Page 5 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

O k. Ok, I had to do it. There might have been something important—like, work-related important.

Optimistically, there also could have been something like a cordial “hello” or “just checking in,” because I’d known people in college and in high school, and even in elementary school.

And after I’d graduated, I’d hung out with other people.

They hadn’t been my own friends, but I’d spent plenty of time with them and they were acquaintances.

They might have been sending a message, too.

I tried to pet Coral the cat for reassurance but she stared at me out of empty eyes and then turned to show me her butt, so I left her alone.

So, the new emails in my inbox could have been something positive…I held my breath and clicked.

No, there was nothing good. I had been right to be fearful because it was all bills and threats, plus a woman bothering me with intrusive questions about my mother.

I blocked her and looked through as many others as I could, until I felt the familiar squeeze of anxiety in my chest and I had to quit.

It had been like this since the accident and I did the same thing that I always did, every time I got so overwhelmed that I couldn’t breathe: I went outside.

It was the cheapest therapy I’d been able to come up with.

I slowly sank down to sit on the front steps of our little apartment building.

There were four units, two on the ground floor and two stacked above those.

The upper two were empty after some storm damage to the roof but fortunately, one of the lower ones had been available when I’d come out of the hospital and had been reeling and frantic about where I would live.

I had felt lucky to get it, even though these two steps had been very hard for me to navigate at first and they still weren’t the easiest now.

But they were an ok place to sit, especially since the weather had warmed up.

It had been uncomfortable in the winter but when I got this feeling, I hadn’t cared if it had been freezing, snowing, or sleeting.

The door to the building opened and closed again behind me. “ Senorita Mack,” Hernán said.

“Mr. Bermejo,” I answered, but he shook his head. “ Senor Bermejo,” I corrected myself.

“ Hace buen tiempo ,” he said slowly.

“Um…something about time?”

“It’s nice weather,” he corrected. “? Qué tal estás hoy ?”

“Um…” What was the right answer? “ Estoy bien. ”

He clapped like those two words were an extraordinary achievement, and for me, they were.

He had decided that I needed to learn Spanish so he’d spent the last few months teaching me, but it was an extremely slow process.

I had previously taken two years in high school too, but none had stuck very well.

I wasn’t much of a language person at all, in fact, because I’d also struggled in English class.

He was excited to teach me; due to my decision to try optimism and the need to have bonds, I hadn’t said no.

Hernán started to speak to me again because he had the idea that if I heard enough, eventually I would start to absorb it.

After that happened, Spanish would emerge from my own mouth.

He would stop every now and then to give me a loose translation, like that he was talking about his daughter or telling me something about Spain, where he’d grown up.

And I usually did recognize at least one or two words, but this teaching method wasn’t doing much for my language acquisition.

I didn’t mind hearing it, though. I was glad to interact with anther human, even if I had no real idea of what he was saying.

He switched to our common tongue when he wanted me to answer. “Why are you out here? Did you have to check your email?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“What about the junk file?” He sounded stern. “You missed the message from the lawyer because you didn’t look in there before.”

“I didn’t look in there now, either,” I further admitted. I gotten too overwhelmed by the regular stuff. “I will.” I took out my phone and did it, because he was right and ignoring email folders only made them grow aggressively, like poison ivy.

I felt a wave of relief. Fortunately, luckily, wonderfully, most of the contents of the junk folder was actually junk, people trying to help with my erectile disfunction and telling me that my passwords had been compromised. Except for one. I stopped scrolling and looked at it.

“? Quién es ese ?” Hernán pointed at it, too. “Who is that guy?” he translated, because I hadn’t quite nailed down all the question words.

I also looked at the name. “It’s someone I met briefly,” I answered. “How do you say ‘chicken’ in Spanish?”

“ Pollo . What does that have to do with…” He squinted and frowned at my screen because he didn’t like the small text size that I used. “Levi Lassiter. ? Quién es este Levi Lassiter? ? Quién ?” he repeated slowly, and then raised an eyebrow. “? Me entiendes o no , Emerson?”

I’d gotten enough of an idea of what he was saying to allow me to answer. “Levi is someone I met through his sister.” I opened the email, and there was nothing except for a picture. It was a chicken: pollo .

“How did you know what would be in his message?” Hernán asked me. “Wait a minute. Is this some kind of threat? If it is, it’s a poor choice of animal. Why not a wolf? A jackal?”

“No one’s threatening me with pictures of chickens,” I assured him. “He’s making a joke, an inside joke. It’s not going to sound funny if I explain it, but it was at the time.” I smiled again now when I thought of it. “He looked up my email address. That’s funny, too.”

“Why is it funny? Why wouldn’t he pursue a beautiful girl?” He typed on his own phone and then held it up. “Levi Lassiter. Is this him?”

“Oh, wow.” Yes, it was a picture of the guy I’d met for a few moments in the coffee shop, the one who’d seemed as uninterested in me as I had been…

well, I hadn’t been uninterested in him.

Of course, I hadn’t been interested, either.

I’d thought he was rude to his sister who was trying to help him, but I hadn’t been not-uninterested.

That wasn’t the same as interested or uninterested, though—I had been neutral. That was the word.

This picture was also neutral, and by that I meant it was ugly and devoid of charm.

Yes, it showed the same man from the coffee shop, with the same curl in ends of his hair, the same straight nose, the same arched eyebrows.

He stared blankly at the camera out of the same dark eyes, too. I frowned. “He looks…”

“Boring,” Hernán stated.

“It also looks like a mugshot,” I said. “Is it?”

“Let’s see, shall we?” He typed some more. “No, no arrests that I can find. He rarely posts and it’s all private anyway. I don’t see anything for work, either. Who is this?”

He definitely sounded unimpressed, but I had returned to looking at the picture of the chicken. “Why did he reach out to me?”

“I just told you,” Hernán answered impatiently. “Why wouldn’t he reach out? Or, are you wondering why he sent a chicken? I also have questions because as a threat, it’s terrible, and for romance? Also no good. Maybe a dolphin, maybe a dove…”

“I also just told you that it’s a joke, not a threat and not an overture,” I said, and I used the handrail to pull myself back to my feet. “I need to get back to work.”

“What are you going to answer him? Want me to ask my daughter for advice?”

“No, that’s ok.” He and his daughter were very close, but she lived all the way in Nevada.

I figured that was why he liked to spend time with me, because I reminded him a little of someone he loved, since I was a woman and also below the age of fifty.

She was successful and financially stable, though, so we also had our differences. “ Adiós .”

“Let me know what happens,” he requested. Because the other reason that he liked to spend time with me was that he was a busybody.

I in my chair and looked at the chicken more, and then I also looked up Levi Lassiter.

Hernán had been right; there was nothing much about this guy that I could find.

I thought about him as I glanced around my apartment, at the bland expanse of rental décor with ecru walls and grey, plastic-wood floors.

It was all as boring as the mugshot picture we’d looked at.

If I wrote back, what would I have said? “Cute bird,” I typed, and then quickly deleted it. He had been funny and I had to respond in kind. I tried again: “Are you asking me over for dinner?” No, that just sounded unkind to chickens.

Ok, there was another way to go with this. “Are you the guy from the coffee shop?” I wrote, and before I could second-guess myself again, I sent it. Then I turned up the volume on my phone.

I got up again, even though I felt the familiar pain.

I went into the little kitchen, just an alcove off the main living area, and I opened my refrigerator and the two cupboards next to it.

The mug, plate, and bowl sat where I’d placed them.

The small carton of milk was still in the refrigerator, next to the same bunch of arugula that I’d bought because I knew that I needed more vegetables in my diet. It was now looking wilted—

My phone made a soft chirp and I walked faster than I had in a while over to look at it.

“Are we emailing?” Levi had written. “I think this is how my parents met. It should be a great story for our kids.”