Page 97 of Meet Me in the Garden

“We went there with some friends on vacation last year,” Pamela adds, and moves aside so that I can step in. Unfamiliar furniture, a new citrus scent, a crowdedness to it that hadn’t been here when it was only Ginny’s. A framed film poster of Elizabeth Taylor and a collection of seashells in a glass bowl on the coffee table. Pamela disappears down the hall to the bathroom and I wonder if she knows how much time I’ve spent here. If she knows anything about me at all.

“Here,” Ginny says from the kitchen. She emerges with a map, places it in my hand.

Come with me, I want to say.

But Pamela’s back, the curlers removed from her hair now, lips hot pink, snaking her arm around Ginny’s waist. “You got what you needed?” she asks. Her eyes are hard.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you. I’m sorry, again, to bother you both.”

“Have Lionel call me when he’s back,” Ginny says before she shuts the door.

Face burning, I start the car. The city fading out, the long stretch of nothing, the desert. The life they’ve made while I’ve still been dreaming of her. Imagining her with me when she and Pamela live together without hiding. I’m passing billboards and houses and highway but what I see are Pamela’s seashells, her smooth brown curls, her arm around Ginny’s waist, showing me how she gets to touch her like that anytime she likes. Seared into my mind now. “You marry me,” Ginny once said, her legs pinning me in place, and I was foolish and afraid and I pushed her away.

A few minutes after noon, Lionel appears in the distance, his lanky frame moving quickly against the backdrop of modern houses, flat roofs, and cactus gardens. He walks with his hands in his pockets, his gaze to theground, glances behind him as he steps into the street to cross, nods at me as he approaches the deli. I turn around, see him scanning the distance. And then he’s at my door and climbing in.

“Drive that way a few blocks,” he tells me. “Let’s get out of sight.” He smells clean, like soap, but perspiration beads his forehead, stains the cotton under his arms. I follow his instructions, park where he tells me to. He scoots across the seat, hugs me tight. “Thank God for you, Odette.” He shakes his head like he has so much to tell me and doesn’t know where to start.

“Lionel,” I say. “What’s going on?”

“We should get out of here. But first, there’s a bird. She’s mine. In the coop in the backyard.” I wait. “If the men come looking for me, we can go get her.”

“How will we be able to tell?”

“We’d see them walking by,” he says. “Way over there.” He points toward an intersection a few blocks away. “There’ll be four of them, if they all go over together.” We eat the lunches I packed. We wait for a very long time. And then Lionel bends forward, squints, and two men appear, closely followed by two more. “That’s them. Let’s go.”

We turn on the block one over from them so they won’t see us pass by, and Lionel has me turn another corner to wait, and a few moments later he’s back with a bird in a small cage, racing to the car. “Go go go,” he says, and I accelerate hard, turn fast onto the main road.

“Is this a getaway mission or a heist?” I ask, and he laughs but doesn’t answer me.

He places the cage in the back. Wiggles it to make sure it’s secure.

“Is that bird really yours?”

“It’s a matter of opinion,” he says. “In my estimation, yes.”

“Lionel.”

“What? You’re taking their side?”

I glance at him. He’s humorless. “I’d never take their side,” I say. “I was so worried about you, I couldn’t sleep. Ginny wants you to call her when you’re home.”

“Ginny does, huh?”

“I went to her place this morning to borrow a map. It was a mistake. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I needed certain things to sink in.” He’s watching me, not saying anything. I ask, “Does she ever talk about me anymore?”

“It’s been a little while.”

I nod.

“That doesn’t mean she isn’t thinking about you.”

“It seems like they’ve made a real life for themselves. It’s a home now, that place.”

“Pamela isn’t always good to her. I mean, sometimes she’sbadto her.”

“How so?”

But he shakes his head, won’t tell me. “Pull off up here,” he says. I take the exit off the road, park in front of a restaurant. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.” He leaves the windows cracked for the bird and I follow him inside, a bell chiming after us, an unsmiling man behind the counter.