Revenant Rising (75 page)
He quick returns to the far side of the chimney and climbs back onto the narrow perch which may be easier to tolerate now that he’s got something to look at. He doesn’t even have to stretch to see through the gap he sighted through the first time he came here. And, like before, he’s looking straight at the lawyerwoman’s bed, but this time she’s standing next to it. And so is the rock star that’s not supposed to be here.
Hoop takes a couple of deep breaths and adjusts the range, leans in close and then distances himself some before squaring with what he sees. And what he sees makes him understand once and for all why oaths and swears slip out when no other words come to mind. If he knew any good ones, he’d say some now.
He was right to rank her a harlot. Look at how she’s tearing off her clothes and tearing off the rock star’s clothes that he hasn’t already pulled off on his own and tossed on the floor like someone will be right along to pick up after him. And look how she’s touching the rock star in his most private of places before easing back on the bed and gaping her legs open to show off her most private of places. She gets her comeuppance when the rock star falls on top of her. He grabs at her titties and she claws at his buttocks. They grapple like wrestlers, him getting the upper hand when he pokes into her entranceway and starts giving her a good pounding. Her legs thrash every which way and her whole body rocks back and forth like she’s desperate to get away. Her head rolls side to side and she yelps and moans like she’s hurting bad. The punisher goes on grunting and giving her what for till the lawyerwoman lets out a sharp cry and exposes her neck as though for a blade while the rock star bashes his head into the bedstead several times over and comes to a shuddering stop.
Given this chance to measure the two of them for size, strength, and how able-bodied they are, he’d be a jackassed-fool to try taking both on at once. That calls for use of a firearm—a cowardly white man’s weapon that’s only acceptable for hunting those things you can’t run down on foot.
Hoop feels no great sense of disappointment as he wipes his brow on the back of his sleeve. He’s got more than one trick in his bag, so this isn’t seen as a total loss. Hasn’t he learned by now that nothing’s ever a total loss? Wasn’t he just talking about that with Audrey, telling her about the backup plan he was working on and how patience is second nature to him these days?
He takes another look at the quarry. He’d better hope they both fall asleep—not just the man—or he’ll be stuck here without a chance to try the other plan.
They’re both still stirring, and it looks like the rock star did hurt her because he’s dabbing and brushing at her eyes and kissing her cheeks and forehead like he’s real sorry—terrible sorry because the lawyerwoman’s having to wipe his eyes with one corner of the bedsheet.
Hoop shuts his own eyes against more nasty business and waits a good five minutes by his internal clock before he checks again. When it looks like they’ve both dozed off, he counts out another five minutes before trying a move of any kind. Then it’s only to work the cramps out of his legs from having stood stock-still for so long.
As soon as he’s able, he inches across the rafters to where the gym bag is. He rights it, continues with what he was doing before the interruption, only now he’s going at it twice as fast. When he’s done with all the transferring, he fills his pockets with doses of substitute medicine, closes the gym bag, and secures it with the combination lock. He slips through the hatchway and down onto the closet floor without making a sound or hearing a sound. So far, so good. But when he turns to close the door to the hatchway, he sees what too much hurry made him do.
There, on the attic floorboards to one side of the opening, is a spill of the little envelopes he just emptied of powdered aspirin and filled with dope. A dozen or more got away from him for being extra slippery and refusing to crowd into the side pockets of his tight-fitting jeans. He scoops them up quick as he can, without a ready answer for what to do with them. Working them into those pockets is too much trouble, the padlocked gym bag’s a bother to open, and common sense says he’s running out of time.
The answer’s right in front of him as soon as he’s ready to see it: A lineup of hanging bags for storing extra clothes fills up one side of the closet. The nearest one is mostly empty and dust-covered like it’s fallen out of use, but the zipper works fine when he slides it open and tosses the extra envelopes inside. The fine powder left on the attic platform he brushes down into the rafters where no one would notice in a hundred years.
He pauses to take a reading before moving out of the closet and into the hallway. The only thing he hears is the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears, a sound that stays with him while catfooting along the hallway to the front stairs—the more distant front stairs because they’re carpeted and less likely to give him away than the bare treads of the nearby back stairs.
He stays close to the wall, where boards aren’t as apt to creak. Same on the stair steps and along the downstairs hallway till he reaches the kitchen, where all he has to worry about is making scraping noises on the clay-tile floor.
Everything is neat and orderly the way it was the first time he was here, so the two open garbage bags dumped on the floor near the phone table are real attention-getters. A closer look shows that they’re filled with women’s clothes; nothing there to interest him.
The other out-of-place items—the worn suitcases left standing at one end of the big kitchen table—don’t look like they belong to a celebrity, either. He nevertheless stoops down to read the nametags on them, and something else catches his eye. On a chair pulled up to the long side of the table and hidden from normal view is a bag he knows for a fact belongs to a celebrity. Now his head is really pounding. It’s pounding so loud he can’t be sure he’d hear reveille if it was tooted right next to his ear. His one hand is unsteady and doesn’t want to uncurl when he sets down his own bag.
He has to move the chair some to get at the familiar celebrity bag with the LV markings all over it. He maneuvers it onto the table and opens the zipper a little at a time, just the way he did at the hotel in Los Angeles. And just like in Los Angeles, he takes out a smaller LV-marked bag full of toilet items, opens it with similar caution and removes the box marked Polks Extra Strength. Only this time he doesn’t puzzle over what that is or help himself to any samples; instead, he empties out his pockets and switches the rock star’s supply with his own.
Everything’s put back the way he found it, and he’s creeping out through the garage before he again wonders who LV is because the initials don’t match up with the owner’s.
Early afternoon, April 11, 1987
Colin wakes with a start, uncertain of his surroundings till he sees Laurel’s face on the pillow next to his. Immediate pleasure is mixed with chagrin for subscribing to a stereotype by nodding off once the deed was done. He props himself up on one elbow to say his sorrys and she’s having none.
“You weren’t asleep that long, a little over an hour.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Perhaps for a little while . . . but not entirely.” She hems and haws, hesitant at first to admit she’s been watching him sleep just to get used to the idea of having him next to her in bed.
“I was going to go see about a noise I thought I heard coming from the attic—I’m afraid a squirrel did get in—but as you decreed earlier, fuck the squirrel, so I stayed here.”
“I’ll check the attic later.” He gets an arm round her and pulls her close with every intention of going slow and easy this time. That resolve takes flight when she flings back the sheet, goes astride, and rears back to regard him with half-closed eyes and an artless smile that rather contradicts what she’s doing. His hands are all over her, caressing, fondling, cupping, stroking, finally seizing onto her bum, enforcing a steady rhythm, accommodating her provocative little twists and swoops forward to brush his face and shoulders with her hair and lips. His mouth is full of words when it’s not full of her—words that never get said in any conventional way after he’s shaken by sensations that could have him bracing for aftershocks. She dominates his vision long after he closes his eyes and loses himself to unbelievable bliss and a seamless return to sleep.
Three hours later, after the inevitable knee-trembler in the shower, he wraps a towel round his waist, and she slips into a toweling robe. He’s used up in the best of all possible ways when he seats himself on the edge of the bathtub to watch her dry her hair. She smiles at him in the mirror, he smiles back; she switches off the hairdryer and without warning, drops to her knees dead in front of him.
“Good god, woman, pace yourself!” He’s more than half serious which gets him a big laugh because she’s only wanting a look at his legs and the pocks and grooves left by multiple surgeries and multiple insertions of rods and screws that make him a standout at security checkpoints. Again without warning, and without any word or gesture of pity or revulsion, she scrambles back to her feet and resumes drying her hair.
He drops the towel in the tub and wanders into the bedroom to contemplate picking up his scattered clothes with about the same enthusiasm he’d show for collecting animal waste. Not that there’s anything repugnant about the clothing put on fresh this morning, but getting dressed moves him one step closer to having to tell her goodbye and damned if he knows how he’ll get through it. This morning he couldn’t do it, and this morning he didn’t even know if he stood a chance; he didn’t even know if she would speak to him. And now—now that she’s declared herself and yielded to his fondest wishes and wildest dreams—how can he leave her?
Laurel comes into the room all dressed, groomed, and polished, and that gives him some idea how long he’s been standing there starkers, looking the part of the habitually rutting rock star. Other than for handing him his pants, she pays no notice and goes at stripping the bed with the sort of finality that makes putting his clothes on seem preferable. He’s still struggling into his trousers and casting about for his shirt when she finishes bundling the sheets together and asks him to bring the used towels as soon as he’s finished dressing.
“I don’t have to start the wash right away, but I should get started with the airlines.” She heads for the auxiliary stairs, leaving him to grapple with another harsh confrontation with reality.
To stave off the moment when he hears himself booked for departure, he takes his time finishing dressing and drags out the collecting of used towels as long as he dares.
Downstairs, he adds his armload to the laundry she’s dumped near the door to the basement, and ventures into the kitchen to find her poring over a yellow pages directory at the phone desk.
“Is there more than one Concorde flight on Saturday?” she says.
“Don’t know. Never had any need to know. And I don’t need to know now because I’m not in that big a hurry.” He retreats to the perimeter, gathers up the sheets and towels and heads for the basement and parts unknown. He’d rather do laundry in the River Styx than learn his hour of departure.
When he returns from the basement, where he probably overloaded the washer, skimped on the detergent, and selected the wrong water temperature, she’s seated in her usual place at the long table, chewing on a pencil and looking skeptically at a page of jottings.
“Am I safe to sit here?” He indicates the chair he was rousted from earlier, and his lame attempt to distract goes as unnoticed as his naked reluctance of a bit ago.
“Not much to choose from . . . Brit Air has nothing until Monday, Pan Am’s full as well. Maybe this TWA flight . . . no, this British Caledonian flight looks like the best bet, going out of Kennedy tonight at ten-forty-seven, arriving Gatwick tomorrow at ten-something GMT. However, the only available seats are in business. Is that a problem for you? I know it won’t bother me, but you might prefer—”
“Hold on, I’m not hearing you right. You’re talking like you’re going with me and that’s. . . .”