Albia said, “It was a bad time. Would you please pass me the green beans, Nicola?”
Elliott told stories of college days. All of them involved girls that both men had wanted. His stories were funny, utterly charming, and many times he made himself the dupe, but still, it was a very strange thing. “Then, of course,” he said, “there was Melissa-no, let’s not speak of her this evening. I’m sorry, John. Another toast. To Albia, the loveliest lady in Chicago.” And while he drank the toast, he looked at Nick and she wanted to slap that oily look off his handsome face.
Over a dessert of creme brulee, Nick felt a sudden cramp, then another, this one stronger, more vicious. She had to excuse herself to run to the bathroom, where she got sick, and soon felt so ill, so utterly miserable, that she just wanted to curl up and die.
The pain was ghastly, her belly twisting and knotting. She threw up until she was shaking and sweating and couldn’t stand. She remembered hugging the toilet with Elliott, John, and Albia standing next to her, not knowing what to do until Albia said, “I think we should call an ambulance, John. She’s really sick. Elliott, go wait downstairs for them. Go, both of you! Quickly!”
And here she was in a hospital bed and they’d pumped her stomach. She remembered now that they’d told her about that before she fell asleep again, thanks to something very nice they’d given her. At least her stomach was calm. In fact, her belly felt hollow, scooped out, shrunk down to nothing at all. It hurt, but it was a dull ache, as if she’d been hungry for too long.
She remembered now that after they’d pumped her stomach, she lay on the hospital gurney feeling like she’d been bludgeoned with several baseball bats. Just on the edge of blissful drugged sleep, she remembered all those mad eyes staring at her from behind ski masks in her dreams, breathed in the smell of the exhaust from the big dark car that had nearly flattened her into the concrete.
It was so very dark. She turned her head just a bit and saw a flashing red light. What was that?
Then she heard a movement. Someone was in the room, close to her. She nearly stopped breathing.
She whispered around that miserable tube down her throat, “Who’s there?”
A man, she knew it was a man, and his breathing was close to her, too close.
“Nicola.”
Thank God, it was John. Why had she thought it could be Elliott Benson? There was no reason for him to be here.
She started crying, she couldn’t help it.
She felt his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right, Nicola. You’ll be fine. You must stop crying.”
But she couldn’t.
He rang the bell. In just a moment, the door opened, flooding the hospital room with light from the hallway. Then the overhead light in the room went on.
“What’s the problem, Senator?”
“She’s crying and she’ll choke if you don’t get that tube out of her throat.”
“Yes, we have an order for that, once she is awake.” She was standing over Nicola now, saying, “This isn’t fun, is it? Okay, this won’t be pleasant, Nicola, but it’s quick.”
After the tube came out, her throat felt like it was burning inside.
The nurse said, “Don’t be alarmed about the pain in your throat. After all that’s happened, it’ll be sore for a couple more days.” The nurse took a Kleenex and wiped her eyes, her face. “You’ll be just fine now, I promise.”
She got the tears under control. She took a dozen good-sized breaths, calmed her heartbeat. “What happened?”
“Probably food poisoning,” John said. “You ate something bad, but we got you to the emergency room in time.”
“But what about you? Albia? Are you ill?”
“No, we’re fine. So is Elliott.”
“It appears,” the nurse said as she took Nicola’s pulse, “that only you ate whatever was bad.” She eased Nicola’s arm back under the covers. “The senator believes it might have been a raspberry vinaigrette. You’ve got to sleep now. Senator Rothman will see to everything.”
And she wondered, why hadn’t John or Albia or Elliott gotten ill from the food?
John kissed her forehead, not her mouth, and she didn’t blame him a bit for that. She wished she could have something to get rid of the dreadful taste, but she was so tired, so empty of words and feelings, that she just closed her eyes.
She heard John say to the nurse, “I’ll be back in the morning to speak with the doctor, see that she’s discharged. Oh, no, I can’t. I have a meeting with the mayor. I’ll send one of my people to see to things.”
They continued speaking, in low voices, into the hallway. The overhead light clicked off. The door closed.
She was shut into the blackness again. But she knew this time she was alone and it was warm here, nothing to disturb her except that small nagging voice in her head: food poisoning from vinaigrette dressing? What nonsense. She’d eaten so little of everything because she was excited about Albia’s birthday, the gift she’d given her, and she wanted desperately for Albia to be her friend, to accept her. She wondered as she fell back into sleep if she would have died if she’d eaten more.
She’d had food poisoning before, on a hunting trip with her dad, when she’d eaten bad meat. It hadn’t been like this.
The next morning, the doctors couldn’t say exactly what had made her sick. They’d taken blood tests, said they would analyze what was in her stomach, and tested both the senator and his sister, but nothing was found.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Beasley, John’s cook and housekeeper, had already thrown all the food away, washed all the dishes. No way to know, the doctors said. Finally they’d let her go.
She’d nearly died. For the second time in a week and a half.
Nick touched her fingertips to her throat, remembering how it had hurt for a good two days after she’d left the hospital in Chicago. She turned on her side, saw Dane’s outline on that wretched too-short sofa not more than twelve feet from her, sighed, and finally fell asleep in her bed at the Bennington Hotel. She was afraid, afraid those mad, dark eyes would come gleaming out of the darkness at her, just over her head, hovering just out of reach. She prayed she wouldn’t have any more nightmares.
Dane, sprawled on the sofa across the room, never stirred. He awoke with a start at 7 a.m. to see Nick Jones dressed in the blue jeans and white shirt he’d bought her, feet bare, pacing back and forth in front of him. He realized he’d slept hard, which was unexpected since the damned sofa was too short and hard as the floor. The TV was on, he could see the reflection of the colors in the mirror over the vanity table, but there was no sound.
“Thank God you’re awake.”
For as long as he could remember, when Dane woke up, he was instantly alert, and he was now. “What’s the matter, Nick?”
She blew out her breath, splayed her hands in front of her. She took a step closer to him and said, “I know what’s going on. I know.”
ELEVEN
Dane swung his legs over the side of the sofa and stood quickly, the blankets falling to the floor at his feet. “You know what?” His sweatpants were low on his belly, and he quickly pulled them back up. He grabbed her hands, covered them. “What, Nick? What do you know?”
“Yes, okay. Listen, you were out like a light last night. I woke up, then couldn’t go back to sleep and so I watched TV, turned down really low. It’s a show, Dane, a TV show on the Premier Channel, a new one, just started probably a couple of weeks ago. It came on at eleven o’clock, called The Consultant. It was about these murders in Chicago and how this special Federal consultant comes in and solves them. It was kind of X-Files-y, you know, unexplained stuff that gives you goose bumps and makes you look toward the window if it’s really dark outside. I wasn’t really paying too much attention until there was this creepy guy in a confessional, and I realized he was talking to a priest about what he’d done, taunting him about the people he’d killed, and then when the priest was pleading with him to stop, he laughed and shot him through the forehead. Dane, it wasn’t about murders in Chicago, it was like the murders right here, in San Francisco.”