I peel the paper bag open and discover a nostril waxing kit I would normally scoff at. But these are dire times, and Isaac Hawthorne is still an active problem in my life, so I tear the box open and take out the small pot of cold wax. “Here.” I toss it across my desk, so while Aubree grabs it and darts out of my office again, I take everything else from the box. Thesticks I’m supposed to shove up my nose, the instruction manual that says to leave them there for two minutes. The small infographic that tells me to pullfast.I glance to my left and watch Aubree stare at the microwave in the communal coffee room—ten, nine, eight, seven—and then as she whips the door open on four, too impatient to wait any longer.
Spinning on her light-up shoes, she charges back into my office with a grin. “I doubt waxing the hair off your head is an option you’re considering…” She sets the warmed pot on my desk. “Right?”
“I’m not waxing my head.”
“Exactly, but I see that your hair is wet, and your face is shiny and clean. That means you washed good, but these…?” She points straight up at her nose. “They’re sneaky, because they’re not so easy to clean, and if you miss just the tiniest little hair, you’re gonna send yourself mad trying to escape the stench.”
“Mmhm.” I’ve been here, done this before, so I dip the first stick into the melted wax and coat the spongy end, then, bracing myself for the sting, I shove it up my nose and exhale a low hiss of pain as the hot wax burns. Grabbing the second stick, I repeat my steps, cover, shove, hiss, release, and since I have to sit here looking like a complete idiot for two whole minutes, I try to pretend they’re not there, and instead, bring my focus back to a smirking Aubree. “Shut up. Tell me something interesting.”
“Oh! Well, okay.” She drops into the visitor’s chair, folds one leg over the other, and places both hands on her knees. “So I think I’ve decided Iwillbe a surrogate for Eli and Curtis.”
“I…” I jolt back in my seat and study her through fresh eyes. “I meant tell me something about Isaac Hawthorne!”
“Oh!” A warm blush fills her cheeks. “Oops.”
“But this… uh…” A million different thoughts ping-pong inside my brain.How? When? Do you have to? Can we negotiate?“Wow…” I exhale a heavy breath. “Alright. That’s a big deal.”
“It’s pretty huge.” And going by the hesitation in her eyes, I suppose she understands the gravity of her choice. “With Cordoza’s thing happening, and ourpromotion.” She emphasizes each syllable in the word. “Even if we remain largely hands off and pretend what he told us doesn’t exist, our lives still change anyway. We know a standard pregnancy takes forty weeks. Add in the hormone monitoring and the insemination, and this could take a year, even if we started right now.”
“R-right now?” My nose sticks twitch with my stammered words. “You’re gonna start immediately?”
“I’m gonna tell Eli I’m on board. Let them do the things they need to do. Make the decisions they want to make. Ultimately, I think it would be best if I get this donebeforeEstefan dies, because after he does, our lives are going to be crazier than ever, and pregnancy is a time I’ll feel especially vulnerable.”
“Well… yeah. Exactly. You’ll be vulnerable, Aubs, and rushing toward vulnerability is rarely the right thing to do. Don’t you think it might be better to wait Cordoza out, see what happens when he dies, and settle into whatever comes for us once he’s in the ground… andthenconsider growing a baby for someone else? Introducing more stress into an already chaotic life probably isn’t smart.”
“Which is why I wanna get it out of the way before Estefan is gone.”
“But we don’t know when that’ll happen. Do…” I search her eyes and wonder, “Do youknow? Can you pinpoint exactly when?—”
“I see his death,” she murmurs, softly shaking her head. “I see his funeral. I see him dying in his bed, and not at the end of an enemy’s gun.”
“Lucky him, I guess.” I sit back and ignore the way my wax sticks clang together with the movement. “If you can see him in his bed, can’t you just…” I roll my wrist. “Ya know, search the room and find a calendar?”
She snorts. “No, Chief. I cannot. As for the surrogacy stuff, Tim and I have gone round and round about this for months already, and then we’ve gone around some more since Sunday. If I wait too long, I risk not being able to do this for my brother at all, and if I get the timing wrong, I risk being pregnant when I’d really prefer not to be. So…” She seems to run out of words, so she shrugs. “Don’t forget to pull your plugs.”
Crap!
I check the time on my computer, but I didn’t actually pay attention to when my two minutes began. Frenzied, I grab a stick and give it a fast yank. “Holy mother of six-armed fucking octopuses!” Tears flood my eyes, and pain radiates all the way to my toes.I’m crying! “Oh my shit, Aubs.” I choke out a watery laugh and study the end of my hair-infused wax ball. “Ouch!”
“You’re bleeding.” Giggling, she jumps to her feet and snatches my spent wax stick. Scrunching her nose, she tosses it into my trash can, then, fisting a handful of tissues, she comes around my desk and perches on the edge to get a closer look at the second. “The worst thing about doing this is that it’s not one and done. You pull the first plug, feel the pain, cry about it for a minute, but then you have to rally and do it a second time.”
“You’re more likely to conceive twins via IVF than if you were to do it the good old-fashioned way.”
Curious, she pulls back and searches my eyes.
“So you do the thing,” I explain. “Feel the pain, cry about it for a minute, and then you have to rally and do it a second time.”
“Nice segue,” she snickers. “You ready for the next one?”
“No!” Panicking, I slap her hand away and cover my poor, aching nostrils.
“What in the world is going on in here?” Eyes wide, grin even wider, Sophia blows through my door with a pair of pliers casually hanging from her front pocket and a hammer fisted in her left hand. However, her teasing mood lasts only until the Isaac Hawthorne stench invades her senses, then she slaps a hand over her mouth and retches. “What the shit, Mayet? Did you take a dump in the corner or something?”
“No.” My voice comes out nasally and weird. “Go away. This is important official business.”
She charges around my desk instead and perches her butt right next to Aubree’s, then dragging my hand down, she reveals my weird face. “Well…” She breathes noisily through her mouth. “This is new. What the hell are you two doing? And seriously.” She gulps. “What stinks so bad? You got a skunk hiding in your butthole?”
“That smell is decomposition.” In my distraction, Aubree grabs the second wax stick and tears it downwards.