“Dead on the highway,” Isabel finished for her, rolling her eyes at me. I looked back, surprised at even being acknowledged.
“Yes!” Morgan stood, dumped the grounds in the trash, then put the brush and dustpan neatly back into its place. “Easily. In my car, no less.”
Isabel slammed her hand on the counter. “Don’t start about the car, okay?”
“Well,” Morgan said, raising her voice, “you shouldn’t just take it like that with no notice, I mean, what if I had to be someplace? Considering you didn’t tell me anything, I’d have no way of finding you . . .”
“Jesus, Morgan, if you weren’t such an old woman maybe I would tell you more!” Isabel yelled. “Living with you is like having my grandmother breathing down my neck. So excuse me if I don’t share all my intimate details, okay?”
Morgan flinched, as if she’d been hit. Then she turned around and busied herself with the sugars and Sweet’n Lows, segregating them with quick, jerky movements.
Isabel yanked out the coffeepot, stuck a cup under the stream, and let it fill up about halfway. Then she replaced the pot, took a sip of the coffee, and closed her eyes.
It was very quiet.
“I’m sorry,” Isabel said loudly. It sounded more genuine than when she had said it to me. “I really am.”
Morgan didn’t say anything, but moved on to turning all the spoons right side up.
Isabel shot me a look which I knew meant get lost, so I stood and took the silverware and napkins into the kitchen. But I could still see them through the food window. I hopped up on the prep table, trying to be quiet, and watched.
“Morgan,” Isabel said, softer this time. “I said I was sorry.”
“You’re always sorry,” Morgan said without turning around.
“I know,” Isabel replied, in that same low voice.
Another silence, except for Morgan arranging straws.
“I didn’t even know I was going out,” Isabel said. “Jeff just called and said we should go sailing so I went and then the afternoon just turned into night and the next thing I knew . . .”
Morgan turned around, her eyes wide. “Jeff? That guy we met at the Big Shop?”
“Yes,” Isabel said. Now she smiled. “He called. Can you believe it?”
“Oh, my God!” Morgan said, grabbing her by the hand. “What did you do? Did you freak?”
“I had, like, totally forgotten who he was,” Isabel told her, laughing. I was so used to her scowling that it took me by surprise. She looked like a different person. “He had to remind me. Can you believe that? But he’s so nice, Morgan, and we spent this awesome day. . . .”
“Okay, go back, go back,” Morgan said, walking around the counter and sitting down, settling in. “Start with him calling.”
“Okay,” Isabel said, pouring herself some more coffee. “So the phone rings. And I’m, like, in my bathrobe, watching the soaps . . .”
I stood there, listening with Morgan while Isabel told the whole story, from the call to the afternoon sail to the kiss. They’d forgotten I was even there. As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship.
The two of them fascinated me. I spent most nights, after wrestling and Mira’s early bedtime, sitting on the roof outside my window. I had a perfect view of the little white house from there.
Morgan and Isabel loved music. Any kind, really; from disco to oldies to Top Forty, there was always something playing in their shared background. Isabel couldn’t seem to function without it. The first thing Morgan did when we got to work was start the iced tea machine; Isabel would turn on the radio and crank it up.
If Isabel was happy, she played oldies, especially Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits, Volume One. If she wasn’t happy, she usually put on Led Zeppelin IV, which Morgan hated; she called it stoner music, and it reminded her of some old boyfriend. Their CD collection, which I’d glimpsed just once as I’d stood on the front porch waiting for Morgan, was enormous. It was spread across their entire house, stacked on speakers and the TV and the coffee tables and just everywhere, spilling across the floor to make a path from one room to another.
Morgan saw me notice this. She had to kick two CDs—George Jones and Talking Heads, it looked like—out of the way just to shut the door.
“It’s the Columbia Record and Tape club,” she said simply, nodding toward the house. “Twelve for a penny. They hate us.”
Apparently Isabel and Morgan were engaged in a mail war with Columbia, sending angry letters back and forth. But the music kept on coming. It was Isabel’s main accessory as she dashed in late to work, always with two or three CDs, usually new, tucked under her arm.
At night, when I crawled out on my rooftop, it was what I heard first, rising from their windows. Usually they were on the front porch with the door propped open, the two of them lit up from behind. Isabel smoked and they split a six-pack, sitting barefoot facing each other. Every so often one of them would get up and go inside to change the music, and the other would complain.
“Don’t play that Celine Dion crap again,” I heard Isabel call out one night, stubbing out her cigarette. “I don’t care how much you miss Mark.”
Morgan reappeared in the doorway, hand on her hip. Behind her, Celine was already singing. “It was my pick, you know.”