“Dance with me.”
I shook my head. “I’ve been doing some kind of drinking, darlin’.”
“It’ll be a slow dance.”
She led me to the floor. The joint was almost empty. Only a few boozehounds and ghosts were left.
And us. Fats the Jazzman had turned to pack it up, but I caught his eye.
“One last song, Fats.”
He nodded.
The mournful wail of the sax floated us across the floor for a few melancholy minutes. She pressed her cheek against my chest with her eyes closed, like the time lost between us had never existed. My hands started at the safe zone above the small of her back, but as the sax played on they drifted, much as we did. Across memory, across streams of unforgiving time.
“Do you like dragonflies?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“As much as the next man, I guess. Why?”
“That’s all the picjector plays on the walls of my hotel room.”
I wasn’t ready for the aggression, the almost hostile manner of her lovemaking. Ok, lovemaking wasn’t exactly the word for it. Lovemaking involves tenderness, affection displayed through pleasure. Soft moments combined with hard movements. The things we did in that hotel room of ours back when time didn’t exist.
Times had changed.
There was a sense of determination in the motion of her hips, an intent look in her eyes that never left my face. As holographic dragonflies flitted around us, she stayed on top the entire time, as if switching positions was a sign of weakness. She was a force of nature — a solar storm, and I was the hapless planet that happened to be in the way.
Only when my muscles stiffened, when my hands clenched the sheets and groans grated through my teeth, only then did she slow down and let the tempest inside of her pass on like the whisper of distant thunder.
Only then did she let me hold her.
Hours passed. The blinds in the windows glowed with the promise of morning.
I opened my eyes and she was leaving.
It’s funny. It wasn’t the sex that stood out clearly about that night. It was the profile of her slender back, the hair that fell across her face as she pulled on her stockings in the blush of the early sun.
I reached out to her. “You don’t have to go. Stay. Stay with me for a little while. We haven’t even talked—”
“I have to go. It’s ok. It’s better like this.”
I felt the flush of anger scald my face. “What’s the point, then? Why look me up after all this time?”
She turned slightly. Shadows brushed stripes across her face. “I… just wanted to see you again. Think of it as a thank you.”
I scrubbed fingers through my hair. “For what?”
Those beautiful dark eyes never blinked. “For being the only honest man I’ve known.”
Depression stepped up once again to punch me right in the kidneys. Whoever said words don’t hurt should be beaten bloody with sticks and stones.
She tilted her head as she studied me. “Remember what you told me when I asked you if it would always be like that? Perfect, I mean?”
I winced. “I remember being bad news. I didn’t mean—”
She held up a hand. “You were right. I didn’t know it at the time, but… you were right. At least you knew. At least you could tell me the truth.”
I looked in her eyes and saw other men. Men who’d expressed their insecurities with fists to her face, men who’d promised her love and given her lies. Men who’d taken her self-worth and ran over it with a cement truck.
I tried to take her hand. “Baby, listen. If I had known—”
She pulled back. Not rudely, but firmly. I was on her terms, and she wasn’t about to show any weakness.
“You don’t have to apologize for anything. What’s happened has happened. But sometimes… I think of you, is all.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. Words weren’t strong enough to cross the gulf of time and circumstances that separated us.
The sadness in her smile spoke enough for us both.
“I got what I came for. Maybe I’ll see you around.” The door closed off any chance of reconciliation. Any promise of second chances.
And she did get what she came for. She had taken something from me, something I’d carelessly left rusting somewhere; one of those neglected valuable things you never miss until it’s gone. I only felt it when the door closed, when she tucked it under her arm as a keepsake of bygone times.
It’s funny how you measure your self-worth. A lotta men judge themselves by how many dames they’ve pulled, or the dibs in their account.
I always thought it was my ability to survive. I didn’t allow myself the luxury of feeling. I knew the damage it could do.
But when she walked away, she took that feeling of invulnerability with her. I’d been tagged like a boxer meeting the ring floor for the first time. The soapy smell of her skin clung to the bed sheets; the impression of her body mocked me like a vengeful ghost.
Scarlett was gone. In and out of my life in a flash, leaving only echoes. Footsteps that slowly faded.
The staccato of her heels down the hall…
Chapter 2: Knuckling Down
Getting punched through a window is a lot harder than they make it seem in the picture shows. First of all, folks tend to steer away from windows when they go fisticuffs. And since glass is harder to break than it looks, you gotta have one of two things going for you when you do get the prime location for a window buster: a heavy body on the receiving end of your fist, or one hell of a haymaker.
I had neither. But that was all right because I wasn’t the one performing the king of the ring imitation.
Poddar was.
I’d inherited Poddar as my illegitimate partner of sorts when his moll took over the lease of my foreclosed office. He was fairly tall, well built, and hailed from the region where India used to be, or so I figured. Nationality was a lot harder to determine when the Cataclysm basically wiped out the world so many centuries ago.
Even though Poddar was a bit square for my taste, one thing he was good at was putting the hurt to a body. I watched Johnny Knuckles sail out the window into the rainy night in a shower of glittering glass. He bounced once across the pitted asphalt and lay still, moaning.
I paused to light a gasper before strolling over. Poddar emerged from the cheap can house Johnny Knuckles had recently inhabited. The other boozehounds didn’t bother to get up to check the scene. We were in the West Docks, where behavior like punching a body through a window was the status quo. If there weren’t a few dozen nightly brawls, the entire area would probably riot to make up for the lack of carnage.
I tipped my Bogart at Poddar. “Nice punch, Ace.”
“It was a kick, actually.” Poddar had the kind of calm, polite voice that made people underestimate him. While he looked and sounded like he spent his spare time crocheting sweaters, he was actually a martial arts master who could snap your neck while quoting ancient poetry. It’s always the quiet ones you gotta watch out for.
We stood over Johnny Knuckles, who still lay on the rain-soaked ground like he’d been run over by a bulldozer. He was a baldheaded, hulking slab of muscles and distended veins, but he’d apparently decided might didn’t always make right. Not when going up against a fighter like Poddar.
Pretty smart for a common goon. Most don’t know when to call it quits.
I puffed contentedly. I’d always thought the smoking would catch up to me and I’d die alone in some dark alley coughing up my lungs. But after learning I had microscopic nanomachines repairing my body’s damage, I’d come to worry less about small things like dying of cancer. At least being an ex-member of the United Haven’s most notorious law enforcement agency had a perk or two.