Nancy
"Now that might help your situation,"
Sumeet
The
question was impossible for Nancy to answer because she was locked in sudden
guilt. There was no better answer, then, than the whole story. Nancy took a deep breath and shared a smirk
with Ador. She let herself take a trip
back in time: before this room, before the hospital, before Water, before the near-robbery
at the hotel. When she began the story
of her trip from Newtopia to find her fiancé she didn’t stop until the
narrative took them back in the cool, smelly room they now reminisced in. Sumeet had spit once more and was sitting up
now. Ador leaned back, rocking the chair
on its back legs.
“So
you’re robbing people now?” was the first thing the ill Spaniard asked.
“No,
I was the one about to get robbed! Ador is though.”
“Hey,”
Ador said correctively and coolly. “I
saved your ass. Sumeet, don’t believe a thing she says about me.” Sumeet
smiled.
“Do
you see why we’re here though?” Nancy asked hoping Sumeet could see the unasked
question. Sumeet thought silently for a moment about his role in Nancy’s story.
“Hope,
I just can’t do it. I get nauseous going
up and down stairs. I know what you’re
thinking and you’re not going to get what you want.”
“But
maybe you could reach out to your family over there, they could get me close,”
Nancy pleaded.
“They
would never see a guest of the family to their quaint little town; only family.
And look at me” he said with slow cautious words in order to prevent tears from
coming, “I couldn’t make it to the end of the room, much less Crete.” The girls
looked across the room and back at him. “Besides it’s money they want
really. They family has a lot of assets
but this revolution has made them poor.
They would never admit it but really they need money.”
“I
have money, I have five thousand Newtopian Coin. Would that be enough?” Nancy felt the pale face of Ador turn to look
her over.
“Five
thousand?” Sumeet repeated, coughed, and groped for the pan again. In that time Nancy explained how she came
upon that much money. She explained of
how her brothers’s own fiancé gave her their honeymoon money. She smoke quickly all while ignoring the
persisting stare from Ador.
“Five
thousand,”Sumeet continued, nodding. “Now that might help your situation.” Sumeet shifted hi frail body on the bed. Ador stood up and squeezed his hand offering
him a faint smile. She neither looked at
nor said anything to Nancy when she turned to leave the room. The quiet slaps of her shoes percussed a
brisk exit.
When
they were alone Nancy stood up and walked to the other side of the bed to grab
the pan. “No,” he said. She picked it up
against his protest and walked to a bathroom just out from his room. She emptied it and rinsed it. When she returned he was sleeping. It’s death, she realized. It’s death I smell. The pan is clean and yet
the stench remains. She sat next to
him on the bed and looked around. She
had smelt death around her but she saw signs of another decay. The light linin sheet suspended above the
magnificent bed was stained and torn where it met the long wood poles. The bed it was above sagged in the middle
where Sumeet lay. The wood floor that
met the bed and stretched across the room was old and dusty not stained and sleek
as she had first thought.
Nancy
removed the tight bundle of Newtopian Coin notes and removed about half. She counted and left 2,500 Coin on the chair
Ador had sat in. She wrote on a note, “Nancy needs to go to North Africa or
Crete. No phone-No way to know. I can’t
stay with you and need to leave. I am so
sorry.”
 |
| Portion of Walden Detritus With Bangor Bobber by Steve Roll See www.steverollart.com |
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