Bottoms Up, Part 7 (Patreon)

Seven: Ring

“I’m just going to assume he’s not in today either?” she asked.

“He’s not,” Effie said. “I don’t know your relationship with Layne, so I’m hesitant to elaborate on that answer too much.”

“My relationship with him is nonexistent,” the woman said. “So fire away. Give me the dirt.”

“I’m only working an eight-hour shift,” Effie said. “That’s simply not enough time for all the dirt. So I’ll offer this: you’ll never see that man in this store before 10 AM.”

The woman laughed and shook her head. “He’s not a morning person, I take it?”

“He’s not an afternoon or evening person either, really.”

“Are you saying that I’m wasting my time coming in here early, then? On my way to work?”

“What time do you leave work?”

“Six. Most days.”

“That’s too late,” Effie said, playing with her hair. “If you want to see him, you’re better off showing up after 10, but before 4. Oh, well there’s lunch to consider too. So, let’s say between 10 and 11:30 and then between 1:00 and 4:00.”

“And he’s the owner?”

“Quite the gig, huh? Look, I can just, you know, give him your number. You don’t have to try and surprise him here in the store.”

“I could do that. But I was hoping to catch him off guard. Here in his natural element. Tease the baby-man a little.”

“The baby-man,” Effie repeated. She really wanted that nickname to catch on. “You are...Kiri, yes?”

Kiri nodded and smiled. “That’s me. And you are?”

“Effie.”

“A pleasure,” she said. “Well, I am on my way to work. If I decide to stop in again, I’ll keep your recommended hours in mind.”

“Should I tell Layne you stopped by today?”

“No,” Kiri said. “I’d hate to come off as desperate.”

“If anything,” Effie said, “you’d probably just inflate his ego.”

“Well we can’t have that either.”

“Mum’s the word, then.”

“Thank you, Effie. Though...if you can find the chance - maybe call him a baby-man? For me?”

“Oh, I very much intend to.”

--

To the surprise of nobody, himself included, he got out of bed late. Truth be told: this wasn’t an accident. He no longer used his daily alarm on his cellphone, and left his wake-up time up to the fates. If he got up early - good. If not - oh well. It had been this way for a while, and he couldn’t even recall when he turned off the alarm. Weeks ago? Months ago?

He stumbled downstairs and to the kitchen, fully expecting to run into Harper and Syd. Alas, just a Harper.

“It’s 9:15,” she said.

He shrugged.

“So you’re not even going to pretend to care about being late anymore?” she asked.

“Effie’s a big girl.”

“Are you alright? Depressed or something?”

“Or something,” he said. Though this was just a dismissal of ‘depressed,’ and they both knew it. “No Syd this morning?”

“They have a job. Sadly.”

He started to try and imagine the kind of job Syd would have. Record store employee? Radio DJ. It was far too early to dwell on something so unimportant.

She sighed and tapped her fingers on the table, clearly considering something. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

He stared at her with tired dead eyes. “You can do whatever you want. But I promise you that I’m probably not awake enough to give you a good answer.”

“I’d take a bad answer too, you know.”

He shrugged.

“It can wait,” she said.

There was a time when he would’ve fought for her to open up. He would’ve straightened himself out, shook the sleepy cobwebs out of his head, and handed her the platform to say whatever she needed to. Now, he was tired - sure. He was also defeated. The gears of change were in motion, and it felt far too late to change them now. She was moving on. If it wasn’t with Syd, it’d be someone else. She’d be moving out eventually - or maybe he would. At their most civil, they’d commit to being friends, though that wouldn’t last forever. The worst part, of course, would be that this had all happened so glacially slow that he’d be left with a lifetime of regret over all the opportunities he had to right the ship.

He let it go, holding her to that - it could wait.

He poured some coffee into a travel cup. He took a sip or two, wincing at the hot black liquid on his tongue - though it seemed to prove effective in restoring a little life to his body. He grabbed his wallet from the counter and his keys from the key hook hanging on the wall.

“Oh, actually,” she said. “There is one thing…”

“What?” he asked, his tone sharpened. “What is it? What is so important that we have to talk about it right now?”

“If you’re planning on leaving,” she said, “you should know that you’re wearing sweatpants again.”

--

It was hard to say why he was so cranky. Yesterday had been, by his own account, a bit of a win for him. A day off. There had been the dispensing of justice.

But - “Oh right” - there had also been a bit of tequila in the evening.

He had stopped at the store on the way to work, picking up a can of paint, some assorted paintbrushes and painting supplies, and a full-length mirror.

“I don’t like the look of this,” Effie said as he entered Bottoms Up through the backdoor, mirror tucked under one arm while the rest of the bags dangled from the other.

“You don’t have to be involved,” he said.

“What sort of project is this? What’s getting ‘Layne’s Frustrated Treatment’ today?”

“The nursery.”

She glanced over to the dark corner of the stockroom where the door to the closet-esque room was slightly ajar.

“Are we...using that room now?”

He shrugged. “I guess that depends on how today goes.”

“And if it goes poorly?”

“You can put a TV in there and call it a breakroom.”

“Then, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, I hope you fail.”

Almost immediately into his project, he too wondered if he was taking on something that was mostly pointless. Who was this room for? Who would use it? When? Why? How?

But being busy felt good, and so he shrugged it off and kept going. He dragged the makeshift changing table out into the stockroom. He washed the walls and swept the floor of the accumulated dust and dirt of years worth of neglect. He taped off the ceiling and floor and opened the paint can to reveal a warm pastel pink. It was the most perfect color for the room he thought. In his imagination, it was the color of the womb he had once spent time in. He wanted to immerse himself in the paint; bathe in it.

He’d settle for just putting it on the walls.

He took his time painting. It may have been the most careful he had been doing anything in quite a while. With every stroke of the brush, he became less fixed on how pointless the room was and more focused on the potentials.

A young couple comes into the store, blushing and giggly as they look at their options. The friendly, and handsome, shopkeep suggests a diaper or two, and the bashful boy shrugs sheepishly, unsure of what he could commit to. The young woman sides with the shopkeep - these might be the diapers they need. But the shopkeep senses the boy’s hesitation. “You know, maybe what you need is to try one on.” And he leads the two back to the Nursery, thrusting a diaper into the young woman’s hand. The boy seems unable to believe that he’ll be expected to put a diaper on here. But the young woman, she’s fine with it. She’s all about it. She closes the door and pampers her little one; he, well aware of the fact that anyone on the other side of that door - anyone in that store at all  - knows exactly what’s happening in there.

Or…

That woman is back in the store again. What was her name? April Something-or-other? She’s buying diapers for her boyfriend for his birthday. She’s flirting with the shopkeep a little - or at least she is not completely shutting down his efforts at flirting. He takes a wild shot in the dark - figuring he’s already got her money anyways. “What can I do to get you into a diaper today?” To his surprise, she’s not winding up to slap his face - she’s hiding her blushing cheeks behind a raised hand. She makes it very clear that all he had to do was ask the question. He offers her a hand, and she takes it. He leads her back to the nursery, closing the door behind them. He helps her out of her clothes, stripping her nude. Her skin is soft, a pinky-peach that positively glows in the pink nursery. He offers to help the nude woman to the top of the changing table, but she’s already there. Her legs are raised in the air, and her bottom is completely exposed. She’s ready for her diaper. “But first,” he says, unzipping his pants, “we need to…”

“Layne?”

He snaps out of his fantasy, realizing for the first time just how aggressively pink the room is becoming. He glances over his shoulder, afraid to turn away from the wall and expose the firmness in the front of his pants.

“Yeah?”

“Someone’s here to see you,” Effie said.

“Who?”

“That lady.”

“Be a tiny bit more specific.”

“Grace? From the Angry Citizens Club?”

His eyes grew big and he awkwardly darted up from his kneeling position. With a quick maneuvering of his pants, he hoped that nobody could tell what had been growing in there. “What does she want?”

Effie shrugged. “I didn’t ask too many questions. I just told her I’d see if you were around.”

“Alright.”

“As in,” she continued, “if you’re not here, I’ll tell her as much.”

He considered it for a moment. Was he here? Did he want to talk to her?

“Yeah, alright. I’m here.”

“Well she’s waiting out front.”

“Send her back here.”

“Yeah? You sure?”

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

The second she had gone through the swinging doors, he sighed in relief. It had been harder to hide his excitement for seeing Grace again than it had been to hide his erection.

--

“So this is, what, now?” Grace said, poking her head into the half-painted Nursery.

He considered lying for a moment. The truth would only prompt more questions. More judgment. More fodder for her whatever speech she gave to the other concerned citizens in town next.

“I call it the nursery,” he said. “It’s a work in progress.”

She scoffed, the first thoughts that came to her mind not seeming to be all that good. “Interesting.”

“What brings you in today, Ms. Vander...er, Grace.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said. It sounded like the kind of lie he had once used himself in the early days of courting Harper.

“And so you thought you’d stop in and see your favorite enemy? How very kind of you.”

“I was thinking about our conversation at lunch,” she mused as she walked around the stockroom, taking in the shelves of extra adult-sized diapers and onesies. “And it bothers me to say this, but I suppose you deserve to hear it: You may have been right.”

He laughed. “Ask anyone, they’ll tell you. You’re never supposed to tell me that. Even if I’m not sure what it was I was right about.”

“You reminded me why I became a social worker in the first place. Research. Delving into the problems instead of just looking at things written in a folder. I’ll spare you the entire sob story - but the quick and dirty version is that I spent many more years than I should’ve in the care of someone who convinced other social workers that I wasn’t a victim.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

“No apology needed. Like I said, I wanted to do better, and so that’s been my life’s work. That was why I joined CALM. But...again, you were right. I hadn’t done my research. I made some kneejerk reactions to what I thought your store represented. That’s not who I have ever wanted to be.”

“And so...what does that mean? For me? What comes next?”

“Research,” she said. “That’s what comes next for me.”

“Can I help you with that?” he asked.

She smiled, then laughed. It wasn’t the first time he had seen some life come to her face, but this was her most candid moment yet while in his presence.

“I don’t think so. I didn’t come here for help. I came here because I wanted you to know that.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Though I’m curious. What does ‘research’ entail? Are you reading things? Watching things? Uh...wearing things?”

“I’ll see where my needs take me,” she said.

Layne glanced over to the swinging doors leading to the salesfloor to make sure there was no sign of Effie. The coast was clear. “I’m going to propose something to you. And I don’t want you to tell me yes or no.”

“Okay.”

He pulled a Carnival diaper from the open pack on the shelf. The same open pack he had pulled two from in recent days. He handed it to her, practically forcing it into her hands.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Take it home,” he said. “I don’t care what you do with it after that. Throw it away if you need to. But in my opinion? There are some things that you aren’t going to learn enough about by researching them online.”

She quickly stuffed the flat padded object into her purse, folding it in half to do so. When she looked back up at him, her cheeks had some extra color to them.

“This doesn’t change much,” she said, doing her best to compose herself.

“No?”

“This could backfire. My research could confirm all the worst case scenarios I imagined. It could only further empower me. It could fuel CALM to take our fight beyond the city council.”

He shrugged. “You’re right, this doesn’t change much. You could’ve done that damning research already.”

“May I make an observation?” she asked.

“Go ahead.

“You’re not wearing your wedding ring today.”

It was a sharp observation. He had taken it off - somewhere around the third shot of tequila the night before. In between the victory dance for having gotten stinky revenge on Hanson and lamenting the inevitable finality of his marriage. The ring was in his pocket now - not that it would matter if he said as much.

“How astute.”

“I shouldn’t look into that too much, right?”

“One thing at a time,” he said. “You finish researching this one thing first, and then we’ll talk about the other.”

--

She was sitting on the deck, sipping on some wine while her vape dangled from her fingers. She didn’t feel like getting a wine glass from the dining room, so she was drinking out of a plastic novelty cup from some place in Las Vegas she and Layne had gone to once upon a time.

It was dark and the outside light by the backdoor wasn’t all that effective of hitting the entire deck. There had been times when she asked - nagged, as he probably saw it - Layne to figure out a better lighting solution. But she actually didn’t mind it tonight. It was actually kind of nice sitting in the dim light.

Harper imagined, for a little while, that she was completely hidden from the rest of the world. It was just her and a plastic cup of white wine.

The sliding door opened behind her. So much for that notion.

“What the hell are you doing out here by yourself?” asked Layne.

“Is the deck unsafe for just one person at night? Are there monsters? Street youths?”

“We can’t all be snarky,” he said. “One of us needs another personality.”

“You should explore that. Become someone new. Fresh. Mysterious drifter?”

“How would you describe me now?”

“Optimistic grump.”

“I don’t care for that much.”

“Well thank you for the warning,” Harper said. “But I think I’ll be okay out here by myself.”

“I was actually looking for you.”

“Oh?”

“This morning you said you wanted to ask me something?”

She took a drag from the vape and washed it down with the wine. She hoped that the whole sequence looked pretty cool in the dim lighting of the deck. “Believe it or not, I came out here so that I didn’t have to talk to anyone.”

“Alright, well, I can just go inside, I guess.”

“Pull up a chair if you want.”

He did. She was tempted to be annoyed that he had taken her up on the offer, but instead she was just surprised.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Was that the question you wanted to ask me this morning?”

“Don’t be a smartass. I’m trying to be nice to you.”

“It was...fine.” He had said a lot with a little. He sounded exhausted. Conflicted. Stressed. Uncertain. Probably a few other emotions she couldn’t put a finger on. She wondered what his day was actually like. The characters he encountered. The tiny little things that he got annoyed at. “How was yours?”

“Good,” she said, confidently.

“Yeah? For real? Like, you’re not just saying that?”

“It wasn’t, like, the best day I ever had. But it was good. Days have been good lately.”

“Because of Syd?”

“They certainly help.”

It was hard to say what his exact motion was in the dark of her periphery, but it looked like a shrug. A friendly and well-meaning shrug, she’d like to think.

“For the record,” she said, “I don’t think Syd is...The One. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re just the first in a series of fun people I meet.”

He made some noises. Not quite words. Half-grunts or little clucks.

She decided to ask the question: “If I want to proceed with a divorce, are we going to be able to be friends?”

He didn’t answer right away. She didn’t expect him to.

“I worry that that’s just what we’d tell ourselves,” he finally said. It felt real. No jokes or sarcastic tone. Nude emotion. “But then we’d just fade from each other’s lives.”

“What’s the alternative?” she asked. “Like, what do you want? In a perfect world.”

She didn’t want to guess what his reactions were, and she turned to face him.

“You know what I miss? The old days. The days before the store. Back when it was just...Mommy and Baby.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I miss that too.”

Neither said anything for a moment or two.

“Hey,” he finally said. “Do you, uh, want to go for a drive?”

“Anywhere in particular in mind?”

“Yeah, I was thinking I could show you a little project I’m working on over at the store, actually.”

She laughed. She was tempted to tell herself that this was a bad idea. But...he was her husband. Still. For now.

“I’m down,” she said. “Let’s go.”