An Odd Man Out (part eight)

The Resident

Chapter Four

An Odd Man Out

[rerunning the last several entries to help readers catch up, because I haven’t added to this story for months]

She said this, and when they’d kicked a few leaves, stepped around to the laburnums’ shedding, she talked to John about Daniel Cheale’s mission to solve D. B. Cooper. He would go into the wilderness. He would hobble himself with a makeshift crutch, find a tree branch and pretend he needed it to walk. If he immersed himself in the choices Cooper had to make, journaled it, deals would come…a book, a documentary, who knew, even the answer…

“So,” John cut in, “Aura’s husband’s a wacko? In actuality? But she didn’t take her daughter.”

“They only talked about these things.” Claudie a little heated. “Whatever Aura decided, and if she went back and got their daughter, Daniel would quit his job and disappear. What’s wrong with that? People can have…”

She finished, her chosen words apt enough, “Complicated situations.”

They had put their bed from the apartment in a guest room. Guest rooms, so crazy (he thought in Claudie’s language), the having of these to manage. Only a mattress on the floor of their own room.

Upstairs at Penney’s, he waited for his wife to choose, tell him what to spend, whether he was paying for everything. He watched her circle to the wicker a second time. A fan-shaped headboard came with this set, that matched a rocking chair, and the drawer-fronts of a wooden dresser. The floor model had breakages, spots in its painted weave crunched by thumbs. Claudie ran her thumb along the mirror’s edge.

“Let’s get that.”

He woke, from what might have been a prayer they wouldn’t… To find they weren’t.

“I mean, look, this set is white too, and I just like it better. It’s fourteen hundred.”

John asked himself, do I have taste? Why wouldn’t I like white?

The pieces were heavy, speckled with an antiqued finish; they had glossy gold knobs, square, on the dresser, the nightstand drawers, the footboard’s faux drawers.

Faux drawers…?

“Um. My Mom has a Penney’s card. I’ll call her.”

“Really?” Gina said. “Is it nice? Will you like it? I think you can do cheaper.”

Well, a hundred a month, paid for (more or less) in a year. Or the extra $200 could be their gift, if his parents wanted Christmas over with. He assumed they did; his mother seemed jealous Teconieshe had sold them a house with nothing down.

“I guess you’ve got the leeway. You can do what you want.” She sounded about to hang up. Before they’d got to the embarrassing part.

He rushed: “If you can charge it for us, I mean over the phone   Or not, if you’d rather come in person     Or whatever      I’ll cover the payments.”

44

Tithonians

An Odd Man Out (part nine)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)