Authors: Finder
When I could think again, I found that Sunny had made the effort mostly unnecessary. She only wanted to know if I was fit to drive, or if she ought to. I weighed the alternatives carefully: driving the Ticker's bike (I'd promised it she'd be back soon; her voice saying "All that has been mine…") versus sitting in the sidecar and the person driving not being her. "I'll drive," I said.
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By the time we got out to the cur
b in the rain, I remembered to ask, "Where are we going?"
"My place," she said. "It's closer."
"I—I'd kind of like to be by myself."
"No, you wouldn't. Trust me."
I tried to marshall a couple of civil arguments, or even an uncivil one. She interrupted with, "Do you have a shower?"
I thought of the barrel in the backyard, in the rain. "Not… really."
"I do. Drive, or give me the keys."
I drove. It wasn't raining hard enough to substitute for the shower, but it made my clothes damp enough to bring back the awful river smell in them, and chilled me pretty thoroughly in the bike-made breeze. A passable set of distractions. Would it be very long before I could quit worrying about where my next distraction was coming from?
Sunny's street was quiet, and almost all the windows were dark. "It's late," I said.
"It's that. So try not to throw any pots and pans down the stairs."
There was a candle in a holder, on a little table inside the front door. Sunny lit it and led the way up, and I put all my effort into not missing a step in the wobbling light. On the third floor landing. Sunny turned to me. "Wait here."
I remembered that she was on the fourth floor. "Why?"
"Because. Not scared of the dark, are you?"
The light disappeared with her, up the next flight and around the corner. I heard her stop at her front door.
There was a long silence before the jingle of keys reached me, and the sound of the door opening. It was a well-made building, so I couldn't hear anything after that.
It seemed like several minutes before her head appeared around the turn in the stairs. "Coast is clear,"
she said softly. "Come on up."
The lamps were all lit in her apartment, and the white walls had warmed to a kind of buff color in the glow. "Coast is clear of what?" I asked.
She tipped her head to one side and gave me a look that suggested she was being patient and I should appreciate it. "Of anything that might have been left by the person who made my car blow up."
I stared. "I forgot." Ye Gods, how could I? I'd had one surprise at Walt Felkin's front door; wasn't that enough to make me permanently wary? Well, I had a lot on my mind—which reminded me of what and
how much, and I turned away and sat down in a chair in the living room, blind for an instant with the
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return of
feeling.
Sunny stood for a moment in the open front door. Then she shut and locked it, and said, "Company gets the first shower. There's towels in there already, and I'll hang a robe on the hook, since you won't want to put those clothes back on. Don't dawdle, okay? I want one, too."
"You can go first."
"I prefer second."
She went off toward the back of the apartment. I stayed where I was for long enough to be sure that she was in the kitchen, before I went down the hall and discovered that one of the doors that had been closed on my first visit was the bathroom.
It reminded me of her kitchen, clean, plain, with white towels and a rag rug on the floor, and soap that smelled nice, but only like soap. (What was it? Flowers and strong perfumes for the bath?) The robe on the door hook was navy blue cotton flannel. Had the Triumph been Sunny Rico's only indulgence? She mostly lived as if she didn't want to leave fingerprints.
The water was very hot, and there seemed to be a lot of it. I cried in the shower, because I knew Tick-Tick would have asked how they heated water for the building. It was harder to stop, knowing that no one could see or hear me do it. Was that why Sunny had assured me I didn't want to be alone? I dried off, and combed my hair, and noticed that I'd be the better for a shave. One of these days. The robe fit. I carried my towel and my dirty clothes into the kitchen.
Sunny was standing at the counter looking at nothing. I thought she jumped a little when I came in, as if she knew someone was there but didn't expect it to be me.
"If I wash these, is there some place I can leave them to dry?" I asked her, holding up the clothes.
She let her breath out. "There's a line on the balcony out back. You can hang the towel out, too. Don't worry about washing it."
Sunny closed herself in the bathroom, and I did a hasty job on my jeans and T-shirt in the kitchen sink.
It had quit raining by the time I stepped out on the balcony, and I set to work pinning things on the clothes line. The ordinariness of it was comforting. Everything had just changed—except that clothes still got dirty, and I could still make them clean again the same way I had before everything changed.
Don't think about it
, I insisted.
Sunny had made coffee while I showered. I poured myself a cup, and was carrying it down the hall to the living room when the bathroom door opened.
Steam puffed out, and light into the unlit hall.
Sunny's robe was white terrycloth, as ascetic as the one I was borrowing. She stood in the doorway, her bare pink feet over the sill, the light outlining her head with the wet hair combed down sleek as otter pelt. Her eyelashes were dark with moisture, and her eyes looked larger than usual. She was so close I could feel the damp heat from her skin, and see the beads of water gathered on her breastbone between the lapels of the robe. She was a little shorter than me. I was surprised; maybe I'd been thinking of
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mysel
f as a version of me at sixteen, when all cops were taller than me. Maybe she was talle
r when she
wasn't wearing a robe, when she was
n't warm and damp and smelling of shampoo.
I should have said something casual, but I couldn't talk at all. I forced my feet to carry me toward the living room and an armchair as far from the hall as I could get.
If I'd expected anything, I'd have thought she would go into her bedroom for clean clothes. Instead, she came into the living room, too. She didn't seem to be able to hear my heart beating, which was a relief.
"Think you can settle for the couch?" she asked.
I swallowed, which didn't help, so I just nodded.
"Are you hungry at all?"
I shook my head.
"Well, that's good, because dessert was in the back of the car." When I didn't respond to that, she asked,
"Did you lose your voice?"
Surprise made me cough. "No. No, I'm fine." I was too restless to stay where I was; I stood up and went to the front window, and parted the curtain enough to see the street. It was still there. The bike and sidecar waited by the curb, and everything gleamed with the polish of rain.
"Are you tired?" Sunny asked.
I ought to have been. I probably was, if only I could figure out how to tell. "No," I said, looking out at the street.
"Me, neither," she said, and sighed. "I keep wondering if I should have heard something from The Lilacs."
I couldn't think of an answer to that.
After a moment Sunny said, "I could leave you alone, if you wanted. Maybe I was wrong—maybe you would have preferred to be by yourself."
"No, you were right." I looked over my shoulder at her and found her closer behind me than I'd expected. She looked disarmed, and it had less to do with the robe and the wet hair than it did with the absence of something in the set of her mouth and the way her eyes tracked, an armored attitude that she'd had as recently as when she went to take her shower.
I had my back to the window, though I couldn't remember turning around. I was also forgetting to
breathe, and compensating for it by taking in little gasps of air. Sunny put her hands on my shoulders. I could feel the heat of them through the robe. Her eyes tracked over my face, her expression grave, as if she was looking for something. I didn't know if I wanted her to find it or not. My hands reached out, almost by themselves, and curved around her waist. I waited a moment to see if she'd hit me.
Her fingers slid up from my shoulders to my neck and moved lightly through my damp hair. I gave up waiting, pulled her to me, and kissed her.
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She wasn
't waiting for me, and she wasn't embarrassed about it, either. She pushed the robe do
wn over
my shoulde
rs to my elbows and searched across my skin with her fingertips as if they were eye
s. She
followed them with her lips, until I stopped her by putting my arm around her and drawing her near again. I ran my hand slowly down her neck, over her collarbone, into the space defined by the opening of her robe, and finally under the cloth
to
the slope of her breast, soft
over
the firmness of her pectoral muscle. My fingers brushed the nipple, and she drew a hard breath and opened her mouth on mine.
It was an urgent matter, that lovemaking, without time for subtleties, for talking, for sweetness. It didn't celebrate anything, or symbolize anything. It was two creatures who needed an extreme of comfort from each other, without delay, and got it. Afterward we lay in a tangle of skin and robes on the living room floor, and still we didn't say anything.
One of the oil lamps began to smoke furiously. Sunny untwined herself from me and from her robe and blew it out. As she moved to the other side of the room and the other lamp, I watched her, watched the long muscles show themselves and disappear in her thighs, watched the curve of her buttocks rise and fall just a little out of synch with the rhythm of her steps, watched the light slide off her shoulder blades and define the vertical path of her spine. Then she put the other lamp out, and I could barely see her at all, until my eyes adjusted to the dark. When they did I saw her standing above me, reaching out her hand. I took it, rose, and let her lead me into the bedroom.
We both had to hunt down that state of exhaustion that would let us sleep. But eventually I found myself lying on my back looking at the bedroom ceiling through half-closed eyes, aware, but not desperately so, of the strong, supple body stretched out and touching mine, thinking about rolling over toward her and wondering if I would fall asleep before I got it done. Something about the light on the other side of the bedroom blinds suggested that dawn was close.
I turned my head and saw Sunny, her head raised a little by the pillow and one hand, watching me, her expression detached and a little speculative. I remembered, all in a rush, where I'd seen the expression before: when she'd collected me from the Hard Luck, when she'd asked about Richard Weineman, when she'd wanted to know the story of my last great disaster out in the World, the last major roadmark on my trip to Bordertown. And I wouldn't tell her. I wouldn't even tell Tick-Tick, that hungover morning over waffles and strawberries, which was—oh, God, only days ago. Only days. And I'd said to the Ticker that if I told anybody about it, I'd tell her. Already, in a few days, it was too late.