Accidental God 2.0 -- Section 16

[A little old, quite a bit of new. Trying to write when I can, but a job is a job is a job. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased with the old stuff, and I think it fits in right here in the story. Enjoy.]

    As Bradley walked out of the bagel shop, he looked up. Yep, there it was, clinging to a tree branch, that little brogut. It looked at him with wide, lizard eyes and its tongue flickered out.  Bradley couldn't decide if it was disturbing or cute.
    Speaking of disturbing and cute, what was it about that girl in the bagel shop? She wasn't the kind of woman Bradley usually thought of when he thought 'beautiful'--she was a little too skinny, not that Bradley was one to talk--but she was sticking in his head. Yep, there she was in his head, standing and smiling. She was doing a lot of smiling. Bradley put in his earbuds and walked and thought.
    Happiness, he decided. That girl looked like she actually enjoyed life. How strange. Not to say that Bradley didn't like his life, but he also wasn't starting any parades in honor of how great the world was. The world WAS great. It just didn't always feel that great. But he liked it. Just not all the time.
    Bradley shook his heads, realizing that he was thinking in circles, and all those circles were around that smiling girl. Should he have asked her name? But he had Olivia. Sort of. So he actually hadn't ever asked Olivia out, but he was going to. Soon. Whenever it felt right. He didn't want to rush things, because then she might think he was coming on too strong. And that's not what he wanted. And besides, that girl from the bagel shop was smiling at him. She probably smiled at everyone, though. She was a smiley kind of girl, and then she'd looked disappointed somehow when he'd picked the multigrain bagel. He'd asked for cream cheese to try to make up for it--he wasn't sure if it would--and it hadn't looked like it had done any good. Why was he still thinking about this?
    And where was he going? Bradley still felt lost in the morning, with the sunlight slanting across the world so low it looked like it would trip over something. He knew where to go in the evening and at night, but morning was a foreign country.
    Bradley wandered. It wasn’t a new feeling—it was kind of a default activity, something to do after losing a job or a girlfriend or a sense of purpose. In fact, a lost sense of purpose was probably the one he was most familiar with. He made his way toward his usual wandering spots, but none of them appealed. The D’Arte Board Gallery, always a good place to kill an hour (or at least maim a few minutes), was surprisingly unappealing--and closed--and Fifth City Park was too far.
    That was when Bradley realized he hadn’t, in fact, lost a sense of purpose. Inexplicably, he was walking somewhere with a hint of determination. More than a hint. He had the full-on flavor of determination in his mouth, the scent of usefulness leading him onward.
    Fifteen minutes and a few turns later, and Bradley was in front of the apartment building that held his sister, her husband, and their two children. On second thought, probably not the husband, since he had a job with early hours, but Clara was almost certainly there. And, from the faint sound of screaming coming through the ground floor windows, at least the smaller of the children definitely was there.
    And not sounding good. Bradley walked faster, jogged up the five steps to the front door, and buzzed. It was a few seconds before his sister’s voice crackled through the speaker—along with a heavy dose of crying baby.
    “Yes?”
    “It’s Bradley.”
    “Thank goodness! Get in here.”
    There was an angry buzz at the door, and Bradley bumped it open with his hip. By the time he was in the hall, the door to Clara’s apartment was already opening, letting out the crying and a hefty dose of three-year-old shouting as well.
    Clara was dressed for the day, but her brown hair had been abandoned somewhere between shower and brush. JoBeth, the ten-month-old, was clinging to her shoulder, and the t-shirt that must have been clean when she started wearing it was now smeared with baby-snot and some variety of pureed food. Bradley’s sister looked frazzled.
    “Poopy diaper or crying baby?” she asked.
    “Do I have to choose?”
    “Please, Bradley?”
    That purpose inside Bradley swelled up, moved his mouth, and made the decision for him. “Crying baby.”
    “Really?” said his sister. “Thank you! As bad as she is right now, when I tried to put her down to change Erica, JoBeth freaked.”
    “Worse than this?”
    “Way worse. I don’t know what’s wrong. After I get this diaper changed, we’re calling the doctor. Please take her? Maybe a change of scenery will help her.”
    “So I’m scenery now?”
    “The best kind of scenery. Scenery that loves her.” Clara leaned her side toward Bradley. “Here, JB. It’s Uncle Brad. You like Uncle Brad.”
    Bradley held out his hands to take his niece, and the purpose that had been building in him shot down his arms like a cat after yarn, not that Bradley had ever owned a cat. Down his arms, through his hands, and through the air to JoBeth. By the time Bradley’s hands took her weight under the arm, she had stopped crying. Before he had his niece against his shoulder, she was asleep.
    Except for the whir of the stove fan in the kitchen, everything was quiet. Erica had stopped shouting and was staring up at Bradley. Clara’s mouth was open. Somewhere upstairs a dog barked.
    Bradley tucked his chin and looked down at the sleeping baby.
    “Guess I make for good scenery,” he said.
    “Guess so,” agreed Clara. “Want to come in? Not much else is clean, but there’s enough empty couch to sit on.”
    “You always do that,” said Bradley.
    “Do what?”
    “Say your place is messy, when it’s practically clean enough for a furniture photo-op.” He walked in, past the kitchen, and looked at the living room. “Oh.”
    “I told you it was messy,” said Clara. “I didn’t finish laundry day, we still haven’t weeded out all the unnecessary toys Mom gave Erica for Christmas, and Ted has decided to start doing weight lifting.”
    “So those free weights in the corner are his?”
    “‘Free weights.’ Why do men call them ‘free weights?’ They cost enough, and they certainly don’t free up any space in the apartment.”
    “Come on,” said Bradley, sitting on the one corner of the couch that wasn’t covered in unfolded—yet fresh scented—clothing. “You know you’ll like how he looks after a month or two with those.”
    “I like how my husband looks just fine right now,” said Clara, grabbing an unusually silent Erica and laying her down on a diaper changing pad. “Besides, the last thing I need right now is the temptation to get another one of these. I don’t know how people handle three children at once. Sure, it’s a fair fight for the moment, but as soon as they outnumber us, I think the battle will be over.”
    “Didn’t you want more kids?”
    “Absolutely. Just not yet. Quit moving your legs, squirt—don’t touch! Yucky. This is a two wiper, at least. It’s dried on.”
    “Ah, family,” said Bradley. “It’s all about sharing.” JoBeth was warm against his chest, and he could feel something…off inside her. Wrong. If she were a rose, her thorns would be too large—but they were shrinking. The wrong inside her was fading, and she felt peaceful against his shoulder. “Looks like this one is doing better.”
    “I don’t know what you did,” said Clara, strapping on the new diaper and sealing up the old one with a grimace. “Whatever it was, thank you.”
    “Not sure I did anything. She’s just a good kid.”
    “She is,” agreed his sister, picking up her older child and setting her on her feet. “Go find Boobles, squirt.”
    “Oh!” said Erica, her eyes bright. “I put Boobles in the big little blanket.” Then she was gone, her diaper waggling behind her.
    “That’s a good kid, too,” said Bradley.
    “She is. Easier to think that when they’re not shouting at me, though, I’ll admit that. Seriously, thanks for coming Brad. I don’t know how you knew, but thank you.”
    Bradley shrugged but then froze when JoBeth stirred on his shoulder. “It just seemed,” he said in a quieter voice, “just seemed like I needed to be here.”
    Clara smiled at him. “Mom never understood that about you. She keeps wanting you to be Dad, but Dad never listens to his heart the way you do.”
    “He does, too.”
    “When?”
    “That time with the thing, when we were at that place.”
    Clara laughed. “Exactly.”
    “Of course, Dad has had a lot more steady jobs than I’ve ever had.”
    Clara raised her eyebrows and nodded in agreement. “If by ‘a lot more’ you mean ‘one job that he'll have until he dies,’ then yes, he did. Can't keep a man away from his archives. And now I’m off to seal this thing in five layers of plastic before I send it to a landfill to store its stink for future generations.”
    “That is a powerful one,” Bradley agreed.
    Clara walked into the kitchen. “You see the phone?” she called back. “I think it’s on the couch somewhere. I’d rather not use any cell minutes wading my way through the doctor’s automated menu just so they can send me to urgent care.”
    Bradley glanced down at JoBeth again. The wrong was almost entirely faded. “Not sure you need to,” he called back. “I think she’s doing better.”
    “Here it is,” said Clara, showing up at the door to the living room, phone in hand. “You think so? I should probably check in just to be sure. How’s her forehead?”
    Bradley felt it with the inside of his wrist. “Warm.”
    “How warm?”
    “Normal warm. Babies are a little hotter than grownups, right?”
    His sister walked over and felt with her own wrist. “No fever.”
    “Nice,” said Bradley. Then he noticed Clara was staring at him. “What’s up?” he asked.
    “I think that’s my question. You look different.”
    “It’s because I lost my job.”
    “That’s not it, though I find that slightly amusing. What happened?”
    “I fed peanuts to a lady with a peanut allergy.”
    “Really?”
    “Not exactly, but that’s how it ended up. Anaphylactic shock isn’t pretty.”
    “She okay?”
    “No idea. Off to the hospital she went, but she didn’t look good.”
    “Eek.” Clara sat down on the floor and started folding clothes. “But that’s not it. That’s not why you look different.”
    “I had a bagel this morning. Never underestimate the power of a good bagel.”
    “Oh, believe me, I don’t, but that’s still not it either.”
    “You sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Maybe I’m in love.”
    “Are you?”
    “No. Well, maybe. No.” Olivia, he thought. Bagel girl, he thought back.
    Clara wrinkled her nose. “Darn it. It would be good for you.”
    Erica ran back into the room holding a stuffed dog tightly by the neck. “Boobles wants food,” she said, leaning in earnestly to announce this two inches from her mother’s face.
    “What kind of food does Boobles want?” asked Clara with weighted tones.
    “Chocolate.”
    “Not chocolate.”
    “Cereal.”
    “What kind of cereal?”
    “Ummm…red.”
    “Red cereal?”
    “Red cereal.”
    “Did you mean oatmeal with raspberries?”
    Erica nodded solemnly.
    “We’re out of raspberries,” said Clara. “What about blue cereal? With blueberries?”
    The three-year-old’s eyes got wide and she nodded even wider.
    Clara pushed up to her feet, leaving a small pile of folded laundry and an even larger pile of the unfolded variety. “I’ll make that right away. You want any?” she asked, looking at Bradley.
    “I had a bagel.”
    “Of course,” said his sister. “This is me, not underestimating its power. Heck, you probably won’t even be hungry by tomorrow, which is good, because Ted doesn’t like to share my lasagna.”
    “Were you going to invite me?” asked Bradley.
    “Momma’s making zanya!” said Erica, excited.
    “We were,” said Clara.
    “Keep in mind,” said Bradley, “even bagels have their limits. What time?”
    “Ted thinks he’ll be back by six, so any time after five-thirty would be perfect. Earlier and you can help cook, later and I yell at you for not setting the table.”
    “Got it. Five-thirty.”
    Clara disappeared into the kitchen again, leaving Erica staring intently at her uncle.
    “What’s up, Eri-berry?”
    “You look funny.”
    “Is that what Boobles thinks?”
    Erica and Boobles nodded together.
    “Maybe you’ve just never seen me in the morning before.”
    She looked puzzled. “What?” she asked, her voice rising to a squeak.
    “Morning light is different than evening light.”
    “What?”
    Bradley tried a different approach. “Do you like Boobles?”
    That got a nod.
    “Does he eat his own vomit?”
    “Bradley!” Clara’s voice prodded at him from the kitchen.
    “What’s a vomit?” asked his niece.
    “Ask your mother.”
    A blueberry flew out of the kitchen and smacked Bradley on the cheek. He picked it up off the dish towel where it landed and popped it into his mouth. “It’s a kind of dog food. Very nutritious.”
    “Come to the table!” called Clara. Boobles and Erica scampered away, and Bradley settled back into the couch, resting. Not that he was tired. He wasn’t, even waking up when he did. He just felt…content. This was a good home.
    “Someday,” he sighed to himself and looked out the windows. Sunlight painted a pile of sheets with squares of light so bright they hurt to look at. JoBeth, dense and warm on his shoulder, made him think of sleep. The wrong inside her was entirely gone, leaving a rich red of rose petals. Clara and Erica talked in the kitchen, and for a moment Bradley could feel the world spinning beneath him.
    It was perfect.