Page 87 of Summers at the Saint
He closed his eyes and felt around inside the purse until his fingers closed on a flattened plastic pill bottle.
“Ahh. Success.” He squinted at the pill bottle and then glanced at Traci, who was still slumbering peacefully on his lap. “Tylenol PM. Case closed.”
Somehow, half walking, half carrying, he managed to get her out of the car and up the metal staircase to his apartment. He leaned her up against the railing of the miniscule landing while he unlocked the door, and with an arm around her waist, guided her inside.
The apartment was hot and stuffy. He deposited her on the sofa, then switched on the window air-conditioning unit and the ceiling fan. When he turned to check on his guest, she’d slid sideways, so he lifted her feet off the floor until she was fully horizontal.
“Okay. Now what?”
Maybe, he thought, caffeine would help. He popped a pod of dark Italian roast in his coffeemaker, and filled up one of his two mugs. After it was brewed, he let it cool on the countertop.
He sat on the floor in front of the sofa. “Hey, Traci,” he said loudly. “You need to wake up now. Wake up and have some nice coffee, okay?”
She smiled beatifically and rolled onto her side, facing the back of the sofa.
“This is not good,” Whelan said aloud. He grabbed the remote for the television, which was already turned to the Braves game, turning the volume to high.
His guest did not stir.
He paced around the tiny studio apartment. He’d taken an early lunch break and now he was starved. There wasn’t much in the fridge. A six-pack of beer, a nearly empty jar of pickles, some of the turkey lunch meat and cheddar cheese slices he used to make his bag lunches, half a jar of salsa, and some moldy grapes.
On the way into town, he’d decided to head over to the new Mexican place that had opened across the street. One of the guys on his crew claimed it was authentic Oaxacan cuisine. But did he dare leave Traci alone like this? What if she woke up in a strange apartment and thought she’d been abducted?
Instead, he dumped three bags of snack-sized Doritos onto a plate, tore up some of the cheese slices and scattered the pieces on top of the chips, and zapped it in the microwave, then dumped some salsa on top.
He sat at his table and scarfed down the nachos with a bottle of Modelo. Authentic desperation dinner, Whelan-style. At least he had a ball game to watch.
The Braves were playing at home, but losing 2–3 to the Mets, until the bottom of the eighth, when the rookie catcher slammed a three-run homer into the seats at Truist Park. “Dumbest bank name ever,” Whelan grumped, not for the first time.
It was nine thirty. Traci Eddings had been passed out on his sofa for a solid two hours, and she showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. And nowhewas tired, bone weary after a full day of sweaty manual labor. Too tired to safely drive his boss back out to the island, and even if he tried, what would he tell the security guard on duty?
Oh, hi. I’ve got your drugged-up boss here. Where should I dump her?They’d probably have him arrested, especially given the circumstances of her niece’s well-publicized overdose.
At ten, he took a hot shower and changed into a clean T-shirt and a pair of jogging shorts. He usually slept nude, but tonight that was not an option.
He’d half hoped she might be awake when he emerged from the bathroom, but instead she was snoring. And drooling on his sofa cushions.
It looked, he thought, like he was going to host a sleepover. And not the fun kind.
Whelan found a light blanket and draped it over her, and slipped her shoes off.
Since she was sleeping on the sofa that normally became his pullout bed, he fashioned a pallet on the floor with a long-disused sleeping bag from his military days, with a throw cushion from the sofa as a pillow.
The floor was unforgivingly hard and the air conditioner wheezed in a way he’d never noticed before, and he was struck by how loudly Traci, a relatively petite woman, could snore. He lay awake for an hour, exhausted but too uncomfortable to fall asleep.
“Fuck it,” he said finally, and helped himself to one of Traci Eddings’s Tylenol PMs. He set the alarm on his phone for 6:00A.M.and drifted off to sleep. In the morning, he told himself, everything would sort itself out.
CHAPTER 44
“Mom?” Livvy’s voice was shaking with anger and embarrassment. “I can’t believe you would come to my job today and create a huge scene.”
“I did not make a scene,” Shannon protested.
From the clanking of silver and china, Livvy could tell her mother was unloading the dishwasher. Which probably only contained one spoon, one bowl, and one glass, but in Shannon’s world the dishwasher got run every day. No matter what.
“Oh really? You didn’t threaten to kick a security guard in the balls if he didn’t let you in to see Traci Eddings?”
Her mother didn’t deny it. “Who told you?”
