“It’s been weeks. ‘Already’ can’t come soon enough. I’m ready to have some mobility back. But hey, while I’ve got you here,” she said. “Are you coming to Castaways tonight?”
“I’m pretty wiped out, but I’m thinking about it. Why? Did Ben want to print up posters?”
“Oh, he will, sure. But that’s not why I’m asking. Ben wants to start doing theme nights. Since you can’t do a show on command every night of the week.”
“Theme nights?” Leda asked. “Like… tiki night? Goth night? Furry night?”
“Those sound amazing, yes. I’ll write down those ideas for him. He’ll be thrilled. Tiffany will whip up some themed drinks, employees will dress up, and patrons will be encouraged to do likewise.”
“How?”
Niki said, “Not sure yet, but Tiffany had a good idea. Like, we get Steve to hand out tickets to people in costumes—and they get two bucks off a drink after happy hour. Something like that.”
“I like it. But what does this have to do with me? Do you want to do a couple’s costume and Matt says no? You know I’ll dress up with you, baby. Any day of the week.”
“It’s like you read my mind. Say, hypothetically, that Ben’s first theme night is 1950s kitsch…”
Leda screeched, “Lucy and Ethel!”
Niki cackled. “Damn right! Do you know where those costumes are? Where did you put them?”
Leda hesitated, her glee snagging on the memory of where she’d last seen the dresses and wigs. “They’re in the storage unit downtown.”
Her friend was quiet for a few seconds. “The Ricky and Fred costumes are there, too, I guess.”
“Yeah, it’s all mixed up with Tod’s stuff. It’s okay, though. It’s time. Those costumes are too damn cool to be stuffed in a box over mere grief, don’t you think?” Leda tried to sound more lighthearted than she felt. “You and me, we’re going to kill it at the first ever Castaways theme night. I’ll bring the Fred and Ricky costumes, too. In case Matt wants to be Ricky again.”
More silence, then Niki said, “I’m not sure what to say right here, you know what I mean? Nobody ever wore the Fred costume, so it’s not like it was really Tod’s. But it feels like it was. The only person I can think of, is maybe Grady—but that’s not the kind of working relationship you two have, I don’t think.”
“Correct.”
“Right. So. Me and you will be Lucy and Ethel. I’ll give Matt the Ricky costume, and you can just… hang on to the Fred costume, or whatever makes you happy. Maybe you’ll find your Fred someday, and we’ll have a big I Love Lucy party, and it’ll be a whole new chapter for you.”
“Maybe.”
“Leda? Hon? You okay? I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to turn this into something weird. I’m really sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. Not your fault, and I’d be happy to bust out the Lucy and Ethel garb. I was going to knock off soon anyway, so I’ll run by the storage unit this afternoon and dig up all that stuff. I’ll bring it with me, and see you tonight.”
“Are you sure it’s okay?”
“You heard me, I’m good. I’ll come around at the tail end of happy hour. Tell Ben I’m in, and he can call me whatever he wants on the posters.”
“He already does.” Niki paused. She held the phone against some nearby part of her body while she listened to someone say something. She came back and said, “All right, but I have to go now. The doc’s calling me back to the exam room. Take care of yourself, please? And if you decide you don’t want to do this, that’s fine. I promise, nobody will be mad about it.”
“I’ll be there tonight, costumes in hand. Go get your boot off, so we can dance.”
They hung up, and Leda sat alone at her desk, staring at her computer monitor and not seeing any new messages—good, bad, or otherwise.
She powered it down and collected herself. She took a deep breath and grabbed her purse. Food, that’s what she needed. Food and then storage unit and costumes and Castaways. She slung the bag over her shoulder and rose to her feet. This was fine. Everything was fine. She hadn’t had literally the worst morning in the history of mornings, and tonight there would be free booze. She could do this.
She could do this.
First, she went back home and got her car. She didn’t need Jason for sushi, because the sushi bar was around the corner from her office—but if Niki wasn’t coming along, too, sushi was somehow less appealing. Nah, she’d go pick up a burrito she could bring along for the ride. Something to distract her while she went plowing through a small locked room full of heartache.
She found a Chipotle on the way, got a burrito the size of a newborn, and took it (along with a large, caffeine-loaded soda) to go.
Back to the old Tully’s roasting facility she went, wending through the industrial end of the city to get there—because it was easier than hopping on the interstate, where it’d take twenty minutes to go two exits. Might as well use the twenty minutes to see the sights, honk in support of some protestors, give five bucks to a dude holding a sign at a stoplight, and not get run off the road by midday commuters running late or just plain running.
Under the streets was a forest of concrete with a canopy of asphalt high overhead. Leda found a place to park, and it should have felt perilous—it was right underneath an on-ramp—but instead it felt lucky, because it was only half a block away from her destination and it was in a two-hour free-parking zone. It was like she’d found a unicorn and left her car on top of it.
If she’d been more awake and less depressed, she might have been in a good mood. She always liked to think of her parking luck as a daily omen, and this was a good one.
But no.
She was grumpy and antsy, and a little bit shaky from too much caffeine and not enough food or sleep and maybe a weird psychic hangover from the dead lady in the bright building. But she’d fix the food part once she got to the unit.
Inside the big old building with cars whizzing past it, she went to the storage unit she’d been keeping since before Tod had died.
She’d first rented it a month after they’d gotten engaged. They’d planned to combine households—and even though those households belonged to a couple of single, job-hopping, broke-ass millennials, there’d still been so much stuff that would have to go someplace. It was supposed to be a temporary measure until they could get their own place, but then Tod had died, and they’d never moved in together. Then she’d moved into the bungalow with somehow less room than her old apartment, and even more of her things got crammed into the dark little place. Now it was a labyrinth of boxes, bags, and loose furniture piled like King Tut’s tomb up in there.
Tod’s parents had taken most of his things, but she’d kept a few, and plenty of her own possessions had reminded her of him. The rest was a mausoleum of things that she didn’t always want to touch but couldn’t bear to part with.
Too many little flashes, sparkling through her brain like TV static and fireworks. Little memories, playing out again and again. It had nothing to do with psychic powers and everything to do with nostalgia.