Page 6 of The Cadence
“It’s cooling off,” one of the women noted, and I nodded.
“I think I heard thunder,” I answered.
“Is that right? My weather app didn’t show any rain.” We discussed the problem with forecasts and when she and her party got off at the third floor, I said goodnight.
Will hadn’t spoken, and he didn’t until the doors closed again behind them. “That’s why I prefer a big city.”
“What do you mean?” I watched the numbers of the floors slowly light up as we continued to rise. “I love elevators.”
“Why?”
“You go in, the door closes, and it opens at a new place. In a car, you can see where you’re going but when I was a kid, I thought an elevator was magic. Why do you like big cities?”
“No one talks to you.”
“She was talking to me, not you,” I reminded him. “Her husband was staring but she didn’t have a clue that you’re William Franklin Bodine. Or does that bother you, too? Do you want people to know who you are?”
“Hell, no. I’m happy to go unrecognized. The only people who know me are either serious football fans or they live around here. I don’t want to talk to them or anyone else,” he said. The doors opened and he waited for me to step out first. I had always appreciated his manners.
“If you don’t want to talk to anyone, then why did you ask me to come here? Was it because of guilt again?” He tapped the keycard on the lock and we stepped inside. “Holy Moses! This is a palace!”
He didn’t seem to notice the splendor around him, like the big windows that looked out onto the mountains and the fancy furniture. “What did you ask me? If I feel guilty? No, I don’t. I went back to your house because I felt…” He seemed to be at a loss for words. “I felt that there was a need for my presence,” he finished.
“That’s not really a feeling. A feeling is an emotion that you have inside you, like happy, sad, yearning.”
“Yearning?” Will shook his head and paused for a moment to think. “I felt like things were unfinished,” he told me next.
“That’s still not an emotion,” I pointed out.
“Do you want a drink?” He walked to another area of the room that seemed to be a personal bar. There was a little refrigerator and a few bottles on the countertop for him to choose from.
“Sure. I’ll take whatever you have.” I continued to look around and got a feeling of my own: confused. “Where do you sleep in this place?”
“It’s a suite. That means there’s a separate bedroom.”
I checked, and he was correct that there was another room with a large bed. There were also two bathrooms, one more than we had the pleasure of using at my grandma’s house, and two closets. Also, there were two TVs, two desks, and that nice bar area.
“Are you done exploring?” he asked, and offered a glass. “I figured you’d like whiskey.”
“You figured right.” I took the drink and sighed a little. “My grandma didn’t know that I was familiar with alcohol. She would have been so upset.”
“You’re twenty-one,” he pointed out. “Did her objection have to do with religion?”
“No. Can I sit down?”
“Why couldn’t you?”
Mostly because I didn’t want to mess up the nice couch. “She was worried about liquor in general. From what I heard, her husband was a drunk. The other ladies never said it outright but I caught a few hints over the years. She also worried about me smoking dope and mainlining. That means IV drug use, which I know because I looked it up.”
“Do you do those things?”
“No, I never have. The most I dabble in is liquor.” I looked at the short pour of caramel-brown liquid in the glass. “It was nice that she cared.”
“I remember the first time I met you,” Will said suddenly. He’d helped himself to his own drink. “She stood around the corner in the kitchen so she could listen to what we were doing, because she was worried.”
“Not only because I was alone with you, though. She was also concerned because she’d talked to the school about how behind I was. She kept going in to see the principal and that womanjust wanted to ignore her. Grandma had been trying to do the assignments with me but she had dropped out after sixth grade and it was hard. She didn’t know how to help but luckily I got you.”
He stood and walked into the bedroom, and when he returned, he had another box of tissues. “I bought a multi-pack,” he explained.
