Then he started coughing again. The heavy rattle in his chest sounded like a ‘he was about to die’ kind of coughing. He was bent over, leaning on the kitchen counter – I guess we would call it that – and breathing slowly.
“I’m going to make you some tea,” I said, feeling utterly useless.
His head bobbed once, then again.
A sure sign he was in distress if he was allowing me to stay and also allowing me to fix him tea.
I looked around the sterile kitchen with the brown walls and the sink and nothing else.
An action that might prove to be my greatest challenge.
“Go back to bed,” I told him. “I’ll figure this out and bring it to you.” He started to pad his way out of the kitchen when I realized if he left, I might never find him in this sprawling mausoleum he called his home. “Wait! Which direction are you headed in?”
“For fuck’s sake, Flowers. Just follow the hallway back towards the bedrooms. Mine is at the end.”
That sounded like a reasonable direction. Almost as reasonable as making tea.
Except, this was going to sound insane, but there was no stove top. Just flat counter as far as the eye could see. There was a massive copper structure that hung over the island but fuck me if that was the cooking vent. I looked directly under it and there was no range, no round spaces to indicate where a pot should go. There were buttons along the side of the island and I had imagesof one of those hidden televisions popping up, but that didn’t seem to make sense for a range top.
Fortunately, I found a microwave at hip length on the other side of the kitchen island. That would have to do. I opened nearly every cabinet (you had to push them in first and then they automatically opened) until I found a mug. With the mug in hand, I looked for some type of lever on the faucet that would bring the flow of water. It was only after a few minutes of searching, that I got annoyed and hit the thing with my hand, that I realized how this worked.
Seriously? Some designer was going to have to sit me down and explain the point of a cabinet with no knobs, no stove top, a hidden refrigerator door and a touch happy sink.
Rich people.
But once I had water and a tea bag and could figure out how to set two minutes on the microwave, I was set. I also sorted through my bag of supplies and came up with a chest decongestant that would reduce his fever, and hopefully, help him sleep.
The microwave beeped and I could tell the water was ripping hot, but it would have plenty of time to cool on my journey across the Land of House to E.G.
I left the kitchen the way we’d entered and I kept my eyes on the pattern of tile in the floor. The mosaic pieces did seem to change upon transitioning into what were open solariums? Living areas? If I followed the path, I wandered to another part of the house where many of the doors were closed. I was going to guess, these were the bedrooms and E.G. said he was at the end.
I stopped. I was going to enter E.G.’s bedroom?
He was in your motel room. And he helped you move into your apartment.
Both of those things were true. Nothing had felt overly familiar, either. This wouldn’t either. I would drop off his tea, watch him swallow some cough medicine, and consider it done.
His cough echoed off the high ceilings and it was easy to determine which was his room.
Squaring my shoulders, I moved forward with a bravado I didn’t necessarily feel but was prepared to fake.
Pushing open the door he’d left ajar, I was once again overcome with the magnitude of the room. The bed was the biggest I’d ever seen, with no fewer than twenty pillows butted up against an ornate carved headboard. There was some kind of mural painted on the wall above it. On the opposite wall, there was a mounted large screen TV. In the corner, two comfortable chairs and an end table between them. In another corner, some type of half-couch.
The room was bigger than my entire one-bedroom apartment, and while I was positive the archways led to a closet and a bathroom, it seemed crazy to me that there were no clothes at all to be seen.
No pictures either.
Here too, the ceilings were at least two stories high, and the windows to the right of the bed ran the entire length of the room.
A shade was drawn to keep out the light, so the effect inside the room was of a cavernous den. Like one of those places in the movies where the bank robbers could hide out with their horses under the dripping stalagmites.
Stalactites?
“Are you going to stand there gawking, or are you going to bring me my tea?”
“Both,” I admitted.
E.G. was in laying on his bed, but not under the covers, which, oddly, made things less awkward. I walked toward him and handed him the mug. Then I set about putting everythingelse he needed on the table next to his bed. He already had a box of tissues, so I focused on getting the cap open on the decongestant.
