Page 68 of We Could Be So Good
Suddenly his office seems even emptier than usual. It’s only three o’clock, not nearly time to leave, but Andy’s not getting anything done. He’s tried to make sense of the report, but the words on the paper in front of him have long since disintegrated into a blur. Maybe Nick won’t mind Andy hanging around hisdesk for a bit. When he gets to his feet, the room wobbles in a way that rooms really shouldn’t. He drags himself to the elevator and mumbles “six” to the elevator operator.
“Go home,” says Nick, looking up from his typewriter when Andy approaches. “Don’t sneeze on everyone in the newsroom. Meyer is going to throw you out the window if you even walk past his desk.”
Andy looks over his shoulder and, sure enough, Meyer is giving him a look that dares Andy to come any closer. Andy holds up his hands in surrender.
“I don’t need to go home,” Andy says. His head is pounding and the floor is wobbly again, not that he’s going to mention that to Nick. “It’s just the sniffles.”
Nick gets to his feet, takes hold of Andy’s elbow, and steers him toward the elevator. “I’ll be home by seven and your ass had better be on the couch.”
“Fine,” Andy grumbles. “I’m leaving.”
Nick is by Andy’s side, all but shoving him into a cab. When the cab pulls into traffic, Andy turns around and sees that Nick is still on the curb, watching, as if he thinks Andy might try to jump out of the moving taxi.
But Andy gets home in one piece, even if the stairs take three times as long as usual and have him wondering if it would really be so bad to curl up on a landing and sleep. Or die. Either one, really. When he gets upstairs, he drops onto the sofa and falls asleep almost immediately.
***
Andy wakes to a cool hand on his forehead and the blurry sight of Nick looking down at him with undisguised concern.
“I think you have a fever.” Nick disappears for a minute and comes back with a couple of aspirin and a glass of water. “You’re sicker than I thought.”
Andy wants that worried look on Nick’s face to go away. “It’s nothing,” he says, sitting up and doing his best to look normal. “I probably just got warm while I was sleeping.”
Nick gives him a long, skeptical look but drops the subject. “I’m making soup for dinner. You want the television on while I cook?”
“No, I’ll just watch you, like a creep.” He attempts a leer, but ruins it with a sneeze. Nick rolls his eyes, then takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and throws it at Andy.
Andy sits up and rests his chin on the back of the sofa. He lets his eyes unfocus and his mind wander. He watches as Nick puts a grocery sack on the table and takes out an onion, some garlic, a dozen eggs, a couple of cans, a lemon, and some cheese. Then Nick washes his hands and rolls up his sleeves. Andy closes his eyes and is left with the rhythmic thwack of the knife against the butcher’s block, the sizzle of onions hitting oil, Nick’s off-key humming.
He must fall asleep, because when he opens his eyes, Nick is standing over him, brushing Andy’s hair off his forehead. “Come and eat something.”
Andy gets to his feet and stumbles over to the table, where a bowl of yellow soup and a piece of toast wait for him.
“Egg soup,” Nick says, sitting down across from Andy. “It’s good when you’re sick.”
Andy would eat a bowl of motor oil if Nick put it in front of him and it’s completely insane that Nick doesn’t seem to already know this.
He sits and takes a spoonful. “S’good,” he says. “Lemony.” Hethinks he’d probably appreciate it better if his nose weren’t so stuffed up, but the lemon and steam cut through some of the more nightmarish things happening in his sinuses.
“It’s what my mother made when we were sick,” Nick says.
“I miss my mom,” Andy says. He’s pretty sure he hadn’t meant to say that, but he’s tired and his head hurts. He’s not even sure why he misses his mother now, of all times: God knows she never cooked soup or anything else in her entire life and was hardly the kind of person who could be described as nurturing. She would haveshotanyone who called her nurturing, and that thought only makes him miss her more. But she was his mother and now she’s gone, she’s left himagain, and Andy is all alone, and will always be alone, and—
After dinner, Andy lands on the couch and drifts off, waking to hear Nick’s hushed voice.
“I don’t have a thermometer, but he feels hot,” Nick is saying, and then there’s a pause. “Really hot. No, no cough.” He must be on the phone. “Okay,” he says a minute later. “Got it. Thanks, Bev.”
The sofa shifts under Nick’s weight. “Hey, I’m heading out to the drugstore to get you some medicine.”
“Don’t need medicine. I’m fine.”
Nick snorts. “You have the flu, pal.”
“Says who?”
“Says Beverly. She’s a nurse.”
Beverly is Michael’s wife, Nick’s sister-in-law. Andy doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Nick went so far as to call his brother. “I don’t get the flu,” Andy says.
