Dreamland(83)

“She dressed as a flapper for Halloween a couple of years ago,” I mused, spinning the wig around on my hand. “This was part of her costume.”

“Hey, I dressed as a flapper last year!” Morgan chirped, spraying the bathroom sink and countertops with cleanser. “Great minds think alike.”

I had to admit that it was a lot easier to clean with her help. Alone, I would have scrutinized every item, trying to figure out how it fit into the delusion, but Morgan simply kept moving forward until each task was completed. By the end I felt, if not quite whole, reassured that everything would eventually return to normal.

“Is there a decent-sized supermarket nearby?” Morgan said, washing her hands at the kitchen sink.

“There’s the Piggly Wiggly.” I shrugged. “But, really, we can go out if you’d rather rest after all this work….”

“You cooked for me in Florida, so it’s my turn,” she said.

At the Piggly Wiggly, Morgan miraculously managed to find a package of rice noodles in the Asian food section, along with a small bottle of soy sauce. Adding garlic, frozen shrimp, chicken breasts, cabbage, and a few vegetables to the cart, along with a dozen eggs, she triumphantly pulled up to the beverage aisle and threw a six-pack of beer into the bottom of the cart.

Back at the house, she got busy in the kitchen, washing and chopping vegetables and starting a pot of water to boil on the stove. Pulling out a large skillet, she made a shooing motion in my direction. “Leave me alone in here. Go sit on the porch with a beer and relax,” she instructed, in a voice that brooked no disagreement.

Pulling a beer from the six-pack, I grabbed my guitar from the truck and settled into one of the rockers out front. I fiddled around with whatever chords came to me as my mind wandered over the last few days. Every now and then I’d stop to take a sip of beer, feeling the beginnings of a melancholy ballad take shape.

“That’s pretty,” I heard Morgan say from behind me. I turned to see her standing at the screen door, her hair tied back in a ponytail with a rubber band. “Is it new?”

I nodded. “Yeah…but I’m not sure what it is yet. And I’m sure I’ll need help with the lyrics, since you’re so good at those all-important hooks.”

Morgan brightened. “After dinner,” she promised. “Food in fifteen minutes,” she called over her shoulder as she returned to the kitchen.

The smells wafting through the screen door were making my mouth water, and the crackling sound of frying garlic and onions eventually made me lay down my guitar and wander back into the house. Morgan was stir-frying the shrimp, chicken, and vegetable mixture in a heavenly mix of soy sauce, black pepper, and other spices, all the while keeping an eye on the quick-cooking rice noodles.

“You can set the table,” she said, swiping absently at a tendril of hair that had escaped her ponytail.

I set two places, cracked open two cold bottles of beer, and put them next to the plates just as Morgan set down a huge platter of fried noodles garnished with limes and hard-boiled eggs.

“Wow,” I said. “Kinda puts my chicken dinner to shame.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, taking a seat across from me. “This is the easiest dish in the world, although it really hits the spot.” She raised her own bottle of beer. “To family,” she said.

We clinked bottles and took sips before digging into our fragrant plates of food. I think Morgan knew I needed a distraction from thinking about my aunt or Paige, so she regaled me with stories of her family trips to Manila and her grandma’s attempts to teach her how to cook. “I wasn’t a very good student,” she said, laughing. “Once I caused a small fire while I was trying to use the wok, but I did learn one or two things.” She popped a shrimp into her mouth and washed it down with another sip of beer. “My grandma finally told my dad that it was a good thing I was smart, because no one would marry me for my cooking.”

I leaned across the table and kissed her. “I love your cooking,” I said. “And everything else about you.”

Morgan went on to tell me about her last day with her friends at the Don CeSar. While she admitted that my sudden departure put a bit of a damper on their last afternoon, what made it worse was a group of guys who monopolized the chaise longues next to theirs at the pool and spent the entire time badgering them to meet up later.

“It was irritating. All we wanted was a peaceful last afternoon together in the sun.”

“Did you end up going out on your last night?”

“We did, and thank God we didn’t run into those guys. But we weren’t out late. Everyone was kinda tired. It was a big week for all of us.”

“Fun though, right?”

“I can’t speak for them, but I was living in dreamland.”

I smiled. “How did your parents react to you leaving again as soon as you got home?”

She made a face. “I didn’t tell them until after I booked the flights, and while they weren’t thrilled, they didn’t try to stop me. I should mention, though, that as soon as I got home, my mom sat me down and tried again to convince me to take that music-teaching job in Chicago instead of going to Nashville.”

I made sympathetic noises as I stood and cleared the table. Together, we did the dishes, by now in practiced rhythm. As I put the last of them away, she nodded in the direction of the porch. “Let’s sit outside for a while. I want to help you keep tinkering with that song you started.”