Among the Living (15 page)

“I like your place. It must be easy to keep clean,” I say and realize it may come out as a jab, as if I am making fun of it. But as usual, I think in literal terms, and the words are there before I realize it. I wish my place were this easy to take care of; instead I have a house for four with only one soul in it.

“It is, Mike. I have a maid come in once a week and go over the place with a dust mop, and then I do inspections with my white gloves.”

“I see, and does your maid have an accent and wear a little skirt?”

“Yes, he does, but it costs extra.”

Touché.

She heads for the kitchen and comes back with a cool bottle of wine and a microbrew, then stands in front of me with one hip cocked. “What’s your poison, sailor?”

“Scotch, single malt and old, but I’ll settle for some of the white.”

“Excellent choice, sir. I will be right back.”

She hums some song that tugs at my memory, but I can’t place it. Glasses click on the counter, and then there is a pop as the cork comes free.

She returns after a minute with two glasses that are already showing condensate lines on the outside. The condo is hot, but not stifling. She deposits the wine in front of me and then opens the curtains to a long window that looks out over the city. I can see the skyscrapers from here. Colombia Tower and Westlake stretch into the heavens, and of course there is the gigantic Bank of America building with its sleek back windows.

“So where are you taking me tonight?”

“I don’t know. What do you like?”

“Mike, how long have we worked together, and you don’t even know what kind of food I like, hmm? We could go for some Mediterranean. I know a place in the city, and it’s a bit of a walk. But I’m in the mood for something much more exotic.” She pauses dramatically.

“If you say haggis, it’s off.”

“I didn’t know you liked Scottish food.” She laughs. “No, I want an oven-fired pizza, but we’ll have to go downtown for that.”

“That sounds amazing,” I say then lean over and toast her with a tip of the glass against hers. The wine is cold but a bit sour for my taste; still I sip it and then have another, deeper pull.

“Now that you’ve had a few hours to think about the video we watched earlier, what do you think?” she inquires.

“I think someone has a crazy imagination. I think it’s a hoax just like those UFO videos in Brazil or the guys who lit flares and attached them to big balloons in Texas. Just some kids having fun, that’s all. The only thing that really concerns me is that my searches on the web today turned up some very odd and conflicting information.”

“I found the same thing.” She leans forward, and once again we are talking in tones that echo conspiracy even though we are alone in her condo. “Sites that disappear without warning, and every time I typed in ‘deader,’ I got some very bizarre information … or misinformation. When you told me about the websites going AWOL this morning, I blew it off, but Leonard’s pep talk got me thinking, and investigating. But I have to tell you something. I was too afraid to talk about all of this earlier.”

“If you’re about to tell me you were once a man, I may have trouble looking at you the same way.”

“That’s not it, silly. Besides, I would look ridiculous in a French maid outfit.”

“I beg to differ.”

She sips her wine again and then her natural smile returns but just a hint, almost a smirk that makes her lip curl up in one corner until a crinkle hits her eye. “Mike Pierce, are you flirting with me?”

I wish I could come out and say no, and in a way I feel shy and my mind flashes back to earlier today when I had the desire to kiss her in front of our desks. I wonder what would happen if I set my glass down and attempted to do that now.

“I was going to tell you that if the National Guard is rolling into town, we may have a very big problem on our hands, one we should look into tomorrow, and I mean look hard.”

“On a Saturday?”

“Yep. Let’s stroll into Queen Anne like we own the place.”

I laugh at her, and she smiles back. Then I take a huge swallow of my wine and hope the stuff goes to my head quickly. We talk about the video a bit more, then about the nature of hoaxes and what it takes for someone to pull something like that off. We spend a good fifteen minutes planning how we will drive up and demand to be let in. As we chat, she jumps up and goes to the kitchen, returning with a plate of crackers and some cheese. I am hungry, and the food helps temper the wine somewhat.

We polish off half a bottle of the stuff, and it goes right to my head. I don’t drink often, so I have a low tolerance for alcohol. She gets up after setting her empty glass down and leans over the table. Her shirt is open so that I can’t help but get a glimpse down her shirt. I look up into her eyes, and she doesn’t look perturbed.

“I’m a dirty girl, Mike,” she says in a low, husky voice.

I just about choke on the last swallow of wine. Some of it threatens to rush back up my nose, but I manage to hold it down with a will.

“So,” and she lets the word hang in the air. “I need to jump in the shower.” She stands with a stretch and hits me with an innocent grin. “There’s more wine, help yourself.”

She heads down the hall, and the door closes with a click. A fan kicks in, and I am left to my own devices in Erin’s condo. I sit for a minute with my eyes wide open, staring at the blank TV before I decide to try to put the image of her in the shower out of my mind. I switch on the TV and tune it to a local channel, but they are running national news, which looks a lot like yesterday’s news. Maybe I am just getting cynical.

Shouldn’t they be talking about the gas leak? There are potentially thousands of people displaced, and they seem to be ignoring it. If I ran a local station, I would have my reporters all over it day and night. That’s the kind of thing that keeps people glued to the TV, real-life drama in your back yard, with commercial after commercial served a la carte.

I grab another glass of wine, just a half, and as I am pouring, my phone buzzes. I open it with a flip and see it is a message from Leonard. He has sent me a partial article from a website. It went to my Gmail account, so I am able to read it on my touch-screen phone.

The article is long, in depth and filled with medical jargon, but the gist of it is that researchers at Trigenics had been working on a virus that was able to enter a brain tumor and kill it. There was a rumor that one of the doctors grew impatient with the progress and decided to try it on his wife, who was dying of a nasty growth near her spinal cord. Surgery wasn’t an option, and a gamma knife had only halted the growth for a few months.

As she lay dying, he injected the experimental drug numbered VSV N16J, a modified virus related to the vesicular stomatitis virus. The active virus was modified so that single-strand RNA was used rather than double-strand DNA.

The story gets vague after that. They were both brought to the hospital with wounds, but no one would say what kind of injuries. Then the story ends with no real explanation as to what happened to the woman. It isn’t even a real news article. Leonard must have cut and pasted the thing from somewhere.

I read the tiny screen and half watch the news, which starts to creep me out a bit. They are going on about sports, orders at Boeing, the president’s stimulus package, a gruesome murder in a downtown hotel. There is no mention of anything out of the ordinary. I try to play it off again; my mind is just being paranoid, and that is all. The attack at Rita’s place was probably too small to show on the news; I’ll check the paper tomorrow.

The shower stops, and there is quiet from the bathroom for a few minutes, then the door cracks open and I hear bare feet padding on the wood floor. I want to turn around and see what she is wearing. Is she in a towel? A little robe? Some hot lingerie she wears from the bathroom to the bedroom before getting dressed? I nearly chuckle at this last image. I stare daggers at the TV, fixating on the screen rather than turning my head around to watch her. Pure innocence—after all, we are just friends.

“I forgot my wine,” she calls. “Would you pour me a half-glass, please?”

“Sure.” And then she goes into her room.

I pour with a steady hand due to the courage I have sipped over the last thirty minutes. I take the glass down the hall and stand outside the door, just a foot away, unsure what to do. Should I just walk in and hand it to her? I am almost overwhelmed by the fresh scent of soap and shampoo, and she is very likely dressed in something decidedly unshirt- and unpant-like. “Um,” I say after a few seconds, and isn’t that a brilliant piece of dialog for the woman I have wanted from the moment I laid eyes on her.

“It’s okay, you can come in.”

She stands near the bed dressed in a towel that is tied in front over her breasts and comes just below her bottom. She is still wet, her olive skin silky tan under the gleam of water. Her hair pulled back from her face as if she only took time to run her hands through it.

“I’m conflicted, Mike.” She walks to me and takes the glass. She sips it while staring into my eyes, and I want to turn away, to look at anything but that smoldering gaze. I can’t; it’s like she can see inside me to the broken parts and put them back in order. I want her, I want to plunge my hands into that hair and pull her to me.

“Oh?” I say instead, which is just about the stupidest thing I can think of.

“Yes. I want to take this towel off and then I want to take your clothes off, and I want to see where that leads. I have a feeling it won’t lead very far, since the bed is right there. But I worry about our friendship as well, or should I say where I want it to go, because I have to tell you, Mike, I am just about done being your friend.”

“You are?” Is that a hint of panic in my voice? It is. What is she talking about? I can’t seem to decide if she is joking or not. I feel my face flush bright red, redder than the wine is making it. I have desired Erin for a long time, and to think that she has feelings for me is overwhelming.

“Yes. I’m ready for what comes next between a man and a woman who are attracted to each other, and I know you are too. So tell me what to do, Mike. Do I get dressed and we go find some pizza, or do you take door number two, which is behind the towel?” And get your life back in order, my mind adds. What would that feel like?

There is a moment when I want to run screaming as if I were on fire. I want to flee back to my neat and orderly life where the only complication is whether or not my crazy ex-wife is going to call me in a drunken haze. I have my pets, a lazy cat and a noisy bird, and they don’t get along so well, but the life works for me.

I am not sure if I’m ready for a complication like this.

My hand remains lamely at my side until she takes it in hers. She pulls it to her lips and kisses the palm. I feel a fire burn where her lips touch my skin. I feel my body ignite, and I want her. I want her like I have never wanted anyone in my life. Like a barrier shattering, I seem to come out of my fugue, come out of the fog that has clouded my mind. I see her before me; I see her with a clarity I have never experienced before.

Her face is smooth where I run my trembling hand over it, cheek warm and flushed from the shower. Her breath catches in her throat, and I run my hand around her ear and into her wet hair. Then her lips are on mine, and she is devouring me eagerly. I pull her to me and crush her in an embrace that has been a year in the making. I can almost feel her smile around the kiss, which goes on for so long I wonder if it is night already.

We fall onto the bed together, and somehow her towel is lost in the mix. Her body is wondrous, soft in all the right places. She smells like a dream, and I take my time getting to know every nook, every bump, and every cleft of her skin.

The bus was late getting to Seattle thanks to some clowns in military vehicles. They were rolling down I-5 like they owned the thing. The beat-up tour bus had to slow to a crawl and follow like they were in some kind of caravan. The driver, Marcos, tried to get around the convoy a few times, but he kept getting cock blocked.

The band started the day pissed, and it got worse by the hour. First the air conditioning cut out and sure, Seattle isn’t the hottest town in the U.S., but when it is 85 degrees out and you’ve got no cool air, it feels like you are in a fucking oven.

They left Portland late, missed breakfast and had to eat some shit from McDonald’s. Now Grinder has to lie in his rack while the crap food roils through his guts, giving him a nasty case of gas. Lucky for the other guys that they are asleep; they don’t have to put up with his six-foot frame letting out noisy fart after fart. Shit smelled like rotten eggs left in the sun.

They had partied until 4:00 a.m., so they were all passed out, and as usual Eric was snoring like a lumberjack going at a fresh copse of trees. Grinder had the windows pulled all the way open so that when they were moving, the wind blew through his waist-length bleached white hair. He is perched up against the back of the metal rack with a wad of paper in his hand while he tries to come up with lyrics for the new album.

This will be the band’s third disc in four years, and he is looking forward to getting back into the recording studio. They have found moderate success in the states, but more overseas. The European markets love their brand of death metal, while Americans tend to gravitate toward what he calls corporate-approved masturbametal. The shit they play on the rock channels between cuts of the classics like Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.