Chapter Thirty: Harbingers
NICOLETTE sat on one of the ornate, rococo iron chairs surrounding the inlaid tile table behind her little cottage. The day was warm and sunny, though the temperature was already noticeably dropping as evening approached. In an hour or so, she supposed she would have to either go inside or fetch her jacket, but for now she was content to watch the westering sun as it began its descent toward the ocean. Distantly, she could hear the waves crashing against the rocks, carrying the smell of salt when the breeze turned her way, occasionally mingling with the light perfume from the hedge. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the pleasant associations the sea air brought. One of the things that she had most missed while she spent her time at the CIW was the smell of the ocean and the rhythmic susurration of the surf. It had surprised her how bitterly she missed it, how much of a balm it was to have it back.
She shook her head, dismissing the thought as she took a long drag on her cigarette; she had mostly quit the habit, but when she was especially stressed out, it seemed to soothe her nerves and help her put things in perspective. She was exhausted from two sleepless nights in a row, with only a couple of cat-naps to get through the day. Her exhaustion was a weight dragging her limbs, her skin strangely and uncomfortably sensitive; sometimes she fancied she could feel loud or unpleasant noises on her skin before she heard them.
She blinked, her eyes feeling gritty and dry; that was partly lack of sleep, and partly the aftereffects of a long day fighting a losing battle with tears. Nicolette wished she could have just stayed home and wrapped herself in her blankets, grieving and wallowing in self pity after the terrible conversation she’d had with Daniel the night before, but she needed to pay her share of rent, to put food on the table, and to save a little money for her plan...though it felt as though her plan had collapsed into ashes in the last 24 hours.
She checked her watch, noting that it was, in fact, only about 15 hours ago that Daniel had left. She could still feel the aftereffects of his parting words, feeling their corrosive burn, etching shame into her DNA. She wanted to be angry with him, had tried to summon righteousness to shield herself, but ultimately those feelings couldn’t stand her own harsh scrutiny.
If she was being brutally honest -- and when have I ever failed to do that, she thought bitterly -- Rose had broken her and she had run; her courage had failed. If she hadn’t broken...
She shook her head as the afternoon sun broke apart, her vision blurring with bitterness and rage, her jaw clenching until her teeth ached.
Over the last two years, she had fantasized the Conversation going myriad different directions; some of those possibilities had seemed hopeful or optimistic, some neutral but workable. The majority of endings she’d imagined had been the result of night terrors and moments of despair when she’d felt especially depressed or discouraged by her circumstances. She’d held out hope that things might come right as a means of getting herself through prison, through three and a half long, dull years, spent cycling between extremes of privation, boredom, and anxiety. The possibility that things might work out had been the light at the end of the very dark tunnel her choices had led her down.
For a little while, things had seemed as though they might come right -- as though she might just be able to undo some of the damage her abrupt and wordless departure had inflicted. But reality had a way of making a mockery of plans, especially when those plans were built on absurdly optimistic assumptions about people. She shook her head as she studied the glowing tip of her cigarette; his exit had hurt worse than just about anything she could have anticipated.
Man plans; God laughs, she thought with a bitter smile.
She watched the exhaled smoke get picked up by the late afternoon breeze, Well, you certainly didn’t help the situation by holding back. But what am I supposed to do? ‘Hey Dan, sorry I left, great to see you, I love you, ohbytheway I sucked dick on camera for a living, good thing prison put a stop to that, love the jacket...’
It was an impossible situation with only impossible solutions. She’d tried to console herself that his reaction suggested that he still had feelings for her. If that was so, then maybe, once he calmed down, things might just be salvageable. She had to believe that or admit that this whole thing was a fool’s errand and she was the biggest fool of all for relocating three thousand miles from her family in the hope that an old lover would take her back.
She knew the connection between herself and Daniel had been real, that her love for him had been true; she was convinced that the reverse had also been true...
She chuckled bitterly -- she sounded like a stalker, conjuring up justifications for her stalkery fantasy world...but up until last night, it hadn’t seemed like such a stalkery fantasy. She had considered calling or texting, hoping against hope that he would respond, but she knew the agony of waiting for a reply would be pure torture. Even if he did take her call or respond to her text -- what if his response was just as angry and hostile as it had been half a day ago? Nikki wasn’t sure she was ready to try and field that, just yet.
So, what then? Just wait and see? Are there really any other workable options?
She had considered trying to work through Shelly and Dane, perhaps sending messages through them to Daniel, but after some consideration, it seemed unfair to put them in the middle of something they didn’t understand. They were good people, had been good to her -- a virtual stranger -- but she felt as though she owed them better than to ask them to absorb Daniel's justifiable anger. Thinking about Shelly and Dane brought back the strangeness of her day -- she realized that she was at least partly avoiding it, avoiding dealing with it on top of everything else that was going on.
Shelly had visited earlier, though she hadn’t stayed very long. Nicolette’s day had been too strange and confusing and her unstable moods hadn’t helped. She hadn’t wanted to burden Shelly with her sleep-deprived crazy magnifying everything out of proportion and ended their afternoon early; she would have to call back and invite her over some other time.
She felt a crash coming soon, lack of sleep and the emotional extremes of the last two nights finally catching up to her.
Unconsciously, Nicolette flexed her right hand, surprised how quickly it was healing. She remembered the torn and bruised flesh left by the gold sedan’s antenna; when she’d looked at it this morning, her hand had been tender and clearly still injured, but it ached far less than it had when Daniel had bandaged it. In fact, it was the only injury from the club that she still felt, despite expecting her head to remain tender for several days. She frowned as she realized they hadn’t gotten around to comparing notes on the dreams, or on the strange men she’d seen in the club...the men she suspected had tried to...tried to kill her.
She shook her head, still struggling with the idea that anyone could possibly care enough about her to do that.
“Daniel...” she murmured.
It seemed doubtful that they would compare notes, now. She couldn’t explain it, but that realization filled her with anxiety. Things were going on that they needed to understand, things that had been left dangling because of their current...situation. She felt as though she was sitting in a house with a gas leak that remained unrepaired because the homeowner and the technician weren’t on speaking terms; if they didn’t get their act together soon...
If only that had been the limit of the strangeness she’d been experiencing. Her left hand twinged in sympathy under its white dressing; both her hands were now bandaged. It had happened at the shelter -- the animal shelter that she volunteered at on Sundays and any other time where she could spare the time and energy to ride the bus over the mountains away from the coast. It was a sad and frustrating job, seeing the number of animals that were abandoned, often as a result of owners leaving their animals unspayed or unneutered. They always seemed genuinely shocked when their pets showed up with kittens or puppies, or turned out to need more care than the owner anticipated.
That was what had led to this afternoon being so inc
redibly strange. It had started out as a typical Sunday -- she’d tried to sleep in, but hadn’t really managed to sleep at all. She’d eventually given up and gone for a run along the beach, trying to let the rhythmic susurration of the ocean and the focus on her breathing push back the previous night. After that, there really hadn’t been anything to do, so she’d hopped on public transport and shown up at the shelter to offer help with whatever needed doing. Most of the time, as a volunteer, that mostly meant cleaning -- cleaning out cages and cleaning out the meeting areas where potential adoptees met their pets. She had other duties that she often helped with which were, in some ways, more pleasurable, but in others were far more heartbreaking. Things which included walking and socializing the animals, sometimes helping to bathe and groom them, duties which often resulted in Nicolette feeling a connection with the animals under the shelter’s care.
It wasn’t one of her official duties, but she often found herself helping with the animals that were going to be euthanized; she had a way with the animals, some innate gift to bring them calm when they were stressed out. As a result, they often called her away from her ‘official’ duties to help with especially troublesome animals. Euthanization didn’t happen often at the shelter she worked at, but when animals were too ill or too dangerous, and were showing no sign of improvement, sometimes there was no other choice.
She rubbed her injured left hand, still feeling the sting as her mind went back over the strangeness that had led to that dog biting her. She had been walking between the cages, checking on the dogs before feeding them, generally feeling a little encouraged to see their enthusiasm to see her when she met Josie going the other way carrying a catch-pole. She felt her stomach sink, knowing that the catch-pole could only mean a very limited set of things, the most likely of which was that they were going to take out one of the “trouble animals” and prep it for euthanasia. The dogs were generally excited and enthusiastic to be pulled from their cages, but somehow they always knew when they were being pulled from their cage to be put down rather than walked or bathed or just moved out of the cage so it could be cleaned.
Nikki had felt her stomach drop immediately -- she suspected she knew which dog they were putting down; a little black and white sheltie named Racer. From day one when he had been brought in by his previous owner, he had been neurotic and a biter. Nikki felt bad for him; she couldn’t say what it was, but she knew Racer had been abused, and abused badly. He bore no visible injuries when he’d been brought in, but from get go, he’d been fearful and prone to biting if you weren’t careful. Perhaps it was her intuition about the abuse that allowed her to connect with Racer better than any of the other staff; Nikki was the only volunteer or permanent staffer that could handle Racer without getting bitten. She knew the staff had worked with Racer extensively to resocialize him, perhaps help him learn to trust people again, but progress had been slow and dubious at best.
She had been waiting to hear that he’d been put down for weeks, or expected to show up to find his cage empty or allotted to another resident when she showed up for her volunteer hours. When she saw Josie walking with the catch-pole, she knew instinctively that Racer’s time was up. Nicolette briefly considered trying to take him in, but she knew that he was just too dangerous for her to handle; besides, the Magnusons -- her landlord -- had a no-pets clause in their lease. Nicolette had turned and followed Josie back, hoping she might be able to help -- maybe even calm the poor Sheltie down enough that they’d give him more time, maybe enough time for a breakthrough.
In the end, it was no good -- Racer had backed into a corner the second he saw Josie and wouldn’t budge. She had been forced to use the catch-pole to get him out and control him, so he could be anesthetized prior to being injected with the cocktail that would kill him. It was more humane than the gas chamber that Nikki had heard was still in use in some less enlightened facilities, but she still hated it, hated to see it in action. In the end, she’d stepped into Racer’s cage and soothed him until he calmed enough for the technician to give him the injection. Nikki had stayed with Racer through the rest of his ordeal, calming and reassuring him, until he finally went to sleep with a quiet whine and a feeble thump of his tail, almost as if he was making a final plea, “See? I can be good...”
She knew that sort of anthropomorphization risked sentimental projection of her own feelings onto the animals, but nevertheless that was how she read Racer’s last moments. On top of everything that had happened over the last couple of days and nights, that had been a sort of breaking point for her, releasing a flood of tears. Josie and the tech had watched her sympathetically as she excused herself to the ladies room to compose herself. On the one hand she understood the necessity of putting down an animal that had no hope of adoption to free up the very limited resources the shelter had at its disposal, but she just couldn’t reconcile that with what seemed to her to be unfairly cruel; Racer hadn’t asked to be taken in by an abusive asshole or abused until he was hopelessly broken, or given up to the shelter where there was really only one possible outcome. It was that hopeless unfairness that tore at her, that reminded too much of her own history. Perhaps she had hoped for a sympathetic breakthrough -- if Racer could be saved, then perhaps there was hope for Nicolette as well.
It had taken her the better part of 10 minutes to get her composure back. She had intended to go and chase down Josie and Karl to apologize for her lack of professionalism, but decided to stop by the cooler to visit Racer before he could be properly cremated and put to rest. Nikki had wanted to apologize to Racer and say good bye, intending to see him before he could go stiff and hard, feeling like something that had never been real, a harsh reminder that the animus that had been Racer was gone. She had found him, unceremoniously wrapped in a plastic bag, left in a corner of the freezer, hopefully not to be joined by any other animals that day. Nicolette had always admired his black and white fur, making her wonder if he had been a purebred. She was the only one he would allow close enough to groom him, so she knew how lustrous and silky his fur could be when it was properly cared for. Shivering in the small, chilly space, she had knelt by him, struggling with her sorrow as she unwrapped him. She remembered patting his shoulder with her left hand (since her right hand was bandaged), prepared to murmur soothing words to send him on his way.
Racer had spasmed, emitting a snarling shriek that was only slightly less loud than her own and latched onto her hand. He had continued to shriek for nearly five seconds (which had felt closer to five minutes), before she’d managed to yank her hand free. Racer had almost immediately flopped down, once again completely still. When her fellow employees had come running, wondering what was going on (and perhaps a little panicky that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong), they had found her standing on the opposite side of the cooler from Racer, clutching her injured hand to her abdomen, eyes wide with shock, panting with her startlement and fear.
It had taken several minutes to get Karl to understand that Racer had bitten her; he kept asking where the attacking dog had gone. When their repeated questions finally awakened her indignant anger, she had pointed out that there was still blood on the dog’s muzzle. When they finally started to accept that Racer really had bitten her, they all kind of freaked out. They had finally called one of the vets over, and she’d taken the time to check Racer’s vitals, telling them that Racer was as dead as the steel floor he was laid out on, and that he’d definitely been dead since the injection. She had been troubled by Nikki’s injuries, treating Nikki’s hand, but nevertheless suggesting that Nikki go see a human doctor as soon as possible.
Everybody had been supremely unsettled -- even the vet that had checked Racer -- going so far as to suggest they stop euthanizing and double check the chemicals being used before any other animals were put down. In the end, the shelter had reluctantly asked Nikki to go home and get some rest. Nikki had decided not to take the bus, but had called Shelly instead, finding to her relief that Shelly had been at the Hills
dale shopping mall -- only 15 minutes away.
Riding back over the mountains in Shelly’s little white Rabbit, Nicolette had apprised Shelly of the weirdness at the shelter, then, in response to a hesitant inquiry, had reluctantly filled her in on her conversation with Daniel. Nikki’s retelling, though not as complete or as detailed as the version she’d given Daniel (omitting the details of poor Mrs. Hamilton’s robbery), had taken the rest of the afternoon, long enough for Shelly to stop by a coffee shop (not Coffee Beach, thank God!) and get coffees which they’d taken back to Nikki’s home. Nikki had been genuinely surprised that Shelly hadn’t peppered her with questions about her work as a dancer or in film; instead she’d patiently heard Nicolette out, then offered genuine sympathy.
Perhaps that’ll come later, she reflected, once the idea has had time to settle in.
Once Nikki had finished her retelling of the day’s strangeness and the conversation that she’d shared with Daniel, Shelly had insisted on checking her hand (the dog bitten one, not the antenna-slashed one), wincing at the bruised and punctured flesh, but relieved that the injury wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined. After that, they’d lapsed into a tense silence, where Nikki waited for the questions to begin, or the moralistic lecture that seemed sure to come.
But Shelly had just sat with her, offering assurances that Daniel would come around, he just needed time to process. But Nicolette suspected that even to her own ears, Shelly's assurances sounded hollow. They had lapsed into silence, Nicolette retreating into her own thoughts while Shelly silently offered her presence as comfort until Nikki couldn't stand the silence any more and made her excuses -- though they made tentative plans to meet up for coffee later in the week.
Her eyelids grew heavy as she watched as the sun’s lower edge approach the horizon, setting the ocean afire. When she found herself beginning to nod off, despite the cooling summer evening air, Nicolette stamped out her cigarette -- one of many that afternoon -- and stood.
She couldn’t help checking her phone, hoping against hope that Daniel would call her, perhaps to soften his parting words.
Nothing.
No messages.
From anyone.
She wasn’t surprised, but couldn’t help her disappointment. With a sigh, she turned and went inside.
Maybe tonight she’d be able to catch up on some of the sleep she’d been missing; tomorrow she needed to start planning her next move.
Interlude