what she wanted to do.

“Uh, yeah … ”

She smiled and pushed him into the same empty chair that she had pushed him into hours before when he was bleeding. “Sit yourself down there, boy. I’m going to make you breakfast.”

She made him the most delicious truffle omelet, chopping his single truffle up and using the cream that he’d bought for his champagne truffle sauce. She retrieved the lead crystal glasses and the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and combined it with the orange juice in his fridge to make mimosas, and sliced one of the rolls he’d bought in a North End bakery extra thin and toasted the slices, spreading them with left over bruschetta that he had in his fridge. She let him carry the glasses into the makeshift dining room while she arranged the omelets and toast artfully on their plates and carried them out to set on the table before him with a flourish. He looked up at her with amazement and admiration. “This isn’t quite how I had imagined this date would go, but I can’t say that I’m really disappointed.”

“I think I’d have changed the part where we ended up in the emergency room, but other than that, I think it was fun.”

He smiled at her and picked up the fluted glass, raising a toast to her. “To you, Denise. I love your patience, your inventiveness, and I think I’m going to love your cooking.”

She returned the toast. “I know you are,” she said immodestly.

He took the first bite of omelet. It was light, fluffy, and full of the delicate flavoring of the truffle. He praised her cooking, then said, “I had wanted to impress you. Guess I made a heck of an impression last night.”

She studied him for a minute, wondering how much to reveal, then said, “You did, Dave. But not because of the fancy menu or the expensive ingredients. It’s the effort that you put into it. The details. The trees, the lights … And then you were willing to do something silly like take those lobsters out to the beach with me instead of making me feel like a goofball or complaining about the expense. I like that about you, Dave. I feel safe with you. It’s not all the trappings, it’s just
you
. I like to spend time with
you
, because you’re a good guy.” She took his hand in hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. “Thank you.”

“No,” moaned Dave into the phone. “There’s no way I could possibly work today … No, I don’t know if I’ll be in tomorrow. It depends on how I feel … No. It’s the flu … A headache, nausea, my stomach feels like sludge … Yeah … Yeah. Okay, Presley. Just let Paul know that I won’t be in today … Yup … All right … Thanks, Pres.”

Dave rubbed his face as he hung up the phone. He felt awful. He had forgotten just how bad sick could feel. His body ached, his stomach rolled, and there was a nasty taste in the back of his mouth that he didn’t want to identify. Wearily, he hoisted himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and waited painfully for his stomach to catch up with the rest of his body. When he thought it was safe, he lifted himself tentatively to his feet. He stood there a moment, waiting to see if this move would prove to be fatal. When it didn’t, he shuffled off to the bathroom to take care of necessities, then slowly made his way into the kitchen with one hand braced against his stomach.

He paused again, leaning heavily against the fridge. The metal front was cool and soothing to his body. He stayed there, eyes closed, for as long as he dared. He felt tired and as weak as a jellyfish in a tidal wave, only the tempest was in his gut. Reluctantly, he pushed away from the fridge, determinedly making his way to the cabinet under the sink. Whimpering loudly, he bent and seized his biggest bowl — the giant three gallon one made from galvanized steel that his grandmother had always mixed bread in. He hoped it would be big enough when he needed it. Clutching it to him like a shield, he turned away from the sink and made his way across the linoleum and into the living room.

Cookie the cockatiel bounced from perch to perch and chirped happily when she saw Dave come into the room. Dave winced at the shrill sound and swallowed hard. “I feel sick,” he moaned, hoping for a little avian sympathy. Cookie cocked her head and peered at him thoughtfully. “I feel awful,” he tried again. She continued to stare at him in silence. “I think I’m gonna die,” he whined finally. Cookie finally emitted a single chirp, which Dave took as an acknowledgment of his suffering. Feeling somewhat pacified, he moved to get the box of bird food from the shelf under the cage. “You’re a good bird, Cook-Cook,” he told her, pouring her an extra large portion of bird food. He looked into her water bowl. Ordinarily he changed her water every day, but the water in the dish looked clean and relatively full, so he decided to leave it as a concession to his miserable condition. Then he shuffled off to bed.

Lying there, feeling miserable, Dave’s thoughts wandered back to one of the conversations about romance novels that he’d had with Kirk and Ghoulie months before.

“Okay,” Dave had said.“What else have we got?”

“
Exquisite
by Janet MacNee,” contributed Ghoulie.

“Okay, great. How does the hero there win the girl?”

“Well, the turning point comes when the hero gets sick. The woman — who’s his ex-wife — stays to help take care of him. And while she’s taking care of him, they get to talking and they realize that the girl’s father had lied to them both, and the divorce was all a mistake and they start to fall in love again.”

“Hey, I read one like that, too,” Kirk had said. “Only, the woman gets sick and she’s having chills, see? And no matter how many blankets the guy piles on her, he can’t get her warm enough. So finally he pulls off all his clothes and climbs into bed with her. Then the fever breaks and they make love.”

“If I tried that with Shelby, she’d tell me to take my icy paws and get back on my own side of the bed.”

“No, no,” Dave had said thoughtfully. “I’ve read things like that, too. Only the girl gets hurt.”

“Or the guy.”

“Or she goes blind.”

“Or is paralyzed.”

“Or gets amnesia.”

“Or breaks a leg.”

“Or risks a miscarriage.”

“This is great!” enthused Dave. “So all I need to do is wait until the next time I get sick or hurt, and then call Denise so that I can play on her womanly sympathies.”

“Yeah,” agreed Kirk with a triumphant grin. “Women love illness! That’s bound to work!”

Dave sighed now at the thought of having Denise there. If she were there, she could take care of things like making sure Cookie was fed and watered. She could heat him up some chicken noodle soup to make sure that he didn’t get dehydrated. He closed his eyes as he imagined it. He’d feel better if Denise was there. He drifted off to sleep, thinking how nice it would have been if she’d been there.

• • •

The ringing phone woke him up hours later. He considered letting it ring — the selfish son of a bitch didn’t deserve to talk to him anyway — but the shrill ringing seemed to drill straight into his aching skull, so he fumbled for the receiver in a faint effort for self-preservation.

He grunted into the phone. No words — they’d have been too much effort. Just a grunt was all he could be expected to manage in his weakened condition.

“Hi, Dave? It’s Denise.”

Denise? Oh, God! His heart lightened and began to beat faster. He had an image of her sitting by his bedside, soothing his fevered brow with long, perfectly manicured fingers, her sweet, womanly voice soothing him as he laid his head in her lap. She’d make him chicken soup to sooth his churning stomach. Hell. She’d probably even spoon it into him, his own hands too shaky to manage it safely. After all, women loved illness, didn’t they? For the first time all day, he began to feel that he wanted to live after all.

• • •

“Denise. Hi.”

“I heard you weren’t feeling well. Are you playing hooky or are you really sick?”

“I’m really, really sick,” he told her. “My head aches and my joints ache and my stomach hurts. I’m all hot and I’ve got this horrible taste in my mouth, you know?”

Standing in her office at WMTR, Denise winced distastefully. She didn’t
do
illness. She had never understood how her sister could want to be a nurse. Blood she could deal with — it was sudden, dealt with quickly, and not contagious. But sick people were just so …
icky
.

“Are you going to be all right? Do you need a ride to the doctor’s or anything?” She prayed that he wouldn’t need anything, but figured common courtesy demanded that she ask. After all, he was all alone.

“Could you bring over some chicken soup?” he asked, sounding pitiful and hopeful at the same time.

Denise mouthed a silent obscenity on her end of the line. As much as she loved Dave, she really didn’t want to be exposed to whatever it was he had. “Uh, okay. I guess. I’ll have to drop it off on my way home from the station.”

“That would be great,” he told her. “You’re an angel of mercy. Listen, there’s a key to the apartment hanging from the nail under the flower wreath thing that Mrs. Silva has hanging on the front door. Just let yourself in, okay?”

Denise sighed. “Okay. Are you sure you’ll be all right until then? I mean, I could try to get someone else to check on you if it’s bad — ”

“No. No. I’ll wait. Come as soon as you can, though, okay?”

She frowned at her desk blotter. “Okay, honey. I’ll be there in a little while.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

“Feel better.”
Preferably before I get there
, she amended mentally.

• • •

Denise honestly did try to put on her best bedside manner before unlocking the door to Dave’s apartment. He deserved at a polite visit, at least. After all, she
had
offered to get him something if he needed it. And it really wasn’t his fault that he was sick. She just hoped she could drop off the soup and run so that she didn’t have to risk being exposed to whatever God awful germs he might be incubating for one minute longer than she had to be.

Cookie’s chirping greeted her as soon as she was in the doorway. Poor bird was probably hoping she’d let her out of the cage for a while. She wondered if it was too cold outside to bring Cookie home with her. If Dave was feeling really badly, he might not be up to taking care of the little bird, and that was one thing she could do that would be helpful without being distasteful. “It’s me,” she called out, just in case her entry had alarmed him. She wiped her feet on the mat and crossed the room to check inside the bird’s cage. The food and water dish looked full and the bird tilted her head to get a better look at her, raising her crest in excitement. “Hi, Cookie. How’s my girl? Are you being a good birdie, huh?”

“Denise? I’m in the bedroom,” came a feeble voice.

Drawing a fortifying, and hopefully germ free, breath, Denise squared her shoulders and marched into the sick room with all the determined grimness of a suicide bomber.

She stopped at the doorway and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “Feeling any better?” she asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be yes.

“I feel like shit,” Dave moaned. “My head aches and my mouth is dry and I feel like I want to heave.”

“Uh huh.”

“Could you come feel my forehead? I think I must have a fever.”

“You don’t have a thermometer?” she asked, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t have to actually come into any sort of physical contact with him.

He shook his head miserably. “I never get sick,” he told her. “I didn’t think I needed one.”

“You should have told me,” she said as she reluctantly approached the bed. “I could have picked one up on the way over.”

She set the little white deli bag on the nightstand. Dave sat up as eagerly as one could when burdened with aching bones and joints. Without sitting on the edge of the bed, Denise bent down and reluctantly placed her hand against his sticky brow.

“Your hands are cool. They feel so good.”

She pulled her hand away and straightened up as soon as she thought it was socially acceptable to do so. “I
think
you feel hot,” she said. “Although it could just be that my hands are cold. I was just outside. I could be wrong.”