Precious and Fragile Things Read online

Todd had gone outside to bring in some wood for the stove. Now he came in and dumped the logs into the bin. Snorting and stamping, he slapped his bare hands against his thighs and blew into his curled fingers. He looked up at the sound of her curse and raised both eyebrows.

  “It’s dead,” Gilly said in a tone more appropriate to the loss of a pet than an inanimate piece of electronic equipment. She held up the iPod.

  Todd toed off his boots and left them to drip snow onto the floor by the door. He shivered, still rubbing his hands together and shook his hair, coated with a light mist of flakes from the seemingly constant snowfall. “That sucks, huh?”

  “Yes. It does.” Gilly got up, put the iPod on the table.

  She hadn’t wept in weeks, but she wanted to cry now. Instead she scrubbed furiously at her eyes until they stung and her breath caught in her throat. “It’s just an iPod,” she said.

  She felt him watching her but Todd said nothing, just disappeared into the kitchen. She heard him rummaging around in the drawers. He was back before she had time to even turn around.

  “Here.” Todd held out a handful of batteries. “There’s an old CD player in the cupboard. It should work.”

  She didn’t move toward him to take what he offered. After half a minute Todd sighed, shoulders slumping, and rolled his eyes. He went to the cupboard himself, pulled out the boom box. He brought it to the table and set it beside the iPod, then flipped the CD player on its side to pry open the back and fill the empty slot with the batteries.

  “I took them from the flashlight,” he said. “If you don’t fucking listen to something, I’m going to be pissed off.”

  The threat sounded empty. Gilly was too touched by the gesture to do more than stare, anyway. Todd sighed again, heavier this time, and stomped upstairs. She heard the scrape of a drawer, then his feet on the stairs. He brought her the CD case he’d rescued from the truck.

  “Here.” Todd opened it. “Pick something.”

  Gilly unzipped the case and flipped through the plastic pages. The sight of the silver discs, such a vivid link to her life, made her throat burn. She gave herself a mental shake and forced the feeling away. “Like what?”

  Todd took the case from her and looked through the choices. His forehead wrinkled in consternation. “What the hell is this stuff?”

  Gilly bit a smile, knowing instantly the reason for his question. Her taste in music was eclectic, to say the least, her iPod filled with everything from classical to reggae. She rarely listened to CDs anymore except in the truck, and the discs she’d chosen to keep in there had all been chosen for their “singability.” She had to be able to belt out the lyrics, sing with abandon, and generally make the kind of fool of herself that she could only do in the privacy of her vehicle with no one to hear but the kids.

  “Hedwig and the Angry Inch? The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Phantom of the Opera?” He faked a gag. “Don’t you have anything good?”

  “Hey. All of those CDs are good.”

  Todd flipped some more pages. “One Hundred and One Silly Kids Songs? The Wiggles? Jesus, Gilly.”

  She smiled. “You might like it.”

  Todd rolled his eyes and pulled out another disc. “Simon and Garfunkel. Jason Manns, who the hell is he? Oh, hell, no. Spare me that folk shit. Okay, this is better. The Doors. Greatest hits. Sweet.”

  “That’s my husband’s…” Gilly stopped herself. She didn’t want to talk about Seth with Todd any more than she already had. “But we can listen to it.”

  Todd punched the button on the small CD player and inserted the disc. In a few seconds, the first opening strains of “The End” came out of the speakers. He grabbed the bowl of popcorn he’d made earlier and sat down on the couch, long legs stretched out on the coffee table, head back on the cushions.

  “This is good.”

  The music made Gilly restless. At the window, she peered out into the rapidly falling night. More snowflakes, light now but promising to get heavier, drifted down. She hadn’t been outside in nearly a month. Todd’s footprints still broke the span of white, but with the new snow coming down it wouldn’t be long until they disappeared, too.

  Jim Morrison’s achingly clear voice spouted poetic lyrics that reminded her of college parties, lights dim in the basement of some fraternity house, warm beer and cigarette smoke. The song made her think of Seth, too, who’d owned the CD before they’d met. He’d taken her to see the film The Doors, Val Kilmer playing a perfect Morrison, at some college art department film series on their fourth date. He’d bought her popcorn and nonpareils, and later had licked the salt and chocolate from her fingers before leaning over in the dark movie theater to kiss her. Gilly touched the frosted window and watched her fingertips make small, clear ovals in the rime.

  She missed him. Missed his strength, his quiet humor. She missed the way he put up with her sniping and complaining, and the way he laughed with her at silly old movies. She missed the scent of him, fresh soap and water, and the way he never failed to squeeze her when she passed him.

  She had no tears, not now, not when they would serve no purpose. Watching the snow outside, it seemed impossible it would ever melt. That she would ever be able to get away from this place. It seemed as though she might be here forever, listening to a dead man sing and watching darkness swallow the world.

  “What do you think he means, anyway?” Todd’s voice broke her concentration, and Gilly jumped a little.

  Her fingers skidded in the frost, leaving slashed marks like wounds on the glass. “Who?”

  “Morrison.” Todd crunched some popcorn. “The killer picks a face from the ancient gallery and all that shit. What’s that mean, do you think?”

  Gilly tore her gaze from the window to contemplate the man on the couch. “I suppose you could take it to mean that…well…” She struggled to put her thoughts into words. Her thoughts, not anything she’d read that someone else had postulated. “That there’s a killer in all of us. Or that we can choose our actions. I think he means we can choose the face we wear.”

  “Gilly.” Todd gave her a look. “The fuck’s that mean? Choose your face. You get the face you’re born with.”

  “Not your real face.” She made a circle with her finger, outlining her features. “Not your eyes and nose and mouth, not like that. The face you put on for people. For the rest of the world. I think he meant you choose that face.”

  Todd cocked his head. “Huh. You think that’s true?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I do.”

  Her answer seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded thoughtfully. But then Todd said, “That’s a bunch of crap.”

  Gilly sniffed. “Why’d you ask if you didn’t want to know?”

  “I asked what you thought. Doesn’t mean I have to agree. What about the rest of it?” Todd reversed the CD for a few seconds until the passage started again. “The blue bus and all that stuff?”

  Gilly pondered, aware that for whatever reason, he expected her to have an answer. “Life is a journey?”

  She waited for his scoffing.

  Todd glanced at her. “Hell, it sure ain’t one I want to take on a bus. You ever take a trip on a bus, Gilly?”

  She had, several times, to visit a college boyfriend. “Sure.” The memory made her smile. “Bus stations are scary.”

  “You got that right.” Todd cocked his head to listen to the music. “Morrison was one fucked-up dude.”

  “Some people think he was a great poet for his time,” Gilly said, uncertain why his casual assessment of the long-dead rock star should affect her at all, much less cause her to rise to his defense. Hell, she didn’t even like Morrison all that much, despite his sexy ways and liquid lyrics.

  Todd turned up the volume. “The dude wanted to kill his father.”

  “And fuck his mother,” Gilly said matter-of-factly, and was completely unprepared for Todd’s reaction.

  His face went pale, and his mouth gaped. He turned his attention from the small CD player and stared at her