“ What do you mean?”
“ Dani and I were best friends growing up. She was one of the guys. She was the one I could tell everything to, but I think that’s all we were ever meant to be, best friends. Even that’s over now.”
“ Never lovers?” Maria said.
“ We never were,” Broxton said.
“ Really? I thought-”
“ Can you think of a better way to ruin a perfectly good friendship?”
“ I think maybe it can make a friendship even stronger. Something that can last forever. What could be better than your lover being your best friend? I think that would be very nice.”
“ I suppose, if you found the right woman. Dani obviously wasn’t the right one for me.”
“ Can you help me carry these up to my room?” she asked.
“ Sure,” he said.
“ Then let’s go,” she said, pushing herself from the table. She stood, brushed her hair back with her fingers, then picked up several of the bags. He picked up the rest and followed her toward the lobby and the elevators.
At her room she slipped the plastic card key into the door. She reached out to open it when the green light on the lock told them it was okay to enter, but the door jerked open before her hand touched the knob.
“ Bring the bags inside and set them down, then walk to the bed and put your ass on the mattress, Mr. Broxton. You too, Maria.” The voice commanded obedience, and the gun in his right hand backed it up.
“ You?” Broxton said.
“ Me,” Earl said. “Surprised?”
“ Very,” Broxton said.
“ You know each other?” Maria said.
“ He’s the man that tried to kill Prime Minister Ramsingh in Venezuela,” Broxton said.
“ He’s also my husband,” Maria said.
“ Curious,” Broxton said.
“ And that’s the way you’re going to stay,” Earl said. Broxton tensed his legs and gauged the distance between them, two quick steps, but Earl seemed to be daring him to try it and Broxton knew he’d be dead before he closed half the gap.
“ Sit,” Earl said. “Only you, Broxton. Maria, get a glass of water out of the bathroom.”
“ Get it yourself.”
“ Come on, baby, we both know I can be difficult if I get upset, so don’t get me angry and make me do something I’ll be sorry for.” He was talking softly, but he was a man on the edge and any second he was going over.
“ Do as he says, Maria,” Broxton said, sitting.
“ You don’t scare me anymore, Earl.”
“ Baby, if you don’t hustle your buns into that bathroom, I’m going to put a bullet into lover boy’s stomach, then we’ll see how much I can scare you.”
She went into the bathroom and got the water. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“ Put your ass next to his,” he said, as he fished a bottle of pills out of his shirt pocket. “These won’t kill you, but they’ll put you right out.” He tossed the bottle toward them and Broxton snatched it out of the air with a quick left handed catch. “Four for you, Mr. Broxton. Two for my wife.”
“ How do we know they’re not poison?” Maria said.
“ You don’t, baby, but it’s the pills or a bullet.”
“ What are they?” Broxton asked.
“ How should I know? She gave ’em to me and told me if you got in the way to drug you up till it was over. She wants you alive, remember?”
“ She tried to sink us,” Broxton said.
“ That was then, this is now.”
“ How’d you get away?”
“ You were so busy turning tail and leaving us to die that you didn’t notice when she lowered the dinghy into the water. We grabbed her get-away-bag and sailed into this nice little bay. Three hours later we were on a plane for Port of Spain. We probably beat you back.”
“ She’s well known in Trinidad, by now Ramsingh knows she’s back. He’s probably got every cop in the country looking for her.”
“ Think again, you’d never believe the shit she had in that bag. She’s a master of disguises, you’re old girlfriend. I thought I was flying back to Trinidad with my mother. She sailed through customs, a little old lady from Boston, coming down to Trinidad to visit her son who works for one of the oil companies. She even had the accent down.”
“ I don’t believe it.”
“ Believe it,” Earl said, then he gestured toward the pills in Broxton’s hand. “Now, eat up, I don’t have all day.”
“ I’m not very hungry.”
“ Mr. Broxton, we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. I got no instructions about my wife. You want her to stay alive you eat the pills,” Earl said, as he moved the barrel of the gun till it was pointing at Maria. “Well?”
Broxton poured four of the pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.
“ Now you baby.”
Maria took the bottle from Broxton and tipped it to her lips, swallowing the last two pills, then she drank the water. “I hope they kill me, Earl,” she said. “That way I’ll never have to see you again.”
“ Baby, death is the only way you’ll ever get rid of me,” he said.
“ Now what?” Broxton said.
“ Now we wait,” he said, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow evening, at five straight up, Ramsingh will be getting his and it’ll all be over.”
“ She’s going to hit him during the dedication speech?”
“ Yeah, in front of an army of cops, pretty fucking ballsy. I almost with I was doing it, but it’s her show now. I’m out of it.”
“ It’s not too late to really be out of it, Earl,” Broxton said. “Let us go and I’ll keep you out of it.”
“ Climb up on the bed, lay down on your backs and stare at the ceiling,” Earl said.
“ You don’t have to do this,” Broxton said.
“ You’re wasting your breath,” Maria said, and she scooted on her rear till she was in the center of the bed and lay down with her head on the pillow.
“ Now you, Broxton,” Earl said, and by the time he was stretched out next to Maria she was asleep and he was out a few minutes later.
The slight breeze blowing through his hair told him it was a dream. He tried to reach a hand up, to touch it, to pull on it, to feel its texture, but his hands were locked at his sides. He opened his eyes and looked down, wind rippled through his loose clothes, tickled his bare feet and helped to keep him aloft.
“ Dani,” he moaned. He was floating above her nude body, gently coming down on top of her. He felt her breasts pushing against his bare chest, felt himself getting hard. He tried to bring a hand up to caress her, but his arms were locked iron tight at his sides.
He felt her hand take him and guide him into her. After all these years, it was happening at last. He felt her grind up to meet him and he was thrilled. He never wanted to wake, the dream was better than any reality, better than life.
He was so hard, but he couldn’t seem to find release. The dream had him in its grip and he slowly pumped into her. He came so close, but the pleasure he craved was just beyond the edge. He tried to grind into her faster and harder, but he was crippled without the use of his hands and so he was forced to match her slow, sensual rhythm and she held him on the edge of forever with her steady rocking, stomach tightening, thigh clenching motion, seeming to suck him deeper and deeper into her until he felt like his heart was going to burst.
Then she pumped her pelvis up to him to catch him as the greatest release he’d ever known ripped through him. He went and went and went and he thought he’d go on forever. “Dani, Dani,” he moaned, then he was sinking in dark waters, the surface fading away. There were sharks here, danger near, and he was moving blindly out of control, buried in black, shivering and shaking, cold one second, hot the next. He tried to see, but pain plagued his eyes, the lids weighed heavy, covering an ache that caromed through his head. To open them would be to invite in the hot chills that ravaged his body. He felt like he’d been crucified and tossed into a whirlpool, and it was sucking him down into the pit.
Reality was spinning away as the varying shades of red running inside his eyes turned into flames dancing over hot coals, leaping out from behind his eyelids and wrapping hot tongues of fire around the back of his neck, hot and clenching, choking his breath away as his lungs exploded. He gagged, trying in vain to suck air through lips that refused to part. And then he passed out again.