I had called Nadine and told her I was coming for the weekend…by myself.
“Potato chips,” I whispered when she answered the phone, not able to say anything more than that.
“Shit. You’re using the safe word. I don’t have any cavalry, Ellie! Crap, where am I going to get some cavalry?”
“No cavalry, Nadine, I just need to get away.”
“By yourself?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered tiredly
She didn’t grill me for more but I knew I wasn’t off the hook. She would want to know exactly what had happened. I wasn’t sure I could explain it myself.
Driving up through New York City made it impossible for me to dwell too much on my problems. After almost getting t-boned twice and nearly sideswiped a half dozen times, I was lucky I still had my own hair by the time I parked my car outside of Nadine’s walk up in a quaint neighborhood in Queens.
Her apartment building was loud. Music and laughter, voices and conversation echoed through the walls.
Nadine lived on the fifth floor and my legs were burning by the time I reached her floor, since the elevator was out of commission.
“Ellie!” Nadine shrieked after I knocked on the door. She gave me a quick hug before pulling me into her apartment. I dropped my bag on the floor.
“Bathroom,” I said, feeling as though my bladder was about to burst.
“That way.” Nadine pointed to a door just off the small living area. I all but ran towards it. The bathroom was tiny, even by my standards. The shower stall (no bathtub), toilet, and sink were crammed into a space the size of Flynn’s closet. I banged my elbow on the wall when I bent over to pull my pants back up.
I walked back out into the living room and Nadine handed me a beer. “I’m so glad you’re here!” She grinned and tapped my bottle with hers.
“Thanks,” I said, though I didn’t sound very convincing. Now that I was here and my bladder was thankfully empty, I thought miserably about how I had left.
The look on Flynn’s face when he walked back into the house.
Our argument.
The horrible feeling that things were changing.
“Let me give you the grand tour,” Nadine said, snapping me back to the present. She looped her arm with mine and tugged me toward the window on the far wall. “This is my window that overlooks the Deli and Grocery.” She turned me around to face her living space, which was, like the bathroom, ridiculously tiny. “This is the living room slash kitchen.”
“Where’s the kitchen?” I asked, looking around.
Nadine pulled me across the room and stopped in front of a tiny stove and mini fridge. A small length of counter top stretched along the wall. There was no separation between the kitchen and the rest of the room. Nadine had put a café style table and chairs in the corner to delineate the “eating” area.
“Check out the flat screen,” she enthused, pointing to the TV attached to the wall. I cocked my head to the side.
“Is it crooked?”
“Yeah, my neighbor Tommy hung it for me. I just figured guys would know how to do that stuff. I was wrong. But it’s bolted in there with heavy-duty screws so it’s not going anywhere without use of a jackhammer,” she huffed.
“I guess you can just watch TV with your head to the side,” I suggested, snickering.
“Shut up, Ells,” Nadine laughed and led me to the only other door in the place.
“And this is my room,” she said with a flourish. Her bedroom consisted of a twin-sized bed shoved under the window, a bookshelf made of plastic egg crates and a garment rack for her clothes.
“Wow, Nadine, it’s…uh…”
“Small. Cramped. The size of a fucking shoe?”
I chuckled. “I was going to say functional.”
