flowers for alexander | chapter fifteen
Though she had a little bit extra on her body, Florence didn’t hesitate to take Alex by the hand and lead him back away from the water’s edge. Though the ground shook, the water never returned in the form of a vast tidal wave, but more of a rather large wave that washed further from the per usual shore’s edge: it still made a large breaker that showered Alex, Florence, and the boys from Death Angel in cold foamy seawater as they scurried away from the beach. The boys laughed out loud at the sheer amount of water that fell over them; Alex let out a loud whistle and shook his head about like a dog; Florence meanwhile gasped and shivered from the feeling. Cold water to the cold California climate was not a very good mix.
She felt someone take her hand and lead her away from the shore. It was difficult to already walk through the sand, but to run across it through the darkness was something else.
She rounded the corner only to be met by the bright lights cascaded down from the side of Exodus’ ship. The five of them had wrapped up their set and began to close up shop on their moving home. Florence then turned her head to find that it was Death Angel’s guitarist Rob who had pulled her to the dry land. His long black hair matted to his forehead and the sides of his neck, and his dark olive skin carried an extra sheen to it from under the bright gas lamps on the side of the ship.
“Thank you,” Florence told him, out of breath.
“I saw you struggling right next to me and then I saw another wave come in,” he explained with a gesture to the waters behind them. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.” Alex surfaced right next to her, flabbergasted, out of breath, and dripping wet himself; Andy and Mark followed suit right behind him, as well as Dennis and Gus.
Footsteps caught her attention, and she turned her head to find Gary of Exodus running towards them with a look of concern on his face.
“Holy shit! You guys alright?”
“Yeah.” Florence shook her hands about. “Just sopping wet.”
“Where is that shaking coming from?” Andy asked aloud.
“No clue, little man,” Gary said with a shrug. “We had just started packing it in when the ground started moving again. Steve told me that he saw you guys go down to the beach and I just had a bad feeling about it.”
Alex shivered and lingered closer to Gary, who looked on at him with a slight smirk on his face.
“Are you cold, Alex?” he teased him.
“Not at all! Why, do I look cold?”
“You’re as hot as the Arctic on the Winter Solstice,” Gary said with a hearty chuckle, and then he gestured behind him to Exodus’ airship. “I think we’ve got some towels for all of you.” Alex gestured Florence to follow him, and the boys of Death Angel scurried up from right behind them. Indeed, Zetro and Tom handed them some fresh towels out from the back of the airship: the breaker had hit the coast and gotten them wet as well.
“We’re not as drenched as you guys,” Tom pointed out as Alex ruffled his jet-black curls with the towel and wrapped it around his slender little body to protect from the wind.
“We had a feeling, though,” Zetro added as Florence did the same thing with herself. All the while, she had never let go of the seashell that Alex had given her. Even after Rob took her by the hand and guided her away from the shore, she still clutched onto it as if it was about to escape her.
The five boys returned to their ship, and all the while, Florence and Gary offered to check on them for the next stint of the air held up in the air, but Mark vowed they were going to be alright.
“If we crash, you’ll know,” he insisted, and he let out a loud hearty laugh. “That’s really kind of you both, though.” It was right then Florence realized she hadn’t really gotten to know Mark before. Perhaps the next time they were in the ground, she could make her way back there for a round of lunch with them.
Meanwhile, she and Alex made their way back to Testament’s airship, where Francine eagerly awaited them. She lingered back a bit as Alex climbed aboard behind Florence: she peered back at the two of them, and especially at Francine, who looked somewhat nervous in his presence. Alex then locked eyes with her for a moment.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Florence heard him ask her as the door closed before them.
“Where’s my wife!” Eric’s voice caught her attention, and she bowed towards him on the other side of the floor, and right underneath those brass pipes on the wall no less. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of the towel as well as her hair still dripping wet with ocean water.
“What happened to you?”
“The ground shook while Alex and I were down on the beach,” she explained. “This huge breaker came up and completely rained down on us as well as the boys from Death Angel.” She froze as she noticed the reddish tint to his big brown eyes. “And what happened with you?”
“Let’s just say Lou knows his way around a bottle of sarsaparilla and leave it at that,” he explained, and she sniffed. “It had the tiniest bit of alcohol in it. I mean really tiny.”
“I was just going to say, you smell like root beer,” she noted. “Unless this is some sort of pun to cover up the fact that you were drinking actual beer just now.” She pressed her hands to her hips.
“If it was actual beer, you would know where it came from,” he vowed to her with a wag of his finger.
“Actually, I wouldn’t, Eric, because I’m pregnant, remember?” She gestured to her own body as well as the round bump on her waist, to which Eric sighed.
“Alright, you got me,” he said, and then his expression turned somber.
“What’s the matter?” she asked him, and he nodded right behind her. Florence turned to look at Francine and Alex chatting with each other about something. He ran his long lanky fingers through his wet black hair and shifted his weight a great deal while she continually glanced down at the floor.
“Something happened,” Eric noted to her, and she nodded at that. “Like, something happened when you and I weren’t paying attention.”
“Frankie was enthralled by Alex during the show earlier,” she told him. “Like, she was absolutely beguiled by him. Maybe this is just a girl meeting the star of the show and she’s just nervous. I know how she gets sometimes—she was a nervous wreck meeting my parents the first time.”
Francine then nodded her head and she padded away from there, to which Alex watched her go.
“Frankie!” Florence called out to her. “What’s going on?”
Francine never replied. Instead, she kept on walking up the steps to the upper parts of the airship, away from the stage area. Florence turned to Eric with her eyebrows knitted together. Alex then strode on over to them with one hand clasped to the crown of his head.
“Alex, what happened?” Eric asked him.
“Oh, she was just kind of concerned about us,” he replied in a haste. “It’s nothing, really.” And yet, the warm rosy blush in his face told another story. He followed after Francine, and thus, Florence and Eric were alone there on the floor, surrounded by the stage layout as well as the pipes in the wall. Once he had ducked behind the door to the neighboring part of the ship, she turned to him.
“That sounded like a lie,” Florence confessed in a low voice. “Little weird, too, because Alex is not the kind of person who lies, either.”
“Oh, yeah, he’s usually pretty blunt,” Eric replied. “Almost to the point of overkill—well, you used to go out with him. I’m sorta preaching to the choir on that.”
“Damn right you are,” she said with a chuckle. “And I’m kind of curious as to how you know Alex as intimately as I do.”
“It’s… primarily lucky guesses and just being around him,” Eric assured her with a shrug of his shoulders. Florence squinted her eyes as him, and then, without another word, she led him back to the other side of the ship and their bunks which awaited them for another night.
The whole corridor reminded her of the compartments on a train as she walked along a narrow walkway past a series of small rooms big enough for only two people at the very least. Louie and Greg were in the first one from the entryway with a deck of cards and the aforementioned bottle of sarsaparilla: indeed, Florence could smell the sweetness of it as well as a slight tinge of alcohol in there. She knew that her sense of smell would only fine tune itself from that point onward.
Chuck and Tiffany had already called it a night as their bunk was pitch-dark, and Alex had posted up in his room with his gaze directed out the window. Florence resisted the urge to say anything about it, especially since it was really none of her business. But then again, it was her ex-boyfriend and her best friend involved: in a way, it was her business.
But she sighed through her nose and continued onto her and Eric’s bunk up the corridor. She breezed inside first and immediately took her spot in the edge of the small bed up against the wall in there. Eric slid the compartment door shut behind him and ran his fingers through his smooth black hair. His face was still slightly flushed from the show earlier; but at least, the tips of Florence’s hair had dried out to a degree. She continued to shiver under the towel, and Eric took his spot next to her on the edge of the bed,
“I do see some good coming out of this tour,” he confessed to her in a low voice. “It’s bringing you and me closer together.”
“The same can be said for the ground shaking, too,” she added. A flash of light emerged outside of their window; Florence peered over her shoulder to find that they had already lifted off the ground, albeit in utter silence and much to her surprise as well.
“Did it seem like we just lifted off the ground?” she asked him in a low voice, and Eric shook his head.
“No. And I doubt you and I are already used to it, too. In fact, I didn’t know we even lifted off until you said something about it.”
They both turned for another look out the window, out to the black sky tinged with orange from the lights of the town and the even blacker ocean down below. It was hard to believe that not even thirty minutes before she and Alex were down on the beach together with Death Angel.
“What’s this?” Eric asked out of the blue. Florence returned her attention to the seashell in her hand, in all it’s smooth blackness with that light pink stripe on one side.
“A little memento from the coast,” she told him.
“You know, we’re just going down to Santa Barbara, right?” He chuckled and bowed his head a bit at that.
“What?” she demanded, and then he shook his head.
“Nothing.”
“No, no, no, no, I know you, Eric Peterson. It’s never nothing with you.”
“Sure it is!” he declared.
“It’s definitely something,” she quipped.
“It’s not. I promise.”
“What were you going to tell me downstairs, anyway?”
“I don’t know how ready you are to handle it, to be frank,” he confessed with a shrug.
“I think I’m ready,” she insisted, and he shook his head.
“Nah, it’s… it’s pretty crazy.”
“Eric, unless you and Alex killed a man and buried the body somewhere inside of this ship, I’m sure I can handle it.”
He fetched up a sigh and rested his spindly hands on his chubby knees.
“Okay. Alex and I—” He paused for a second, and Florence leaned in closer to him.
“Yes?”
He swallowed. “—we killed a man and buried the body somewhere inside of the ship.” He buried his face and launched into a fit of muffled giggles. Florence rolled her eyes.
“I should’ve known,” she cracked. “Maybe Lou added a little more booze to the sarsaparilla than originally intended.”
Eric slid his fingers down his face and tilted his head back.
“Nah, he didn’t,” he said. “If there was, I’d be way more truthful than this.” He burst out laughing again, and Florence rolled her eyes.
“Come on, babe, let me joke around for a bit!” he insisted. “We’re going to be parents soon, we may as well play around and still be kids in our own rite, anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘still be kids’?” she asked him, confused. “I thought being a musician meant being a kid forever.”
“A musician, yes, definitely, without question. Dunno ‘bout a mechanic, though.”
“Taking things apart and building them up again? It’s basically those Lego sets of cars or airplanes.”
“Lego sets or Lincoln logs?”
“Lego. If I was strictly doing buildings, like an architect or some shit, then I might see it as Lincoln logs.”
“You wouldn’t be a very good architect, though,” he pointed out.
“What, with Lincoln logs? Nonsense. It’s more dependent on the person, mind you.”
They fell into momentary silence only to find that the entire corridor had fallen into silence: not a peep emerged from Greg and Louie two doors up, and Alex kept quiet the entire time on the other side of the hall. Even Francine was quiet in the room next door.
“I can’t stop thinking about Alex and Francine,” he confessed to her in a near whisper.
“I can’t, either,” she assured him, also in a near whisper. “You know, that’s my ex-boyfriend and my best friend there. They looked like they were indulging in something secretive. That’s probably why Frankie never said anything when I asked her about it. I wish I could hear what they were saying.”
“Is there a way to eavesdrop on a ship like this?” Eric asked her.
“Yeah, but there are two caveats that come with that. Number one is as far as you and I know, the pipes all go back to the boiler, which means there’s no using one to listen in anywhere on the ship unless the boiler is shut down because there won’t be any steam to go about. And number two, I’m not doing that.”
“Yeah, but you just said that it’s your best friend and your ex,” he pointed out. “Aren’t you at the very least curious about it?”
“Well, yeah, of course. But I don’t want to be rude, though. If there’s something going on there, I don’t want it to seem like I’m being nosy.”
He shook his head. “You’re not being nosy if you think it’s something serious,” he assured her. “Especially if the two of them are having to lie around you and me both.”
“I think that baffles me more than anything,” she confessed. “Like… why would two of the most honest and sincere people I have ever known want to lie to me about something?”
“You know, parents will sometimes lie to their children to protect them from the outside world or from some sort of trouble on the outside,” he reminded her as he leaned back on the bed and reclined on his elbows. “Like… say you and I are fighting in front of our kids, or we’re strapped for cash or something, and we’re having to make some sort of sacrifice for the kids. We’ll give them something to do so they won’t know what’s happening because we don’t want them to worry.”
“Well, shouldn’t they know about it at some point?” She followed suit right next to him.
“Of course. But they should be kids first and foremost. Let the kids be kids for the time they have as kids. At least, that was my dad’s approach when I was a kid. Did your parents ever do that?”
“I think they did,” she recalled. “So, you think that maybe Alex and Frankie are lying to us about their conversation because they don’t want us to know what’s going on?”
“I think that but that doesn’t necessarily make it true, though. I kind of want to eavesdrop on them—” He was cut off by the sound of Francine’s voice outside of the door. Florence put her hand up on his forearm, and they glanced at one another: he nodded his head.
Careful not to make any noise, Eric slithered off the bed and crept over to the door. He crouched down next to the frame and slid it open ever so slightly so they could better hear their whispered voices out there as they echoed off the corridor walls.
“I think they’re asleep,” Alex was saying to Francine in a light voice, although not light enough for Florence and Eric to not hear.
“Good, ‘cause… I just kind of want this to be between you and me,” Francine said, and Florence sat up on the bed to pay closer attention. “There are some things I feel really reluctant sharing with Florence.”
“I don’t blame you one bit,” Alex assured her. “The only thing more dangerous than someone who hates you is someone who knows you intimately. I say that because she and I were a thing once.”
“You said you were going to give me something?”
“Yeah, I was! I wanted to wait ‘til everyone was asleep, though…” His voice trailed off; Eric closed his eyes and Florence held still on the bed, still reclined back on her elbows. Neither of them moved or made a sound until Alex came back within earshot.
“I want you to have this,” he said in a husky, velvety whisper: Florence hadn’t heard him talk like that in what felt like forever. Eric opened his eyes and peeked out the crack in the door.
“What is this?” Francine asked him.
“What is it?” Florence mouthed to Eric, who then shook his head.
“It’s something I wanted to give Florence when she and I were together, but I didn’t have the guts to give her.”
“So, you’re giving it to me?”
Eric raised an eyebrow at that, while Florence gaped at him.
“I guess you could say that,” Alex continued, still in that mellow tone of voice; Florence glanced down at the black and pink seashell in her hand, and she wondered what on Earth Alex had that he wanted to give to her. There was a brief pause, which was then followed by a gasp.
“Alex… it’s beautiful,” Francine breathed.
“Isn’t it?”
“Where did you find this?”
“Sutro Tower. I was just walking along and I saw there. I wanted to give it to Florence but I didn’t think she’d be very impressed to know that I found that thing on the ground right near a radio tower.”
“I think I would,” Florence mouthed, scornful.
“Don’t be going around showing people that, though, especially Florence ‘cause she’ll want to know what it is.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” Francine vowed. “And I’m going to put it somewhere where no one’ll find it.”
“Just pray that you don’t forget you put it,” Alex advised her in a singsong voice.
“By the way, where’d you say the bathrooms were?”
“Right down there…”
“Okay. Thank you, and thank you for this.”
“My pleasure,” Alex breathed, and then silence fell over the corridor as Francine walked away. Eric waited a minute before he closed the door again; once their room was shuttered again, he let out a low whistle.
“Did you see what it was?” Florence whispered to him, and he shook his head.
“No, I couldn’t see shit,” he whispered back to her. “If I opened the door any more, they would’ve seen me.”
She raised up the seashell for him to see.
“Wonder what it could’ve been,” she said aloud in a wistful tone. “Moreover, what was there under Sutro Tower? Who finds stuff under Sutro Tower?”
“Coins?” Eric suggested.
“Besides coins. Who finds beautiful, captivating stuff under Sutro Tower, stuff that boys are reluctant to give their girlfriends so they give them to the girlfriends’ best friend when the relationship ends?”
“You don’t think Alex has feelings for Francine?” Eric suggested.
“He talked in that husky voice,” Florence recalled. “He’d always talk to me like that when he was turned on. His voice gets really soft and silky, like he’s telling me a secret.” Eric shifted his weight at the sound of that. “It’s really hard to say, though, especially since we couldn’t see them.” She lay down flat on her back, and she kept the shell clasped to her belly. “God, what was it?”
Eric lay down next to her, even though she lay perpendicular to the bed.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he told her, and he rolled over a bit to kiss the side of her neck. “Besides, you’re with me, now.”
“Yeah, I am,” she said, and she gazed up to the ceiling. She thought about the kiss she had given to Alex when they walked on the beach together. No way she could confess that to Eric, especially when she was the one married to him and carrying his baby. Within a few minutes’ time, they turned with the same direction as the bed; Eric had switched off the light, and their room was engulfed in darkness. Darkness save for the orange light from outside the airship and the blue light from the boiler at the heart of it all.
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