The last thing she became aware of was that she wore nothing but a dirty robe (easier to go to and from a hot bath if you never dressed). That was when she firmly shut her door.
“God,” Edie Whitelock panted, catching up. “You can cover a lot of ground in not a lot of steps.”
“You should see if Morag has one of those little personal scooters. Or a golf cart. It must take you all day to get to the post office, and this village isn’t even a mile wide.” Cosima shoved her hands deep into the pockets of the shooting jacket she’d bought online, which Morag had delivered in its box outside her door, along with all the other boxes.
Before Cosima could feel badly for her unfair and sharp comment, Edie laughed. “Ha, ha. You know I’m not even that short? Five three. The average height of a woman in the United States is five four.”
“That’s theaverage,” Cosima said.
Edie’s voice was an alto’s. Those borrowed wellies were too big for her feet and too tight for her calves. When they squelched in the mud, she had to pull her boot back on where it was undoubtedly slipping off her heel. It bothered Cosima. Things that didn’t fit tended to bother her.
She stomped in a puddle.
“What do you mean, ‘That’s the average’?” Edie was good at mimicry.
Cosima took a deep breath. The outside air was sooutside. “I mean, if you add together all the heights and then divide them by the number of people, you get five foot four.”
Edie laughed again. “I know what an average is. I don’tknow what you mean by saying ‘that’s the average’ in an imperious tone.”
Cosima, for the first time in eleven days, felt herself want to smile.
Something about Edie’s thick dark hair with its part down the middle, concealed now by that hideous hat, and her thousands of multicolored freckles and her smirky mouth made Cosima feel like this was a person who could take on the towering wave of her meanest emotions and then tell Cosima to fuck off.
She walked a little faster to see if Edie would try to keep up. “I meant that it takes a lot of short people and a lot of tall people to compose that average, but five four being the average doesnotmean there are necessarily a lot of people whoarefive four, nor does it mean that it’s normal you’re only an inch below this arbitrary number.”
She snuck a look at Edie and glimpsed a dimple appearing, then disappearing from her cheek. The dimple was an affront.
“Fair. You might’ve let me have it, though. My life at five foot three inches is hard. For example, I look absurd in dress pants. Like a painting of a Victorian baby that’s dressed in grown-up clothes, except the cuffs are dragging on the floor and have mud on them.” Edie mimicked this vision, arching her back and hiking up imaginary pants, pretending to trip on a cuff. It was inane.
“What’s hard aboutyourlife?” Cosima put a snap in her question. The so-called pants Edie wore were very tight jeans, probably stretchy. They were absolutely correct for someone with a figure like that to wear, because why try to disguise it?Shewouldn’t. Cosima had to get pleats tailored into her real pants so it looked like there was any figure at all under her clothes, and Edie got a good ass for free.
“Well. Interesting question.” Edie tapped a finger against her lips. They had come up to High Street, which ran along a low stone wall. Cosima hadn’t been back to see it since she passed it in the car that had taken her to the inn. It felt different walking beside it, seeing all the little plants shaking off the rain. “Let’s play a game.”
“No. I’ve already agreed to this walk. I won’t agree to anything else.”
Cosima did not know where her refusal came from, but snapping that “no” at Edie felt like taking off slingback stilettos at the end of a fourteen-hour day.
But she said it to the air, because she’d lost Edie. She turned around.
Edie had stopped. There was a huge orange cat sitting on the stone wall, blinking slowly. Cosima watched as Edie made a little whispery sound,spspspsps. The cat stood, arching its back, and then bumped its head against Edie’s hand. She stroked the cat and scratched around its head. The cat’s tail rose up in the air, flicking at the tip.
“Suit yourself,” Edie said, petting the cat. “But we’re staying in the same inn at the same time in a country neither of us live in, and you’ve been hiding in your room. If you don’t want Morag to keep siccing me on you, you’ll have to come out occasionally. Might as well have some fun.”
“I don’t want to have fun.” When Cosima said it, she imagined she was tipping over a table full of toys and screaming.
Edie leaned against the wall.Herhair didn’t curl in the damp. It remained straight. The moisture caused it to separate into dozens of dark ribbons that slid against the horrific, noisy nylon of her jacket. Her nose was red. Cosima had no way of predicting what this woman would do, but whatever she did, Cosima wanted to force the opposite until she felt like she hadnever been anything but a contrary hermit who snarled at the entrance of her cave.
“Then don’t have fun,” Edie said. “It was only a suggestion. My game can be played with the intention to lance psychic boils. Plus, I’ll go back to Wisconsin at the end of the month, and you’ll go back to…?”
“Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles. Which is far, far away from Green Bay, in more ways than one. I didn’t mean to come at you by recognizing you like that, I’m sorry, but also, it’s proof our lives couldn’t be more different.”
“How do I know that? You could be the heiress of some kind of Midwest dairy conglomerate.”
“We have those! Dairy money, department store money, paper money, cannery money. Green Bay Packers money. But I am not one of those. I am the daughter of a single mother with two younger brothers who I shared a room with. My mom’s got a three-bedroom now, but she had to be pretty crafty when I was growing up.”
“So what’s your game?” Cosima stepped toward the cat cautiously, and when Edie drew her hand away, she gave it an experimental stroke down its back. The cat’s fur was soft, its body hot underneath the fur. The cat pushed up into her fingers and surprised Cosima with its positive reaction to her touch. It was purring so loud, it sounded like it might hurt something inside of itself.
