Forever Innocent

We waited by a pair of Adirondack chairs for the rest of them to move through and walked up the steps to the house. Inside, a woman with a badge led an older couple around the small interior room. “Sorry about the crowd,” she told them. “Sometimes professors require their students to come up here.”

“What are those blue flowers by the door?” the woman asked, and the three of them stepped outside the house to look.

I pulled Corabelle into the corner by the fireplace, catching her as she stumbled into me. “This is very disorienting,” she said.

The floor was slanted, and the walls were at opposite angles, the pictures hanging to complete the unsettling sense that you were the one off-center. Corabelle clutched my arm. “Are you feeling sick?”

“It’s strange.” My head couldn’t quite wrap around the disconnect between the tilted floors and slanted walls and the way my body tried to hold itself.

“Look up at the chandelier,” she said, still trying to find her footing.

I pulled her closer and examined the metal loops hanging from the apex of the ceiling. Seeing a straight line that matched what my brain said was up and down calmed the sensation that I was falling sideways.

“It’s like finding true north,” Corabelle said.

We still held on to each other as though we were lashed to a ship’s mast in a storm, but she no longer seemed like she was going to fall. I knew if we looked anywhere else, to the sides, or down, or even straight ahead to the door, we’d lose our balance again. But as long as we focused on the right spot, the world was manageable.

The tour guide stepped through the door. “It’s calming, isn’t it? Some people actually feel sick inside here, like the last poor couple. But if you just stare at the chandelier, you find peace within your discomfort.”

“Who built this?” Corabelle asked.

“It was installed by Do Ho Suh, an artist from Korea,” the woman said. “He wanted others to feel the disorientation that he felt coming to a new country.”

“It certainly works,” Corabelle said. Now that she had looked away from the chandelier, she gripped me hard, already starting to sway. “Do you get used to it?”

“I only volunteer here once every two weeks, so I have to adjust all over again every time. After about half an hour, I can manage. Are you here for the assignment?”

“Yes,” Corabelle said.

“The picture your professor wants you to measure is that one.” She pointed to an image of a baby, allegedly one of the deans.

Corabelle tried to step toward it and stumbled into me. I managed to catch her, but my stomach began to turn. The angled walls seemed to be falling inward. I tried staring at the floor, but the position of my feet made the confusion in my brain hit a fever pitch.

I wanted out of there, back to normal ground, where I could control things again. Screw the assignment. “Come on, Corabelle,” I said. “It looks like 27 degrees to me.”

The guide looked displeased with us, and Corabelle almost protested. But when she turned to me, something in my face changed her mind. She just said, “Thank you” to the guide as I led her out.

Once we were back on a level surface, I expelled a huge breath. “Not my thing,” I said. “Thanks for not being the usual you and insisting we do the assignment the right way.”

“You were turning kind of green.” She squeezed my arm.

I glanced back at the house. It seemed perfectly normal from the outside, well, other than the fact that it teetered on the edge of an eight-story building. Funny how something so ordinary could knock you sideways.

We reentered the hallway and waited for the elevator. “Can I make dinner for you tonight?”

“Since when do you cook?”

“I’ve got the internet. I can figure it out.”

Corabelle harrumphed. “I’ve got to see this. When do you get off?”

The doors slid open and I pulled her close to me. “As soon as you get there.” As the elevator closed, I lowered my mouth to hers.

Chapter 30: Corabelle

“Girlfriend, you have to SPILL.”

Jenny hadn’t let me so much as tie my Cool Beans apron before peppering me with questions about Gavin.

The shop was quiet midafternoon, just a few regulars. Austin was conspicuously missing. He probably decided to stop coming. Jenny perched on a stool in front of the counter covered with little table signs. She was switching the summer specials out for the fall coffees. I winced when I saw “Hot Pumpkin Spice,” which Jason had threatened to re-nickname me with.

“About time we switched out the menu,” I said.

Jenny pointed a finger at me. “No stalling. I want to know everything.”

“We seem to have gotten back together, that’s all.” All sorts of torrid scenes flashed through my head, the car, the shower, on his weight bench. But I didn’t need to share all that.

“Will you return to the dish room for a grand finale?”

I laughed. “I don’t think so.” Although I silently thought, maybe.

“Huh. Corabelle laughs.” Jenny stuck another cardboard sign into a metal frame. “Maybe this hunk boy isn’t such a bad thing.”

“We always used to be good together.”

“Until he walked, right?” Jenny snatched up a handful of the table signs. She handed several to me, and I followed her out into the main room.

Jenny was always quick to the point. “He did. It was bad.”