Gypsy's Lady

by MariaLisa deMora

  Chicago

  Jesus.

  Nauseous, Doug swallowed, his throat clicking dryly. He pushed to sit upright on the side of the mattress, wincing at how the edge dug into the backs of his bare thighs. Head swimming with what he recognized as a raging hangover, he sat elbows to knees and dropped his forehead into his palms, massaging his temples with cautious fingers. He found a tender spot on his skin and explored it, tracking it down across his cheekbone to the hinge of his jaw. Huh. No memory of a fight, but there were no coherent memories beyond the first two hours at the bar last night, so that wasn’t a big surprise.

  Lifting his head, he opened his eyes and glanced around the room, every muscle locking in place when he saw the pile of clothes along the wall near the built-in dresser. From where he sat, he could see the bathroom and knew it was empty. He also knew the clothing wasn’t his, because that particular shade of pastel pink did not complement his coloring. There was nowhere else in the room for anyone to hide.

  Only one side of the bed was mussed, and a quick scan found his shirt and jeans folded on top of the bathroom counter. Whoever had been here hadn’t shared the bed with him.

  Cautiously shaking his head, he winced at the renewed headache and was pushing to his feet when the bundle of clothing moved, shifting. Doug stared, seeing a pair of delicate-looking hands appear, unwinding fabric from around a head featuring a riotous mane of unkempt hair. It was all surrounding an elfin-featured face.

  She stared at Doug and he waited, hoping she would give him some clue as to why she was there. Nothing about his body told him he’d had sex last night; all his aches were of the barroom brawl variety. She sighed and pushed to sit up all the way, leaning back against the wall. “How’s your head, hero man?” Hero man?

  “Head’s fine.” He stretched the truth because his head was pounding both from the booze and the bruising, then decided to follow it with a tiny question. “Who are you?” Okay, maybe not tiny, but not as big as the one he wanted to ask which was “why the fuck are you here?”

  “You remember anything?” He nodded a second lie in response to her return inquiry and caught the corners of her mouth curling up. “Need me to fill in a few of the gaps?” She shifted around, dug a bottle of water from under the clothing she’d used as a blanket and played with the lid until she got it off, upending the bottle for a long drink. Without pressing him for an answer, she talked, feeding him enough details to mesh with what he thought was probably the real story. “Lots of nights I sleep behind a dumpster in back of a little community bar. It’s bad news, but there’s an exhaust vent so it’s not so cold. Bonus is it keeps me out of the main jog of people.” She shrugged. “You came out the back door of the bar at the right time for me. Wrong time for the guy who thought he could talk me into a date.” The way she said the word made it more distasteful than he expected. “You took care of him. Then you wouldn’t shut up until I came back here with you. I knew you were too drunk to get it up, so I figured I was safer here than out there.” She shrugged, gesturing towards the door.

  “Are you a hooker?” If she was, she probably hadn’t been for long, an air of innocence still clung to her, but that could be the frailty of the features that gave her face a gamine cast. He slid a hand under the pillow on the bed and his fingers encountered cold metal and smooth leather. His piece and wallet, safe under his head all night.

  “No. I mean, I’ve tricked when there’s…but, it’s not how I get by. Not normally. The guy…he wasn’t anyone I recognized, so no way he’d know anything specific about me. He just assumed.” Her lips curled and Doug nodded.

  “Asshole.”

  She jerked her head in agreement, lifting the bottle again for another deep drink. “You’re a decent guy, aren’t you?”

  Doug leaned to grab his clothing so he could dress. “I don’t like to see people taken advantage of.”

  Lips pursed, she dipped her head once. “Decent guy. You sleep okay?”

  He shrugged. “Well enough. You got a name?”

  “Claudia.” She stood, fabric falling away. Bending at the waist, she gathered up the pieces of clothing, folding them in half and half again before shoving them into one of several plastic bags that had been underneath her. “You’re Doug.” She laughed as she wrapped a piece of tape around the top of a bag. “Doug the decent dude.”

  Fingers working to fasten his belt paused for a moment as he laughed. “Yeah, I’m so decent I took the bed and made you sleep on the floor.”

  “Honey, that was my choice. You were all kinds of charming trying to get me to climb up there. I figured once you passed out, I’d rather be a little distance away, just in case you were a puker.” Bags stacked to the side in a tidy pile, she turned to look at him again. “He clocked you a good one.”

  Doug’s fingers drifted back to what he knew had to be a bruise. “Yeah. I’m kinda glad I don’t remember that part.”

  “Didn’t matter. You had him down in like a half a second. He only got one lucky hit.” She glanced at the bathroom and he waved her forwards, settling his ass on the edge of the bed again.

  He dug his phone out and stared at it. No notifications. No missed calls. He hadn’t reconnected with anyone since coming back home.

  “Want breakfast, Claudia?” Socks and boots, gun tucked into the waistband holster he preferred, he flipped the covers back into place. If he took the time to smooth the fabric, no one would ever know he was here. Except the not-hooker in the bathroom, who he’d apparently saved from being raped last night. One who thought he was a decent man. That’s a connection. He grinned. “I’m hungry.”

  ***

  Jesus.

  Doug grinned, watching Claudia sashay from the bathroom towards the tiny dining area. His new apartment wasn’t large by any stretch of the imagination, but she moved like she had all the room in the world. Step and glide, followed by a tiny shimmy as she settled her skirt into place.

  It had been six months since he woke in the cheap motel room with a quirky homeless chick sleeping on the floor. We haven’t made much headway in any of those departments, he reminded himself. It had taken a full three months to convince Claudia to come to his place if she couldn’t get a shelter bed. Then another month to wear her down with arguments the couch was more comfortable than the floor. These days she left the best of her belongings stored in his hallway closet and while she wouldn’t accept a key to his place, he’d left one with the office and Claudia knew to ask for it if she came and Doug wasn’t home.

  His final assignment transfer was still pending, but he was slowly settling into his temporary role in the new precinct. It was a whole new ballgame with a near-complete change out of the higher-ups, and a new captain to learn. After being paired with another detective, they’d made strides in clearing a backlog of cold cases. Sometimes bringing in fresh perspectives made the difference. Brass was pleased, and Doug had all the free time he could want, which left him ample time to keep looking into Thornton’s death and Norwood’s disappearance.

  “Red meat’s bad for you.” Claudia settled cross-legged on the chair opposite him, fork in hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it, too. But it’ll clog your arteries and blow your heart up eventually.”

  He grinned. “I eat chicken and fish most of the time.” He shoved a dish in her direction and didn’t wait for her to serve herself before he picked up his burger and took a huge bite. “God, so good.” He opened his eyes to see her grinning at him, lips parted in silent laughter. “What?”

  “You could star in a porno.”

  “What?”

  Claudia rolled her eyes as she dished potato salad onto both of their plates. “Big guy like you, handsome, all that hair? Total porno material when you moan like that.”

  “I didn’t moan.”

  “You so moaned.” She stabbed a chunk of potato and shoved it in her mouth, shifting it to one cheek before continuing, “Big time porno.”

  “Tell me about today.”

  She laughed at hi
s obvious conversation change, then went with it without argument. “It was a day. There was a wreck down by the convention center entrance. I…” She paused, and he watched her hand begin to tremble, fork shaking in her grip.

  “Claudia?”

  She pushed out a hard breath and looked at him. “I was a doctor, did you know that?”

  Doug shook his head. He’d asked a dozen different ways, trying to figure out how she came to live on the streets, but no matter the angle he’d used, she’d been relentlessly silent on the subject.

  Claudia’s pupils dilated, her eye movement erratic as she breathed in shakily. “I was. Damn good. The military wasn’t happy when I shifted out, but I’d done enough…seen enough to last a lifetime. Done with the navy, I settled here because the weather is…” She stopped again, and he watched her work to collect herself. “I like the four seasons, you know? Not just heat and cold. I like all the in between, too.” He nodded, but she was no longer looking at him, gaze fixed on the fork in her hand, apparently studying the unsteady metal utensil. “I…the non-technical term is burnout. Where you’re just done, ready to throw in the towel. But I loved what I did, so I kept on. Figured it would get better, as long as I just kept on. Civvie versus military, at least that way I had more of a say in what I did, you know? Then one night there was an accident just outside my neighborhood. I was headed back from the north end, where we’d been blowing off steam. Heard the crash. The screams.” Claudia’s voice broke, and he swallowed around the pain in his throat at how tormented she sounded. “She was so small, tiny. I tried.” Her focus snapped to him, and with an earnest urgency, she told him, “I did, you know? I tried. Three years, four months, and thirteen days old. I tried.” Her gaze was watery, wide pupils lost behind the tears. “I’d been drinking. Just blowing off steam, dancing the alcohol out of my system almost as fast as I poured it in. But, I’d been drinking.” Gaze distant, she stared past him, not even aware he’d reached out and plucked the fork from her fingers, and was now holding her hand. “I shouldn’t have put my hands on her. The board relieved me of any culpability, but I couldn’t. After that, I just couldn’t. I was done. When her family sued in civil court, I didn’t fight anything. Signed it all over. Everything I had. I knew it wasn’t enough. Would never be enough. She died in my arms, with my hands trying to hold her little body together. Nothing I could give them would be enough. I walked away. Took the coward’s way out.”

  She straightened and stared at him for a moment before she yanked her hand out of his grip, and began to push back from the table, movements tense with sudden urgency. “I need to go.”

  Doug was out of his chair and had rounded the table before she’d fully risen to her feet. He reached out and gathered her into his arms. “You need to stay.” Her forehead settled against his chest. She didn’t return the hug, but she didn’t shove him away, either. Trembling, she was shaking so hard the top of her head thudded against his chin with enough force to hurt. “Stay, Clauds.” He tightened his arms, holding her rigid frame close. A minute passed, then another and she finally sucked in a hard breath, the angle of her shoulders softening slightly. “You need to stay,” he told her again. Maybe if he repeated the words enough times, they could silence whatever demons were tearing her apart inside.

  He heard a tiny mumble against his chest and gave her a squeeze. The rough clearing of her throat preceded a question spoken in a voice so small it was nearly lost in the room. “I’m crazy, you know right? Certifiable. You sure I can stay?”

  “I’m certain.” He gave her another squeeze as she shifted, resting her cheek against his chest. “You need to stay.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  ***

  Claudia had been living with him for several months, and Doug found he enjoyed not just the idea of the company, but her companionship. Quick-witted and smart, she was loud and quiet by turns, and Doug looked forwards to coming home at the end of the day. He’d never had a friend like her, not family with different ties of loyalty than his brothers in blue, and not a colleague, either. Just a friend with no judgment or demands, taking everything as it came, offering him pearls of wisdom as they moved through their days. Accepting his help when she needed it while taking nothing for granted. He liked the satisfaction gained by taking care of her, making certain she was well, without expectation of payback. Doing it because it was what friends did.

  “Hope you’re hungry. I made supper,” Claudia called from the kitchen and Doug glanced at the clock. He was late, having covered a murder on the city’s southeast side. Unable to leave the scene until the lab boys were done, he’d called and left her a voice mail on the apartment phone.

  “Did you get my message?” He locked the door and walked to the kitchen. Doug stopped in his tracks at what greeted him and laughed, unable to stop himself, the tension of the day rolling away in the form of gut-wrenching whoops of hilarity. She twisted and glared at him, which didn’t make the scene any less comical.

  Claudia stood there with her hair twisted up in what looked like a tiny terrycloth towel, giant oven mitts on both hands, an apron featuring the torso of a male bodybuilder on her body, and something closely resembling the Abominable Snowman’s feet completing the ensemble. She glared at him and propped fisted mitts on either hip, which made it look like the bodybuilder was throwing sass, and made him laugh louder.

  “No food for you.” She whirled, tripped over her house shoes and stumbled, slapping the countertop with one palm. It didn’t make him laugh any less, because the leggings she had on under the apron were covered in emoji, with one smiling face strategically placed at the top of her butt. At his renewed howls of laughter, she scowled over her shoulder, fighting the grin trying to curl the corners of her mouth. “I’m not kidding, Dougie, no food for you.”

  “Clauds, you’re my best friend, you know that?”

  “And that, Dougie, is possibly the saddest thing you’ve ever told me.” He sobered as he watched pain flicker across her face, features rearranging themselves from sorrow into a pleasant expression that was a bigger lie than she’d ever told him before. “I miss your hair.” He’d finally had to cut the locks grown in California to fit back into the ranks at the precinct. Doug had been surprised when he’d missed it, too. “Go change. Then, come and eat.”

  “Clauds?” He took a step in her direction but stopped when she lifted a hand. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

  “Sure, Dougie. I’d tell you. Now shoo. Sooner you get ready, sooner we can eat.”

  They spent the evening on the couch, as they’d done so many times. Taking turns channel surfing until they found something worth their time, trading barbs about the characters on the shows, throwing jokes back and forth in a way that was easy and comfortable. Maybe their friendship wasn’t conventional, but it was real and something Doug wanted to hold on to. He reached out and traced a finger up the back of her hand, pulling her attention away from the TV.

  “You’d tell me if something was wrong?” He repeated his question from before, studying her face as she gave it thought. He saw the change when she decided to lie to him again and forestalled it with a shake of his head. “No bullshit, Clauds. You got something going on in your head, you tell me. No longer a request.”

  In her eyes, he recognized a flash of the pain she’d offered once before. “She was so small, tiny. I tried.” Instead of those words, she gave him a truth he hadn’t expected. “If there were anyone I could tell, it would be you, Dougie.” She shook her head. “Sometimes we have to soldier on alone to get to the other side.”

  “As long as you make it to the other side, does it matter if you’ve had help?” He covered her hand with his. She made no move to join their hands, didn’t grab hold. “There’s only one wrong road here, Clauds. That’s the one where you don’t talk to me, tell me what you need. I’m here for you.”

  “I know, Doug. You’ve helped me so much already.” She pulled away and reached for the remote. The TV clicked and w
ent dark as silence filled the room. She broke it with a softly spoken, “All you’ve ever done was try to help.”

  “Keep that door open, let me in.” She held his gaze for a moment then she bent double, hands on her knees as she pushed to her feet. “Claudia, talk to me.”

  “Tired, Dougie. Just tired.” She turned, the smiley face on her ass such a contrast to the emotions running through him it was as dissonant as a sharp slap in the face. She shuffled step by step as she walked away, and the plastic soles of her furry house shoes were loud in the silence. “Night.”

  Hurry

  “Clauds?” Doug’s greeting rang through the quiet apartment without an answer. “You home? Hello?”

  Silence surrounded him. It was Wednesday, which had become their standard movie night. Doug and Claudia hadn’t missed one for months. She’d already picked out the offering for tonight, some blow ‘em up flick she considered standard holiday fare. It was only two days until Christmas, and he’d stopped by a boutique down the street from the coffee shop where they sometimes had lunch to grab her present.

  He’d had a hard time explaining to the guys at the precinct about Claudia and him. They weren’t romantically involved, at all, the thought of it made him grin as he imagined her scathing putdowns for the idea. She had enough to say about seeing his one-night stands leaving the apartment. Even if he were so inclined, Doug knew there was no way Claudia would go there. They were…friends. Good friends, something he hadn’t realized he’d missed having until she filled the empty slot as if she were made for him in that way. She got him, understood his moods, and accepted how angry he got over the things he saw every day, his rages at the excesses he saw in the people he worked with, and for. She’d let him carry on for hours, healthily unwinding that fury, leaving him better at the end.