I shook my head at her. I didn’t know what I was trying to say, and didn’t want to have to try to explain any further. I was just marking time until tomorrow, when I could go and do what I had to do. I wanted to spend the intervening time just staring into space and cleaning my gun, doing a final inventory; maybe some Annual General Meeting for Jack Randall, Inc., where all the unfinished business was neatly wrapped up just in case the proceedings were adjourned forever.
Nearly cocked her head to one side and peered at me intently. “It ever occur to you that maybe you’re not the only one whose life is a bit fucked up, Jack?”
“It’s all in place,” I said.
“No, it isn’t There’s nothing in place. You have to listen to the past just as much as you fucking want to, no more. Things can change. Okay, so the spares died, Suej died—I’m going to miss her, too. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t. Forget them, and forget Maxen, and forget everyone else. There’s new stuff out there to have.”
“Like what?” I said. I wasn’t asking in the hope of an answer, just putting words out into the air. Nearly paused for a moment, then abruptly refilled her glass.
“Well, like me,” she said, as she put the bottle back down. I stared at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, I’m beginning to think I must kind of like you or something, notwithstanding the fact you’re a fuckwit. Otherwise why would I be sitting here listening to you talking psychobullshit, when, as you charmingly point out, I could be out there earning money?”
She looked up at me, chin thrust out belligerently, and for a moment I really saw her; saw the intelligence in her face, the clearness of her eyes, the perfect, animal way in which she sat in a chair. I didn’t see her as a friend, or a woman, as Howie’s employee or someone’s daughter. I saw her as Nearly, as an inexplicable, inimitable, irreplaceable person.
And then, just as clearly, I remembered sitting with my back to the wall of a room on 72, five years ago. I made a promise to Henna’s body. I have broken so many other promises, so very many. To keep that one was the least I could do.
I shook my head, and Nearly lunged forward and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her eyes on fire and her face livid. She’d known exactly what I was thinking.
“She’s dead, Jack, and by the sound of it, that was your fault. It was your fault because you wouldn’t leave something alone, and now you’re going to do exactly the same thing and this time it’ll be you who gets killed. You think she would have wanted that? You think that’s going to make things better?”
“You have no right to use Henna like that,” I shouted, prising her hands from my jacket. “It’s none of your fucking business and Vinaldi shouldn’t have told you about her.”
“Fuck Henna!” she spat. “Henna’s dead. I’m not speaking on her behalf. I’m speaking for me. I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t care what you want,” I said loudly, and heard the words drop like coins into a well without bottom.
“It’s because I’m a whore, isn’t it?” Nearly said. “Because I sell it to earn a living. We all like the idea of a woman who enjoys fucking but we don’t want them if they’ve ever been with anyone else, right?”
“It’s got nothing to do with that,” I said quietly, and I think I was telling the truth.
“Yeah, right.” She slugged the last of her drink down. “Well, hey, Jack—finish the rest of the wine by yourself.” She stood, snatched her cigarettes from the table, and then looked down at me, utterly furious. “Maybe it’s better you go off and play tomorrow after all,” she said. “Otherwise that’s all it’s ever going to be, Jack. Finishing the wine by yourself.”
As she walked toward the door I stood up, too, suddenly afraid.
“Don’t go like this,” I said, reaching out to grab her shoulder. She slipped out from under my hand and kept going. “Can’t we be friends?”
Her face was hard, and she looked like someone I’d never seen.
“Friends is no use to me, Jack. I’ve got friends. I don’t need any more. What I need is someone who’ll light up the woods so I can find a place to stay.”
I blinked. “What made you put it like that?”
She shrugged. “Who gives a shit? It’s just a phrase, like ‘Hey, we can still be friends.’” Her eyes ran over me, as if capturing something. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and dull. “No, I don’t want to be your friend, Jack. You’d be a lousy friend. For a start, you’re going to be dead, and dead people never return your cal Is.”
She grabbed my face in her hands, and kissed me hard on the lips. It wasn’t tender, or forgiving. It was fierce and uncompromising, the flip side of a punch in the mouth.
“Good bye and fuck off,” she said, and walked out of my life.
I sat in Howie’s office until six, then went into the bathroom. I stood in front of a mirror and shaved, and when I was finished with each itemi I threw it into the trash. Shaving cream, razor, comb, toothbrush. Then I examined my reflection for a while. I looked like an alien.
The bar droid told me Howie had gone to bed. I got it to serve me a coffee and drank it sitting at the bar.
The room was almost empty, just a lone couple sat at a table in the corner, come in for an early coffee on the way to work. They were holding hands, and something told me they’d just spent the night together for the first time. The girl’s hair was still wet from its morning wash, her normal routine disrupted; his cheeks were pink from using a razor found lying around in her bathroom, feeling oddly unsettled, wearing yesterday’s shirt and smelling of someone else’s deodorant. Neither of them seemed quite sure what to say, how to be, as they struggled to deal with suddenly widened perceptions of someone they saw every day at work. Confused memories of the night before; of the shock of so much skin.
The cat I’d pulled from the abandoned Farm was also there, curled up asleep in one of the corners. I was glad it had found a home. It would never want for peperoncinos, at least.
A little while later the young couple stood up, hesitated, and then held hands as they walked out the door.
I thought about leaving a note for Howie, but I couldn’t find any paper and I didn’t know what I would say. Seven o’clock, I left the bar and walked to an xPress elevator. There was very little life on the streets. The only place doing business was a Chinese restaurant with a variety of tired-looking dishes sitting in hot plates in front of the window. The restaurant was called the Happy Garden, but it didn’t look like a Happy Garden. It looked like a Pretty Miserable Garden. It looked like the kind of place Schopenhauer would have enjoyed during the period when he had a bad urinary infection.
At 100 I showed my fake pass to the guys standing there. Their eyesight wasn’t as good as the one who’d stopped me with Vinaldi, or maybe they just cared less; either way, I got through and made it up to 104.
Golson was still half asleep when he opened the door, but woke up rapidly on seeing me.
“Whoa, big dude,” he said. “You’re turning into a regular feature.”
“You got someone with you?”
“Yeah,” he said, smirking. “Sandy came back for some more.”
“Get rid of her,” I said, shouldering past him into the apartment. It was beginning to feel like a second home. Golson scuttled after me as always, making small and unimportant bleats of disagreement.
“Hey, man—I can’t do that. I promised to take her to the Memorial as my guest. That’s why she came with me last night. She kept her side of the bargain—she ain’t going to leave now for no man.”