“Drink it all,” Tooley said, “that’s what you need.”
She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”
He glanced at his watch. “I will be in twenty minutes.”
“About that job…”
He shook his head. “I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. How would it look? He’s a senior partner, and he’ll be in the office two or three times a week.”
“If I could earn some money—”
“We’d get a better place and get out of his building. Right. And I’ll find you a job, and we will. Only not at Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. That’s out.”
“How was I last night?”
“Fine. You were fine.” He kissed her forehead. “Now listen up. You drink all of that, then lie back down and go back to sleep if you can. Let those pills work. You’ll wake up again around ten, and I’ll call you if we can go out to lunch together.”
She nodded, and found that nodding hurt. “You can’t say for sure?”
He shook his head. “It’ll depend on how things go at the office. Every day is different. I told you.”
She sipped the soda until the door closed behind him, then held the glass up to the light, which hurt almost as much as nodding. There was no color, but he might have put vodka in it, or gin.
Hoping for vodka, she finished it and carried it out to the kitchen. There would be more soda somewhere, and vodka, too.
Dishes in the cabinet and dirty dishes in the sink. Ice in the little refrigerator, but no vodka and no soda. Come on! It’s just a fucking two-room apartment.
There was vodka in the other room, next to the tele—vodka, but no soda. She poured what was left in the bottle over the ice in her glass, and carried the bottle back to the kitchen; there she ran it through the disposer, where it crashed, clicked, and growled.
No soda. She sipped the neat vodka. It burned her throat, and she turned the tap. There was pressure for a change, but the water smelled like sewage.
She threw the whole mess down the drain.
Army water on Johanna had smelled like chlorine; but once she had found a little trickling creek there, and the water had been cold and clean and good, better than any bottled water.
The screen buzzed. Automatically, she blacked the camera and flicked on the picture. Buckhurst’s face appeared in the screen, big, black, and scowling. “Ms. Blue? Is this you?”
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not going to turn the camera on. You got me out of bed.”
“Sorry, Ms. Blue. Mr. Tooley, he done gone, so I think you be up, too. Man here say he got a package for you. Say you don’t know him, only you know the man sent him. I say what his name, only he won’t tell. His name Smeedy. He show me his card. Got his name on it an’ say he a musician.”
“Did he say what was in the package?”
“No, ma’am. Say he don’t know.”
“Put him on, please.”
Buckhurst turned away, and a familiar face appeared on the screen. “I’d like to come up, Ms. Blue. All I have to do is hand you this.” The package that he presented for her inspection could easily have been a shoebox wrapped in brown paper. “I’m told it belongs to you.”
“I was up late last night,” she told him, “and I’m sure I must look like hell. It’s twenty-nine eighty-nine, and the door’ll be open. Come in and sit down. I’ll be in the bathroom splashing stinking water and combing my hair. Make yourself at home. I’ll be out in ten minutes.”
Softly: “I can just leave your package and go, honey.”
“Don’t you dare!” Raising her voice, she added, “Let him in, Buckhurst. He’s okay.”
* * *
She had carried a bottle of cologne into the bathroom, and smelled like a flower garden when she came out. He was sitting in Tooley’s big vinyl-covered chair, with the package on his lap.
She smiled. “Hello, Charlie.”
“No thanks?” His eyes—the bright blue eyes she had inherited—twinkled. “I risked prison for you. I deserve a kiss.”
“You didn’t. But you’ll get one anyway.” She bent, and her lips brushed his.
“Since I’m no longer your father, I can ask you for a date.”
She straightened up. “You can, and I might go. Is it a good show?”
“How about a picnic?”
“You’re serious?”
“Entirely serious, honey.”
“I’d offer you a drink if it wasn’t so early. Would you like me to make coffee?”
He shook his head. “We need to talk to you, honey.”
“We?”
“I thought I’d bring my wife.”
She sat on the couch, one long leg drawn up. “You two think I’m getting fat.”
He shook his head again.
“Do you know about her? That’s not really Vanessa.”
“Depends on what you mean by really.”
“Well, I am getting fat. Fat and soft. See, I know all about it, so Mother doesn’t have to make those cream-cheese-and-watercress sandwiches.”
He said nothing.
“Fat and soft, and I’ve been drinking too much. I know that, too. What else is there?”
“Now it’s my turn to change the subject. Do you want to open this box? Check it over?”
“No, I don’t. How much is she costing you? How much a hundred-day, or how much a year? However you’re paying.”
He grinned, displaying teeth more regular than she remembered. “Your mother ought to have taught you that it’s impolite to ask how much things cost.”
She started to say, I don’t consider her a thing, when she realized she did. She substituted, “There are times when I’ve got to make exceptions. How much, and when will you get tired of paying?”
“She’s cost me quite a bit so far. Dresses and shoes and jewelry, none of them cheap.”
“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.”
“Then nothing.” He was no longer grinning. “You’re asking about Reanimation?”
She nodded.
“Nothing. That file is closed, and Reanimation gets to stay in business. They were greatly relieved.”
“I don’t even know whose body it was. Skip knew, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“That was probably wise.”
“So you’re not going to tell me either?”
“At the picnic, perhaps. It will be up to my wife. What would you do if you knew the name?”
“Damned if I know. Find her family, I guess, and tell them what happened.”
“They think she’s dead, and they’re right. She was suicidal, honey. That’s why she did it, why she went to work for Reanimation. This is what she was hoping for.”
Chelle rose and went into the bathroom. When she came out, her eyes were dry once more and the lean, white-haired man who was no longer her father had gone.
* * *
She had gotten dressed slowly, thinking of breakfast. As a civilian, she had always hated going into restaurants alone. Now she was a civilian again. She could make her own breakfast—SoySunRise, milk, and coffee or tea—or go out.
Find a restaurant and go into it alone.
The street was filled with sunshine and clogged with patient trucks, hulking yellow buses, gliding bicycles, and hunchbacked cars. She flipped a mental coin and turned to her left, a slender, hard-faced blonde taller than most men. After two blocks of shops, she was about to stop someone and ask about a good place to eat when she saw the cheerful red-and-white sign: Carrera’s Café. The café was plainly open and serving, though not now (Chelle glanced at her watch) terribly busy. She went in and took a booth.
She had finished ordering by the time the lost woman came in. The lost woman looked at her and looked again; Chelle looked back and—after a second or two—waved. “Sit down.”
“I … Really, I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not.” Chelle kept her voice low. “There’s nobody seating people, and you don’t want to sit alone. So you sit here with me. Solves both problems.”