“Like ink and oatmeal.”
She gulps, trying to imagine that sliding down her throat. Void sliding down her throat.
“If you could eat anything in the world right now, what would it be?”
“A deep-fried cheeseburger with potato chips on the bun.”
“Too bad. We don’t get everything we want. It’ll have to be eggs.”
“Mmmmmmmm,” he says, sounding surprisingly enraptured. “Eggs.”
She pads into the kitchen, dragging her slippered feet. They’re dog-eared, but the rubber bottoms still squeak insolently. She opens the fridge, rummages briefly. When she shuts the door, Void appears behind it. She yelps and drops her ingredients. The red bell pepper waddles across the linoleum.
“Put turkey in the eggs.”
“Okay,” she says, picking up the bell, along with the other ingredients. He’s smacking his non-existent lips, and it sounds like when a bird sits on a transformer.
“And ham if you got it.”
“Don’t push it.”
She sets to work as Void sits on the couch. He shimmies down until his head is on the seat, and he puts his stumped bottom half on the coffee table.
“So what brings you here?” As if he’s some tourist, and she’s a diner waitress. What brings you around these parts? “Why now?”
“I’m hungry.” So he is her wandering stray, coming back when it is favorable to him.
She washes off the red bell pepper and water rises around the magazine roll jutting from the garbage disposal. Will Void stay here past when Connie and Di arrive? She’s never had to deal with him in the presence of others.
She looks out into the garden at Judd pacing against his leash. Sees the row of garden gnomes, chipped and faded from their lives spent in the elements. Their backs are turned to her, and she doesn’t blame them for their contempt. Because of her, their brother is somewhere out there, discarded, in the cold expanse of anonymous seas.
She shuts off the water and shakes the wet pepper in the air before setting it on the cutting board. “I know you’re not real,” she says. She tries to say this as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
“Who said I was?”
“I just want you to know that. I don’t need…therapy to know you’re not real.”
“Says the girl who’s talking to herself. Yeager wasn’t enough.”
God, she misses him. He would know what to do.
“I grew out of you,” she says, wiping the pan out with a sponge, circling the inside rhythmically. “I’ll do it again.”
“Will you?”
“You’re an imaginary friend. I had others. You’re not special.”
“I’m not your friend. You must know that by now. So, I must be here for some… purpose. Probably.”
Void laughs his vile, reverbed laugh. Beddy sets the pan down. Checks the clock on the microwave. Connie is always inflexibly on time. Which means she and Di will be here any minute.
Beddy turns around. Wipes her hands firmly on a towel. Tries to make her shoulders square and intimidating.
“You need to get out of here. There’s people coming over.”
Void yawns, stretches his arm above his head.
“Actually, I think I’ll stick around.”
The square in her shoulders bends. Shadows of panic.