Title: "Adversity On Gilman: Part 8 of 12"
Later in the afternoon, Erica had again called Zero's house. No reason was stated. She had simply said that Matt wouldn't be home from work for another two hours, and that her father was away doing a cookout with his friends. Erica had opted not to go; instead, she asked Zero if she could drop by for awhile.
Zero opened his door after her first knock. He had done nothing during the day except sit on the couch, idly smoking cigarettes while thinking of Carenthia and what seemed like an irrational move for her. Having Erica over might have been a way to take his mind off the situation from earlier. Although, he doubted, any conversation with Erica wouldn't exactly be the greatest return of words, given her current unknown status in the pregnancy land.
"Hey," she said, as he opened the door up to her.
Zero looked at her. There was a smile on her face. It seemed like a forced smile, he thought. He replied with a neutral, "How are you doing?" and opened the door up to her to let her come inside.
She stood in the doorway, not taking a step to come inside. "Oh... much of the same, really." In the corner of her mouth, she smiled a little. "You want to take a walk?" she asked. She looked at Zero. He seemed dressed, able to get out.
A walk sounded fine. The sun was just setting. There was a moderate breeze blowing through.
The two walked down the sidewalk, neither speaking for a moment. Erica walked with her hands by her side. Zero, with his hands in his pockets. They looked off.
Zero broke the moments when he asked her, "Nothing has gotten better?" He looked to his right at her as he asked.
Erica kicked a small stone lying along the concrete. "Well... it's probably best not to talk about it right now." She didn't look up to Zero. Her attention maintained itself on the concrete of the sidewalk.
Zero looked up into the sky, understanding her point of view. "I understand," he said. His mind was also still tracing back to Carenthia, as she had set off to Oregon earlier that day. A nice, refreshing walk with Erica lost a little of it's tranquility with those thoughts in his head.
Erica thought back to when she and Matt had talked on his bed. He was down about the fight from the previous day. She had told him that Zero wasn't mad at him. She was almost positive that she was correct. "So, are you mad at Matt?" she said, just to make sure her instinct was correct.
Zero assumed Matt would be feeling that way. "Not at all. I understand what he was going through." He understood, but knew that there were better ways of confronting situations. "He handled it wrong, but everyone makes mistakes." He looked over to her as they continued their slow walk down the street.
Erica returned the gaze. "He thinks you might be mad at him." She looked back ahead to the post office ahead of them. "He told me yesterday that he doesn't think he'd be able to even speak to you for a few days."
Zero shook his head. Matt was something else. He would sometimes have to contain him; other times, he had to prod the kid forward because of being shy in situations. "He has no reason not to," said Zero. "I'll go by his apartment later on just to snap him out of it."
Erica nodded her head in agreement. "It'd probably be for the best."
They continued walking, with the sun setting as every minute passed.
Zero knew something brought her over. There always seemed to be a reason, not that he had a problem with her coming by. He was just waiting for her to finally bring it up. "So, is Matt the reason why you stopped by?" he asked. He had to break the silence, or else his mind drifted off to Carenthia and her departure.
Erica stuttered for a moment. "Oh, nah." She looked over at him. "Just seeing how things are going."
Zero tilted his head at her and asked, "And that's the only reason why you came by?" He knew there was an underlying reason. He could never drag it out of her until she was ready to say so, though.
She quickly responded with, "Yeah. So..." She paused for a moment, not real sure what to say, "what's been going on?"
Zero thought he might as well go ahead and tell her about Carenthia. Whatever reasons Erica had for coming by and asking to go walk, Zero assumed she would say... eventually. He didn't know why she always waited so long in her conversations. But until then, he hoped that getting everything about Carenthia out into the open would enable him to be able to put it aside afterwards.
He looked over at her and replied, "Other than Carenthia moving, nothing new has really had a chance to happen yet."
Erica suddenly stopped in her walk and turned to face Zero. She wasn't exactly expecting a response like that. "Wait... Carenthia moved?" She turned her head, looking at Zero through the corner of her left eye.
Zero nodded his head, tracing his thoughts back to hours earlier. She had stopped by his apartment before she left. He looked back over to Erica, realizing that his mind was starting to wander. "She left this morning."
She still stood on the sidewalk, the information that Zero had told her was taking a while to sink into her mind. "I... how and why did this happen?" She raised her arms in question.
Zero thought about it for a moment, but truly he knew he didn't have to. The reason why she was leaving was the very thing he tried to convince her of against. "I think she thought she needed to after what had happened between all of us and Jenkins." He turned and started back into the slow walk that the two had been doing.
Erica followed, walking alongside him. "But it was Mrs. Jenkins who really set all of this up." She had been paying attention to how the scene was playing out.
Zero nodded his head. "And I told her that." He looked back to Erica. "I tried to convince her that she needed to stay. Running wasn't going to solve anything." His eyes wondered back to the post office, looming ever so larger as they walked on.
Erica slightly shook her head. "But she still did?"
Zero reached into his shorts' pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Pulling one out and lighting it, he responded with, "Yes, she did," through his teeth that held the cigarette. Taking it out, he added, "She's on her way to Oregon, unless she's already arrived there. Her father is going to help her out right now." He blew a small patch of smoke out.
Erica thought back to Carenthia being the one who, whether she realized it or not, set up the whole previous day's ordeal up. And even from that, it made Erica look bad in the process. She wasn't sure if she was bitter at her or not because of it, though. It might depend on whether Zero was. "Are you mad at her?" was what she asked, doing a little searching about where Zero stood with the woman.
Zero looked over at her. "At Carenthia?" he asked. He was pretty sure that's whom Erica was talking about.
"Yeah," responded Erica.
Zero shook his head. "No, I'm not." He took a slight drag from his cigarette, thinking over what he should say next. "She and Matt were just pawns in all of this. Carenthia just happened to be a harder pawn to break. But once she finally broke, she took it the wrong way." He blew out the light patch of smoke.
Erica listened as Zero talked to her. Perhaps... she felt she shouldn't hold a grudge against her, either. It was just too bad that she hadn't been able to talk to Carenthia after the ordeal had happened. "And we were just getting to know her, too."
Zero slowed in his walk. His eyes went to the concrete at his feet. "She was good," he said. He raised his face back up to Erica. "It is just a shame that we couldn't find that out until now."
"Did she tell anyone goodbye?" asked Erica. She had, as well, slowed in her walk.
Zero nodded his head, remembering what Carenthia had told him earlier. "She told Mrs. Jenkins. And then, she came by here and told me. After that, she left." He took a rather large drag from his cigarette.
That kind of surprised Erica. In only two days, those two had hit it off, despite all the circumstances surrounding how they met. "So you were the last she told. You must have made quite an impression on her." At least, she assumed they had hit it off. If she was reading Zero right, then they had.
They came upon the post office, with its long staircase that led up to the door of the structure. They decided to take a seat, relax a little from their small walk.
Zero nodded his head to reply to Erica. "I can't say whether I did or if I didn't." He opened up his hands, looking ahead at the street as he continued. "All I know is that she was a good woman. It's just tragic that things went to the climax in the way that they did."
Erica watched as Zero took another deep drag from his cigarette. Her eyes had a fixation on the smoke that followed out. She gazed at it while replying. "Yes, it is." She thought back to when she had first seen Carenthia. She had hated her. Funny how times change. "We would have welcomed her a long time ago if we would have known her."
"Yes, you're right," said Zero, flicking the cigarette out onto the sidewalk.
The time had came for Erica. She didn't know why she always put it off when she had something to tell Zero. Perhaps it was so it didn't seem that she was just leeching off of him for support. If she went into other discussion first, then she wouldn't feel so bad with bringing up her own problems.
"Oh..." she said, kind of slow and direction changing in their conversation. "There was, actually, a reason why I did come by." Her hands began to shake as she said that.
Zero nodded his head. He had a reasonable idea about what it could be about, since they had seemed to touch on all of the other happenings from recent past. "I figured. What is it?"
She was slow and deliberate with her first few words. "I wanted to ease into the topic. Kind of failed at that, I see..." She twitched on the steps. She wasn't sure in how she should continue. "But, well... I finally took a pregnancy test today."
Zero slowly turned his face, his eyes locking with Erica. At that moment, he knew that either reality was about to hit hard on the Gilman apartments, or else everyone was going to take a deep breath of relaxation. But he knew what the answer would be by just looking at her. He could see that she was holding off on finishing her thought. If it had been negative, she would have already told him by then.
He took a deep breath. "It is," was all he said to her.
She held her head low, looking off at the steps below her. "It came back positive." She tried to fight back a tear that had started to run down her face.
Zero saw it. "No, don't try to fight it back. If you feel like crying, then do it. Right now is a better reason than any for you to." He leaned over, putting his arm on her shoulder.
She wiped away her face, though. "No, I've done enough crying about it. Now I just get the end results. There's no crying left." She turned to look at Zero. "I just fear having to tell Matt." Her chin began to shake. Mentally, she forced it to stop. She sat silently, looking at Zero.
"I'll be there with you when you tell him," he said.
Erica slowly responded, but the care was thick in her tone. "...Thank you." She leaned into his arm, causing it to go around his shoulder.
Zero spoke softly to her. "Tonight. We'll go to his apartment tonight to tell him. But I'll be there when it happens."
She looked back into his eyes, tears forming in her own eyes. "Thank you. Thank you for being here during this whole time." She fought the tears back, pushing them out and away from her eyes.
