She stuffed the bills and travelers checks into the shoebox she kept under the bed and dumped the credit cards and ID into a paper bag, to be disposed of in the nearest Dumpster.
It wouldn't be much longer before someone noticed what was going on. But by then they would be well on their way. Feral made it sound really nice, not at all what she'd been led to expect. She was looking forward to meeting his folks. She had to be sure to stay on her best behavior. After all, every girl wants to make a good impression on her future in-laws.
CONFESSION
Kurt Busiek
My name is Roger," I lied. "And I'm an alcoholic."
They say confession is good for the soul, but it's never done much for me. I was in a basement room a few blocks off Union Square. There were about thirty other people in the room, sitting around card tables on folding chairs, smoking, sipping coffee and listening to me. One or two of them were newcomers, checking out a meeting for the first time. The rest were familiar to me, faces I'd seen at other meetings. Smoke hung thick in the room, like nobody had ever heard of the Surgeon General's report. Pretty typical for an AA meeting.
I went through the rest of it, how both my parents were alcoholics, how coming home and finding one or both of them passed out in the living room revolted me so much I knew it'd never happen to me. But it did. I was establishing a career as a securities broker when I started winding down from the day with a beer or two. Then it was screwdrivers, then scotch, and by the time I got fired I could knock off a bottle of tequila while alone, watching TV. After that, of course, I needed the booze to cope with how those assholes had treated me. It wasn't until I woke up in Hoboken, bleeding on somebody's BMW, and couldn't remember how I'd gotten there that I faced up to the fact I was in trouble. It was a stirring story. I'd told it so many times I almost believed it myself.
There was a girl at a nearby table. I'd seen her before, even spoken to her once or twice. Wendy something. Maybe Cindy. She watched me closely, and when I looked over, she smiled. There was warmth in her eyes and her pulse went up slightly, her steady strong heartbeat pumping the blood through her veins a little faster. I smiled back. I shouldn't have — she'd take it as an invitation — but she looked like Kate, with that silky red hair, an expressive mouth and a sharp little chin.
I swear, I deserve all the shit I get.
After I finished my qualification, there was a round of applause and some guy started a collection to help pay for the room and the coffee and all. I drew myself a black coffee from one of the urns in the corner and drifted over to join the only all-male conversation in the room.
Mike was talking about a murder, listing detail after detail of knife wounds, finger marks, torn clothing. It was the same conversation as always, just a new installment. Some nights it was baseball, some nights politics, once in a while the deplorable state of Broadway. But it always boiled down to the same thing — how bad New York had gotten. They'd chew over the latest news, trade the latest stories, compare failures, atrocities, outrage. Then Lou would shake his head slowly and the others would join in. Not like that when they came to the city, no sir. Tonight's tidbit was a dead woman found on a tenement roof. Lou took it as a sign nobody cared about people anymore. Fred disagreed. Contract killings, he said. They made it look like a crazy, killed ten or twelve to hide the real motive and got off scot free. Mike didn't think that was how hired killers worked, but he wasn't making much headway against Lou. I just listened. The ritual of it was oddly comforting.
Sure enough, she came over. "Some of us are going over to LB's for coffee and sandwiches afterward. You want to come along?" Her pulse was really going now, and blood filled her face, coloring her cheeks and filling out her lips, making them deeper, heavier, inviting. What was I supposed to do? Women at AA meetings aren't generally overflowing with self-esteem to start with, and it obviously took a lot for Wendy (or Cindy) to do this.
"Look, I'd love to," I said, "but I've got to meet this guy." I smiled in a you-know-how-it-is way.
It didn't work. She opened her mouth to say something and I knew what was coming. A "Half an hour won't kill anyone" or a "We'll be there late; you can stop by after," something along those lines. I locked on her eyes and thought, Go away. Just go away. "Maybe next time," I said aloud.
She closed her mouth. Looked around in transient confusion and absently turned, not seeing me anymore. I watched the way her hips rolled, making her wool skirt twitch as she headed back to her friends. She even dressed like Kate. I wanted to call after her, to change my mind, but I knew better.
Oh well. There were other meetings I could go to for a while. I put my Styrofoam cup down and headed for the door before she remembered me.
Outside, the air was cold and crisp, and the night sky was bright, the city glare that generally shrouds Manhattan thin enough to let a couple of stars through. Nights like that make New York seem small and cruddy, no more than a crusty infection on the side of a diseased planet, and all its inhabitants inconsequential and irrelevant. I didn't need that; I needed to feel human, plugged-in, like life was crucial and death was a horror, like moral choices had weight and power. I went up to 16th Street, walked into Shay's and ordered bourbon, straight up.
I knocked it back, ordered another.
The anonymous hubbub calmed me down a little. I realized I was breathing heavily and slowed it down, settling back on the barstool and looking around. There was the usual crush of evening revelers: couples, knots of workplace buddies and solo cruisers looking for action, mixing and mingling in their urgent quest for camaraderie, comfort, sex or oblivion. One of them, about ten feet down the bar, was staring at me.
She was a cowgirl type, lanky and lean with streaked blond hair, a wide-brimmed leather hat, a fetching overbite and long, long muscular legs that promised action, energy and staying power. The legs were sheathed in skin-tight denim, and when she saw she'd caught my eye she flexed them, arched a little and pursed her lips at me in an insolent smile. Her heart beat like a racehorse's, sluicing the blood around her body with more gusto than your average beer commercial. My teeth hurt and I wanted to test my strength against hers and see who collapsed first.
I shot her a c'mon-aren't-you-too-old-for-this-shit look and turned back to my drink.
The bartender, Rachel, was right in front of me, offering to top up my glass. Shit, I thought, I must really be on tonight. I knew Rachel from a few other nights at Shay's, and she struck me as the tough, no-nonsense type. I thought she was immune. But her pulse was up, her breathing shallow, and she looked at me without quite focusing. She leaned forward, crossing her arms under her breasts, lifting them and pushing them together, emphasizing her cleavage. Her chin was up, exposing the long line of her neck and the vulnerability of her throat. She was talking about how dangerous the streets were — especially late at night. It made her nervous, or so she claimed, walking home alone.
I said something I forgot as soon as the words left my mouth and looked past her at the mirror behind the bar. When people in a bar don't know what to do, they look at their reflection in the mirror. Out of long habit, I do the same, despite the fact there's no reflection to see.