“Ahhh,” Jon said. “I think I followed that.”
As if on cue, another attractive girl with dark hair appeared behind the bar from the rear entrance. She was a lot shorter than Mallory, but like her boss also made the most of a similar black outfit, utilitarian yet classy.
As Mallory said, “Ready to go?” to Jon, and came out from behind the bar with her purse and coat to walk with him to the door, both Bree and the male bartender stopped what they were doing, wearing surprised looks at the sight of their boss leaving with a customer. Apparently that didn’t happen very often.
“My place is on the other side of the park,” she said as they hit the night air, which seemed to be warmer than Jon remembered it.
“Do you usually say goodbye to your dad when you leave?” Jon asked as they were walking.
“Uh, yeah, I do, actually. I forgot this time.”
“You’re distracted.”
“It’s your fault,” she said, after thinking for a few seconds. “Asking for a drink named Link Up…. That was really subtle.”
“At least I didn’t order a Screaming O. Though I thought about it.”
“You could have had a Flirtini…. That would have worked.”
“Nah, I like to skip right past the flirting, and go straight for the Screaming O.”
Jon almost winced at this theatrical banter, which sounded more like Halladay than himself. But it was a part of the role he felt he had to play to get more information from Mallory. He also was aware, however, that she was doing the same thing for reasons of her own.
They both laughed half-sincerely at the jokes they continued to make as they traversed the park, bathed in the otherworldly light of the UV lamps. By the time they had reached the other side of it, they had both taken off their coats and were each holding them in one hand, because it really was getting warmer out. And their other hands were clasped together.
Her apartment was a couple blocks beyond the park, on Twenty-Third Street, and shortly after they reached it they had taken off a lot more than their coats, and a lot more than their hands were clasped together. The words “dream girl” floated across Jon’s mind as he saw and felt more of her, and when he apologized for the various wounds and bandages on his body, she even said that she liked them. (“They’ll leave some major scars, and I’ve always loved men with scars.”)
In any other situation Jon would have seen this as a sign that they were meant to be together, but in this situation he knew that neither of them could trust anything the other said. In fact, before they fell asleep next to one another afterward, to get the rest they both needed, Mallory had made sure her phone was password locked before she put it on her nightstand, and Jon had stuck his under the pillow on his side of the bed, along with his gun.
They both woke at the same time after a few hours, as if neither could allow the other an advantage, and the conversation was nothing like what lovers usually share in such moments.
“Are you sure you don’t want to change your story?” Jon said, while stroking her hair gently.
“Why would I want to do that?” she said with a puzzled look, resting her hand on his hip.
“I wouldn’t want anything to come out that would keep me from being able to walk you home again… because you were locked up somewhere.”
“I have nothing to hide,” she said, gently moving her hand up and down his side. “And you wouldn’t do that anyway.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t. But somebody would.”
“But you wouldn’t let them.”
“Maybe I would.”
At this Mallory pulled her hand away and rolled onto her back, so her hair was now out of his reach.
“I’m hungry,” she said. “You want something?”
He said, “Okay,” and they each dressed in silence on their own side of the bed. Then there was a lot more silence as she made some eggs and toast in the kitchen with him sitting on a stool on the other side of a bar, not unlike the way they had met a few hours earlier.
“What’s with the kids on the fridge?” Jon asked. There were several pictures of young children with obvious disabilities. One little boy was severely bow-legged, and another’s smile showed her obviously diseased teeth.
“They’re children in the city who have rickets,” Mallory explained, “because they’ve never had any sunlight and their parents didn’t give them the nutrition they need. I sponsor them so they can get help.”
“How could people who live here not give their kids vitamin D?”
“Welcome to humanity,” she said, spreading her hands. “A lot of them are single parents, and they’re sick themselves with addiction or depression or whatever.”
“Why don’t they just leave?” Jon was about to say “this hellhole,” but then stopped himself when he realized who he was talking to, and added, “Why haven’t you left?”
“My dad doesn’t want to,” she answered with a shrug, “and we have the bar. Every year we think the sun might come out again.”
“But didn’t the scientists say how long it would take?”
“Yeah, but I never know what to believe. Plus, it might sound trite, but this is our home, so why shouldn’t we try to make it better and not just give up on it?”
“Hmm,” Jon said, nodding. “Well, I think it’s cool what you’re doing for those kids.”
She looked at him thoughtfully for a few moments, and then said, “I’m thinking this might not be the time to play games with each other.”
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like something really bad is going to happen tomorrow when the day comes. It seems like the end of the world, at least around here.”
“Is this just a feeling,” Jon said, “or do you have some reason—”
“I’ve read some of the stuff that’s been written about it, seen some stuff on the news. But my dad says that’s all bullshit, or conjecture at least, so I don’t know who’s right about what exactly will happen and why. But I just have this… intuition or something, that it’ll be bad. And if it is, isn’t that a game changer?”
“I remember my father,” Jon said, “quoting some famous person who was asked, ‘What would you do if you knew the world was ending tomorrow?’ And he said, ‘The same thing I was planning to do today.’ I think he even said, ‘plant an apple tree.’ I understand the first one; not sure I understand the apple tree thing.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Mallory said. “But it just seems wrong to keep covering up, to play games with each other, like I said, when we might be dead tomorrow. I don’t even know if I should keep the bar open after tonight…. I don’t know if it’ll ever be open again.”
“So where are you going with this?” Jon asked, abandoning his breakfast and watching her beautiful ice-blue eyes. They looked away and then back at him.
“Would you be up front with me if I was totally honest with you?” she said.
“How have I not…,” he started, but then stopped when he saw her shoulders droop. “Okay, I guess so. This has been a day of firsts for me, why not another one?”
“Okay, I’ll start,” she said, seeming invigorated. “I don’t want to tell you everything I know about my customers, because I trust Gotham Security more than the police.”
“Go on.”
“Long story short… my boyfriend—he was my fiancé, actually—disappeared and was found dead two years ago. The cops were utterly useless, but it was Gar Render’s people who broke the case. They found Tom’s killer—it was a carjacking—and they avenged us.”
“They killed him?”
She nodded resolutely, and said, “No one ever deserved it more. And that was something else the cops could never do, even if they had found him.”