She said: "They're not creeps."
"Yeah. They're normal guys who-" "They're not creeps."
The smile slipping from Eddi's face: "Just joking around, Soledad."
"Except what we do," hitting the "we," making it very much come off as "not you," "isn't a joke."
"You get DMI branded on your ass too?"
"I've worked both sides. Maybe you ought to before you start making judgments."
From Eddi, a cold, cold look. Then a smile, but that, too, was frozen. And sharp.
"Know something, Soledad? One day you and me are going to talk. Maybe not long. Couple of minutes. But we're going to talk about something. And when we get done talking, we're going to realize we went that couple of minutes without just about getting into a fistfight. Then we'll go out and celebrate. Only, it won't be much of a celebration because, I'm guessing, before we get to the champagne you and me'll get into an ass-kicking contest."
"Other than I think champagne is for little girls, I'm looking forward to it."
'The lack of argument or the ass kicking?"
"Sweetie, we get into some ass kicking, you'll be too busy getting your ass kicked to argue."
And that turned Eddi's smile warm.
Raddatz came back around. Seeing that, Panama felt comfortable enough to quit faking like he was doing something else and reengage.
Raddatz asked of Eddi: "Anything else for us, Officer?"
A moment's thought. A shake of her head. "I was saying to Officer O'Roark this one was pretty average. We got it, and everybody gets to go home. They should all be this good."
"Write it up and get it in."
"By tomorrow."
Raddatz departed without salutation. Panama and Soledad followed. "Soledad."
She turned back to Eddi.
Eddi didn't say anything else, made no move to close the distance between her and Soledad.
By her lack of action Soledad got that whatever else Eddi had to say wasn't for other ears. She made the cross back.
"This is going to sound a little weird. If it was some other DMI cree… If it was some other cops besides you, I wouldn't bother."
A little shrug, a little shake of the head from Soledad. She'd take it as it came.
"When we hit the terraformer, it looked scared." Eddi stood close to Soledad, went quiet.
For eyes that might be watching she tried to come off like she was being casuaclass="underline" a little leftover girl talk that had to get finished. "I don't mean the kind of scared four hot MTacs put into a mutie."
"Then scared how?"
"If I knew how, it wouldn't be weird to me." "Why are you telling me this and not Raddatz?"
Rocking on her heels, Eddi faked like she was without concern. "I guess I've got ego the same as anybody. So making something out of nothing; I can do without DMI thinking I'm all hysterical. But I've looked in the whites of enough freaks to know this one was, was scared of something besides us. Maybe it means something. Maybe it doesn't. More than those guys, I trust you to come to which is which. Get healthy, Soledad." A flick of her hand as a wave good-bye. "However you feel about me, I feel better when you've got my back."
Watching Soledad limp away, Eddi got an ill feeling. Her insides real quick got morbid and unwell. Eddi'd never seer. Soledad so busted up. Wasn't just that she was watching Soledad cane away with an odd rocking gait that was same as Vegas neon announcing Soledad was jacked. Wasn't just that Soledad'd been injured at all. Plenty of times Soledad had gotten the bad end of things. Less, maybe, than some MTacs, but enough so that the image wasn't alien to Eddi.
Soledad was busted in another way. She'd been always to Eddi a single-minded MTac out kicking ass. She was still emotionally myopic, was still putting her foot to tailbones. But she wasn't an MTac and didn't seem to be one in the most severe way possible. In a change-a-day world, Soledad had been a constant. The extreme variations between life and death Eddi was pretty sure she could handle. But in the dayto-day, aside from being extant or extinct, it was nice that some things always remained. Lucy was always going to screw things up, Ricky was always going to forgive her. Politicians were always going to set aside the public trust for cash or whores. Soledad was always going to be an MTac. Or not.
And what really made Eddi's ill feeling putrid, it wasn't going a few rounds with a mutie that changed things. It was not looking both ways when Soledad ran across a street.
It was extreme chance. It was real bad luck. It was not much of anything that changed everything.
Eddi was ready for major life changes. Eddi'd been through the sudden loss that robs survivors of good-byes, makes closure a quaint notion. That kind of shit makes every other unchanging thing a minor miracle.
Soledad limping away was one less miracle in Eddi's life.
Thursday was off for Soledad, She got up late thanks to the little white pill she took to help induce the sleep that otherwise rarely came to her. She went swimming. Worked out her bum leg. Hurt like hell. But she wasn't about to let herself go to waste. Laundry. She gave thought to going to a movie but couldn't find one she figured she could sit through without later regretting the two hours of her life, the nine dollars of her hard-earned she'd tossed away. She gave thought to calling Vin. Couldn't particularly think of anything to say to him different or new or somehow meaningful that wasn't covered in their last pseudo-conversation three or four days prior. She did send off an elongated e-mail to her mother. Soledad had plenty to say to her mother. A dark part of Soledad wondered if her mother was even really sick, or had just tumbled onto a grotesque way to build a relationship with her daughter. Errands were run and Soledad ate and watched the news. She eked out a few more pages of the Mailer book she'd spent closing In on a year and half "reading." She fucked around on the Internet for a while.
Eight months after his seventy-third birthday a guy fell in love for the first time all over again. A mother was told her child would not live to see the morning. An NBA hoops star who hadn't started let alone finished college, but still managed to pull in more than twenty mill a year, was refusing to take no for an answer from some girl he'd known all of three and a third hours. A guy who'd never wanted kids was taking his sons to the amusement park for the third time this year thanking God for them every step of the way as, ironically, they were the only things that gave his life meaning.
All this was happening across town, somewhere across the country. Somewhere beyond Soledad. Physically beyond her. Emotionally. In her time and space it was the most ordinary of days that passed utterly without significance. The kind of day, in another forty-eight hours, there would be little of it she would be able to recall with distinction if at all.
With absolutely nothing else to do, having wrung herself empty of every approximation of purpose, she lay in bed and let sleep come.
Sleep ignored the invitation.
Soledad debated taking a little white pill. Wasn't worried about getting hooked. She was worried only that when she ran out, more would be hard to come by as more required a prescription she didn't have. And taking the pills built up a resistance. As it was, beyond just the sleep they gave her, Soledad dug the knockout that came with the drugs. Made her think that death… yeah, it had to be respected, but there was no reason to fear it.
That quick, that easy, Soledad was thinking about death again.
Getting her mind off that, she settled on skipping the pill. Better to go a few sleepless nights than have them lose their sweet, sweet effect.
Soledad Say in bed. Ignored the urge to check and check and recheck the clock. Over a few hours maybe she slept a little, but probably she didn't. The phone rang. It was late. Or really early. Either way Soledad knew she wasn't going to care for what was waiting on the other end of the line.