A Safe Place

(continued)

By Lynn Frost

Adrienne watched for several moments as Erica tried on shoes — no socks, not even a stocking, just barefooted. Did she know that was illegal? Did she care? Had Erica ever concerned herself with anything other than what her whims dictated? Adrienne shrugged her shoulders. Her tux was getting scratchy.

Erica tried on a pair of soft brown leather sandals. She twirled her ankle around and around, walked past the floor mirror a few times, then let out a falsely innocent sigh before she slipped the new shoes on her feet, cramming the old shoes into the empty box. Same old Erica — what she wanted she took, regardless of the consequences.

Adrienne had seen enough to jog her memory. Her heart had stopped swinging as the fantasies trickled into something more familiar — reality. Adrienne turned to leave. She didn't want to be in the vicinity when Erica got arrested for shoplifting.

"Adrienne?"

Adrienne inhaled deeply before she turned around. She stared at a point just between Erica's eyebrows. "Yeah."

"You look good," Erica said, the small dimple near the corner of her mouth appearing when she smiled.

"What are you doing?" Adrienne said, pointing at the shoebox stuffed with Erica's worn out sandals.

"Trading shoes."

"I think it's calling 'stealing."'

"Have you been crying?" Erica asked, her less-than-subtle way of evading a subject.

Adrienne rubbed her eyes. She damn sure wasn't going to let Erica think she was crying over her. "Sinuses."

"Oh," she said, glancing down at her feet as she pointed and flexed her toes inside the stolen shoes. "Did you know that a bad sinus infection can kill you?"

"No." It all flooded back to her now, the insanity of living with this woman who was preening around Wal-Mart with her super model-wannabe lover and her stolen shoes — two years of madness entitled Erica. Adrienne yanked at the black bow tie at her throat and thought of Aimee Kate's serious gray eyes, round and delicious, like chocolate kisses.

"Oh yes," Erica said, as she raked her artificial nails through her dark hair. "See, we all have this germ inside our nose called meningitis. And if you get a bad nose bleed or a sinus infection, it could get inside your head and cause your brain to swell till you die."

She'd said it with the pep of a cheerleader. It thrilled Erica to taunt people with all the ways they could die. She'd dredge up the most horrific stories until she was satisfied she'd compressed you into a tight ball of anxiety, then she'd smile brightly as she watched the fear collecting your face into red alarm. That Erica, such a little bubble of delight.

"Thanks for sharing that with me," Adrienne said in a tone that wiped some of the grin off Erica's face.

"You better get to a doctor. Why just last night me and Murphy were watching a documentary on diseases," she said, "and those people over in China and Hong Kong wearing the face masks — they don't know what the hell they got."

"SARS."

"What?"

"The new disease is called SARS," Adrienne said, as she mentally kicked herself for getting caught up in the depressing conversation. She'd seen the documentary the other night, too. Not only had they showed SARS but the show went on to catalog several other epidemics: the Bubonic plague, AIDS, Swine Influenza, Tuberculosis, Typhoid Fever and Polio. "Man is not the dominant animal," the narrator said, "Disease is." A comforting thought to ponder in the shoe aisle of Wal-Mart. But then her thoughts in the towel aisle hadn't been much better.

What was it I came here for? Oh yeah, to get some distance from forever... to forget what it looked like inside Aimee Kate's eyes, they way they probably look now, rimmed with disappointment.

What had Aimee Kate really wanted when she'd asked Adrienne about moving in? Had she once asked for forever... or even tomorrow? Maybe she searched for something simpler. Maybe she just wanted a safe place. A few fleeting moments spent taking pleasure from the warmth of a shared embrace.

Adrienne lifted her shoulders in an attempt to squeeze some of the tension out of them. She recalled the gesture as she made it. She hadn't done it in so long — six months. Now, here she was fighting the stiffness that shrieked through her body as Erica inched toward her, stepping on her tuxedo shoe. Adrienne stepped back.

"How's Aimee Kate?" Erica asked, unsuccessfully masking a venom that she had no right to voice.

"Fine."

"I miss you," she said, her blue eyes steadily working at convincing Adrienne of their sincerity.

"Hmm." Adrienne thought about the sparkling grape juice stuffed between fat pillows. She felt a sudden urge to retrieve the bottle.

"Don't you miss me?" Erica asked, dropping her voice into a small sound that might be heard as vulnerability by someone less wise than Adrienne.

"I'm not answering that."

Erica tilted her head and stared at her feet. She could've fooled anyone had they not known to look for the spotlights. But Adrienne knew better, she'd shared this terrible stage with Erica too many times. Get the camera ready, the scene would soon escalate into Erica's close-up.

"I just said 'I miss you,' Adrienne, that's all." Erica's voice rose and a few shoppers, a couple of lesbians fingering flowered flip-flops and hugging every time one of them said "Jamaica," glanced over at Erica and Adrienne.

"I've got to go," Adrienne said, and turned. Erica grabbed her sleeve and Adrienne was tempted to shrug the jacket from her shoulders and keep walking.

"Why?" Erica whined and the Jamaica-bound lesbians cast anxious looks around the shoes, careful not to let their nervous eyes light on anything longer than a moment.

Adrienne jerked her arm loose. Erica's hand dangled like a corpse — a diseased corpse, dying with something worse than SARS... self-adulation.

"I don't have time for any more of your dramas," Adrienne said, as she turned her back and walked towards the pillow bin. She didn't look back, not even when she heard Erica stomping her stolen shoes. Adrienne thought of the two lesbians that had been buying the flip-flops for their trip to Jamaica. She hoped Erica's terrible behavior wouldn't make them eye each other with suspicion, fearing their relationship might one day spiral into temper tantrums in the Walthall Wal-Mart. She hoped they instead filled their apprehensive silence with laughter, a strong, sure laughter that would lift them away.

As Adrienne left the store she caught herself whistling. Not because the world was okay. Hell, she could die tomorrow with the meningitis she harbored in her nose. And who knew what other parasitic stowaways would emerge from the bowels of the Earth to kill people or drive them to the edge of psychosis where they would wield a crossword puzzle as a pitiful weapon. There was no safe place. The best anyone could offer was a brief reprieve.

Still dressed in her tuxedo Adrienne stood on the wooden steps outside Aimee Kate's apartment at 3 a.m. as she shifted the bottle of grape juice from one hand to the other. Five minutes passed before she knocked on the door. She glanced down at her tuxedo shoes. She looked like an idiot - that ought to mean something to Aimee Kate - that she'd allow herself to dress up like a fool just to make her happy.

But she'd stood the woman up, not once, but twice. How could she expect Aimee Kate to excuse that kind of callousness? She could explain to her jilted lover that at this very moment she could be catching her death from meningitis. Or that tomorrow might see her buying them a supply of surgical masks and safety glasses. Or that in the early morning light of each new day the very last remnants of the woman she'd known all her life as her grandmother were evaporating quicker than the dew in full sun. Or she could just open her arms and offer her lover the most she had to offer... a small slice of brief reprieve.

The door opened, Aimee Kate tied her red kimono and rubbed her eyes. "What took you so long?" she asked as she pushed her way into Adrienne's arms.

Adrienne kissed the top of her head. "I don't know."

"You were at Wal-Mart, weren't you?" Aimee Kate pulled back just enough to gaze into Adrienne's eyes.

"Yeah."

For a few moments they said nothing, just stood there in the night underneath the yellow glow of her porch light.

"Find what you needed?" Aimee Kate asked matter-of-fact.

Adrienne rubbed her thumbs gently over Aimee Kate's cheekbones. "Yes."