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Chapter EightThe white styrofoam boxes were opened and out sprang the glorious aromas of egg rolls, vegetable stir-fry, chow mien, and a number of different types of meats. Allara felt her stomach turn, proclaiming its need to be full and she leapt to the cupboard to retrieve a plate.
"Hold up." They were the first words to break the amicable silence. They were also swiftly followed with more words to fill the gap that had been left by the shattering of geniality that had left the air dead and wanting of something unidentifiable.
"Let’s not use plates. I don’t have anything to wash them with…forgot that minor detail when I was at the store." Allara shrugged ambiguously and Orlando couldn’t tell if she thought he was an unforgivable idiot for not having dish detergent, a horribly lazy person for not wanting to wash dishes by hand, or if she really didn’t care. He decided to take it at face value and carried the take-out containers to the living room, as he did not yet have a dining room set either.
The meal passed quietly, with the evening news playing sedately in the background; the noises from the street below melded with the voice of the anchor and time went on. Somewhere between the weather and latest political scandal, Allara’s animalistic need for food was eased and she slowed down to begin thinking about her current situation.
Talk to him. Say something. You have to spend the next week with him, in his house. You might as well make it worthwhile. Then again, it’s only a week and there’s no reason for you to be here in the first place.
Battling with herself, she did not realize that she had begun softly whispering under her breath, in between bites of cashew chicken and chow mien.
"I’m sorry, what was that?" Orlando had been studying her from the other beanbag, thinking smugly to himself that she would be embarrassed to be caught talking to herself. On the contrary, she seemed quite amused as she turned to face him, her lips curved into a welcome smile. She hastily tried to finish masticating the bite of food in her mouth before replying.
"Sorry, I was talking to myself." What are you doing?! Talking. I know that. Then why are you asking? Why are you having a two-sided conversation with yourself, in your head? Shut up.
"Ah, I know how that is. Everyone is always making fun of me for being absolutely daft, but I find that it helps me to sort things out in my head." He flashed her one of those dazzling smiles that the cameras could never seem to get enough of.
"Exactly!" She grinned at him before reminding herself that she was not here to be friendly and her smile faded, her face quickly returning to stone; eyes losing all of their twinkling potency. The sudden change perplexed Orlando and he decided to continue on with the conversation as if he hadn’t noticed.
"Well, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who does that." He frowned as she refused to reply and instead glared at Tom Brokaw while rapidly shoving General Tsao’s beef into her mouth. She realized she was probably making a mess of herself and glanced around for a napkin, only to be startled at the feeling of one being gently dabbed against the corner of her mouth. Allara reacted in an almost violent manner, flinging her arm out to block any future attempt at contact as she recoiled into the beanbag, almost toppling over the side onto the floor. She turned half-frightened eyes toward Orlando, who had held his hands up in an act of submission.
"Whoa, calm down now. I only meant to help. Why are you so averse to human contact?" He was rewarded with a cold glare as Allara resumed eating, somewhat slower so as to avoid another napkin fiasco. Not to be deterred, he tried again, with a different and yet completely unoriginal tactic.
"You know, you are going to be here for a week, you have to talk to me sometime." Tom Brokaw droned on and Orlando waited for some sort of reply; all he got was an exasperated sigh.
Right, because I hadn’t thought of that. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, you could tell him anything you want right now and chances are that he’d believe you. You could tell him that you were raised by wild mountain goats or that your father used you as bait when he went crocodile hunting, it really just doesn’t matter at this point.
But, to her own surprise, she found herself telling him a bit of the truth. A carefully guarded and not altogether too-informative part, but it was still the truth; a baby step in the right direction.
"I just don’t like people very much, so I avoid conversing with them. Happy?" She quipped the last word, her tone turning frigid and laced with sarcasm.
"No. Not particularly. Why don’t you like people?" He, on the other hand, was not angry or sarcastic, merely curious. The gentleness in his tone was lulling Allara into a sense of security that she believed to be entirely false.
"Oh gosh golly gee whiz, I don’t for the life of me know!" Her cynicism dripped like rain from a pine needle in the middle of a storm, despite the look of wide-eyed innocence on her face. Orlando groaned, beginning to realize that he was fighting a losing battle.
"Listen, I’m just trying to be nice, alright? It’s not my fault you’re stuck here-" catching Allara’s disapproving stare, he corrected himself. "Well, ok…so it sort of is my fault, but, well…we can at least try and get along, you know?" He shot her a half-hopeful look before staring down at his abandoned chopsticks and the fork half-buried in fried rice.
Try and get along, try and get along, try and get along, try and get along…
Over and over again it paraded through her head like a mantra, finally convincing her to make an attempt at decent and quasi-friendly conversation.
"Right. So…tell me a little bit about you. Something that I might not know." It was a pitiful attempt at small-talk and she knew it, so she was happy to see that she didn’t get any groans or pained looks, instead she received an amiable reply.
"Well, let’s see…something you don’t know? Well…I can’t really think of anything that you wouldn’t already know or that I would choose to tell you right now. I’m really quite boring when you get down to it. But what about you? I don’t know anything about you…other than your name."
Allara glanced shrewdly at him, trying to figure out if he was serious about wanting to know about her, or just trying to pass the time. She was also trying to decide whether or not to tell him anything remotely truthful about her past. With that slightly crooked grin and those welcoming eyes, she determined that there was no harm in letting him know a little something about herself.
"Well, my full name is Allara Gael Evans, and I’m from a small town called Athens, in northern Georgia. When I was about five years old, we moved to Atlanta so that my father could be closer to his work. We took a vacation to Los Angeles once when I was twelve years old and that’s when I decided I was going to live here. After that, I just struggled through my teenage years like anyone else, and here I am."
So that’s not exactly the whole truth, but it’s close enough.
Orlando cocked his head to one side and stared at her for a full minute with an approving look. Finally his lips cracked into a small smile, and he nodded his head as he spoke.
"See now? That wasn’t that hard. Good start, Allara Gael Evans from Atlanta, Georgia. Good start."
The two settled into another comfortable silence, to be broken only by Allara rising from her perch on the bean bag to gather the plates and throw them away. A few more lazy hours passed and Orlando turned in his seat to look at the now-sleeping woman next to him.
He observed how different she looked when she slept. Her features were softened, and her wavy raven hair haloed her face, the light shining off of it to create an eerie glow about her. Her lips were soft, full and pink-uncovered by lipstick. Dark lashes fell against alabaster cheeks, concealing emerald eyes. Her chest rose and fell softly with her breathing and she seemed smaller, frailer. Slowly, so as not to awaken her, he gathered the delicate frame to his chest and carried her down the hall to the bedroom. When he returned to the living room, he pushed the two bean bags together and lay down on them, shifting his weight to make the night more comfortable.
~*~
The next morning Allara awoke to find the apartment completely deserted, a hastily written note on a paper plate lay on the kitchen counter, beside the sink.
Alara: 10:00- Gone to store, be back for lunch
Snickering at the spelling mistake in her name, she glanced at a nearby clock to discover that it was ten thirty, so Orlando would return in a few hours she reckoned. In the meantime, she would take a shower and see what was on television. Moving silently through the apartment, she admired Orlando’s taste in homes. It certainly was a nice place. A few hours passed and still there was no sign of Orlando. Allara would come to expect this tardiness in his arrivals from anywhere.
Around three o clock, he finally returned, laden with bags. Without a word, Allara began to help unpack. There was no sense in being lazy or mean when she could just as well be useful. Orlando had gone out and picked up several different necessities that he had forgotten the day before. When everything had been put away, the two stood on opposite sides of the kitchen, both at a loss of what to say or do.
Now what? Am I going to live in silence for the next week? I want to call Ani…
"Um, Orlando?" Allara was the first to break the silence with a timid question. "Do you mind if I use your phone to call long distance?"
Orlando looked at her a little questioningly, thrown off by the lack of hatred or loathing in her voice.
"Uh, yeah. Sure, yeah. Go ahead. Phone’s over there." He gestured aimlessly toward the kitchen, and Allara scurried from the room to search for the cordless. She dialed the number with trembling fingers as she stole to the bedroom, so that she would not be heard.
rrrrrrrring…..rrrrrrrring….rrrrrri-"Hello?"
"Hello, may I speak with Aine, please?"
"Yes, just a minute." Allara heard Aine’s mother call for her, slightly muffled by her hand held over the receiver. After a few moments and some slight scuffles on the other line, the melodic voice of her best friend floated through the line.
"This is Aine." Allara’s hand began to shake as she heard her on the other side on the phone, so close and thousands of miles away as well.
"Ani? It’s Allie." Her voice quavered, for she was on the verge of tears. She heard a stream of soflty whispered Gaelic crescendo into hysterical screaming coming from her friend. Finally, her chatter became lucid.
"Lara-bear! Conas tá tú? (How are you?)" Aine was speaking in Gaelic, her first language that she sometimes slipped into when she was overexcited or did not want others to know what she was saying. Over their years together, Allara had become almost fluent in the language.
"Táim go maith, táim go maith, Ani. Cronáim thú! (I am good, I am good, Ani. I miss you!)" Throughout the next hour, amidst quiet tears and sobs, Allara explained to Aine exactly what had happened to her in the past three days.
"Babby, you sure have made a mess of things, no?" Her friend was comforting and loving, but not entirely supportive. "I miss you, Lara-bear, but you should stay in Los Angeles. See if Mr. Bloom can’t help you find a place to stay, come back here and you’ll never get another chance to get out of here. Soon enough I’ll be able to come stay with you."
"Aine! Tá tú glan as do mheabhair! (You're crazy!) No. I’m coming back." Allara fought the words of her friend, but in her heart she knew that they were the truth. If she went back in a week, as scheduled, she would never be able to leave again.
"Tá brón orm (I'm sorry), Allie, but you know I’m right."
"I know, Aine. I don’t know what to do though…Listen, I should go. I’ll talk to you before I decide anything. Slán (Goodbye), love."
"Slán go foill. (Goodbye for now.)" With a sigh, Allara hung up the phone and returned to the living room to find Orlando watching the weather channel.
"Thank you. I’m done now." She tossed the phone to him and it landed with a slight thump in his lap. Calmly, he turned to her.
"Great. I was just watching the weather channel, and it’s supposed to be gorgeous all day long. The beach is a few blocks down the way, would you like to go swimming?"
~*~
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