Wasn't gonna happen.
So Eddi came around to Vin's.
Vin hobbled from the door after opening it. One leg. Too lazy, too drunk to put on his prosthetic. A technological wonder purchased through the generosity of others, and it did nothing more spectacular than prop itself against a wall.
A look around the apartment upon entering. You gotta, Eddi thought, be kidding. A scattering of newspapers that worked as something of a floor guard, as a layer of receptacle for whatever rubbish Vin seemed to feel had to be discarded right there. And Vin seemed to feel there was a lot of rubbish that needed to be discarded right there. Fast-food wrappers. A gang of empties. A bad stink was all around. All of that was noticed after Eddi got past, finally got past how bloated Vin had gotten. A repository of bad eats, fermented drink, with nothing like ambition to bum any of it off.
Once Eddi found a spot to settle, Vin got into some dry crying remembering Soledad: Can't believe she's gone. Iron woman. She was like some kind of… Christ, never thought she… I can't imagine life without…
And Eddi just sat where she was, sat and gave a couple of "C'mon, don't do that's." She was patient with Vin's drunken exudation of woe. Patience was a chore. At the core Eddi got his hurt, had once shared it, but she had already put it on display with Soledad's mother. Wasted it on Soledad's father. Eddi couldn't go back to that well a third time. Now her needs were more practical than cathartic. What she needed, she needed information. Vin probably had some, and she didn't feel like slogging along miles and miles of self-pity to get at it.
Swatting aside all of Vin's blubbering: "What was Soledad doing over at DMI?"
"… Wha…»
"At DMI. You know what she was doing, what she was working on?"
Vin sat a moment. He was waiting for a translation. From English to… whatever it was he was capable of comprehending in his state.
"She was… it was DMI stuff. I guess it was. If she was at DMI, what else is she going to-"
"But what? What kind of an assignment? Did she talk to you about it at all?"
"No."
Brushing fingers across her lips, taking a minute to think. "What about… you ever hear her say anything about the end of fear?"
"… I don't…"
"C'mon, Vin. A phrase like that? You'd remember if you heard It."
"I can't-"
"You're a cop. Think. Remember." Mopping a hand over his sweaty face. "Vin, remember!" Nothing from Vin.
Eddi was up, moving around the room. Newspaper crunching under her feet. Riding wild frustration. Working at keeping from kicking down a wall.
Vin knew he was the eye of her ire. Like a kid that'd done wrong, he tried to explain away his delictum.
"It's a bad time for me," Vin said. "You come in here demanding shit. And I'm, I'm going through-"
"What are you going through that nobody else is except a dry-out?"
"I lost my wife." The words left a trail of saliva that flopped around on his lower lip, dripped to the floor.
"She wasn't your wife."
"She was gonna be!"
"You know why?" Moving right at Vin, rolling right up on him. "She felt sorry for you. She felt so fucking sorry for you and your one-legged booziness she would waste her freedom on marrying you. Not even marrying you-"
Vin tried to get up, move away. One leg. He wasn't going anywhere. Eddi, hot, grabbing him, throwing him back in the chair that was his domicile. No, he wasn't going anywhere at all.
"She wasn't marrying you, she was throwing you a lifeline. And what do you do with her memory? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing."
"Don't fucking say that!" Vin squirmed around in the cushions same as if he was trying to dodge Eddi's words. "She loved me. She did. I lost her, lost, lost my body," rubbing at his stump, "lost everything. You stand there, shit, you stand, and you tell me how I gotta feel? You don't know how much she meant to me. You didn't lose what I lost."
She moved. A step back. One more. Eddi slipped off her jacket. Without hesitation, preparation, pulled up her shirt. Reached behind and unhooked her bra.
Vin didn't look, couldn't look. Scared of Eddi, naked but standing unashamed.
She said: "Look at me." Vin could not. "Vin, look at me."
His head came up, a tangle of his hair was foreground in his vision. The wet in his eyes made Eddi look so slick she glistened. A warrior princess with a Hollywood shine.
Eddi capped her hands over her nipples. Her left breast was pulled back slightly. Along the curve, tattooed in simple letters: we don't need
another hero.
From Reese to Soledad. Soledad to Eddi.
"Told her she should've checked you more carefully," Vin said. "She would've hated that. She hated hero worship."
"I don't worship her."
"Just woke up one morning with that on your
tit?"
Eddi slipped back on her bra. She put back on her shirt. "I know what you've lost, Vin. I've lost as much. But I'm not going to be careful with your hurt, hand you any soft, feel-good bullshit about her. I've read her dia… journal. Whatever. And the shit that's in there… Soledad was, she was empty. She was an empty human being. It's like emotion was beyond her.
Only thing that filled her was guilt for being lucky enough to live when half of San Francisco died. Can you imagine that, Vin, haling yourself because you're not dead? And it was killing her. Guilt was killing her. Before that freak snapped her neck, guilt took her life way back."
A very lonely thought. Lovely in its pathos.
"I admire what she stood for. But don't tell me I worshipped that." Eddi asked again: "Tell me everything you can about Soledad and DMI."
"Soledad…" Vin pulled back his hair. Tangled. Dirty. Uncombed. It just flopped over his eyes again. "I don't know any more than you. They were doing surveillance on a freak. The cops got caught out. The freak killed three of them. And Soledad."
"You know a cop named Tashjian?"
Vin shook his head.
"He's IA."
There was a thick booze haze Vin's memory was nearly useless against. He hacked at it, hacked at it…
What came to him: "He was… he investigated her. It was before you were MTac."
"She was cleared. The investigation was over. Why was Tashjian back in her life?"
Vin didn't know.
"The end of fear: You never heard that?" "You asked me already."
"I'm asking again. Did you ever hear that from
her?"
"I don't…" Vin realized: "She didn't talk to me. Not really. She'd spend all day sitting around with me, but she never… " And he knew: "She didn't love me."
"No, she didn't." Moving straight on from that: "Soledad wasn't working DMI just to work DMI. She was there for a reason."
"Why would you, why would you say-"
"Because it's the truth." Eddi refused to care about Vin's feelings, only wanted to know: "What was the reason Soledad was working DMI?"
" 'Cause her leg… I was… her leg was messed up. That's why."
"Yeah, getting hit by the car was an accident. Her being at DMI; Tashjian was taking advantage of the situation. She didn't trust him."
"What, what situation?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be here. Christ, dry up and help out."
"Help what? Help you be bitter?"
"I'm trying to find out what happened to Soledad."
"She died. She got herself killed!" Vin's delivery dived in and out of rage and extreme sorrow. "And you can't deal with that. You can't deal that your goddess was dark and cold and a brute. You can't handle she let a freak get the best of her. So you've gotta start dressing things up different than they are. Gotta, gotta get it in your head the same guys who took out the Kennedys and King got Soledad. Otherwise she was nothing but normal, and all the time you spent jerking to her was wasted." Vin was taking a spiral right for sloppy, starting to process the truth about Soledad: Her affection for him was just more of her own guilt. "Well, here's the deal, Eddi: Soledad was just like the rest of us, life-sized and not an inch bigger. She was a cold bitch and she fucked up and now she's dead. That's all there is."