* * * * *

After we closed Fortnum’s, Eddie drove me and the Crossfire the one block to my house and parked it in the second space I owned behind the house, a space relegated to visitors.

I was pretty certain I was going to start hyperventilating at the idea of the visitor’s parking spot being the permanent residence of Lee’s Crossfire but I managed to tamp down the panic.

We walked through my backyard and Eddie took my keys and opened the door.

The minute I walked in, I knew something was wrong.

“Someone’s here,” I whispered to Eddie and put my Walgreen’s bag on the kitchen counter.

Eddie turned and looked at me. “No shit, there’s a television on.”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a natural-born detective with a keen sense of danger.

“Stay here, I’ll check it out,” he said, pulling a gun out of his waistband and walking into the dining room.

I followed him.

He turned to me. “Which part of ‘stay here’ didn’t you understand?”

“You’re not leaving me behind, I don’t like to get left behind. Sure, I get kidnapped and find dead bodies when I don’t stay where I’m supposed to be but I’m pretty certain it’d be worse if I stayed behind.”

Eddie gave me a look that said I was quickly curing him of his unrequited passion.

We walked through the living room, up the stairs and the TV was on in the second bedroom. The minute I hit the landing and looked into the TV room, I came to an abrupt halt.

Eddie walked into the room and said, “What’s up, hombre?”

I could see through the open door that Lee’s huge-ass, flat screen TV was in the place where my old-ass, tired TV used to be. I could also see some frames stacked against each other on the floor and leaning against the wall.

I turned my head the other direction and saw two big suitcases on the floor in my bedroom, one of them open and it appeared to have exploded. Men’s clothes, or more to the point, Lee’s clothes, were all over the floor.

I looked into the bathroom and there was an open dop kit on the counter of the bathroom vanity.

Lee had moved in.

I wandered into the TV room. My desk no longer had all my cute stationery, fun girlie boxes, knick knacks and brightly colored journals, that I collected but never wrote in, carefully lined up on the attached shelves with my laptop closed. Everything was shoved around, there was a huge flat screen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse and a bunch of other crap littering the surface and floor and all sorts of cords everywhere.

There was also an enormous safe next to the TV stand.

Lee was flat on his back on my big, red, poofy, deep-seated, comfortable couch. All my fancy toss pillows, which were normally arranged artfully, were shoved up behind his head and shoulders, he had a beer dangling from his fingers and a baseball game on.

He and Eddie were chatting but when I came in Lee looked at me.

“Hey,” he said.

I didn’t answer. It was a physical impossibility.

I wandered out of the room and into my bedroom.

I was vaguely aware of Eddie leaving and was staring at the exploded clothes when Lee walked into the room.

“Cherry’s gonna be all right,” Lee told me.

I didn’t answer. Not that I wasn’t glad as any good human would be that Cherry was going to live to see another day where she could make other mortals feel inferior, just that I was freaking out.

I walked forward and opened my closet doors. I put both my hands at the very end of the hangers on one side and with all my might, I shoved them to the other side. It was a superhuman effort. Hangers clacked together and all my clothes scrunched up and I managed to free about a foot and a half of space. I stepped back and looked at Lee’s exploded clothes on the floor.

It was then I began hyperventilating.

Lee’s arms came around me from behind and he rested his chin on my shoulder.

“Breathe deep,” he advised.

I did as I was told. In. Out. In. Out.

“Feel better now?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

He walked over to my CD player and sorted through some CDs. Then I heard Stereophonics “Dakota”. It was a really good song. I was beginning to feel better.

I looked at Lee and took a deep breath.

“Give me a minute, I can do this.”

He left me to it.

Half an hour later, I was losing it. I had freed another foot in the closet and there was a small pile of stuff that I should have thrown out years ago laying in the landing.

It wasn’t going to be enough.

“It’s not gonna be enough!” I shouted hysterically.

Lee walked back in.

“You could help, you know,” I told him, hand on hip.

He walked to the closet, slapped through a couple of hangers and brought out my butterfly-winged shirt liberally threaded with silver that I wore when I wanted to pretend I was Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t my best look but I’d seen some good times in it, it was a memory shirt.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

His eyes crinkled and he put it back, slapped through a couple more hangers and pulled out an embroidered camisole that had a big rip in it. It used to be gorgeous but could never be repaired. It had also seen good times.

“Are you nuts? I went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in that!”

He put it back and walked out of the room and down the stairs. He came back with two open bottles of Fat Tire, gave me one and then walked out again. It wasn’t a lot of help, but it wasn’t a bad effort.

Forty-five minutes later, I’d scaled the mountain. There was a huge pile of my discarded clothes in the landing, some shoes, bags and other junk. Lee’s suitcases were unpacked, zipped up and out on the landing too. He had two and a half drawers all to himself and about a third of the closet.

I was face down on the bed, listening to Kelly Jones doing a f**king great job at singing Rod Stewart’s “Handbags and Gladrags” which I thought was apropos.

I felt the bed depress with Lee’s weight and a hand at the small of my back.

“I ordered a pizza, I’m walking to Famous to get it. You wanna come?”

I shook my head and Lee left.

I finished the song, replayed “Have a Nice Day”, then turned off the CD player, stumbled in the TV room and threw myself onto the couch. A couple minutes later, Lee walked in with a pizza box with two opened Fat Tire bottles balanced on top.