ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK (20 page)

I really didn’t know if
having Court call me Dely was okay. The nickname had always been reserved for
only my dad’s use, but the way Court said it gave it a whole new meaning and
kept alive the endearment of the silly name.

Court set up the game
while I took the bowls away and hurried behind the wine barrels.

I winced at the sound
of Court’s groans and barely finished my business when I heard a crash and hurried
to find out what happened.

Court lay on the
sleeping bag groaning and squirming. “What’s wrong?”

“The pains, they are
shooting stabs of fire against my hand and my leg.” He moaned as his entire
body jerked from the pain, accidentally kicking the board off the sleeping bag.
All the little tiled letters went flying in all directions. “My leg, it’s on
fire again.” He grabbed my arm, squeezing so tightly, I was sure that the blood
flow to my hand stopped for a few seconds. “Please, Adela, make it stop. Make
it stop.”

“The pain meds must
have worn off.” I grabbed the container of ibuprofen, dumped the last four into
my palm and filled a cup with water.

“Here, Court. Take
these.” I shoved them into his hand and he popped all four in his mouth at once
then guzzled down the entire contents of the cup of water before dropping it on
the floor.

“Adela,” he groaned. “I
can’t stand it. The flames are shooting through my skin again, worse than
before. I don’t know why. You need to take a look.”

I had never seen anyone
in as much pain as Court seemed to be. I questioned my ability to make him
comfortable. I pulled one of the gauze strips off part of the burn, fearful of
what I might find. Luckily, the burn didn’t look any worse, but he certainly
seemed to be in more pain than before. I glanced around the cellar trying to
think of something to do when it dawned on me. Up until that very moment, I
didn’t know how the crazy coincidence that we sat in the middle of a wine
cellar surrounded not only by bottles of wine, but barrels of the stuff had
eluded me. The ibuprofen was obviously not strong enough and maybe it would
help if Court drank some of the wine.

I’d had wine a few
times with Max while hanging out down here when his parents weren’t home. Wine
made you feel relaxed and Courtland needed to relax. My parents loved wine. I
remembered my mom saying she had a headache while pouring herself a glass of
wine once. It was just minutes after Grandma Casteille left from a weeklong
visit last Christmas. Shortly after my mom finished the wine, she was in a much
better mood. Now that I thought about it, I was certain my mom drank the wine
as more of a celebratory drink rather than medicinal. Especially after she
slouched down on the sofa next to me with the glass of wine and whispered close
to my ear, “Now I can relax.” I missed her.

I patted Court on the
shoulder and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Most of the bottles had
fallen during the quake, and now lay scattered on the cement floor, broken. Puddles
of red wine mixed with some white gave some of the puddles a dirty pink color. But
still, several bottles survived. A wine bottle opener had to be somewhere in
the cellar, but with limited lighting, I couldn’t locate one, and I didn’t know
how to work one anyway. I walked over to one of the wine barrels and studied it
for a minute. Like all the others, it had a plastic plug in the side. If I
could remove one of those plugs, wine would probably spill out. Yeah, spill out
all over the floor. I found one of the barrels over on its side and rolled it
until the plastic plug faced up. I used the end of the can opener to pry the
plug out. It took me a while, but I finally got it. “Hmmm … how do I get the
wine out?”

“Look around for
something that looks like a turkey baster.” I jumped at the sound of Court’s
voice, unaware he was even coherent enough to know what I was doing, let alone
hear me mumbling.

I took the candle and
scoured the floor around the barrels and sure enough, about four feet away, lay
a plastic siphon. When I thought about it, I did remember Max telling me how they
took sample tastes of the barrels to get an early impression of the wine so
they could determine when it would be ready for bottling. He mentioned
something about social events, too, where they offered barrel tastings.

I shoved the plastic
siphon into the hole and pulled it out. Nothing came with it.

“Adela, you have to put
your thumb over the top rubber thing and pump to get the tube to suck up the wine,
then hold your thumb over the little hole so it doesn’t drain back out.”

How did he know I was
having trouble? I swear that boy seemed psychic sometimes. “Oh,” I said, trying
not to sound too stupid or surprised. I stuck the clear plastic tube back in
and pressed down on the black rubber casing and by golly, I had a siphon full
of red wine. I accidently moved my thumb and red wine dripped out onto the
floor. “Shoot.” Of course, the cups were nowhere to be found in the dark. I put
the siphon down, took the candle and retrieved the cup I’d used for the water. Heading
back to the barrel of wine, I once again stuck the siphon in the hole and
pumped up some wine, expertly releasing the wine into the cup like it was an
everyday occurrence, filling the small container almost to the brim. I tasted
the wine, cringing, but swallowed the nasty bitter liquid. I had no idea
whether the wine was good or not. In my opinion, this awful stuff rated down
somewhere between cough syrup and that green stuff my mom gave me when I had
the flu to help me sleep, except this stuff seemed to be laced with a tart
effervescence to add even more to my aversion. I was definitely not an expert,
but clearly this wine needed to age a bit more. Somehow, I didn’t think Court
was going to be too picky, considering the pain he was in.

I walked over to
Courtland and winced at the way the muscles in his arms and torso twitched, his
eyes shut tightly together, his hands fisted on top of his chest and realized
he must be fighting back the urge to scream from so much pain. Holding back my
own impulse to cry, I asked, “Court. Can you sit up?”

He blinked his glassy
green eyes open.

“I have wine here. Can
you drink some? It might help take away some of the pain.”

He nodded, sat up and,
leaning against the corner of the wall for support, took the cup, and downed
the entire contents before handing it back to me. “More. Get more.”

“Um … okay,” I said and
walked back to the barrel to refill the cup.

I came back and handed
the wine to him. This time he sipped and looked up at me. “This was a good
idea, shoulda thought of it earlier. It’s a little bitter, though. I thought
the Wendells produced some pretty decent stuff, but this … this must be fairly
new.”

“I couldn’t find a
corkscrew to open one of the bottles.”

“Oh.” He nodded and took
a big gulp and handed the empty cup back to me again. “More, please.”

“Do you think that’s a
good idea?”

“Adela, I’m going to
die anyway. I might as well die drunk and pain-free.”

I went back and filled
the cup again. This time I didn’t hand it to him. I held on to it and sat down
instead, scooting close to him on the side closest to the wall and leaned back
against it. I carefully took his leg with the sprained ankle and lifted it onto
my lap and smiled at him.

Court reached out for
the cup, but I held it just out of his reach.

“Can I have that?”

“If you promise not to
guzzle it.”

“Why not? It tastes
like crap. Have you tried it?”

“Yeah. I took a sip.”

“And?”

“You’re right. It’s
crappy, but you’re getting drunk.”

“And your point is?”

I shrugged, not sure
what my point was. I handed the cup to him, watched him drink it all and
figured the wine was working, because the lines in his forehead went away and
the muscles in his jaw relaxed. His body wasn’t as rigid and tight as it had
been, his gestures a bit looser, a definite improvement from his earlier
struggle with pain.

“Adela, I think it
would be totally awesome if you tried to find some more candles and searched
for a corkscrew. Check the drawers—there must be several. I can open a bottle
of wine. The stuff in the bottle’s gotta be better than this.”

He was right, of
course. The first drawer I opened had a corkscrew in it. I picked up one of the
bottles from the floor, amazed that it hadn’t broken, and brought it and the
opener to Court. Sitting back down next to him, I handed him the corkscrew and
watched as he twisted the opener into the cork. As he pulled the cork up and
out of the bottle, it made a little swishy popping sound. He grinned. “There.
This should be better.”

He filled the cup and
handed it to me. “You first.”

“I don’t want any.”

He shrugged and took a
sip. “Much better; you sure you don’t want to try it? It might help deaden the pain
of what happened yesterday or was it a couple of days ago? I’ve lost track of
time.”

I wasn’t sure I liked
the idea of using alcohol to alter my feelings about my missing family, but
what would one sip hurt? I scooted closer to him and took the cup, placing the
rim to my lips. This wine smelled better than the stuff out of the barrel, so I
sipped. “Not bad.” I handed the cup back to him. “It’s weird the way your pain
comes like that.”

“Yeah. Maybe my nerves
are beginning to heal and they’re feeling things again.”

“Is that what happens?”

“Beats me. Sounded good,
though.”

“What about that game?
Still want to play?”

“No. I’m not in the
mood, but now that the pain isn’t so bad, I think I’d like to try to stand. My
ankle’s not hurting so much anymore.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I think with a
little help I can do it.”

“Okay.” I stood and
waited for him to stand.

He grunted and stood
up. “Give me your hand just in case.”

Instead of taking his
hand, I held on to his arm.

“Are you sure you’re
going to be okay? You’ve had three cups of wine and you are a little wobbly.”

“Ha, Miss Castielle, it
would take more than three glasses of wine to knock me down. Let go.”

I released his arm and
he swayed a little but managed to steady himself.

“See? I can do it. Don’t
underestimate the power of the male ego.”

He took a step and fell
into me. I grunted as I caught him, holding him up. “Yeah, you’re tough all
right. But you’re not doing too badly for a guy wobbling around in just his
shirt and boxer shorts trying to be all macho.”

He smirked at me. “You
know, you’re really pretty when you’re being sarcastic. It’s only because I
haven’t been moving around a lot.”

His lips were inches
from mine and I held my breath. He straightened his body and let go again, taking
a couple of steps. He stopped and turned his head back toward me. “I’ll be
okay.” He slowly walked behind the wine barrels and I let him go.

I plopped back down onto
the sleeping bag and leaned against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest.
When Court came back, he had another cup in his hand. “Here. Hold this,
please.”

I folded my legs in underneath
my butt and took the cup as he sat back down. Leaning against the other wall in
the corner we were in, he draped his bad leg over my lap again, then picked up
the other cup and handed it to me. I held the two empty cups while he filled
each one. He took one of the cups from me and took a sip. “That one’s for you.”

“I don’t drink,” I
proclaimed indignantly.

“No time like the
present to start.”

“Drinking just makes
people stupid.”

“Hell, Adela. You’re
going to be dead by the end of the week. Do you really think it matters?”

“You’re drunk.”

“Not yet, but gettin’
there,” he chuckled. “My hand feels better, that’s for sure. Wish you’d thought
of the wine a day or so ago.”

He took another sip and
stared at me; our gazes locked for a few seconds. “You have very large brown
eyes. You know that?”

“So I’ve been told.”

“Beautiful ones, too.
Yeah, and they have these tiny fiery specks in them that dance when you get
upset. They sure danced a merry jig that day I walked Big Blue around the yard
with you sitting on top, fuming at every word I said.”

“How could you have
seen my eyes when I was sitting on top of Blue and you were on the ground
pulling us along?”

He touched his finger
to his eye. “I saw them. I couldn’t help but see them. The golden specks danced
like little flames in your eyes.”

“My eyes were
flaming
because you were berating me to my horse. Did you think I couldn’t hear you?”

“Oh, I knew you could
hear me. I wanted you to hear me. It was a stupid thing to do, especially after
I told you not to try to ride him.”

“He
is
my horse.
I had every right to ride him.”

“Not right after an
earthquake. You could have died if I hadn’t grabbed the reins. He was headed
straight for the fence and ready to buck. He would have trampled you.”

Court was right, but he
was also getting drunk and I didn’t want to give him any more ammunition. I
knew what happened when people drank—they talked. A lot. Max once told me a story
about Tom Westerly, a guy he’d had a few beers with. Tom told him he had sex
with Leanne Snyder. Max said Tom never would have told him if he hadn’t had all
those beers.

But having Courtland somewhat
inebriated right now was better than watching him suffer in agony from his injuries.

“I was berating you
through your horse.” He laughed. “I am impressed that you actually got that.
Good for you.”