War For The Oaks Part 12

"I'll see you tomorrow morning," the phouka said in a tight voice, and Eddi looked up, startled. His face was expressionless, his eyes a little hooded. "Don't do anything foolish, my primrose."

"But what about-" she began. She summoned up a wobbly smile. "I mean, what kind of a bodyguard are you?"

"You'll be... protected," he said softly through his teeth. He ventured a bitter smile at her. "And I may be annoying, but I'm not stupid." Then he brushed past her and down the aisle. She saw w.i.l.l.y turn to look at him when he strode out.

"Anything the matter?" w.i.l.l.y asked when she joined him at the door. She shrugged.

They walked past the darkened stores to the stairs. The phouka was nowhere in sight. He promised, she wailed to herself. He said he'd protect me, he'd watch for them, and he's gone away-But would he leave her in danger now, after working so hard to keep her safe? She shot a cautious glance at w.i.l.l.y, trying to see him without prejudice. He, at least, must be safe, or the phouka would never have let him near her.

Would he?

"How far away do you live?" w.i.l.l.y asked as he held the outer door for her.

"Loring Park. Fifteen blocks or so."

"Hmm." He scanned the clear night sky. "If you were up for it, I'd walk you home."

They wandered down Hennepin, through the Uptown streetlife. They paused to listen to the man playing conga drums on the sidewalk outside the drugstore. They crossed the street to listen to an acoustic punk trio by the library, and even sang along when they covered the Replacements'"Kids Don't Follow."

w.i.l.l.y admired a s.h.i.+rt in a store window on the corner of Twenty-eighth Street. Then they caught each other's eye.

"I've got to look," she said.

"You're right," he said.

So they went around the corner to Knut-Koupee to peer through the door at the handmade electric guitars on the wall. "Look at that," w.i.l.l.y said, pointing to a black-and-white checkerboard flying vee. "I won't last the week without it."

"Vulgar," Eddi declared.

"Well, yeah." He grinned sheepishly. "That's why I like it."

She laughed and ran back to Hennepin. He caught up with her just around the corner, and grabbed her hand to slow her down. He didn't let go when they walked on.

At Twenty-sixth Street she stopped. "Hey, how did you get from practice to here? Are you abandoning a car somewhere?"

w.i.l.l.y smiled and shook his head. "Borrowed transportation. I returned it on the way-the owner lives around here."

"Convenient. Oh, lord, are we going to have to get a van? Carla's junkyard dog can't transport the whole band."

"And we need a PA," w.i.l.l.y reminded her.

"s.h.i.+t. And a PA. Why do you have to be rich to get rich?"

He swung their joined hands. "You watch. We'll make everything work." He smiled down into her face, and she felt b.u.t.terfly wings in her stomach.

By the time they reached Loring Park, the wind was sneaking through the seams of her denim jacket.

w.i.l.l.y must have seen her s.h.i.+ver. "Cold?"

She shrugged. "It's not far now."

He slid out of his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She could feel the heat of him still inside it, and when she s.h.i.+vered again, it was not from cold. He kept his arm around her shoulders.

Eddi wondered if he could feel her heart beating. She looked at his white s.h.i.+rt front to keep from meeting his eyes, and said, "You'll freeze."

"It's not far now." Her words had changed in w.i.l.l.y's mouth to something tantalizing. His breath stirred her hair.

They stood for a moment looking out over Loring Park. Spring had come to the city like a bomb, and the trees had exploded into leaf in a matter of days. Now the wind made the park rustle, and the branches cast patterns of black lace across the orange globe lamps. Eddi remembered the phouka surveying the same view, his pleasure at it, and felt a sudden unfocused guilt. "Let's go," she said quietly, and they headed up the hill.

They ran up the front steps of the apartment building, and stopped at the door. Eddi fumbled slowly for her keys. "D'you want to come up?" she said, her eyes on the top step.

w.i.l.l.y curved one of his long white hands around her chin and tilted it upward. Even in the dark, his eyes were green. "Do you want me to?"

She stepped away and leaned against the bricks, trying to take deeper breaths. "I don't do this." She shook her head to clear it. "Not like this, so fast. And if we... if we don't work out, we might not be able to make music together either, and the band's important to me."

w.i.l.l.y nodded. "There's no way we can know what will happen. Not from here." He raised one hand as if to reach for her, and stopped. "Do you want me to come up?"

The b.u.t.terflies threatened to shake her until her knees gave way, until the buzzing of their wings made her deaf. She wanted him to touch her face again. "Yes," she whispered.

They went up the stairs with their arms around each other. But they exchanged no kisses until her apartment door closed behind them. There was no comfort in it; when w.i.l.l.y's mouth left hers, she felt as if she were all pulse, and her skin ached to be touched. He took her face in his hands, smoothed the hair away from her temples with his thumbs. She turned her head quickly and kissed his palm. w.i.l.l.y inhaled sharply.

He picked her up in a single swooping motion, and she grabbed his neck in surprise. He crossed the living room and reached for the k.n.o.b on the right-hand door.

"Huh-uh," she whispered. "That's the bathroom."

w.i.l.l.y eyed the door as if he'd never seen one. "Ah. No. I don't think we want the bathroom." He sounded as breathless as she was. She giggled into his collar.

He opened the bedroom door, and looked down at her. "Second thoughts?"

Her eyes widened. "What would you do if I had them?"

"Set you on your feet, kiss you chastely on the forehead, and leave."

"You could do that?"

w.i.l.l.y's laugh was shaky. "Just barely."

She reached up to trace the edges of his lips with her index finger. "No second thoughts."

"Good," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Offer withdrawn." And he carried her into her bedroom.

w.i.l.l.y didn't stay the night. He kissed her lips and her eyelids when he rose, and she heard him dressing in his leather and denim and silk. He whispered, "Tomorrow," in her ear, kissed her again, and was gone.

She fell back asleep. Her dreams were odd, restless ones, from which she woke with a start. It was still dark. She felt a sudden, dreadful conviction that she'd dreamed w.i.l.l.y and his music and his pa.s.sion. Or worse, he was real, but irretrievably gone. Then she remembered his equipment set up neatly on the third floor, ready for his return. And she had the key to the rehearsal s.p.a.ce. It was, she reflected, a very odd pacifier.

She fell asleep again, and didn't dream at all.

chapter 7 Goin' Mobile.

Eddi woke slowly, hearing kitcheny sounds from the next room. For a moment she wished that what she heard was w.i.l.l.y in the next room, but she knew it wasn't. It was the phouka. The knowledge brought comfort and annoyance in equal parts. She threw off the covers and went to take her shower.

It was like, and unlike, her first morning with the phouka. She spent a long time in the bathroom, avoiding him. He would make some rude comment about her social life, or her taste in men; or perhaps he'd leer, and be elegantly crude. Or he might be hurt.... No, if he turned a wounded face to her, it would be a contrived one, meant to tease. And why the devil did she think he might be hurt?

She took refuge in thoughts of w.i.l.l.y. The memory of him leaning over her, his eyes luminous green in the light of the bedside lamp, made her s.h.i.+ver pleasantly. He had made love with an overwhelming intensity, as if his attention was wholly absorbed in pleasing her and himself. There'd been none of the uncertainty between them that was natural to new lovers.

He'd said he would see her today. What if it was different between them today? Or fine between them everywhere but in the band? Calm down, girl, she told herself. You knew all that last night, and it didn't stop you. It's time to live with the consequences.

Eddi made rude faces in the bathroom mirror. She towel-dried her hair. She pulled on the corners of her eyes to see how she'd look if she were Chinese. She stared at the contents of her closet. Finally she faced the truth: she couldn't stay in the bedroom all day. It would look cowardly. She put on a pair of dark green leggings and a pale violet s.h.i.+rt that reached halfway to her knees, and went out into the living room.

The phouka was lying on the rug in front of the stereo, wearing her headphones. When he saw her, he lifted them off, and she could hear Curtiss A.'s latest alb.u.m playing through them.

The phouka contemplated her. He did not seem disposed to be rude, crude, or wounded. That might be good-or it might mean that he was going to be something worse. "Wholly adorable," he said at last.

"You look like an iris in bloom."

Yes, definitely something worse. "I think I'll go change."

"What, and break my heart? Not to mention impugning my taste. No, no, you have to eat." He sprang up and led her to the table.

The table distracted her from replying as she ought. There were fresh cantaloupe and strawberries, a wedge of cheddar, milk, and a plate of something covered with a clean dish towel.

"Sit," the phouka ordered, and whisked the towel off the plate.

"They're scones," Eddi said.

"Precisely. Do sit down."

She did.

"I confess, I had to seek out expert help for those. Eat one, my primrose, and tell me if it was worth it."

Eddi took one off the plate; it steamed fragrantly when she broke it in half. She took a bite. "My grandmother used to make these," she said absently, and took another bite. "Hey, what do you mean, expert help? I thought you said they wouldn't do anything for you?"

"Who?"

"The... brownies," she said, stumbling a little, and scowling at him for making her do it.

The phouka smiled benignly and held up a battered book. "Oh," Eddi said, recognizing her mother's old copy of The Joy of Cooking.

"Those the brownies will not help, must learn to help themselves."

"And the fruit?"

"I have it on good authority that anything that can be got at all can be got at Byerly's."

Eddi quailed at the thought of the phouka turned loose in the most lavish supermarket in Minneapolis; then she found herself wis.h.i.+ng, rather wistfully, that she'd been there to see it.

"But do eat up," he continued, snagging himself a scone. "Not only will the cold things get warm and the hot things cold-oh, which reminds me." He bounced out of his chair again and popped into the kitchen.

When he came out, it was with two cups of coffee.

"But I thought..." said Eddi.

The phouka looked embarra.s.sed. "I've been watching whenever you brewed a pot."

"Oh," she said. He set the cup down in front of her, and watched her hopefully.

She took a sip, not caring that it was too hot. "It tastes just right," she said, and thought sadly, He doesn't need me to make coffee anymore, while he beamed.

"So, as I was saying," the phouka went on, hacking a piece off the cheddar, "you have a busy day ahead of you, and should be well fortified. Breakfast is very important"-he leaned to look out the window at the sky-"even if you eat it at midday."

"What do you mean, busy day?"

"While you wandered the meadows of sleep, my seminocturnal flower, your private secretary has been taking your calls." Eddi coughed, and he ignored her. "Carla will be here in a quarter of an hour to discuss a gig-quaint, that; it used to mean a small carriage-for the band."

"We don't even have a name yet, and already she's found us a job?"

"You'll have to ask her." He looked at the ceiling, as if reading off it. "And w.i.l.l.y Silver telephoned."

Perhaps Eddi only imagined the pause after that, the fragment of silence as loud as a voice. She was certain that it wasn't as long as it seemed to be.

"What'd he say?" she asked.

"He wanted to know, since there's no rehearsal this evening, if you would like to go dancing."

And, of course, she would like to. The phouka was still staring at the ceiling, his expression perfectly neutral.

"Would it be dangerous?" Eddi asked him. She wasn't certain why she did; surely the wisest course was to treat the news casually and change the subject.

He gave her a long, sardonic look. "Dangerous to what?"

"Me."

"Oh, I know that, my sweet, but dangerous to what portion of you? Your physical self? Your sanity?

Your immortal soul? Or, perhaps, your heart?"

Eddi couldn't help but flinch a little at that. "Don't be annoying. You know what I mean."

"Yes," he sighed, "I do. But are you certain you don't want the answers to the others as well?"