Woke Up Dead

by Tina Wainscott

  “The heating and cooling system in this old building never did work right,” he said, looking out at the snow flurries clinging to the window.

  “Roasting in the winter, freezing in the summer.”

  He turned to look at her. “How did you know that?”

  “I mean, I can tell. It’s way too warm in here. The other part was a guess.”

  “Oh.” He nodded slowly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay. I’ll live.”

  He looked so good, wearing his faded blue jeans and white cotton shirt. He’d cut the other sleeve off so they’d match, and the muscles in his arms ripples as he clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “Do you remember anything more about the accident? Or why you came here?”

  She shook her head, immediately regretting the action when Sam and the entire room swayed like a rolling ship. She gripped the arm of the couch again, subtly so he wouldn’t notice.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, noticing anyway. Of course, he would. That’s what he did.

  She forced a smile. “I’m fine.” To prove it, she was going to walk to her desk and get the glass of water Shep had left there.

  “What are you doing?” he asked when she braced the arm of the couch to get up.

  “I want to stand for a minute.” Oh, to feel the floor beneath her feet—the hard, flatness of it. She had left her cream pumps by the door, so her feet were bare but for stockings. Her toes wiggled. Slowly, she pushed herself upward, feeling all those wondrous muscles in her legs group for action. Lifting her arms out for balance, she straightened and stood there for a moment. Sam wouldn’t understand the sheer joy at simply standing, but she could hardly hide it. This was all a precious gift beyond comprehension.

  “Are you sure your balance is all right?” he asked, coming closer.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure.”

  She eyed the water a good five feet away. She could do this. Her legs worked; it was her mind having a hard time accepting the simple motion. She took one step, then another, like a newborn learning to walk for the first time. Her legs started to wobble. Was there any way she could ask Sam to teach her to walk without sounding crazy? No, especially in light of her history of bounding the stairs three at a time. She took another step.

  “I’m dizzy, that’s all,” she said, not lying entirely.

  At each movement, the dull ache in her head thrummed louder.

  Sam walked casually closer, arms at the ready. She had an errant thought about pretending to fall so he’d wrap those arms around her again but nixed it. Then her legs really gave way. She grabbed for the desk, but he got to her first. She wanted to melt against him, but he steered her back to the couch and deposited her there.

  “Just as stubborn as ever,” he muttered as he helped her lower herself to the couch. Kneeling in front of her, he lifted one of her legs and started running his fingers over it. Chills scurried down the length of her leg, an exquisite feeling all around. This seemed terribly forward of Sam, who was usually quite laid back and not the touchy-feely kind.

  “Does this hurt?” he was saying as he pressed harder around her ankle.

  “No.” She watched his fingers circle her calf, thinking how erotic something so innocent could be. Even through clothing.

  “How about this?”

  “Nope. Er, exactly what are you doing?”

  “I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with your legs, and you’re too damned stubborn to admit it. How about this?”

  He was at her knee now, rubbing over the bony cap. A strange warmth spread through her when his fingers rubbed behind her knee.

  “Maxine?”

  “Mm? Oh. No, no pain there.”

  He went higher still, edging that warmth to more specific areas. What was going on with her body? Maxine’s body? No one had ever touched her so intimately before. Tingling sensations traveled from the tips of his fingers to her most private area. She wriggled, embarrassed at feeling such a thing. Embarrassed, but intrigued, too. Mid-thigh, he glanced up at her. How could he look so entirely innocent and intent when she was going crazy inside?

  “How about here?”

  “No,” she said, drawing out the word. “Sam?” He went higher, pressing his fingers into her thigh. The tingling increased, making her fidget even more. Yes, she wanted to get closer to him, but this was a little fast. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Sam.”

  “What? Stop moving around. What about here?” His fingers prodded at the ridge between her upper thigh and her crotch.

  She jerked so hard, that her bottom slipped off the couch, and she landed on the floor.

  He put his hands on his thighs, still kneeling in front of her. “What is your problem?”

  “I, well…don’t you think you’re getting a little fresh?”

  He rolled his eyes in that familiar way he had for all his loony clients. “Maxine, don’t you think it’s a bit late to be modest now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hell, woman, we were married for five years.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THIS WASN’T happening. That had to be the explanation. Either that or someone was playing one heck of a joke on her. But that someone would have to be God, and Jennie couldn’t imagine the Big Guy partaking in practical jokes.

  Sam had taken a phone call, giving her a minute to think. Maybe this was all a dream then. Jennie had dreamed about walking before, and it had felt so real, she’d woken up afterward and actually tried to walk. So she would again.

  She pinched herself in the arm to start the process. This dream was too bizarre to hang around in another minute. Both bizarre and wonderful. Then she pinched herself again. A cold chill washed over her. She wasn’t waking up. The smells, the sounds, everything seemed so real. Even the jingle of Romeo’s tags as he scratched his ear.

  Certainly the dull throbbing in her forehead felt real enough, along with the weight of the concrete block Sam’s words had produced in her stomach. Pushing herself up by her arms, she leaned against the arm of the couch and stood. Her legs felt sturdy, but her mind couldn’t accept that so easily. She glanced toward the door in Sam’s office; he was watching her in the mirror. Good grief, her legs were still tingling from his earlier touches. She took a tentative step toward her desk. Her weight held. Another step. Yes, this was working. Just like in one of those dreams.

  “You ought to see a doctor, Maxine.”

  Sam’s voice startled her, and she lunged for the corner of the desk for balance. This was silly, she knew. “I’m fine, really. You’d be surprised just how fine I am.” If this was somehow real.

  Sam walked up close and took her hands from the desk. She stood almost face to face with him, her hands tucked inside his. He was studying her eyes, looking for signs of insanity probably.

  It was the first time she had ever been anywhere near his height, except when they were both sitting down. She wanted to dance. It sounded strange even to her own mind, but she wanted to dance right then with Sam. It had been her dream, to dance on her own legs, to be held by a man. By Sam. If this was a dream, she could ask him and he’d grant her request. What made sense in dreams, anyway?

  “Sam, dance with me,” she said, tightening her grip on his hands.

  He lifted his eyebrows and looked at her as if a flock of doves had just alighted from her hair. “I’m calling a doctor.”

  This wasn’t a dream. “I was just kidding,” she said with a forced laugh. “I said it because of the way we’re standing.”

  He glanced down, then loosened his grip on her hands. “Go sit on that couch.”

  “I really was kidding,” she felt necessary to repeat. He was still giving her that skeptical look. “And I don’t want to sit down.” I’ve been sitting down for twelve years. Then she realized she was standing on her own. It was probably best to celebrate this internally. She wobbled but caught herself. The hardwood floor felt firm beneath her feet. She flexed her toes, trying hard to keep the smil
e from her face.

  “I really wish you’d sit down. You’re worrying me, standing there wiggling your toes and grinning like that.”

  She’d forgotten how observant the man was. “I’m fine.”

  He gave her a once-over. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

  He answered that in a kind of grunt, glancing out the window. She studied his profile, her heart tightening when she noticed that he looked different somehow.

  “You look tired,” she said, realizing that was one difference. And thin. Was he on a heavy case? She knew the food he ate when he was on a long surveillance: junk.

  He turned to her. “I’m tired, Maxine. Tired to the tips of every hair on my body.”

  She wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen him this tired before, this lackluster. Maybe it was the glum weather, which sapped everyone’s energy about this time of the year. The desk calendar still read January fifteenth, the day she’d fallen down the stairs.

  “Sam, what is today’s date?”

  He glanced at that calendar too, then looked away. “It’s the fourteenth.”

  Wait, that couldn’t be right. Jennie remembered laughing at the day’s Far Side cartoon for the fifteenth, and she never peeked ahead. Shep had said a month had passed since…Jennie’s death. Her head throbbed even harder as the thoughts jumbled in her mind. She had to see for herself, in black and white.

  She pretended interest in her surroundings, looking around and slowly making her way to Sam’s office. She knew he had a calendar hanging in there. One step. Two steps.

  “It still looks pretty much the same around here,” she said, covering her own surveillance as it were.

  “Unlike some people, I don’t have to redecorate every six months.”

  Sam sounded different to her, as different as her own voice sounded. Three steps, then four. She turned around to find Sam still standing by her desk.

  “Change is good,” she said with a smile, but she wasn’t sure yet. If she was Maxine, could she actually play that part well enough to fool anyone? “I see you…kept the couch I put in.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’ve tried to give it away a few times, but nobody’ll take it.”

  That was true. Even on her job interview, Sam had offered it to her.

  “Aw, Sam, it’s not that bad. It lends a certain personality to the place.”

  “It does not appeal to my feminine side, wherever that may be. Admit it, Maxine. You were just getting me back for some unseen injustice. Letting my ex-wife practice her new decorating services on my office was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.”

  Was Maxine a spiteful person? Or just oblivious to what a man needed in his office?

  When she reached Sam’s doorway, the mirrored picture across from her gave her a start. She’d never been high enough to notice it before. It wasn’t the mirror as much as the image of the redhead looking back at her. Jennie reached up to touch the waves at her cheek, and the redhead in the reflection did the same. She winked; so did the redhead. Heat twisted and churned through her. She forced her gaze from the mirror to the calendar Sam hung on the wall behind his desk, the one with the fancy cars on it. Plain as day it said February on it. A month later. She turned to Sam, feeling her face pale.

  “Shep said your assistant…died last month.” She cleared the frogs from her throat. “That she fell down the stairs.”

  Sam’s expression darkened. For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he said, “Some idiot spilled oil from the elevator on the floor outside my office. Her wheels slid across it.” He tilted his head back, then looked at her. “Do you remember yet what you came here for? Or where you got that nasty gash on your forehead?”

  Jennie was reaching blindly for the wall behind her, letting herself lean against it without looking like she was about to faint. Oh God, Jennie really was dead. Maxine had died, too. Jennie had gotten a second chance in her body. The blood rushed back to her face, making her feel sunburned with the heat of it.

  “I don’t remember. Maybe I was coming here to say hello, and did this when I fell.”

  “I don’t think so. For one thing, you’ve never just come by to say hello. And the blood was too dry, remember? Something happened, and you came to me about it.”

  Jennie nodded slowly, having no clue about Maxine’s life at all. She looked at her desk, looking exactly as she’d left it minus a few papers. It bugged her that she’d left work undone. Not that she could be blamed, but it still bugged her.

  “Didn’t you hire anyone else? You’re so busy…or at least I would imagine you would be.”

  Sam started to follow her gaze to the desk, but stopped himself. “I’m not very busy right now.”

  The phone rang again, and Jennie started to walk toward her desk to answer it. Sam walked past her into his office to get it. She leaned against the solidness of the door frame and watched him. If this was real…and it seemed to be real…she had to decide who she was going to be. All she knew for sure was that she was taking this second chance to make Sam fall in love with her. As his ex-wife, she had a distinct disadvantage. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. There didn’t seem to be much animosity between them, the couch notwithstanding. After all, Maxine had come to him for help, even after all these years.

  If she told Sam she was really Jennie…she shook her head. Preposterous. He’d really think she was one towel short of a load, and he already thought Maxine was a little zany anyway. Worst case was she told him the truth and he’d tell her to see a shrink and get the heck away from his life. Sam seemed awfully good at shutting people away from his world, and Jennie didn’t want to be one of them.

  The best case was that she somehow got him to believe her. Then what? Their friendship wouldn’t be the same; the boundaries were different now. Would he still view her as the old Jennie? Or get her confused with Maxine because of her body? Her heart clenched at the risks. She was certain she’d been given this second chance to fulfill her dreams of making Sam love her. The least riskiest proposition seemed to be winning his heart as Maxine. Sam had once loved her; maybe there was still a place in his heart for her.

  Besides, the old Jennie was dull, had no life, nothing to offer Sam. Maxine looked full of possibilities. She glanced at herself in the reflection again, a smile tugging at her lips. Well, at Maxine’s lips. No, her lips now.

  Jennie’s whole life since the car accident had been sheltered. Her biggest risk had been getting this job. She’d never taken the chance of telling Sam she loved him; heck, she’d never taken any chances. Her gaze shifted to Sam, and a warm feeling bubbled inside her. It was time to take the biggest risk of all, to become Maxine Lizbon and win Sam’s heart. She looked back at the mirror again, trying to get used to seeing green eyes and red hair and not brown eyes and brown hair. Maxine, Maxine, Maxine, she chanted internally. It’s me, Maxine. Hi, I’m Maxine. Maxine Lizbon, here. You’re looking for Maxine? Oh, that’s me.

  Straightening, Maxine steeled herself to walk without a wobble to the old leather chair in front of Sam’s oversized desk. Romeo followed her in and sat down facing her. He studied her, his head tilted. She leaned slowly forward and scratched the folds of skin beneath his chin.

  “I missed you,” she whispered. “Both of you.”

  “This guy’s really good, Ned,” Sam was saying, probably to his younger brother.

  She’d never met Ned, or even seen him before, but she knew that he was an up-and-coming litigation lawyer who sometimes used Sam’s services to assist in his cases. Sam rarely talked about his family, and she had always thought there was some kind of rift. She’d never had the courage to ask him about it. What a wimp I was. Reason enough to let Jennie go.

  “No, I’m not saying he’s really injured. I’m saying he’s good. I have a few ideas about moving this case along. I’ll let you know. Okay, bye.” He looked up at her. “Don’t keep looking around my office like that. I don’t care if i
t lacks true taste and culture, class or organization—it’s me, it’s comfortable, and I don’t need your decorating services or your opinion.”

  She could only just stare at him for a moment. “I…I think it looks fine,” she said honestly.

  “You’re kidding, right? Patronizing me, then?”

  “No. It really looks fine.”

  He gave her that skeptical look again. It said, You’re lying; what are you up to? Maxine realized she’d never seen that look directed at her before. “Yeah, sure.”

  “Sam, why are you so defensive?”

  “I was married to you, remember?”

  Those words took her breath away for a second, but she composed herself. “Well, of course I remember.” She needed to find out more about their marriage, why it hadn’t worked out. “How long has it been since we’ve seen each other?”

  He shrugged. “Lunch a couple of years ago, I guess.”

  “Don’t you think people can change?”

  “Not you, Maxine. I know you haven’t changed.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “Don’t be so sure of that.”

  He looked at her, and she wondered if somehow he could see Jennie inside. No, he’d be smiling at her, maybe telling her a story about some goofy case that would make her giggle.

  After a moment he leaned back in his chair. “How are your legs feeling?”

  Her hands were resting on her thighs, and she squeezed them. They were feeling. She pushed a devilish smile from her face and met his gaze. “Maybe you’d better, you know, check them again. Just to make sure.” Last time he’d taken her by surprise, but she could still remember well how his hands had felt on her legs.

  “Ah, I don’t think that’s a good idea. You feel just fine. I think it’s all in your head anyway.”

  “Well, not exactly,” she answered without thinking. “No, you’re probably right.”

  Sam walked around his desk, leaning against the edge facing her. “I know I’m right. Remember—”