Dust and Kisses

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  She took the master key and faced the guest door closest to the elevator area in the same hallway as the window fire escape. It took her a moment, but the passkey finally clicked something and the door opened.

  She took one look inside the large area and pulled the door closed, not going inside. The last guests were still at home, still in bed.

  She moved down one door and opened it.

  It had a made bed and no sign of anyone staying.

  “Wow,” she said, letting the door close behind her and moving into the large, multi-roomed suite. She moved across the main room and carefully pulled open the drapes, trying to stir up as little dust as possible while letting the sun fill the space.

  The room had high ceilings, clearly left from its days as an old hotel. And from the looks of it, in the remodeling they had combined at least three, maybe four of the old hotel rooms, into this suite. There was a small kitchen area, a large dining area, a business desk, and a room with a bed big enough for three or four people.

  “Now the test,” she said, moving into the tiled bathroom with old-fashioned gold faucets and a basket of soap. A bathrobe hung on the back of the door with a sticker saying it was free for guest use. This bathroom was larger than her old dorm room in college, and not only had a shower, but a huge step-up bathtub with what looked like special jets.

  “Oh, baby, let this work.”

  She twisted the cold water on the sink faucet. For a moment nothing happened, but she could feel the air being shoved through the system. Then, with a loud sputtering sound, water came out, running dark and rust-colored, spitting with the air bubbles. It smelled like water that had sat for three years in pipes. She had expected as much. But at least it was flowing. Matt had been right.

  She moved over to the bathtub and turned the faucet there. It too started running after a moment, filling the tub with nasty looking water.

  She started the shower as well, then went back into the dining area and took off her pack. The release of the pressure on her back felt great. She had carried that pack so much over the past three days, it felt as if it were a part of her.

  She laid her rifle on the table beside the pack, but kept her pistol in her belt. She wanted to do a little more looking around. She needed to leave tracks into every room on this floor in the dust in the hallway. If she stayed here long enough, she’d clean the dust completely out of the hallway, but for now, if she had been followed, she needed to make sure no one would come easily to this room.

  She went back into the bathroom and checked the water. It was still flowing, and a lot better looking. Another ten minutes and she just might have clean enough water to take a shower in.

  She looked longingly at the bathtub. If she got a generator up here, she could even heat some water for a warm bubble bath.

  She went back out into the hall, blocking the suite door open so she wasn’t separated from her pack, then used the master card to open every door and walk into each room on the floor, shuffling her feet as she moved along the hall.

  Fifteen minutes of very dusty work later, no one, at a glance, could tell which room she was in. At last, she had a place to stay.

  “One problem solved. Now to problem number two. Getting clean.”

  She went back into the suite, closed, locked, and blocked the door with a chair, then headed for the bathroom. A long, cold shower was going to feel very, very good.

  And she did some of her best thinking in showers. After meeting Matt this morning, she had a lot of thinking to do.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MATT FINISHED his breakfast, then checked his security room to see if Carey had moved, even though he knew his alarms would have told him if she had.

  Nothing.

  Of course, she might have gone out the back. He didn’t have security cameras in that area. But somewhere along the way, if she had left, she would trip one of his sensors and he would know.

  He hoped she hadn’t left, that she was what she had seemed to be, a survivor with a lot of guts, wanting to explore her old home town.

  He dropped into his big chair and stared at the security screens showing the empty city around him. Now, the city didn’t feel so empty. How one woman could make such a difference, he didn’t know. But she sure had.

  But now he had a problem. He had promised her fried chicken for their lunch tomorrow, but he didn’t have a fresh chicken in his freezer. He needed to get out to the Rose Garden and get some fresh eggs and a chicken. At the same time, he didn’t want to leave the security room in case she decided to move.

  He wanted to watch her, protect her if she needed it, help her if she needed that.

  What happened if she came to the Baxter building while he was gone and didn’t find him. How would she trust him after that?

  “Get it together, Matt. Leave her a note.”

  One on the outside door to the building, and another on the main staircase door, telling her where he had gone, what he was doing.

  That felt like a silly thing to do, but he had no doubt, he would do it.

  He sat, watching the monitors for any movement, planning a very special lunch for tomorrow. He wanted it to be special. After three years, the first meal with someone else demanded to be special.

  Fried chicken and a chilled bottle of Chablis from the Willamette Vineyards. He needed to make a lot of chicken. Too much, actually. He wanted to give her pieces to pick from. And maybe two bottles of wine in case the conversation lasted as he hoped it would.

  Her smile, the sound of her voice came back to him clearly. He wanted to very much make the lunch last, find out who she really was, let her know that he was safe and a friend.

  What else needed to be in a picnic lunch? Fresh rolls. He could bake rolls tomorrow morning with the chicken, just before going. And, of course, deviled eggs. Deviled eggs always went great on a picnic, especially the ones he made, from his Aunt Rose’s old recipe.

  It felt like he was forgetting something.

  He tried to remember back to the picnics he used to go on when he was a child, usually up on the shores of one of the lakes in the Cascades. His mother and grandmother always made the best picnics, and always brought them in those wicker baskets.

  He’d search a few stores on the way back from the Rose Garden, see if he could find a wicker picnic basket. And he needed to bring plates, silverware, and napkins as well.

  But he was forgetting something on the menu. He could feel it.

  Deviled eggs, fried chicken, fresh rolls, and what?

  The memory of sitting on a blanket on a warm July day on the shores of the lake came back strong. His dad had tied up their boat on the sandy beach and his mother was unloading the basket. Life had seemed so perfect back then, and actually, it was. He had had a great childhood, one of the best.

  He let himself relive the memory.

  First, she took out a big bowl of fried chicken, covered in tin foil. The wonderful smell was always enough to make Matt want to just grab a piece right then. Of course, she never let him, not until everyone was seated on the blanket.

  Then she took out a plastic container filled with deviled eggs, then a plastic sack with corn-on-the-cob smothered in butter and wrapped in tin foil.

  Corn. Of course, corn and Jell-O. His mom always included corn-on-the-cob and Jell-O. Half the time, the Jell-O had gotten near something that was hot, and had half melted. His mother was always annoyed at that and his dad always just laughed.

  Matt didn’t much care for the Jell-O, but he could do the fresh corn just fine. It was late enough in the season that his corn in his roof garden had fresh ears on them.

  He had it. The perfect picnic lunch. And he would get to Powell’s early enough to do a little cleaning up there, wash a window so they would have some decent sunlight, wipe off a few tables and chairs.

  The idea of having a picnic with Carey had him so excited, he doubted he was going to sleep much tonight.

  “Okay, so much for meal planning,” he said out loud, cl
icking off his audio alarms and leaving the system to record any movement in the city while he was gone. “Time to get everything ready.”

  He stood and headed for the door of the penthouse, grabbing a backpack to carry the eggs and chicken back in. He also picked up his rifle and a box of shells, slipping the shells into the pack. It was a habit he had always done while leaving, and this morning, being out in the city without a gun had felt damned strange. It had to be the first time he’d done that since moving back to the city.

  The risk he had taken to meet Carey was amazing. She could have easily been insane and shot him. He was very glad she hadn’t.

  He made the two notes to Carey to stick on the building’s doors, then started down the staircase, going at a slow but steady clip, thinking about the route he needed to take to get across the river to the Rose Garden.

  Usually, he went within a few blocks of where she was staying and walked over the Burnside Bridge, but he didn’t want to do that today. He didn’t want to do anything to spook her, make her think he was dangerous in any way.

  More than anything, he wanted her to show up tomorrow at Powell’s.

  He went through his lobby and outside, putting up the notes as he went. Then he turned straight downhill toward the river. He would use the Morrison Bridge and go around that way, away from the area Carey was in. A little farther to walk, and harder to get past a few wrecks, but worth not taking any chance at getting too close to where she was staying.

  Portland had been a very big city while it was full of people. And a very big place when he was alone. Now, with Carey here, the city seemed frighteningly small.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE COLD SHOWER felt wonderful as it washed off the sweat and dust from the long morning hike into the city. Carey had found the hotel’s linen closet in the hallway and broke in, getting two fresh towels that hadn’t been hanging up and weren’t covered in dust. It was interesting how many tricks like that she had learned in the last few days, some from thinking a situation through, others from mistakes.

  Learning about hanging towels had been a mistake on her first morning on this trip. She had managed to find a place with running water, taken a shower, then as if the maids had just left the towel on the towel rack, she took the closest one and started to dry herself, finding herself coated in dirt and mud almost immediately.

  Gross, disgusting, and downright weird feeling. If it hadn’t been so annoying, it might have been funny. Even though she was convinced no one was within miles of her, she had still used the muddy towel to wrap herself in while going in search of a clean towel. She had called herself “Mud Girl” the rest of the day.

  She was getting better at picking places to stay as well. This bathroom had a decent-sized window, so there was even enough light for her to see what she was doing. The room she had found on the second night didn’t have a window in the bathroom, and she had had to get ready and shower in the almost complete darkness.

  She wondered as she dried off and dug out some clean clothes, if agreeing to meet Matt had been another mistake on this trip. Granted, there just weren’t that many people left alive and she was hungry for company. And he seemed the same way. But even still, she had to be careful. There were no police, no parents, no friends left to come to her rescue if she got herself in a bad situation.

  She finished dressing and moved over to one of the big windows that looked out over the buildings and the river. The room had stayed fairly cool, but she could tell that outside the temperatures were climbing. It was going to be a very hot day. She missed the coast, the cool breezes off the water, the summer fog.

  And she missed her cats.

  “Well, you made it here,” she said out loud, her voice breaking the silence in the room. “Now what?”

  She stood, staring out the window at the river, thinking about going to her old apartment. Paine’s body would be there, in her bed. She wouldn’t mind having a few of her old things from her place, but she just didn’t feel up for going there yet.

  Or to her parents’ house over the hill in Beaverton. Maybe on the way out of town, on her way back to the coast, she would stop and see both places, pick up a few small things to take home, pay her respects to the three people she had loved the most in the world.

  Or maybe she’d do that next trip. She wasn’t sure if she had the emotional stability to see them just yet.

  Some movement caught her eye on the Morrison Bridge. Someone was walking there.

  She grabbed her binoculars from her pack and focused in on who it was.

  Matt.

  Even from a distance, her heart leaped at just seeing him again. He had what looked like an empty backpack on one shoulder and a rifle slung over the other. So he really had purposely come to see her unarmed earlier.

  That made her feel a little better about him, a little safer about their lunch tomorrow. He had been willing to risk his life, something he clearly didn’t normally do, just to meet her. Amazing, and a little bit stupid, actually.

  She watched him pick his way along the bridge, through the wrecks.

  “So, where are you going now, handsome fella?”

  Suddenly, the answer dawned on her. He had promised her fried chicken and said his chickens lived trapped in the Rose Garden. He was going to get a chicken for their lunch.

  She smiled, watching him move over the bridge and out of sight, feeling disappointed when she couldn’t see him any more. She couldn’t believe how smart he had been to put chickens in the Rose Garden. It gave him a constant source of food besides a garden, which she bet he had somewhere in the city as well.

  Everything about him seemed smart, except his stunt this morning. He appeared nice and was very attractive. She would have thought that even if he wasn’t one of the last people alive on the planet.

  She was going to have to be careful. Very careful. And go very slowly with him. Clearly, around him, her judgement might not be what it should be.

  She searched for him one more time along the far river bank, disappointed that she couldn’t see him.

  “Okay, better get this place livable,” she said, turning away from the window and looking at the high-ceilinged room with its dining table, big soft chair, and huge bed and dresser.

  She went back into the bathroom, got two towels damp and another clean towel from the stack she had taken from the linen closet, then slowly started wiping off the dust from every surface.

  Then she went back to the linen closet and found clean sheets and a bedspread, taking the ones on her room’s bed out and putting them in the service area.

  Then she washed the insides of the main window, as high as she could reach. Amazing what a little sunshine can do for moods. Hers was getting better by the moment as she settled in.

  Actually, she was almost dancing around doing the cleaning, and it wasn’t from the sunlight. The idea of actually having lunch with another person had her so excited, she wasn’t sure if she could wait until tomorrow.

  But she knew she would.

  She downed the last of her bottled water after finishing with as much cleaning as she could do with wet towels. Then she emptied out her backpack, took her pistol and some extra ammunition, and left the rest of her things in the room. She needed more bottled water and there was a drugstore on the corner that might have cases of the stuff.

  She went down the other staircase exploring each floor as she went. Nothing out of the usual. And no other tracks in the dust.

  She was right about the drugstore, it did have bottled water, along with a large, unopened box of M&M peanut candy. She took twenty bottles and the box of M&Ms up to her room, then eating one pack for energy, she went back out into the heat with a half-drunk bottle of water in her hand.

  She was going to see if that hardware store Matt had mentioned had a portable generator, one small enough that she could haul it up to her room. She might as well try to make her Portland home as much a home as possible.

  Otherwise, tonight she was going to be
reading by candle and flashlight, and eating a cold dinner. Not to mention the fact that without a generator, a hot bath in that fantastic tub was impossible.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MATT ALMOST JUMPED out of bed as his alarm clock went off beside his bed. In two years, he hadn’t ever had a need to use that stupid alarm clock. But today, he had a date, and he had a lot of cleaning and cooking to do before then.

  He took a quick shower, then headed out into the kitchen. Buddy, his gray-haired old cat, looked up at him from the couch, yawned, and then went back to sleep.

  “Too early, huh big fella?”

  Buddy didn’t even move. Matt couldn’t blame him. It was early. Really early. The sun was barely coming up over Mt. Hood and the light that filled the penthouse apartment was orange-tinted. A low mist hung along the river and, as always, nothing seemed to be moving anywhere in the city.

  He checked his security room, just to be sure he hadn’t slept through any alarm.

  Nothing.

  Yesterday, Carey had made a couple of trips out of the hotel while he was over getting the chicken and eggs. He had recorded her dragging a pretty heavy-looking small generator back from the hardware store and in through the front door of the hotel on a hand truck. He hoped she had decided on a lower floor room, because he knew how much those little machines weighed and he couldn’t imagine her dragging it up more than a few flights of stairs.

  A couple hours later, just before sundown, she had made a few more trips to nearby stores, clearly for electrical supplies on one trip, food supplies on another.

  After the sun had gone down, it was clear she hadn’t picked a lower floor. She was on the top floor and that impressed him. No wonder she had survived for the past three years. She was one tough woman.

  Lights, for the first time in two years, were coming from another building in the city below him. She had picked a room facing out over the river, away from his building, but he could still see her lights.