Posted on May 3, 2007

The Hole: Part 3

Evajean shrugged.

Elliot didn’t want to push her but he was hungry. Dry cereal, his usual breakfast these last couple weeks, had been far from appetizing that morning and he’d only managed to get down a couple of handfuls before deciding it just wasn’t worth it. Now he wanted the steak and his stomach wasn’t going to let him wait out Evajean’s mourning period before getting it.

“Well, it’ll take a while for me to get everything fired up and cooking. So why don’t I start, you can finish your drink, and then if you don’t want to eat I can reheat it later for you.”

“Okay,” she said.

He picked up her drink and used it to lead her into the kitchen. She sat at the table there, silently, sipping her drink while he seasoned the meat.

Physically, Evajean looked devastated. She was a tiny woman to start but now, after maybe weeks of dealing with a mad and dying husband and the horrors of the world beyond that, she’d shrunk in on herself, her eyes dark and shallow, her hair matted. Elliot hoped she hadn’t given up yet, hadn’t decided to just let this terror beat her down. They weren’t friends, he knew that, but she was the only one left Elliot knew and the thought of being alone in the world of strangers, without even this defeated woman’s familiar face, tightened his stomach and made him feel sick.

So he’d feed her because getting food in her belly (how long since she’d last eaten? he wondered) would have to be the start to recovery. Then talking, then tears, and then, if the hurt didn’t run too deep, maybe a smile. Elliot, who throughout his life had seen problems as projects, obstacles to be methodological overcome, decided Evajean would be his next puzzle. He’d figure her out and help her because there was no one else to help.

Elliot piled the meat on a plastic Dora the Explorer tray he and Clarine had found at a thrift store and Callie had insisted on they buy on the spot. One corner was broken off from his daughter banging against the inside of the car on the way home, overcome as only children can be by delight and excitement and youthful insanity. He missed her. Jesus Christ, he missed both of them.

“I need to take these outside now,” he said to Evajean, who had nearly finished the enormous quantity of whiskey and was staring blankly at the glass. “They’ll be only maybe ten or fifteen minutes on the grill.”

She nodded. “That sounds fine,” she said.

Elliot almost put his hand on her shoulder as he walked past her and out the door at the back of the kitchen that lead to the deck. But he didn’t. He couldn’t be sure how she’d take it. He might spook her. Elliot wanted her, wanted to be with her–it had been so damn long since he’d had companionship or human touch–and frightening her now would ruin it. Better to wait and feed her, get her thinking about life again and not just that corpse in the road.

He left the back door open while he dragged the grill to the center of the deck, turned on the propane, and got it going. The smell of the meat was fresh and new in a neighborhood gone quite. August was the month of barbecues and beer, families in backyards firing up charcoal and struggling through games of croquet. But this August had been silent and without those summer smells. It had been empty and Elliot was glad when it slipped away into September and he could put the month of his wife’s death behind him.

He sat down on the wooden bench that ran along the edge of the deck. Were they really the only ones left? Of course not. The chances of two people, across the street from each other, being the lone survivors of this murderous illness was clearly impossible. Others continued living somewhere, maybe even close. Once Callie’d gotten sick and then Clarine, he’d confined himself to the block, only venturing out so far as the Safeway grocery store a quarter mile north. And this last week he hadn’t left the house at all.

Elliot turned over the steaks and stared into the heat until they’d finished. Spearing them onto Callie’s tray, he took the food inside and set it on the table in front of Evajean. She still had her drink, though it was almost gone, and she swallowed the remainder before touching one one of the steaks and then licking her finger. “It’s good,” she said. “Thank you.”

Elliot smiled. “They should sit for a few minutes. You want another drink?”

She exhaled–almost a sigh–and shook her head. “I’ll get sick.”

“Something else, then? I think I have some cranberry juice.”

“No,” she said. Then, “Actually, could I just get a glass of water?”

He rinsed and filled her cup at the sink in the kitchen and came back with it and a couple of plates, forks, and knives. Evajean pulled a steak from the tray and cut into it. The two ate slowly, not talking. Once, during the meal, Evajean glanced at him and smiled. He smiled back and the they finished the food in comfortable silence.