{The real character’s names are changed. The fictitious names are real.}
I was barely inside the door when Sylvia made two short knocks before letting herself in. It was about 10:00 P M and I really wasn’t in the mood for company but when I saw the concern on her face I relaxed.
“You look awful,” she exclaimed. “How is our girl?”
“She must be doing okay. She was belly aching about having to spend the night alone when they kicked me out,” I laughed.
“You’ve been there all day. You look tired, want something to eat?” Without waiting for an answer Sylvia opened the refrigerator and brought out three eggs.
I had to admit, an omelet or whatever she was going to do with the eggs sounded pretty good. I had not eaten since having a sandwich sometime around 3 P M when I brought the paychecks to Jimmy and Davey.
Sylvia was wearing library clothes, a dark dress that buttoned down the front. Her hair was braided. I suspected she had closed the library at nine and waited for me to come home. She broke the eggs into a skillet and started two pieces of toast before she turned to me. “Did it go as expected? Were there any complications or anything?”
“Yeah, she was weak and tired when I saw her the first time but when I went back she ate some pudding and we talked some. When she wasn’t sleeping,” I added, not wanting to say anything about the blood transfusion that had been necessary.
Sylvia sat a glass of milk in front of me along with the plate of scrambled eggs.
“This is fantastic,” I smiled as I dug into the eggs. She took a seat at the table and watched me eat.
“Can I go with you tomorrow?” Sylvia asked.
“Sure,” I answered. “Isn’t the library open tomorrow?”
“You’re right and I have the late shift again. What about Sunday?”
“She may be coming home that day but sure, Laura will be glad to see you.”
Sylvia smiled as she rose. “Set the dishes in the sink. I don’t have to go in until 12. I’ll come over in the morning and get you underway. I know you have a lot to think about.”
I don’t know what came over me. Getting to my feet, I caught her before she got to the door and gave her a hug. She patted me on the back and said, “ohh, R.,” before I let her go.
I went back to the table to finish the few bites of eggs and toast, thinking how considerate Sylvia had been to wait for me to come home, and then rush over to make something for me to eat.
Before going to bed I checked the answering machine. There was one call inquiring about painting a residence. Lacy had not called.
Laura’s spirits were considerably higher when I got to her room on Saturday. Her hair had been combed and there was some color in her cheeks. A lunch tray had just arrived and she ate some of everything before placing her head on the pillow and waving her hand for me to take the tray away.
She introduced me to her roommate. A young woman named Nadine sat up in the bed near the windows with a lunch tray in front of her.
“Hi Randy, I heard all about you,” Nadine grinned. Unlike Laura, she had makeup applied to her face and her eyebrows had been highlighted to match her dark hair.
“I’ll bet you have,” I laughed. Laura was facing the other wall and did not know I was looking her way, wondering what she had told Nadine.
Seeing that Nadine was not going to eat anymore I offered to move her tray.
“My brother is very considerate,” Laura commented. “It’s too bad he can’t keep a girl friend.”
“You must be feeling better,” I quipped, taking my place in the chair next to her.
“Did you talk to Lacy?”
I shook my head; not wanting to say anything in front of Nadine about Lacy’s reaction to the message I had left on the answering machine. But when I saw that Laura’s eyes were closed, I told her that we had not spoken.
Beverly, Lacy’s sister, had said she had seen the welts on Lacy’s ass. I didn’t believe this. I had not struck her hard enough to leave marks, although her ass may have been red the next day. Lacy had even joked about how her ass looked the next morning. But Beverly had found out about it somehow. Either she had been told or been shown or she had peeked at Lacy’s ass and drawn her own conclusions.
Having your girl friend mad at you was one thing; having her sister mad was serious. Beverly had threatened to call the authorities.
I told Laura that Sylvia had been over the night before to make me some eggs and that she wanted to come to the hospital but she had the late shift at the library. Laura listened, remaining quiet, seemingly glad to have me there as company.
I told her that Jimmy and I had bid on four jobs that morning and gotten two signed contracts with down payments. This made four jobs to do after Jimmy and Davey finished the brothel. This would take us to the middle of November, longer if rain held us up. Things looked pretty good. We had money in the account from the advances we had accepted and plenty of work for the time being.
I was bothered that we had not finished the additions. How would I explain to Sylvia that it was going to take longer to complete the projects than we had planed?
Laura looked over at me with a wrinkled brow that told me she had something serious to say. “When you were overseas did you ever think how things would turn out? Did you ever think, by the end of September that you would be going to school and be in the painting business and be in a hospital room sitting in a chair across from an old prostitute?”
Alarm struck me. Why was she talking like this in front of a stranger? Laura saw my concern and smiled.
“Don’t worry honey; we had a heart to heart last night.”
Nadine was watching us, smiling and nodding her head.
“Just how deep did this heart to heart get?” I asked, getting a tight feeling in my chest.
“I told her everything and she told me everything,” Laura admitted. “It’s easy to talk about things at four in the morning when you can’t sleep.”
