"Luke"s covered in them too," she said, crying. "My baby."
I got up and sat next to her on the chair, holding her and looking down at Luke. At least he looked peaceful. After a few deep breaths she quieted down and straightened up.
"I know it"s just lice," she sighed, "not the end of the world, and I"m just being a silly girl-"
"You"re not being silly."
"I don"t think I"ve ever even gone a day without having a shower before, not for as long as I can remember."
"Me either."
I kissed her.
"And Luke and Ellarose have terrible rashes."
We both sat silently and watched Luke for a few seconds.
I turned and looked directly into her eyes.
"You know what today"s project is?"
She sighed. "A new pulley system for bringing water up? I heard Vince talking about it yesterday-"
"No," I laughed, "today"s project is a nice, hot bath for my wife."
She bowed her head. "We have much more important things."
"Nothing is more important than you."
I nuzzled her. She laughed.
"I"m serious. Give me an hour or two and I"ll have a steaming-hot bath ready."
"Really?"
She started crying again, but this time they were happy tears.
"Really. You can soak as long as you want, relax, and give Ellarose a proper cleaning, bring Luke in with his rubber ducky. When you"re done we"ll use the water to wash some clothes. It"ll be great."
I hugged her, and she squeezed me back, the happy tears still streaming down her face.
"Why don"t you relax. I"m going to talk to Vince and see how everyone is doing."
While she lay down on the bed, curling into the blankets, I opened the door to our room and went out, closing the door softly behind me.
In the main room between Chuck"s bedroom and ours, Tony was snoring loudly on the couch, covered in a deep pile of blankets. He regularly took night watch duty and had been at the door when I"d returned just before dawn. The shades were drawn, keeping the room dark, and I didn"t wake him.
Out in the hallway, nearly everyone was already gone, off on their daily treks to the relief stations to line up for food and water. It was quiet.
Rory was reaching into one of the water barrels at the corner of the elevator hallway, refilling a water bottle. I nodded to him, and he stared at me for a moment but then nodded back and whispered good morning before he left to go down the exit stairwell. Two people were still asleep under a bundle of blankets at the other end of the hallway.
Behind the barricade of boxes that demarcated our end of the hallway, Vince was soundly asleep, so I quietly crossed over and rapped on the Borodins" door to check on them.
Within seconds Irena opened the door. Aleksandr was asleep on his chair, and Irena was just preparing a hot pot of tea. She asked me if I needed anything, telling me they were fine, and then she asked how Lauren was feeling. I mentioned the lice, and she nodded, saying she would prepare an ointment for Lauren and that it was easiest if the men shaved their heads.
It was interesting that n.o.body begged from the Borodins. They had a seemingly endless supply of tea and hard biscuits, but they made it clear that they wouldn"t bother anyone, and even more clear that they didn"t want anyone bothering them. Despite that, I would often catch Irena sneaking a biscuit to one of the children in the hallway, or to Luke, who was smart enough to keep it a secret even from me. After ten minutes and nearly as many biscuits, I refilled my cup of tea and went back into the hallway.
Vince was awake but looking dazed.
"You okay?" I asked.
"No," he replied groggily. "I"ve got a pounding headache, aching joints...I feel ill."
I took an involuntary step back.
Bird flu? Maybe we"d been wrong.
Vince laughed.
"I don"t blame you. Go get the masks. Even if it"s just a regular cold, this isn"t the time to take chances."
Looking up at me blearily, he began scratching his head.
Maybe I should mention the lice?
"Want me to get you some water, maybe find some aspirin?"
He nodded and collapsed back into the couch, still scratching.
"And some bacon and eggs?" I joked.
"Maybe tomorrow," he laughed weakly from beneath his covers.
Going back into Chuck"s apartment, I crossed over to where Tony was still snoring and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Vince isn"t feeling well, and neither is Lauren," I whispered urgently as Tony shook himself awake, looking at me. "Keep the door to this place closed, and wear a mask if you go out."
Rubbing his eyes, he nodded. Going into the bathroom, I retrieved some masks and aspirin and a bottle of water from our stash, and then went and whispered the same warning to Susie, asleep with Chuck.
Vince was at his computer by the time I made it back out, my mask already on. I poured some water into a cup next to the laptop, and he took the aspirin from me, washing them down with the water. He put the mask on.
"The bad guys staying away?" I asked.
He keyed up some maps.
"So far."
I paused, feeling sheepish about my next request.
"Do you feel well enough to help me with something?"
He stretched and sighed.
"Sure. What do you need?"
"A bath."
"Can I come in?"
"Uh-huh," came the m.u.f.fled reply.
Opening the door to the bathroom, I smiled as I found my wife lounging under a ma.s.s of bubbles in a steaming bath.
Irena had given me an ointment and a fine-tooth comb, and instructed me on the best technique for brushing lice out of hair-making sure to go from the roots, and working quickly from front to back.
It had taken a lot longer than my promise of an hour or two to get the bath going.
To start with, the barrels of melt.w.a.ter in the elevator hallway were nearly completely empty. I"d been annoyed, and Vince hadn"t said anything while I"d stormed downstairs and outside with him, ready to fill up more buckets of snow and haul them up.
Exiting the backdoor, I"d quickly understood why they were empty. The snow outside was filthy and encrusted with a thick layer of dirty ice. All of the snow near the front and back entrances had been dug out and hauled up, and trying to dig out new, clean snow was no easy task.
For my purposes, I didn"t need drinking water, just something to bathe in, so I began filling up some barrels while Vince hauled them inside.
With a little fresh air, Vince had begun to feel better, but laboring with the masks on was hard work.
Richard was standing guard duty in the lobby that morning, but I didn"t feel comfortable telling him that I was preparing a bath for Lauren. I just said we were refilling the water barrels upstairs and left it at that. He could see we were up to something, but he just watched us hauling one load after another without saying anything.
In making my promise, I hadn"t quite understood what would be involved.
Chuck"s bathtub was of medium size, but I quickly discovered it needed fifty gallons to fill it. Melting snow to water reduced it in volume by a factor of ten, so filling the bathtub required hauling up twelve loads of snow in the forty-two-gallon barrel we had hooked up to the pulley-and-winch system in the stairwell.
We only had two barrels to connect to the pulley system. After helping me with the first four loads, Vince had started jury-rigging one of the forty-gallon tin drums as a water heater over an open oil flame contraption he"d been working on in our old apartment, using oil from the main furnace in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He left me to dig and haul up the rest of the snow.
After three hours of backbreaking work, I"d decided ten barrels of snow was enough for a decent bath. When all was said and done, it had taken us seven hours to haul up enough snow, melt it, and heat a tub full of water to piping hot, but seeing Lauren sitting there in the bubbles, with a smile across her face, made it all worthwhile.
"I"ll just be a minute more," she said, seeing me enter the bathroom.
It was warm, and the mirrors were totally fogged with steam. The room was lit with candles.
What had started as an idea just for Lauren had morphed into a grand plan for all of our gang to have a good wash. We"d all been washing our hands and faces, doing sponge baths, but in the eleven days since the water had stopped, none of us had really, properly bathed.
"Take your time, baby." I waved the comb and ointment Irena had given me. "And I"ve got a special treat for you."
I didn"t need to mention that it was treatment for lice.
She smiled and slid forward in the tub to dunk her head and hair back into the water. As she did, her body broke the surface of the water, exposing her belly and a small but unmistakable baby b.u.mp. I remembered reading the baby development books from when we"d had Luke.
Fourteen weeks, about the size of an orange, arms and legs and eyes and teeth, a complete tiny person, and one that is completely dependent on me.
Lauren pushed herself back upright in the tub and wiped water out of her eyes, smiling up at me. I hadn"t seen my wife naked in weeks, and despite thinking about the baby, seeing Lauren there, warm and wet, I felt something growl and stir inside of me.
"You going to give me that treat fully clothed?" she laughed, smiling seductively.
She leaned over to a shelf at the side of the tub and clicked on her phone. The jazzy chords of a Barry White song began to play.
"No, ma"am."
I began quickly undoing the belt on my jeans, which was three notches tighter than when all this began. I slid my sweater and then my socks and jeans off, briefly holding them up to my nose before putting them on the counter.
Wow, my clothes stink. Standing half-naked in the steam of the bath, smelling the lavender of the bath soap and bubbles, I suddenly caught a whiff of myself. Actually, that"s me that stinks.
Reaching behind me, I locked the bathroom door, and then I pulled off the last of my clothes and slid in behind Lauren in the tub. The sensation of the hot water enveloping me, soaking into my skin and bones, was indescribable. I let out a low groan of pleasure just as Barry"s deep baritone began telling us about all the love he couldn"t get enough of.
"Nice, huh?" murmured Lauren, leaning back into me.
"Oh yeah."
Reaching over, I picked up the ointment and comb. I began applying it to Lauren"s wet hair, and then slowly started combing her hair back, carefully watching for any little critters I might capture. Lauren held herself absolutely still while I worked.
I"d never imagined that searching for lice could be s.e.xy. An image of monkeys in a forest somewhere, cleaning nits from the fur of a loved one, popped into my mind, and I chuckled, realizing that perhaps I was feeling what they felt.
"Why are you laughing?"
"Nothing. I just love you."
She sighed and pushed herself back into me.
"Mike, I"m so proud of you, the way you"re taking care of us, of me. You"re so brave."
In one motion, she swiveled around in the tub, pulling herself up to me, kissing me wetly.
"I love you."
Reaching down the length of her body, I gripped her b.u.t.tocks and pulled her up onto me. I was incredibly aroused, and she smiled, biting my lip. And just then there was a loud rap on the door.
Seriously?
"What is it?" I groaned. Lauren nuzzled my neck. "Can you give us a minute? Please?"
"I really hate to bother you," said Vince uncomfortably, "but it"s kind of urgent."
"And?"
Lauren began licking my chest.
"They just announced that there"s been an outbreak of cholera at Penn Station."