by Dan Taylor
I sit there, not having a clue what to do. Gerry’s obviously upset. I didn’t even know that woman had tear ducts until now.
After driving for some time, she sniffles, says, “Can I take you up on that offer you made the other day?”
“What offer?”
“About keeping me company?”
I think about my dodgy engine. “Ahh, I don’t know about that, Gerry. It’s my—”
“Sister?”
“Yeah.”
She wipes her tears away with her sleeve. “I understand.” Then she speaks to the driver. “Drop Jake off first wherever he wants to go.”
He says, “Where’s that?”
I say, “No, no! I won’t hear of it. This lady needs dropping off first.” I turn to Gerry. “Where you going?”
“I’m too embarrassed to say.”
“Why?”
“I’m staying in a motel.”
“What for?”
“They found damp at my house.”
“Aw crap. No wonder you’re feeling down in the dumps. First Cole, now this damp problem.”
She sniffles. “It’s okay.”
“Tell him the address.”
She does, and we start heading there.
When we pull up, at some crummy freeway-side motel, I say to Gerry the first cliché that comes to mind. “It won’t seem as bad in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
I look at Gerry, and find that briefcase she’s been holding must’ve hiked up her skirt. It’s been pulled all the way up to her stockings, showing a little bit of the suspenders holding them up. Black lace. Freshly shaven legs.
I shake my head, trying to get a hold of myself. But then find myself saying, “You know what, Howard, I think I’ll walk the lady here to her motel room, see that she gets back okay.”
‘I Could…’ is playing nice, so he doesn’t make some inappropriate quip, but he does shake his head as I help Gerry out. I tip him generously, and start walking Gerry to her room.
“Here, let me take that,” I say, then take her briefcase.
“Okay.”
She’s still sniffling and crying. The poor thing.
I see her to the door, but I’ve gotten back my senses after the brief flash of sex I got in the car. She kisses me on the cheek, says, “Thanks for this, Jake.”
I shake my head. “Don’t worry about it. Okay if I don’t come in? I should really run.”
“Okay.” Disappointed.
I stand there biting the inside of my cheek as she fumbles with the keycard for the door. She gets it open, and then takes the briefcase from me, and I watch her go and sit on the bed, placing the briefcase beside her.
And just as I go to close the door, she says, “I loved him, you know,” and then bursts into tears.
I should go. Get the hell out of here. Tell her that in some way I loved that dork too, not letting on I know what she’s talking about. But it’s those tears. Those damn tears. “I know you did, Gerry.”
She looks up at me, eyes swimming in them. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
She looks down at her lap, crying as though it’s the last five minutes of Six Feet Under.
I could close the door. Just go. Come back and come and see her another day, when she’s calmed down and I’ve had time to get my head around this thing properly, and after I’ve had the heart surgery to correct my dodgy ticker. I should do all those things, because they make sense. But sometimes Old Hancock’s his own worst enemy.
I figured out something before, some solution to a part of Cole’s story about how he got away and, to tear-weakened Hancock, now seems like a good time to use that information. I scratch my head, thinking about how to phrase it. “When Cole was training to be one of Andre’s spies, he went through all sorts of extra training, right?”
She looks up at me, surprised. “Yeah. What about it?”
“This is a long shot, and I’m going to sound really stupid if I’m wrong. But did Cole learn how to fly a helicopter?”
Her eyes brighten. With what? Hope? Realization? I’m not sure.
She says, “Will you come in for five, Jake? Come and drink a coffee with me?”
I bite the inside of my cheek again. “I don’t know. I should really go.”
“Okay.”
She goes back to crying. Really going for it this time. Her tears mingling with her snot, just like Cole. Geez, these two are made for each other.
So I give in, go and sit down next to her.
But none of it seems right all of a sudden, as I sit there and let her rest her head on my shoulder. Could be that this position in which we’re sitting just doesn’t seem like the Gerry I know. Could be that for some reason she’s playing with her briefcase, opening it up, though it’s on her side, so I can’t see into it.
Could be that I just realized what that newspaper thing is that was gnawing at my mind when I sat on the plane. If this situation’s how I think it is, then who was the guy tailing me when I first arrived in Oslo? The guy with the holes cut into the newspaper? That was Gerry’s guy!
Realizing I’m in danger, I start to say something, maybe that I’m going to leave.
But I don’t get the chance.
Out of the blue, Gerry starts tickling my armpit.
The End
Prologue
GERRY SMOULDERWELL STICKS Hancock with the syringe and presses down on the plunger.
A second earlier she was tickling him, and two seconds before that, he had his arm around her, comforting her as she sobbed for the man they both know is alive but both are pretending is dead. At least up until to the point Hancock implied that he knew the whole dirty story.
This rapid succession—being comforted, to tickling, to sticking a syringe in his arm—goes someway to explaining the look of shock on Hancock’s face. All the way, in fact.
He looks down at his arm, not believing what he sees. Then he looks up at Gerry as she stands up and backs off, all the while with the same dumb look on his face. It’s too late to pull out the syringe—both know that. After the initial shock passes, he frowns, asks, “What the fuck…?”
Gerry nods. Admitting what? That she knows that Hancock found Cole Baxter when he was in Oslo, Norway. That he knows Cole’s alive. That she knows Hancock learned enough of what she’s done to make him a threat.
Or she could just be nodding to admit what a bitch she’s been. It doesn’t matter for what reason. It just seemed appropriate at the time. Still does.
She feels naked as she stands there, not knowing how to hold her arms. It’s the way he’s looking at her. Be angry, Hancock. At least disappointed. But she gets neither of those reactions. Hancock looks sad. Worse, almost sympathetic.
She can’t take standing there any longer, feeling like a first-time art model who needs the money, so she goes and joins him on the bed. Coaxes him into a lying position—she by his side—which he rebels against, as much he can with the drug taking effect.
She shushes him still, begins putting his hair back into place.
“Have you poisoned me? Am I going to die?” Hancock asks.
“No.”
“What, then?”
Gerry likes Hancock, though she hasn’t shown him during the time they’ve worked together for the Agency. She doesn’t want to blink, but the urge is great, with the vision-blurring accumulation of tears in her eyes.
“You’ll forget,” she says.
“Forget what?”
“You know, Jake.”
“I do.” He pauses, then says, “I’m getting dizzy.”
“Don’t worry. You’re supposed to.”
Silence a second. A couple argue in the next-door motel room. When there’s a break in the man’s shouting and the woman’s shrieking, Hancock asks, “So you have poisoned me?”
“You’ll wake up tomorrow, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You never could give me a straight answer.”
“I’ve given you some
thing to make you not remember the last few days. Everybody will be better off for it.”
A pause.
Then he laughs, asks, “Are you crying?”
She wipes away the tears. “No.”
“Bullshit…” His voice trails off and he groans.
Catching her off guard, Hancock bolts upright. At least tries to. But she catches him, presses him back down into a lying position.
“My pocket, Gerr…”
“What? What about your pocket?”
He thinks a second. “Never mind.”
A second later he’s out.
Gerry gets up from the bed. First thing she does is open up her briefcase, which fell on the floor during the struggle. She takes out a syringe cap and polythene bag marked BIOHAZARD, undoes the Ziploc, and pulls the syringe out of Hancock’s arm.
She places the cap over the needle and unscrews the needle section, and disposes of both sections of the syringe in it, which she then places in the briefcase.
What next?
His clothes.
She doesn’t want him waking up fully dressed. Or does she? Is Hancock the type of man to skip his pre-bed routine now and again? If he is, he wouldn’t make a habit of it. So she decides she’ll strip him, as far as his underwear.
As she starts unbuckling his belt, he stirs. Hancock’s always with the wisecracks: “Gee, Gerry, if you wanted to get me in bed, all you had to do was ask.”
Both laugh.
A second later the drug takes effect fully. Hancock’s snoring away the last 3-7 days of memory, depending on the individualized effect of the drug.
Back to his pants. She pulls them off after struggling with the button.
She takes his cell phone out of his pants pocket, and then starts folding his pants. As she does, a Post-It falls out of the pocket, floats to the floor.
She bends at the waist and picks it up. Says, “So that’s what he was talking about.”
On it, in Hancock’s unmistakable scrawled handwriting, it reads 800-Aortic-excellence. A telephone number.
Or a code? Is that why Hancock dropped the subject? Better to be safe than, well…
The thought trails off and she laughs to herself, wipes away the tears she didn’t get first time around.
…Sorry.
She’ll dispose of it the first opportunity she gets, along with the cell phone.
When he’s down to his underwear, she tucks him in, kisses him on the forehead.
She takes out his cell phone from his pants pocket, folds his clothes, places them neatly in the top drawer of the dresser.
The last thing she does is place the keycard in the slot by the door.
Everything’s set.
Now standing at the door, the briefcase in her hand, she takes one last look of Hancock before she leaves. The tears have dried now. “Don’t remember a thing, you dumb son of a bitch. Or…”
She leaves the thought hanging as she leaves.
1.
The next morning…
IT’S NOT UNUSUAL for me to wake up with a hangover. So when I open my eyes, which rebel against the action despite the low light in the room, I’m not surprised that I immediately want to close them. In fact, this is just the status quo, cue Sonny and Cher, ad infinitum. But it is unusual I don’t recognize the room in which I’m sleeping.
I sit up and look around. A motel room? It sure looks like one: grimy walls, hideous neutral-colored curtains, Ikea furniture, and a chair standing in the corner of the room, as though someone’s been watching me all night. That’s the key giveaway. There’s not a home-owning soul who decides to have a chair in the corner of their bedroom.
So that mystery’s solved. I lie back down, decide that I just had too much to drink last night, and that if I get another hour’s sleep, my confusion will have melted away, and this headache will have abated enough for me to be able to function upright. My eyes are closed for two seconds before the next mystery comes to mind. They shoot back open and I start padding the other side of the queen-size bed. I can’t believe what I can’t feel. If I had too much to drink, and decided to stay in a motel room—which isn’t all that strange, now that I think about it—then where’s the female that I didn’t want my neighbors to run into in the hallway? There isn’t one.
I get out of bed and creep over to what must be the bathroom door—if the damp at the foot of it is any indication. I put my ear to it and think I can hear running water.
“Hey…” I think a second about what I’m going to say. “…Make sure you leave hot water for me.” Mr. Smooth.
No response.
Has she heard me and knows from the tone of my voice that I don’t remember her name, or even meeting her? Could this be my personal record for turning a casual hook up from wanton sex fiend to sassy intruder hell-bent on exposing me as the pig that I am to my neighbors?
It doesn’t sound a million miles away as a likelihood. So I decide to bring around this mystery woman by guessing her name. Not the soundest plan on paper, admittedly. “Hey, Brandy. Can you open up?”
Again, no response.
“Tiffany?”
Water’s still running, but nothing.
“Brianna?”
I give up.
I’m going to have to go in there, and it seems like it’ll be less embarrassing for both parties if I assume a fatherly role and address her in that tone before barging in and catching her naked, brushing her teeth. “Okay, madam, you give me no choice. I’m coming in there.”
The door’s light, so I go sprawling into the bathroom and find…
Not a soul. Huh?
So where’s that running water sound coming from?
Faucet’s not leaking.
Shower’s not dripping.
Must be the can. It is. Water’s running down from the tank, constantly flushing, making the tank continually fill up.
I’d consider it a relief—some leaky O-ring or whatever in the mechanism of the can instead of a Brianna brushing her teeth—if not for this deep sense of worry from waking up in a motel room with a hangover and no trailer trash to speak of. Not to mention my not remembering this room or the night before. Not even the first drink.
In fact, what is the last thing I remember?
I have to get out of here. I go back into the main room and look for my clothes. They’re not in the usual places I find last booze-filled night’s attire: scrunched up under or beside the bed, compressed under the foot of the duvet, or if I’ve had a really wild night, hanging from the ceiling fan as it rotates.
I do something I haven’t done since living with Mom and Dad: look for last night’s clothes in the dresser.
I pull out the first drawer and jump back from what I see. How did they get here? And neatly folded?
I look around, looking for some adjoining room I haven’t noticed, as I say, “Okay, Chrystal, Candy, or whatever your name is. The game’s up. Funny. Now come out and tell me what you put in my drink last night.” I look down at my waist and feet, seeing underwear. “And explain why a sick hussy like you drugs an attractive man and then doesn’t even have the decency to take advantage of him while he’s sleeping.”
Neighbor bangs on the wall. Says, “Keep it down in there. It’s five in the morning.”
It is?
“Sorry, pal.” I think a second. “Say, you don’t happen to be aiding and abetting some disagreeable lady in playing some hilarious prank on me, do you?”
There’s silence a second.
The he asks, “Disagreeable?”
“Two-dollar outfit, makeup looks like it’s been applied by her blind five-year-old daughter?”
“No one like that in here, pal.”
I noticed he didn’t shout his response. Telling. But if there is a Joanie-Lynne in there, I think it’s unlikely she’s anything to do with the situation I find myself in. Which is what, exactly?
I sit on the bed, start listing the facts: I don’t remember last night, someone other than me folded up my clot
hes and placed them neatly in the dresser drawer, I’m in a motel room I don’t recognize, and…
I think of something.
I rush over to the dresser and take out my pants. Start patting them down. There it is, my wallet.
Strange. But not if…
No, the money’s there too.
The fourth item on the list: I feel like I’ve been drugged, which would explain the memory loss, but I’ve been neither raped nor robbed.
Good news, right? Then why do I feel this is all wrong?
I need to get out of here, so I get dressed in a hurry. Not finding the keycard for the room in my pants pockets, I look around, find it in the slot by the door some sober person would’ve put it. I slide it out slowly, half-expecting the action to be a trigger for some sophisticated bomb.
You’ll be astonished to learn I’m still in one piece when the keycard has fully left the slot.
I rush out of the room, feeling nauseous, shirt tails flapping, and find my way to the reception desk. It’s manned by a college-age kid.
I’m civilized enough to not start blurting out my situation at him, despite my panic. He notices me, takes a second to stare dead-eyed at me, then goes back to reading his magazine.
I say, “Hey, you don’t happen to know what name my booking’s under?”
“Room number?” Without looking up.
I didn’t check. Nice. “Um, is it written on the keycard? I have that.”
“No.” Still didn’t look up.
“Back in a sec.”
No response.
I rush back to the room eight down from the reception area. Room two-eleven.
I walk back, so as to not be out of breath. I go up to the desk, expecting him to have stopped reading his magazine and be waiting with the logbook open, all service with a smile. Even in a flurry of panic and confusion I’m expecting great customer service, and feel disgruntled when I don’t get it.
I say, “Two-eleven.”
He looks up. “Huh?”
“The room number. I just went and looked…never mind. Can you check what name the booking for room two-eleven is under?”
He puts down his magazine, starts tapping away at a keyboard.
“Hancock,” he says, seemingly saying it to the computer monitor.