Page 37 of Old Flames

Ruby passed away in a sterile hospital room. Moments later Jules lost consciousness in the hall. “The shock,” the nurses said. “The emotional toll.” They revived her with fluids, but the real work began when she was left alone to rest. People claimed to fall apart over life’s ups and downs—a traffic ticket, a late fee, an eviction notice, or termination letter. What was financial hardship in the face of irrevocable loss? When you’ve lost the most important person in your life, and you only had one person to start with, the weight of that loss crushes you, reduces you to powder, and no amount of IV fluids was going to help. That night, she was certain to have lost all the love that she’d been allotted in this lifetime. Numbing herself was the only way to cope.

Ayesha, in her breezy dress and leather flip-flops, strolled by at just the right time, defusing a bomb that might have gone off in Jules’s hands.

“Hey!” Ayesha called out. “Want to check out the writing studio? It’s not part of the guided tour. We’ve got to do it on our own.”

“Let’s do it,” Jules said, convinced Ayesha was the only serious adult on this trip.

“Go ahead. I’ll catch up,” Vicky said. “I want a video of this adorable furball.”

The same furball who would’ve scratched Jules’s cornea, given the chance.

“I don’t get the obsession with the cats,” Ayesha whispered as they walked away. “People are going wild over them. Am I missing something? A six-toed cat isn’t all that rare.”

They made their way around the main house, past the urinal Ernest had brought home from the original Sloppy Joe’s which Pauline had turned into a water feature, and moved toward the stand-alone studio loft. Jules clocked a sandy-brown cat eyeing her from the communal litter box. She put her question to Ayesha. “Do you think cats have a sixth sense?”

“Absolutely,” she answered. “They see things we can’t.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Jules stayed close to Ayesha. They climbed the A-frame stairs to the loft, but they could only peer in through the bars of an iron gate. A regal typewriter sat on a dark wood table. They admired the rattan furniture, the bookcases, the simple framed art, and various artifacts brought home from Hemingway’s travels. And of course, it wouldn’t be a Hemingway hideout without the head of a dead animal mounted onto the wall.

“Fuck, I love it,” Jules said in a breath.

Ayesha went silent a minute then asked, “Is she still cross with me?”

Jules assumed she meant Vicky. “No, it’s like you say. She’s wild about the cats. She isn’t avoiding you, if that’s what you think.”

“I think I’ve intruded on your personal holiday.”

“No way,” Jules said. “It was good hanging out with you.”

“Don’t lie to spare my feelings. You two never liked me.”

This again, the old “roommate shit,” to quote Sebastien. Rather than sweep it under a rug as roommates often did, Jules felt compelled to air it out. This was Key West, after all. The land of unburied secrets. “We liked you fine,” Jules said. “But you thought you were better than us.”

“What if I am?” Ayesha asked, brows arched high, leaving Jules to struggle with the question.

And what if she was? Jules asked herself. Couldn’t her brittle ego take it? She’d had mentors in the past, women she admired for their force of will and intellect. Couldn’t Ayesha have been one of them?

“I only wanted to be friends,” Ayesha admitted. “You two were cooler than I could ever hope to be, more confident, more fun. Popular on campus. Invited to all the parties. I was disciplined and focused, but you were better than me in so many ways.”

“I was jealous,” Jules admitted.

“Why? What did I have that you didn’t?” Ayesha asked, incredulous.

“A family,” she answered. “The day you moved in, ten cousins rallied to assemble your Ikea bedroom set. The day you moved out, another cousin cleared your room, handled everything. He said you hated us, by the way.”

“That idiot!”

“It’s okay,” Jules said. “My point is, I envied the love and support you had at your fingertips. I’d lost my mother the year before.”

“I remember,” Ayesha said.

“I’m also estranged from my extended family.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Jules shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”