Merritt Tierce - Love Me Back

Danny goes home to change into his suit and I try to turn on the camera, thinking I will at least see if I recognize anyone in the noncock photos, but the battery is dead. Later that day I am in the wine cellar updating the eighty-sixed list when the Bishop’s handler comes by. The wine cellar is all glass on one side and looks out on the lobby, so I see the handler come in and walk up to the front desk. I wave at him, indicating that I will come out to help him, realizing immediately that the camera is probably the Bishop’s. I squat down by a bin, facing away from him, putting the bottles of Silver Oak away very slowly as I imagine saying Sir there are pictures of white cock on your camera or No sir we haven’t found a camera but we’ll let you know.

If I take out the card before I give it back he’ll notice as soon as he gets wherever he’s going and it might get back to Danny. If I don’t give him the camera and I hang on to it until I can figure out what to do it might get back to Danny. The Bishop calls Danny directly whenever he wants a reservation and Danny is the only person in the restaurant the Bishop will speak to in person, besides Calvin. One thing you can get fired for faster than Danny can unzip his pants is if he hears about something from a guest when you could have told him first. So if I take out the card or I don’t give the handler the camera I will have to tell Danny just to cover my ass, and who knows how he will react to my do-gooding. Don’t fuck up, I say to myself, don’t fuck up. Three weeks ago I took Ana on her first airplane trip ever. Just the two of us, we went to Chicago and had chocolate-chip pancakes across the street from the Art Institute. We built a snow-woman in Grant Park. In the museum, looking at the giant Impressionist canvas with the people holding umbrellas, my daughter said she thought maybe she would be a painter when she grew up. Or how do you get to work in a museum? she asked. I realize that if I just give the handler the camera the Bishop will never know about the cock photos, because the handler’s job is to absorb anything that’s pretty fucking funny.

I bet I know what you’re here for, I say to the handler as I come out of the wine cellar. The camera?

He says Yes, I don’t know how I forgot it, it was a big night for us.

Yes, I say, it’s a fine-looking piece of equipment.

When that magazine article comes out later and it says the Bishop, just back from a trip to Africa, and the Professor met in this city and found some common ground after years of unfriendliness, and when I show Calvin the part in the article that says this alliance forging began over a long dinner at a steakhouse, we talk about how we know it was that night. You brought that, I tell Calvin, it was your energy, they felt it, they couldn’t help but love each other. He doesn’t disagree but he hangs his head and his mouth gets tight and he crosses his arms, which is something he does when he’s pissed, and he says And look how we treated them with that fucking business, it’s shameful. I never brought any shame to this place and they putting it on me like that, it just ain’t right.

What’s this we? I say. You had nothing to do with it. They don’t know we didn’t know whose camera it was, but even if they think it was hate no way do they think you knew anything about it. It’s not on you.

Don’t matter, he says, it’s all the same. Everything’s on everybody.

So where I’m going with this is the phone call I took today. They used to come in, the Bishop and the handler, every few weeks, and I didn’t see them for months after all that. If I thought about it now and then I hoped I was just missing them on my days off but today the handler called to cancel the Bishop’s birthday party in The Private Room, which had been reserved for the purpose ever since the day after his birthday party in The Private Room last year. I didn’t ask why they wanted to cancel. I said Thank you sir, even though I didn’t know what I was thanking him for. Then I said And please give our best to the Bishop — hope to see you both here again before long. We’ve missed you.

All right, he said. You the little girl gave me back the camera?

Yes sir, I said.

Thought so. I recognized your voice. You tell Danny he’ll never have the Bishop’s business again in this life, and he’s a sick motherfucker, may God forgive me for cursing a man who has no shame. No shame.

Yes sir, I said. I’m sorry, sir. Take care.

I hung up the phone and my neck was hot and it was very quiet in the office.

The fourth and last night in Mexico your father and I drink horchata, sitting on rough-cut logs around a fire. Everyone else has gone to bed after our final worship service, which was held here by the fire. We sang hymns and devotionals and all the stars were out. It is the first time I have seen the Milky Way and I look and look and look.

We stay there as the fire dies, talking. It gets colder and colder so your father goes inside to get his sleeping bag. We wear it around us like a shawl. We keep expecting the youth minister to come looking for us and make us go to bed but he doesn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again, I say. Your father says Come on, Snowflake. Let’s go inside.

Our group has been staying in the church of our host congregation, sleeping on the floor in our sleeping bags. I think he means we will go inside and go to bed, I in the fellowship hall where the girls are and he in the classroom with the boys. But when we enter the church he leads us down the short hallway to the kitchen. Past the kitchen is a door with a picture of a woman kneeling at an altar, praying.

My teeth are chattering as we enter what seems to have been a closet or a pantry before it was converted to a tiny prayer room. On the shelves are books and hymnals and Bibles. On the floor is a velvet cushion to kneel or sit on, in front of a small table. There are rocks and dried flowers and a small bowl of rice on the table, among other offerings.

We can see only because of the dim filtered starlight coming from the hall; there are no windows. He lights the candles and then closes the door to the hall. He takes the sleeping bag from around my shoulders and quickly zips it back into the shape of a sleeping bag, while stepping out of his boots. Take off your shoes, he whispers. I take them off and put them next to his. The room is only a foot or two longer than the sleeping bag, and not much wider. He pulls back a corner of the sleeping bag and motions for me to get in. He moves the velvet cushion to the top of the sleeping bag, and waits for me to get settled, my head on the makeshift pillow. Then he gets into the sleeping bag too, and zips it up all the way. Hey little Spoon, he says, embracing me. I have never felt so whole, or safe, or known since.

This should warm you up fast, he says. Body heat.

He kisses my neck.

Did you follow me through the gateway, into the blizzard? I whisper.

Yes, Aviendha of the Aiel, he says, playing along. We have both been reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

I roll over, on top of him. Rand al’Thor, I say into his neck. What’s your plan for getting us back?

I don’t have one, he says.

We wake together when we hear noise in the kitchen on the other side of the wall. He looks at his watch. Six forty-seven, he whispers. Hurry.