She blinks, then goes to the kitchen and gets a carton of eggs out of the fridge, as well as the leftover carton of orange juice from last night. She opens a cupboard, takes out a box of teabags, and places it on the counter. She opens another cupboard and reaches for two coffee mugs, places them on the counter. She gathers a frying pan, olive oil, salt and pepper, a mixing bowl, a whisk, and then pats me on the arm and goes back to bed.
While the pan is heating up, I call my assistant to tell him that I’ll be working from home today. He laughs, because I’ve never done this before, even when I had a sprained ankle. I tell him to reschedule my lunch and forward only the important calls. I don’t have any meetings scheduled all day, so it’s not that big of a deal. When he asks if I’m okay, I tell him I’m just looking after a friend who’s sick.
I take Bernadette her breakfast, and then take Daisy for her morning walk. When I’m back, Bernadette has finished her eggs and orange juice and is trying to focus on her phone. She holds the phone up to me. “Can you read this text from Sebastian to me?”
I take the phone from her and glance down at it, because if I look too hard I might try to read every single text they’ve sent to each other. “He’s just asking if you feel better.”
“Type that I’ll come in in the afternoon. I can do email stuff here. There’s things I need to get for him later.”
“You are not going to work at all today.”
She sneezes and then blows her nose five times in a row, filling up five Kleenex tissues. “I’m fine,” she says. “Tell him I’ll be there in the afternoon. I’ll take a daytime Theraflu.”
“I think you should just drink tea and rest.”
She glares at me. “Theraflu.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She doesn’t notice that I take her phone with me when I go to the kitchen to make her a mug of daytime Theraflu.
When her phone vibrates, and I see that it’s Sebastian Smith calling, I answer on the second ring. “Hi, this is Bernadette’s neighbor. Listen, she’s got the flu. I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to leave her apartment today. She’s sneezing and coughing and she’s got a fever and she can barely speak.”
After a moment, a deep voice asks: “What’s your name?”
“It’s Matt McGovern. I live in the apartment next door.”
“Dolly Kemp lives in the apartment next door to her.”
“Yes, but she’s in Europe with her boyfriend. I’m her nephew, I’ve been staying there for a couple of months. You can email Dolly to confirm this if you know her—I appreciate that you’re being protective of Bernadette. But I’m being protective of her too. So, is there anything urgent that she needs to get done for you today?”
“Not urgent, no.” I hear him sigh. “Okay. I’ll send her an e-mail, but tell her…Tell her I hope she gets well soon, but no rush.”
“Okay. Bye.”
I hang up before he has the chance to say anything else.
It’s not even possessiveness that I’m feeling towards this woman. With Vanessa, I would always go out to parties and bars and restaurants with her even though I would rather we’d stayed at home together—because I wanted to make sure other guys kept their dirty hands off of her. Right now, I just want to make sure Bernadette is taken care of. And I feel lucky to be the guy who gets to take care of her.
It’s different.
Everything’s different.
And also, strangely normal.
After Bernadette has slept for a few more hours and then taken a bath, she whispers that we should play Scrabble. I move the care package from the coffee table, and she doesn’t seem to notice that her sketchbook was on the floor by the sofa, where I left it last night. I let her sit on the sofa with Daisy, and I sit on the floor on the other side of the table, facing her.
She keeps coughing every time she tries to yell at me when I throw down 78 point words, so I bring her laptop over and tell her to message me instead.
The first time she makes up a word, I let her have it, because she’s sick and because her definition ofcryonetricsas software that measures sad data actually makes sense to me.
But I refuse to accept thatmerdlsis a Yiddish word that means “the plural of a happily single woman.”
She sticks her tongue out at me and then rearranges the tiles and takes one away.
“’Slerd’ is not a word!” I yell out. “No more making up words.”
“A slutty nerd is a slerd,” she whispers, totally straight-faced.
