She snorted. “I bet you were a first class bullshitter.” After several seconds she sighed. “Okay…for what it’s worth, if someone wants to see you, they can usually learn. There’s a way to make yourself visible to almost everyone, too…for a few minutes anyway. This ghost back home does it. Don’t ask me how. I just know the room gets cold as hell when she shows up, like a deep freeze.” Her eyes focused past him again…on a car pulling up at the curb. “Now get lost.” Flipping away her cigarette, she slapped on a professional smile, then sauntered through him toward the john.
That definitely ended the conversation.
Cole trotted back up to his walkway and on toward Razor’s place. He noted the activity street below him — hookers and crack dealers doing business…homeless men and women settling into doorways for the night…officers confronting three young men about drinking in public, making them pour their beers into the gutter — but his thoughts lingered on Red’s information. If someone wanted to see him, they could learn. Razor ought to want to see him…once convinced he was there to be seen. Considering the walk-through’s effect on Danny the Prick, it and a computer message should be convincing enough. But…was wanting to see him enough to make it happen? Red did say “learn”. Expecting to see someone was not enough to make him visible close up to those people who glimpsed or heard him in the fog. Yet the Princess Fan and winos who saw him went through no apparent learning process.
He halted and stared down at the scene below. Maybe that was the way to go…let Razor know he was around, then turn off Razor’s reality check. The question was, how. Not by getting him drunk, not with Holly there. Was there any other way?
Yes, Cole realized, looking down at a homeless man asleep in a doorway. Everyone’s reality check shut off in dreams. So maybe he just needed to convince Razor he was dreaming in order to make Razor see him. He probably needed to start with Razor asleep, though, and Razor never went to bed this early. He had been a night owl long before he started working Night Investigations.
Which, Cole reflected, did not prevent seeing whether a dream visit worked on someone else. He eyed the sleeping man as he walked back down to ground level, then decided against using him. This needed someone he could be confident would not normally see him. Say, a clerk in one of the area’s cheap hotels.
Clerks at the first four hotels all proved awake…reading, knitting, watching TV…but stepping into the glorified hallway that served as the lobby of the fifth hotel, he heard gentle snoring. Behind the desk’s protective wire mesh, the clerk, a dwarf, dozed over a crossword puzzle. An ink blot spread out from where his pen point rested off to the side of the puzzle. Cole studied him. First challenge: he needed to wake the man. Yet make him think he was still asleep.
“Hey, man,” Cole called.
The clerk did not stir.
So it took more than talking to reach him. Closing his eyes, Cole stepped into the desk.
Opening his eyes again, he found he had cleared the desk but stood up to his knees in a set of steps that let the clerk reach the desk. However, the mental hangup about solid surface did not appear to affect him once inside the object. He moved forward without restriction.
The steps gave him an idea. The answer to convincing people they were still asleep might be making them think: That’s impossible; I have to be dreaming.
He laid a hand on the back of the clerk’s neck. Cold ought to rouse the man. “Hey! How’s it going, dude?”
As the clerk reached for his neck and lifted his head, Cole backed into the steps and crossed mental fingers.
The clerk blinked up at him. “Huh?”
At him. Seeing him. Yes! Cole grinned. Hooray for that fuzzy state between sleep and full consciousness.
Now for challenge number two. The clerk’s eyes had widened, registering the fact that Cole was on this side of the desk. “Hey…what- ”
“What am I doing in here with you? It’s a dream. See?” Cole pointed down at his legs.
The clerk looked down and blinked. Still seeing him. To keep the fantastic going, Cole climbed virtual stairs until his feet reached the clerk’s eye level and circled around behind him to the clerk’s other side.
The clerk craned his neck to watch him. “A dream?”
Cole cheered silently. “Are you having trouble with the crossword? Maybe I can help. I’m the puzzle fairy.” He stepped back down to floor level and leaned over the clerk’s shoulder. “Let’s see. Thirty-eight down, six letter word for a trip and a treat. Try junket. That’ll make fifty-three across, Potter villain, Snape.”
“Puzzle fairy?” The clerk’s eyes narrowed. “You look more like a cop to me.”
Cole shrugged. “I can be that if you want. It’s your dream.”
The clerk snorted. “Why would I want a cop in my dream? Give me a long-legged blonde riding my lap smothering me in her D-cup hooters.” He wiggled his brows.
Cole grinned. There was nothing small about the guy’s libido. “Sorry…I don’t do sex changes. Even with D-cup hooters, I make a lousy-looking woman. So I’m out of here.” He walked away through the desk. “Good luck with the rest of the puzzle.”
He hummed to himself all the way to the door and onto the street. This just might work.
Not just for Razor, either. It would let him talk to Sherrie! Let him explain all about Sara Benay and reassure her about their marriage and his love for her. Even if the full force of that red-haired temper laid into him for Monday night, no problem. He welcomed it. Anything to get straight with her.
8
Was his ziptrip ticket good to go home again? Cole pictured it and concentrated.
The Tenderloin blurred…and — success! — turned into the front hall.
The house lay dark and silent, not surprisingly. Sherrie rarely managed to stay awake past ten or eleven…even waiting up for him when he worked night shifts. He always came in to find her dead to the world on the sofa, bathed in the glow from the television screen. With school tomorrow and her mother being a day person, too, everyone in the house had settled for the night by now.
He started up the stairs, only to stop at a whine coming from the livingroom. He turned and saw Tiger on the sofa, looking toward him. A pale shape lay beyond Tiger. Cole’s chest tightened. Sherrie?
Yes. He found her in a cocoon of blankets with Tiger at her feet.
Tiger’s tail stub worked like a slow metronome. Cole scratched his ears, then sat down on the coffee table and reached up to run his fingers across Sherrie’s hair. His chest tightened still more. “I’m sorry, babe. I won’t make it home this time.”
Never again slip in the door, tickle her awake, and lead her up to bed. When they were first married, he liked waking her by undressing her enough to make love right there. After the twins came along, he carried her to the privacy of their bedroom. Moving here ended the Rhett Butler stunt, too. The narrowness and pitch of the stairs made it impractical, not to mention life threatening, and for some reason she found the alternative carry, being slung across his shoulder like a sack of grain, unromantic.
Tiger whined again.
“Shhh,” Cole whispered. “Settle.” Sounds Tiger or the kids made always snapped her awake. He wanted to wake her slowly.
Too late. Sherrie sat bolt upright, eyes flying open. “Cole?”
He choked at the desperate hope in her voice. It sparked hope in him. Maybe it would make her see him. “Yeah, it’s me…sort of.”
“Cole?” She twisted, peering around her…looking straight through him.
Hope crashed. The disappointment felt like being stabbed.
“Tiger, what did you hear?” she asked.
The dog stared Cole’s direction and whined again.