Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the fuck out of that guy had been an incredible turn-on — Manny wasn’t sure what that said about him, but there you go.
And she was so going to lie, he thought. Tell her people that he was scrubbed. Say that she’d taken care of things.
Payne had found the solution that worked: He had his mind, she had her legs, and no one was the wiser among her brother and his ilk.
Yup, everything was taken care of. All he had to do now was spend the rest of his life pining after a female he should never have met. Piece of fucking cake.
An hour later, he got into his Porsche and headed back for Caldwell. Driving by himself, the car seemed not just empty but a wasteland, and he found himself putting the windows up and down. Wasn’t the same.
She didn’t know where he lived, he thought. But that didn’t matter, did it. She wasn’t coming back.
God, it was tough to decide what would have been harder: A long protracted good-bye where he looked into her eyes and bit his tongue to keep from talking too much? Or that short, rip-the-Band-Aid shit?
Sucked either way.
At the Commodore, he went underground, parked in his spot, and got out. Hit the elevator. Went up to his apartment. Walked in. Let the door close.
As his cell phone went off, he fumbled to take it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number, he cursed. Goldberg from the medical center.
He answered without any enthusiasm. «Hey.»
«You picked up,» the guy said with relief. «How are you?»
Right. So not going there. «I’m okay.» When there was a pause, he said, «And you?»
«I’m good. Things have been. .» Hospital. Hospital. Hospital hospital, hospitalh ospit alhosp. Ital hospit alhospital. .
In one ear, out the other. Manny did get busy, however. He went to the bar in the kitchen, took out the Lag, and felt like he’d been punched in the head when he saw how little was in the bottle. Leaning into the cabinet, he took out some Jack from the back that had in there so long there was dust on the cap.
Sometime later, he hung up the phone and got serious about the drinking. Lag first. Jack next. And then it was a case of the two bottles of wine that were in the fridge. And what was left of a six-pack of Coronas — that had been left in the pantry and weren’t cooled.
His synapses, however, didn’t recognize any difference between alcohol that was lukewarm and the shit that was chilly-chilly.
All told, the festival of consumption took him a good hour. Maybe longer. And it was highly effective. When he grabbed the last beer and started for the bedroom, he walked like he was on the bridge of the Enterprise, shuffling left and right. . and then listing back again. And even though he could see well enough with the city’s ambient light, he ran into a lot of stuff: By some inconvenient miracle, his furniture had become animated and the shit was determined to get in his way — everything from the stuffed leather chairs to the—
«Fuck!»
— coffee table.
Annnnnnnnnd the fact that he now was rubbing his shin as he went along was like adding a set of roller skates to the party.
When he got to his room, he took a slug from the Corona to celebrate and stumbled into the bath. Water on. Clothes off. Stepped right in. No reason to wait for the hot stuff; he couldn’t feel anything anyway, and that was the point.
He didn’t bother to dry off. Just walked over to the bed with the water dripping off his body, and he finished off the beer as he sat down. Then. . whole lot of nothing. His alkie meter was spiking really frickin’ high, but it had yet to reach critical mass and knock him the fuck out.
Consciousness was a relative term, however. Although he was arguably awake, he was utterly unplugged — and not just because of the alcohol/blood count he was sporting. He was out of gas on the inside in the most curious way.
Falling back on the mattress, he supposed now that the Payne situation had resolved itself it was time to start pulling his life back together — or at least give it a shot tomorrow morning, when his hangover woke him up. His mind was fine, so there was no reason he couldn’t go back to work and make it his business to put distance between this fucked-up interlude and the rest of his normal life.
As he stared at the ceiling, he was relieved when his vision got fuzzy.
Until he realized he was tearing up.
«Fucking pussy.»
Wiping his eyes, he was absolutely, positively not going there. Except he did — and he stayed. God, he missed her to the point of agony already.
«Fucking. . hell—»
Abruptly, his head shot up and his cock swelled. Looking out through the sliding glass door onto his terrace, he searched the night with a desperation that made him feel like the mental crazies were back.
Payne. .
Payne. .?
He struggled to get up off the bed, but his body refused to budge — like his brain was talking one language and his arms and legs couldn’t translate. And then the hooch won, pulling a Ctrl-Alt-Del and shutting his program down.
No rebooting his ass, however.
After his lids crashed shut, it was lights-out, no matter how hard he fought the tide.
Outside on the terrace, Payne stood in the cold wind, her hair whipping around, her skin tingling from the chill.
She had disappeared from Manuel’s sight. But she hadn’t left him.
Even though he had proved capable of taking care of himself, she wasn’t trusting his life to anyone or anything. Accordingly, she’d coated herself in mhis and stood on the lawn at the equine hospital, watching him speak with the police and the security guard. And then when he’d gotten in the car, she had followed, dematerializing from spot to spot, tracking him thanks to the small amount of blood he’d tasted of her.
His trip home had culminated in the depths of a city that was smaller than the one that she had seen from his car, but was still impressive, with its tall buildings and paved streets and beautiful, soaring bridges that spanned a broad river. Caldwell was indeed lovely at night.
Would that she had come for aught but an invisible good-bye.
When Manuel had pulled into some kind of underground facility for vehicles, she had let him go on his own. Her purpose had been served when he had safely reached this destination so she’d known she had to depart.
Alas, however, she had tarried down at street level, standing in her mhis, watching the cars go by and seeing pedestrians cross corner to corner. An hour had passed. And then some more time. And still she couldn’t leave.
Giving in to her heart, she had gone up, up, up. . honing in on where Manuel was, taking form on this terrace outside his home. . and finding him in the midst of leaving the kitchen to walk through his living room. Clearly unsteady on his feet, he kept running into pieces of furniture — although likely not because the lights were off.’Twas the drink in his hand, no doubt.
Or more accurately, all the drink he’d taken in addition to it.
In his bedroom, he didn’t disrobe so much as dishevel himself out of his clothes, and then he was into the shower. When he emerged dripping wet, she wanted to cry. It seemed so very hard to comprehend that merely a day separated her and him from the time she had first witnessed him thus — although, indeed, she felt as if she could almost reach through time and touch those electric moments when they had been on the verge of. . not just a present, but a future.
No longer.
Over at the bed, he sat down. . then fell over onto the mattress.
When he went to wipe his eyes, her devastation was complete. And so was her need to go to him—