by Sara Reinke
“Thanks,” she said, exhaling a quick, smart stream of new smoke.
“No problem,” he replied. The bartender returned with his whiskey, and Paul fished his billfold out of his pocket. The girl remained at his side, sharing the cut-glass ashtray between them, and he glanced at her. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Christ, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d used a bullshit line like that, but he must not have delivered it too cheekily, because the blond girl smiled again, meeting his gaze and keeping her eyes fixed on his. “I’d like that, thanks.”
He had no idea how long they stood together at the bar, talking. In the dream, it felt like hours. Songs came and went, drinks were ordered and down, over and over, long into the night. Her name, he learned, was Aimee, and she had come to the club that night with a gaggle of girlfriends who had hoped, in vain, to cheer her up following a recent break-up. The friends, it seemed, had all hooked up―running off with her lighter in the process―and leaving her fairly well stranded.
“They meant well,” she said with a shrug, taking a long sip from her latest in a long line of tequila sunrises. She smiled somewhat sadly. “But I don’t think I’m going to feel up to meeting anyone again for a long time.”
“Don’t give up on all of us,” he told her. She’d run out of cigarettes, and started smoking his. He offered her one, holding out the flip-top pack to her, and she smiled into his eyes as she slipped one out.
“Maybe I won’t,” she said.
He dreamed that they went out to his truck together, that in the darkened parking, they tangled together, kissing and clutching at one another. He dreamed that he pushed her back against the side of his truck, the passenger’s side door standing open wide, and that he kissed her deeply, delving into her mouth with his tongue, leaving her whimpering, clutching at his shoulders and hair. He touched her breasts, his hands reaching desperately, urgently up beneath her shirt, falling against her warm, soft flesh, and she moaned against his lips, arching her back. His arousal was nearly painful, straining against the confines of his jeans, and he wanted her. It had been too long since he’d been with a woman last, and he wanted to bury himself inside of the girl, to take her right there in the parking lot, in the front seat of his truck.
This has to be a dream, he thought. This can’t be real it can’t be
He moved his hands, pulling his shirt tails loose from his jeans so he could unbutton his fly. His fingers brushed against something tucked in the back of his waistband, and he blinked in momentary surprise as he curled his hand around the slim grip of a stun gun. Touching it was like being doused with ice-cold water. He’d been overwhelmed with lust, so ready, willing and eager to take the girl, he was surprised he hadn’t thus far shot off in his pants. But the moment his hand touched the barrel of the stun-gun, it was over, utterly extinguished. He remembered. He didn’t own a stun gun; didn’t know where it might of come from, but he remembered what he meant to do with it, what purpose had brought him to the nightclub that night. He pulled it out, but she didn’t even notice. She was too involved in kissing him, in grinding herself against him, mewling at him in implore.
He pushed the twin prongs of the stun gun against the flat plain of her belly, and she paused, stiffening against him, her breath drawing still in momentary confusion. It was all he allowed her. He flexed his finger against the trigger, and saw a wink of bright blue light as the electrical charge seared through her. She jerked against him, convulsing violently, uttering a choked, sodden caw that he muffled with his firm kiss. He pressed her firmly against the truck seat and shocked her again, holding her to prevent her from crumpling to the ground as her knees failed her. He shocked her a third time and heard a spattering of something wet against the ground, felt hot dampness on his pantleg as she involuntarily voided her bladder of the tequila sunrises he’d bought her.
Once she’d stilled, any cries of protest faded to a thin, gurgling croak from her throat, he reached over her for the glove compartment. He popped it open and pulled out a Ziplock bag. Now he remembered. He didn’t know how he could have forgotten. He’d been distracted inside the club because she’d looked so much like Vicki. He’d been distracted in the parking lot, because it’d been too long since he’d been laid, and his lust had overpowered him. He remembered now, though, and he opened the Ziploc bag, pulling out the square of cloth he’d soaked in chloroform earlier.
“Please…” the girl, Aimee, whispered. She was barely conscious, utterly paralyzed, her arms and legs twitching involuntarily, her shoulders shuddering.
“Don’t give up on all of us,” he told her again, and then he pressed the cloth over her mouth and nose, holding it there until she had succumbed to the vapors and passed out.
* * *
“Uncle Paul?”
Paul jerked, his eyes flying wide at the sound of Emma’s voice. He was bewildered and alarmed to find himself standing in his living room, facing the front door of his apartment, his hand against the knob. What the hell…?
“Uncle Paul?” Emma said again, her voice wavering and uncertain.
He turned, blinking stupidly around the shadow-draped room. It was still night; the glowing clock on the DVD player said two thirty-seven. What the hell?
“Uncle Paul, where did you go?” Emma asked. She stood at the threshold between the corridor and the living room, her hair sleepily disheveled, her teddy bear, Mr. Cuddles, clutched in both hands against her chest.
Go? Paul blinked in new confusion. He glanced over his shoulder at the door and saw it was unlocked. Jesus, did I go somewhere? Was I sleepwalking? What the hell is going on?
For a moment, he didn’t remember, but then the dream returned to him in broken bits and fragmented images―the nightclub, the girl, the stun gun. He pressed the heel of his hand against his brow. That was just a dream. Just a goddamn dream. It wasn’t real.
But when he looked down, he realized to his bewildered dismay that he was still wearing his jeans and shirt from earlier in the evening, not his pajama bottoms. His shoes were still on. He patted his hip and felt his wallet still tucked in his pocket. Christ, if I open it, is it going to be short $40? He wondered. Because that’s what I dreamed I spent tonight―forty bucks in whiskey and tequila sunrises.
“Uncle Paul?” Emma whimpered, her voice little more than an anxious mewl.
He opened his eyes and realized he was frightening her. You’re not the only one, kiddo.
“I…I’m sorry, Emma,” he said, and he leaned toward a nearby endtable, switching on a lamp. He and the little girl both squinted against the sudden glow, and he struggled to smile for her. “I’m okay. I…I was just outside, smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t sleep.”
He pulled his cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket and shook it demonstratively. There had been almost three-quarters of a pack remaining in the box when he’d walked toward his room to go to bed earlier that night. Now, from the sounds of things, the pack was nearly empty. He flipped the top back and found only two cigarettes. That’s not possible, he thought, his face ashen. It was just a dream. Just a dream.
Emma still stood in the doorway, her large, dark eyes watching him apprehensively, and he tried to smile again as he pushed the pack closed and back into his pocket. They must have spilled out, that’s all, he told himself. Maybe I was sleepwalking. I haven’t been sleeping good, and that fight with Vicki had me all kinds of rattled. That’s all. Christ, that has to be all.
“I’m okay,” he said again, as much to his niece as himself. He held his hand out to her. “Come on, kiddo. It’s late, and you’ve got school tomorrow. Let’s go back to bed.”
She looked hesitant for a moment and then nodded, slipping her palm against his. “Okay,” she said.
He couldn’t tell if she believed him or not. Emma was an extraordinarily perceptive little girl, even if she didn’t really speak to the ghost of Paul’s dead mother. She wanted to believe the reasons he’d offered her, that much was obvious, but whether she, in fact,
did believe him was another matter entirely. And he couldn’t really blame her.
Because that’s how I feel, too, kiddo.
* * *
“I’m telling,” Bethany Frances said, sitting on the edge of her older sister’s bed and turning on the broad beamed, chrome flashlight she held between her hands. The spear of sudden, yellow light pinned M.K. as she ducked back through the bedroom window.
M.K. looked over her shoulder, squinting against the glare. “No, you’re not,” she growled, as she drew her long leg in over the open window pane. She wore strappy sandals with alarmingly high, wedge heels, tight-fitting jeans low enough on her hips so that the back of her thong panties showed when she bent over, and a halter top that looked like nothing more than a thin scrap of fabric tied behind her neck to cover her breasts. If their mother―or, worse, their father―knew that M.K. was wearing stuff like that, they would have sent her off to a convent.
“Yes, I am,” Bethany replied. She was fourteen, and M.K. was sixteen―although on that night, in that outfit, with her heavy sheaf of blond hair brushed straight and hanging loose to the middle of her back, M.K. looked a far cry closer to twenty-one. Which, Bethany figured, was exactly the point. “Mom said you could go on dates with Jeremy Laslow. She never said you could sneak out of the house and go clubbing with him. I’m telling.”
M.K. closed the window and wiped her hands on her jeans. “No, you’re not,” she said again. She frowned, reaching out and snatching the flashlight. “Turn that thing off, would you? Look, Mom doesn’t know I was gone, so there’s no harm. She’s sleeping. She takes those pills now at night―a bomb could go off and she wouldn’t know. And Dad isn’t here, so what difference does it make? Besides…”
She reached over Bethany’s shoulder, switching on her bedside lamp. Bethany could see she was wearing glittery eyeshadow and too much lipstick. She smelled like cigarette smoke and something fruity, like wine. M.K. smiled at her sister, hooking the corner of her mouth and one carefully manicured eyebrow in tandem. “Besides,” she said again. “If you tell, then you won’t be able to go with me next time. And Nathan Darcy was asking about you.”
Bethany blinked, any further protest stilled on her lips. Nathan Darcy was a junior, like M.K., while she was only a freshman. But she saw Nathan every day at band practice. He was first-chair trombone, and she played the clarinet. He would talk to her sometimes, rare but wondrous occasions that would leave her flushed from head to toe, her stomach all fluttering, her throat closed up.
“Nathan was there?” she asked, her voice nearly a gulp.
“Sure,” M.K. said. She walked over to her vanity table and sat down. She reached for her sandals, unfastening the buckles around her ankles. “He goes all the time. Everyone meets up at Snake Eyes.”
“But…that’s a bar,” Bethany said quietly, her eyes widening.
M.K. laughed. “No shit,” she said. She took off her earrings and slipped the large hoops into the drawer of her vanity.
“That’s a bar for gay people,” Bethany said.
M.K. laughed again. “No, it’s not. Gay guys go there, sure. Lesbians, too, sometimes. But Snake Eyes is an everybody bar. And they don’t check I.D.s too closely―that’s all that matters.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes and a Hello Kitty lighter out of the drawer and went back to her window. Bethany watched as she opened it again and then lit up. “You’re going to love it,” she said, exhaling a quick, smart stream of smoke. “They have a great big dance floor.”
“But I…I can’t get in,” Bethany said. How did you get in, M.K.? she wondered.
M.K. glanced at her, dropping a wink. “Sure you can.” She slipped the cigarette between her teeth and wedged her hand down into the impossibly tight confines of her back pocket. She pulled out a small, rectangular piece of plastic and tossed it beside Bethany on the bed. “I told you. They don’t check too closely.”
“It’s a driver’s licenses,” Bethany said, bewildered to find M.K.’s yearbook photo on it.
“I know,” M.K. replied as Bethany lifted the card and examined it. M.K. only had her permit. She didn’t know how to parallel park yet, and thus, had not taken her driving test.
“This says your name is Rachel Adams…” Bethany looked at her. “That you’re twenty-three?”
M.K. arched her brow again. “Pretty cool, huh?” she said, grinning. “I’ll get you one, too. Then you can go with us.”
Bethany’s eyes widened again. “No way,” she said, shaking her head. She dropped the license like it was hot enough to have burned her fingertips. “That’s illegal.”
M.K. shrugged, turning back to the window. She leaned out, presenting her ass to her sister so that Bethany could see the string of her thong straining up over top of the waistline of her jeans as she flicked her cigarette out into the yard. “Suit yourself,” she said, turning once more. “I guess I’ll tell Nathan you’re too chickenshit to come. He’ll have to find someone else to ask to the homecoming dance.”
All at once, Bethany couldn’t breathe. “You’re lying,” she squeaked.
M.K. shrugged again. “Whatever.”
Bethany watched as she wriggled out of her jeans. She folded them neatly between her hands and went to her closet, tucking them inside. She didn’t hide them, necessarily, but she went out of her way to make sure they were lost in the sea of other blue jeans, pants and tops, so that their mother wouldn’t notice them―or how low they were cut―if she went snooping. Not that Vicki Frances ever went snooping through her daughters’ things. Ever since the divorce from their father, it seemed like all she did was work anymore.
A year ago, Vicki had been abducted by the Watcher. She’d survived, but she never talked about what had happened to her. He raped her, M.K. told a horrifed Bethany once. I bet that’s it. I bet Dad doesn’t even know. That’s why they got a divorce, though, and why she takes the pills. Because she can’t stop thinking about it.
Vicki took sleeping pills, and M.K. was right; when she was under their effects, there wasn’t much outside of a dousing of water that could rouse her.
M.K. unfastened the loose ties holding her halter top in place and hid it away, too. She slipped on an old, oversized T-shirt and then stepped discreetly out of the thong panties. These, she burrowed in a drawer, safe from prying parental eyes.
“Did he really say he wanted to ask me to the dance?” Bethany asked.
“Not exactly,” M.K. replied, catching her hair with her hands and pulling it out from beneath the collar of her shirt. “But he thinks you’re cute. I told him you were my sister and he asked me to bring you along next week. I told him you were too much of a baby―just a freshman, and wouldn’t do it, but he kept on asking. And he kept talking about the homecoming dance. You put two and two together.”
She let Bethany sit there and stew over that revelation for a long, fidgety moment while she returned to her vanity. She sat down, dunked a tissue down into a small jar of cold cream and began to dab at her eyes, removing the glittering eyeshadow and heavily applied mascara.
“So you still going to tell on me?” she asked after a moment, glancing at her sister through the vanity mirror. “Or do you want to go?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Paul was awake when the sun came up that morning, a glowing hint on the horizon. He’d dozed a little off and on through the night, but anything approaching real sleep had escaped him. After the dream he’d suffered, and the peculiar sleepwalking spell that Emma had snapped him out of, he’d been terrified to close his eyes for too long.
With the dawn came a new resolve to shake the incident from his mind. It was a goddamn dream, he thought. I was mistaken about how many cigarettes were in my pack. I was sleepwalking, that’s why my hand was on the doorknob. Nothing more.
He changed into a pair of cut-off sweatpants and a T-shirt and left the apartment. He ran every morning, a ten-mile circuit around the neighborhood. By the time he returned, Emma would need to get up and ready for school. It worked perfe
ctly. And Christ knew he needed the distraction of a long, fervent run.
He walked down the stairs of the interior foyer in his building, and paused by a bank of steel mailboxes to stretch his legs out. Once he was set, he pushed open the door and stepped out into the brisk, damp morning air. He stepped down from the building stoop and walked down the sidewalk, heading for the parking lot.
“Lieutenant Frances?”
He turned, startled by the beckon and was surprised to find Susan Vey, the new reporter―she of the perky breasts, nice ass and apparently overprotective brother―coming down from the stoop of the adjacent apartment building. She wasn’t wearing any make up, and her long hair was drawn back in a hastily secured knot at the base of her neck. She wore a plain white T-shirt that hugged the swells of her yet-perky breasts, and a pair of nylon jogging shorts that awarded Paul an all-too revealing glimpse of her long, pretty legs.
For a moment, he felt a pleasant warmth tingle through him, but then he remembered his dream from the night before
Don’t give up on all of us
of Aimee and her too-short skirt and miniature breasts, of the fact she wasn’t wearing panties and that she had been eager to let him fuck her in a nightclub parking lot…until he had shocked her with a stun gun, that is.
A stun gun I don’t own, he thought, closing his eyes and shaking his head once. Goddamn, I didn’t hurt that girl. She isn’t real. None of it was―it was just a damn dream.
“Lieutenant Frances, hi,” Susan said, catching up to him. She smiled brightly but seemed somewhat perplexed. “I thought that was you. I didn’t know you live here…?”
“Yeah, in one-oh-four,” he said, pointing to his building over her shoulder.
She laughed. “I’m in oh-five,” she said. “How funny! I just moved in last weekend. It’s a small world, huh?”