“Sir—take your hands off the wall.”
I’ll admit it. I jumped.
Crash eased back, cool as can be, turned to the security guard who was standing in the doorway, and smiled. He held his hands out, palms forward, the universal I-give-up sign.
“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry at all. “My mistake.”
How long had she been standing there? Jesus. I wanted a hole to open up in the floor and swallow me, despite the fact that there was probably a basement full of mummies underneath. Sure, they were creepy dead bodies. But at least they wouldn’t have seen me liplocked with Crash.
I turned and headed back toward the gift shop, walking with giant strides to get out of there as quickly as possible without actually running. I didn’t stop until I was fumbling in the parking lot with my keychain, its half-dead battery and my automatic locks. Crash went around to the passenger side, put his forearms on the roof, and rested his chin on his folded hands. Even though I was doing my best not to, I looked. He was still smiling.
“So,” he said. “Where do you want to go for lunch?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got things to do.”
The lock finally popped open. I could go to the car dealership and get the battery changed. There. I wasn’t lying. I did have things to do. For real.
We climbed into the car and snapped on our seatbelts. I could tell he was watching me, but I kept my eyes on the parking lot. There was a ghost on the lawn with a parasol and gigantic hair that looked like she could’ve been pretty old, 1800’s even, but I didn’t mention it. She was old, but not thousands of years old. I didn’t trust my voice to sound normal, anyway.
I merged onto the highway. Crash played with the radio. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. It wasn’t that “companionable silence” that you hear about all the time. I just suspected I’d get roped into a conversation I didn’t want to have if I asked him what the fuck it was he’d thought he’d been doing back there, but I couldn’t think of a single damn thing I could bring up to change the subject, either.
Traffic was light enough that I got back to Crash’s store before I exploded and sprayed gobs of skin, blood and brain on the windshield, so I supposed I should be thankful for that, at least. I double-parked in front of his building. Crash turned the radio down and stared through the windshield, looking thoughtful. “All that history,” he said, “I’m surprised there weren’t any spirits at the museum.”
“I didn’t say that. I said there weren’t any mummy ghosts.”
He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “You held out on me,” he said. Like he was surprised.
I shrugged.
“It really is that fucking easy for you.” He sort of looked like Billy Idol when he was mad and his lip curled like that, even though he hadn’t been born yet back when MTV-punk was in its heyday. He got out of the car and slammed the door. He lit a cigarette before he’d even made it to the sidewalk.
A car pulled up behind me and laid on the horn. Had I really been thinking about going after Crash and explaining myself? There wasn’t really much to say. If I piped up every time I saw a ghost, I’d never shut up. There was one at the corner, and another few wandering around in the grocery store parking lot across the street.
He didn’t realize how stupid it was to be jealous of my so-called talent. In terms of psychic ability, more is definitely not better, even for empaths. Who could stand to feel the weight of everyone else’s baggage as acutely as if it was his own? How would you ever know what you actually felt?
The car horn blared again. I did a quick check in my rearview, flipped on my blinker and pulled into traffic. The thought that Crash might actually know how I felt was something I didn’t want to dwell on. I did my best to channel all my mental energy into the phrase “really bad idea” whenever he got anywhere near me. So what was that kiss all about?
He probably had no idea how I really felt, not without a bunch of meditating and centering and whatever other maneuvers he had to go through to beef up his talent. He was just a level one, after all.
Stroke of Midnight
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Famous last words, I know. But originally we would’ve had four hands to carry the six-pack of microbrew and the sub platter. Then we got a call (okay, Vic got a call). There was a body, and he had to go…which left me by myself trying to figure out how to ring the doorbell. I could’ve knocked on it with my foot, but I really wasn’t in the mood to hear SWAT team jokes for the rest of the night. I really wasn’t in the mood to be there at all anymore, but it seemed better than sitting alone in that minuscule apartment with a platter full of subs.
I managed to connect my elbow with the doorbell, and pretty soon a silhouette filled the frosted glass window. I hoped it was Manny. That surprised me. Keith might’ve been the one I’d known forever, but Manny had an easygoing way about him that Keith had never managed. Sure, Keith tried, or maybe he just tried to fake it, but all those bitchy remarks he made and then later claimed to be “just kidding” about, all the backhanded compliments and derisive eye-rolls—they added up. The front door opened. Keith. “Oh, here, let me get that.” He wrangled the platter through the door, then did a sudden stop as I mounted the single stair so he could peer over my shoulder. “Where’s this Victor person we’ve been hearing so little about? Parking the car?”
“He got called in. You’ll have to make do with me.”
He shooed me in out of the cold and bumped the door shut with his hip. “And what have we here? Alcohol and nitrates? Very decadent. And just in time—there’s been some grumbling about the gazpacho.” Civil enough. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. A pleasant new leaf. He leaned over the platter and kissed me on the cheek, then headed for the dining room.
Whatever snow had landed on my leather jacket beaded up into water droplets in the heat of the foyer, and I shook them off before I tucked my coat into the closet. If Vic were there, I would have mentioned how nice it would be to actually have a coat closet. If he were there.
Either the dining room was packed, or the helium balloons crowding the ceiling with their curlicue ribbons dangling down made it feel that way. Or both. There were guys from the gym, guys from the bar. Keith’s sister Marie and a few of her friends. No guys from the force, other than me. There weren’t enough of us to make up a demographic.
“Look, it’s Jacob,” Manny called out from across the dining room table. He’s the kind of guy who really knows how to make you feel welcome. Keith did good, landing someone like him. Manny rounded the table, hugged me, and kissed me on the corner of the mouth with champagne on his breath. “And where’s your secret boyfriend?”
“He had to work.”
Manny clucked his tongue and quirked his eyebrows. He’d never been a cop. “What’re we gonna do with you, Jakie-pie? We’re starting to think you’re ashamed of us. All we’ve got on your mystery man so far is a quick peek across the grocery store parking lot.”
“And you call yourself a P.I.”
He leaned into me and pressed his mouth to my ear. He was a grabby drunk. Charming, but grabby. “He’s deliciously tall. And cute.”
“I thought you said you only got a quick peek.”
“So color me observant.”
Marie looped some strings of Mardi Gras-type beads around my neck, black, silver and gold, and Keith pressed a glass of champagne into my hand. “Any chance loverboy will make it by Midnight?”
“Doubtful. 10-71.”
Keith furrowed his brow. “Stray animal?” Maybe Manny’s sense of humor had finally started to rub off on him. He finished his champagne and took another glass from the pyramid of flutes on the table. “Let’s see. What kind of PsyCop would they send to investigate a shooting? Precog? Telepath?”
“Keith, stop it.”
“Oh. It’s classified.” His voice went cold enough to chill the champagne in his hand. Maybe it hadn’t been humor at all. Maybe he’d just been trying to lull me into a
false sense of camaraderie so I’d be wide open when he took his shot. You’d think I would expect it by now. “I’m sure a civilian like me couldn’t possibly handle knowing what your secret boyfriend’s talent is—card tricks or spoon-bending.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.” Jealous of me for staying on the force, or jealous of Vic for settling down with me? Hard to say. But right after I said it, I regretted it. Keith was working through big-time anger, the resentment of being squeezed out of the Twelfth. Officially, he could have dug in his heels and stayed. With that temper of his, though, I couldn’t say I was surprised when he hadn’t.
A deafening noise ripped through the house. Saved by the bell. Keith gave me a faux laugh, tossed his head, and went to see why an alarm was going off in his kitchen. I lost myself in the press of the crowd that was razzing Manny for not knowing how to use his own broiler, and joined in the cheer when Marie climbed on the countertop and knocked the batteries out of the smoke detector with the Swiffer handle.
We all dispersed to open the windows. It was below zero out, but the small bungalow had been so packed with bodies that the cold air was a relief. I went into the back hall and undid the chain and deadbolt on the outer door to see if it was too cold for me to prop it open and channel some of the smoke out into the yard.
Your typical inner-city Chicago backyard won’t make the cover of Better Homes & Gardens. There’s the utility poles, the rat-control garbage cans, and the inescapably seedy alley that connects them all. But Keith’s yard had this untouched blanket of snow that sparkled under the streetlight, the way snow does when it’s cold enough to sting—and it was pretty. Pretty enough to keep me there despite the ice forming in my beard.
The door to the kitchen opened and someone slipped into the hall. Keith, I thought at first, back to revisit my jealousy comment. But the body language was all wrong. Manny, then. They’re built alike, and both dark-haired and dark-eyed, but aside from the generalities, they’re very different. Manny’s a quarter Guatemalan, so his features are more exotic. Also, I don’t feel like strangling Manny. “Whoo, it’s nasty out here. Good thing I’m fortified with champagne against the cold.” He pulled a pack of smokes down from a shelf that held peat pots and gardening gloves and offered me a cigarette.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you still smoke.”
“They say it’s harder to kick than heroin.” He lit up, took a drag, and blew a stream of smoke over my shoulder. “The ball’s gonna drop in Times Square in a couple of minutes. I’m sure Marie and her girlfriends will be happy to kiss you. It’ll be ninety percent platonic, too. Well, maybe eighty-five. Cherise might slip you some tongue.”
I sighed. My breath left a trail of vapor almost as sharp as Manny’s cigarette smoke. “Speaking of slipping things in…lately your boyfriend’s been sneaking so many digs into our conversations, they’re more hostile than not.”
“He’s just jealous because your new man still has hair.”
“Keith looks decent with a shaved head. He has a good skull for it.”
“Sometimes that’s all it’s good for.” Manny dropped his cigarette into a terra cotta strawberry pot where it snuffed itself in the snow with a long hiss. “Just ignore him, baby. You know how he is.”
I did. I suppose I hadn’t really expected him to act differently. Not with champagne involved.
Manny said, “Private practice ain’t nothing like being a detective. People are a lot less likely to call on Keith to do their dirty work now that they gotta pay him out of their own pockets.”
“If he misses it, maybe he should—”
“Uh-uh. No way. My name is on the mortgage and that’s how it’s gonna stay. I’m not going back to sneaking around ’cos my boyfriend’s a cop.” He slipped an arm around me and gave my ass a quick grope. “I already bragged about us to too many people to take it back. The way things went down…I gotta think they happened for a reason. Keith and that Sergeant Owens falling out, maybe it made him get his booty in gear and start his business. And the two of you, maybe you never caught on, but now he’s got me in all my fabulousness.”
Manny always knew how to make me smile. “That he does.”
“So what’s he got to bitch about?”
I followed him back inside and we congregated with everyone else in the slightly smoky living room. The ball dropping in Times Square looked as big as life on their massive TV. Marie and all her friends did kiss me, lipstick and champagne, and not too much tongue. It wasn’t really New Year’s Day yet, not in Chicago, however it seemed like once the ball dropped and everyone on the East Coast kissed and partied and set off fireworks, celebrations in the Midwest were more of a formality. Technically, it would be New Year’s Day in an hour—but it just wasn’t the same. Kind of like going through the motions of ringing in the New Year without Vic.
I was home by eleven thirty and in bed by quarter to twelve. I planned to read some of the paperback I was currently crawling through two pages at a time in an attempt to take my mind off of Keith. He might be pissed at me, though he’d never admit it, for staying at the Twelfth despite the grumblings of a few homophobes. But it was stupid of him to feel jealous. Now he set his own hours. No 10-71s on New Year’s Eve for him.
And like Manny said, maybe things did happen the way they did for a reason. I’d like to think we’re not just sacks of biological goo careening through a random universe.
My eyes burned; it’d been a long day. I rested the paperback on my chest and rubbed my eyes—closed them for a moment, only a moment, to rest. The quirky hangtime of pre-sleep stole over me where time stretched. My limbs felt weighted down, like maybe I could move them, but only with more effort than I was willing to expend.
So when Vic’s face filled my field of vision, I figured I was dreaming, that hyper-real sort of dream you have when you first fall asleep, the kind you only remember if something jerks you awake.
Like cold lips pressing against yours.
I snapped back into waking awareness with a big heave and a gasp. And I blinked. The room was its usual time-yellowed white, and Vic stood in the center, a pillar of dark in his black peacoat. His hair stuck out, glistening with melted snow, and he had a day’s worth of stubble that emphasized the cleft in his chin. He smiled down at me with a boyish grin that seemed like it shouldn’t even be able to exist in the same face as his usual scowl. “You fell asleep with the lights on. Didn’t you go to that party?”
“I put in an appearance. What about you—are you home for good?” Unlikely, since he would have hung his coat on the back of the kitchen door before he came into the bedroom if he was. But you never know. Maybe I’d been snoring and he wanted to call me on it, so he rushed in without ditching his coat.
No such luck. “It’ll be a couple more hours. The spirit took off fast, but we’ve gotta walk the grid and make sure we didn’t miss anything.” He glanced at the alarm clock, and I did too. Three minutes past twelve. “When I saw your car outside, I told Zigler I had to run up and take a pill.”
“That excuse’ll wear thin someday.”
“Someday,” he agreed. He bent over me and parted my lips with his tongue, then sucked my lower lip into his mouth and hummed as if I tasted good. It made me tingle all over. I thought about pulling him into bed with me—damp peacoat and all—and starting off the year on a high note; unfortunately there’s only so long I’d expect his Stiff to wait down there in the car.
When he pulled back, he cupped my face in his palm. His fingers were like ice, but so what? I covered his hand with mine and stared up into his eyes. So blue. I’ve always been a total goner for blue eyes. “This wasn’t exactly the way I pictured tonight turning out,” he said, “but for some reason I feel pretty okay about it.”
“You got out of going to a party.”
He smirked. “That’s not what I mean.” He pressed his mouth to mine again, firmly—just lips this time, but with his hand still cupping my face and his fingers growing
warm. Our breath mingled. His stubble scraped my upper lip. When he finally pulled away, the ghost of his touch lingered on my cheek. “I think it’ll be a good year.”
“Pretty okay” and a cautious optimism was as wholehearted an endorsement as I was likely to expect from Vic. He gave me a parting glance over his shoulder—a naughty one, like he was thinking about waking me up again once he got home for good—and flipped off the overhead light. I lay there in his bed, his mattress that was too small for the both of us sagging toward my side of the bed, and stared at the ceiling. Though the light from the living room wasn’t shining in directly, I could see well enough. Awful room. Small and cramped, with a dozen coats of economy white paint laid on so thick the detail in the crown molding was gone.
Awful apartment, when it came right down to it. The hallway smelled like boiled cabbage, the bathroom was so narrow I could hardly turn around in it, and the furniture was all slightly out of plumb because the pressboard was starting to work loose from the screws that held it together.
I had no idea how long we’d be stuck there. The only property we could both agree on was bound up so thick with red tape we might never unravel it all. For the foreseeable future, this four-room flat was home.
Home.
Our bed now, our room, our apartment. So despite the fact that my living situation hadn’t turned out exactly like I’d always pictured it, I was “pretty okay” with it too.
No Sale
Shopping malls don’t tend to be haunted. They’re too new. Too frequented. Too high-profile for your average murder, with security cameras everywhere. And don’t forget the mall cops.
These little boutiquey joints in Boystown where Jacob wears out the magnetic strips on his credit cards, on the other hand….
PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1 Page 3