A Doll's Odyssey
Part Two |
Previous: X. She's Leaving Home
A Doll's Odyssey
Part Two
XI. Bad News Travels
XI. Bad News Travels
August 22, 1999, Alum Creek, Ohio
It had been a late night. A reception at the Center for which she had been on the security detail had run until past dawn. Xe'd gotten back to her little efficiency two miles up Alum Creek Road from the campus at too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. Giving it all up as a bad job, she'd shucked her tuxedo jacket, dress shirt, and black dress shoes, and fallen face down on her bed still wearing her striped trousers, suspenders, and a sleeveless undershirt.
When the pounding in her head resolved to a fist hammering the front door of her apartment, she levered herself up and looked blearily around. By this time, her raven tresses were in a pretty good state of pillow hair and the wrinkles from her bed clothes were imprinted on her face.
"What!" she yelled at the door. Then: "Go away!"
A voice shouted something unintelligible from the hallway. She couldn't decipher the words, but she recognized the voice. Dolly Lao Ma.
"Fuck! Ma! What the hell do you want?"
"Get your ass up!" That time she understood it. Groaning, she rolled over and somehow staggered to her feet. Her eyeballs were distorted or something, because it was very hard to see the clock, but she could have sworn it was only twenty minutes since she'd put her head down. Couldn't be. Nobody was that cruel.
She slid the chain back and undid the dead bolt, standing aside to admit the slender china doll, who strode briskly by her and turned to face the taller woman with a drama-queen flourish.
"So what the fuck is so important?" she demanded angrily.
"Gabrielle has gone and done it good this time."
"Jeeze, Ma! Gimme a break. Couldn't this wait?"
"No way, Jose!" Ma exclaimed. "You must not have heard me. Gabrielle Dolly has fucked up big time."
"What did she do? Shoot Boob Taft?" The governor of Ohio.
"No. Worse." At least in Ma's opinion. "She dumped Drummond."
"What! No way! Those two are like... they're like an Amaretto ad or something."
"Believe it, Sister. The redhead has flipped her freakin' lid."
"Where did you hear this?" Xe Doll asked suspiciously. "Lemme get some coffee." She led the way to the kitchenette where she opened a jar of Taster's Choice and spooned some into a plastic mug. Then she looked speculatively at the jar of instant coffee. She picked up the spoon again and dipped it into the jar, coming out with a heaping teaspoonful. She carried the spoon to her mouth and carefully lipped the crystals off the bowl of it, chewing contemplatively for a few moments before swallowing.
"Ew!" Ma shuddered. "How can you eat that stuff? It's bad enough in liquid form!"
"Ah. I just figure it all goes to the same place, so why be so furkin' picky? Y'know?"
"I suppose," Ma said skeptically.
"Look. You woke me up on twenty minutes' sleep. If you don't like my taste in morning pick-me-ups, next time you can bring coffee and donuts from the Krispy Creme." She ran water from the tap into the plastic mug, set the mug in the microwave, and spun the knob.
"OK, OK. I get the point," said Ma, holding her hands up, palms forward, in a placating gesture.
"So... Where did you hear this news?"
"From Val, who heard it from Cally. Apparently Gabrielle is crashed out even as we speak on Cally's couch."
"Hmm," hummed Xe Doll, mulling that over. "Well, she's a free woman." She shrugged and shambled back into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.
"Xe! We can't..."
"You know the way out."
"Xe-e-e!"
Xe Doll rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow. "What part of this don't you understand? Gabrielle is a free human being. She's entitled to make her own choices... her own decisions. Are we supposed to perform a--a--an intervention--" her voice dripped sarcasm like warm honey from a spoon "--every time somebody doesn't do what we want them to? Gimme a break. Give her a break. If she wants to leave her lover, well, that's her right, isn't it?"
"But she's not right in the head! Cally said..."
"And Cally is qualified to judge this how exactly?"
Lao Ma growled her frustration.
"Look," said Xe Doll, holding up a hand, "I understand your concern. I'll talk to her. Tomorrow. Now go away. I need to sleep."
"But--"
"Look. We know where she is. She is apparently as short of sleep as I am and, being a sensible girl, is taking steps to get some. Why am I having trouble seeing the downside to this?"
"She told Cally that she and Drummond had a big fight last night. She hitchhiked back from Mammoth Cave, packed up her clothes and some other stuff, got in her Beamer, and drove up here. She said she's never going back to Drummond."
"Good!" Xe grunted. "Shoulda done it long ago!"
"Xe! You know that's not right.!"
"Yeah," Xe Doll sighed. "You're right. So what do you want me to do about it?"
"Well... talk to her. Make her see reason."
"Humph! You know how hard-headed she is and you want me to 'make her see reason?' I wonder exactly who it is that's flipped her freakin' lid, here, Gabrielle or you."
Ma chuckled at that and gave her patented dimpling smile that included glints In her dark eyes, glints of amusement at her own expense. "That would be me," she allowed. "But you've got to at least try."
"Yah," Xe sighed. "But she's asleep right now?"
Ma nodded.
"OK. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to sit in that chair over there by the phone. Call Callisto and tell her where you are. Tell her to call you the instant--the instant, mind you--that Gabrielle wakes up."
Ma nodded her understanding. "What then?"
"Then you wake me." Xe Doll flipped back over on the bed. She was snoring within seconds.
Ma stood watching the tall, enigmatic doll sleep for a moment. Then the microwave beeped. She stepped to the kitchenette and opened the door on the tiny oven. She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the contents of the cup. She realized that, purely as a matter of self-defense, she'd have to manage to obtain some real coffee or doctor this somehow to render it drinkable.
And Xe was right; she couldn't leave the phone. This would be a challenge to her resourcefulness. She began rummaging through the cupboards, clucking at the sad state of the woman's kitchen, looking for the makings of a decent cup of coffee.
"Maybe lots of cream and sugar? Ew! How old is this milk, anyway?"
#
Later that day, Number 4 The Lane, Cincinnati
Something out there left for you
But it's not me
Reached a point of no return
It's only right
To set you free
Drummond stopped, his voice choked with tears. He bowed his body over the guitar in his lap and gasped for breath. This was a silly, stupid, self-destructive exercise in maudlin self-pity.
He and Dolly had been working together on the song, a duet as performed by Clint Black and Martina McBride. It wasn't strictly speaking applicable to their current situation, but the feel of it was.
He'd picked up the guitar and started singing to try to soothe the burning pain in his soul. That need for a musical balm was still there. And since this song was the one that was stuck in his mind like a cocklebur on a pair of wool socks, he straightened up, took a few breaths, and started to play again. This time he managed to get through it, even though the middle-eight and chorus--
There's a place you'll always be
No matter where you are, you're here with me
When the world is turnin' upside down
Together we can stand our ground
...
... Even when my arms are empty, darlin'
I keep holdin' on to you...
--had him sobbing again with tears sheeting down his cheeks. He was shaking and felt empty. But somehow, the ache in his gut was a little more bearable and he could conceive of the possibility that he might, someday, recover from this.
Catharsis. The word just floated across his mind like a paddle boat on a lazy mirror lake on a summer afternoon. Maybe it would do him good. Gods knew he had to get his shit together somehow. He was absolutely no good to Dolly in this condition.
Finally, a rhythmic pounding on the kitchen door wormed its way into his consciousness. He stood and, guitar in hand, padded through the house to the back door. As he crossed the tiled floor of the breakfast nook, the banging ceased and was replaced by a series loud crashes that came at wider intervals than the pounding had. As he stepped into the mud room, he saw, through the window in the door, Xe Doll smash her shoulder into the back door.
"Shoulda broke the glass," he chuckled sardonically. He opened the door just in front of one of her charges at the thing, and stood aside as she stumbled into the mud room and crashed into the jam of the doorway to the breakfast nook. She stood there rubbing her shoulder and glaring at him accusingly.
"This is a big house, you know. You could give somebody time to get to the door." He closed the back door and locked it, brushing past her and into the kitchen. "Better yet, you could ring the front doorbell, which you can actually hear all over the house. What a concept! So what brings you out from under your rock on such a fine day as this?" He padded back through the kitchen and down the hall to the den where he had been playing, and sat back down on the piano bench and resumed strumming the guitar.
Xe Doll followed him, looking around her with some curiosity--she'd never been in the house before. "I came down 'cause we gotta do something about Gabrielle." She noticed in passing that he was wearing a tan leather belt pack. She made a mental remark that it was odd since he was inside and a belt pack was a going-out kind of thing.
"No shit, Sherlock, You sure have a genius for the obvious. First thing I have to do--nobody invited you along--is find her. Then I have to figure out how to persuade her to get treatment from McDougal. Then I have to get McDougal to figure out what's wrong with her and then I have to pray that he can fix it. Are you getting the picture?"
"I think I can help with that first part..."
"And how did you find out about it... what?"
"Bad news travels fast. I said I think I can help with the first part." She grinned wolfishly. "I know where she is."
Drummond stood up slowly, not looking at Xe Doll. He gently laid the guitar down on the sofa, giving it a gentle stay-there pat before he straightened and...
Took Xe Doll in his arms and gave her a big kiss on the lips.
"If you ever want to have kids and--you know--all you gotta do is ask. I'd be proud to fill the turkey baster. I think I love you, Xena Doll."
"Well, yeah..." Xe looked embarrassed and surprised, and maybe even a little pleased. She started to wipe her mouth... had the back of her hand to her lips, then caught herself and stopped. "Any time." She grinned again and shuffled from one foot to the other, shrugging and mugging like a juvenile delinquent whose favorite street cop has just told her something really cool.
"So where is she?"
Oh. Yeah. That's what we're here about.
"You'd better sit down, man." She suited her actions to her words and slumped down crossways on an overstuffed armchair, her lanky frame draped in a truncated W over both arms and the seat. Drummond sat back down slowly on the piano bench. By the time his butt hit the wooden surface, his heart was pounding and trying its best to climb up his neck on the inside.
"OK. I'm sitting. Now tell."
"Well, it's not so much where she is; she's at Cally's. It's what they say they're gonna do."
Drummond's eyebrow crawled up his forehead.
Then she told him.
Next: Part Twelve
A Doll's Odyssey
Part Two |
Previous: X. She's Leaving Home