Bad Karma

by Theresa Weir

  He hung up and turned to Cleo. “What about pizza? Sound okay to you?”

  “Fine.” She resented the fact that he was suddenly acting as if holding her against her will was perfectly normal.

  “How about a movie?” he asked. “Wanna watch a movie?”

  She shrugged. From the corner of her eye, she saw he had a movie guide in his hand. “No.” Was this how he made his move? Pizza and a movie? A little white bread, if you asked her.

  “How about this one?” He held up the movie menu. “I heard it’s supposed to be good.”

  “Who says?”

  “I don’t know. Some reviewer.”

  “You can’t trust reviewers.” She tossed the remote control on the bed. “Do whatever you want. I’m going to take a bath.”

  She took her bag with her-just in case he got any ideas about digging through it. In the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror and pulled her hair free of the elastic band.

  It looked hideous because it had been smashed under the cap earlier. She tugged at the chopped ends, then dug her fingers into her scalp, trying to fluff it up. All her life people had commented on her beautiful hair, and now it was gone. It didn’t matter, she tried to tell herself.

  It’s just hair.

  But it did matter. It mattered a lot.

  The hair she’d cut away and left lying on the floor of the bathroom in Egypt was hair Jordan had touched, hair Jordan had loved.

  The room came with packets of soap, shampoo, and bubble bath. Cleo filled the tub and sank into the bubbles. She soaked for a long time, until her toes and fingers wrinkled, until Daniel banged on the door and asked if she was ever coming out.

  “No!” Maybe she’d just stay there forever. Maybe she’d keep the door locked and never come out.

  She washed her hair twice, sliding down in the tub to rinse.

  Daniel rapped on the door again. “Pizza’s here,” he shouted.

  Why did people think pizza was the answer to everything?

  She stepped from the tub, dried off, then wrapped a towel around her head. Rather than revisit the clothes she’d worn all day, she slipped into one of the fluffy white robes that came with the room, tying the belt at her waist.

  Back in the main room, she found Daniel propped against the headboard, a slice of pizza in one hand, a beer in the other, watching CNN. She crossed the room and opened the white box with red lettering.

  “Ham and pineapple on one side, anchovies on the other,” he said.

  The sauce was a reddish orange, more orange than red when she really looked close, especially where it pooled thinly around the chunks of pineapple. “They both look so good I can’t decide,” she said with a sarcasm she figured would be lost on him.

  She settled for the pineapple, grabbed a beer, and sat down on what she already considered her bed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked a minute later when her slice was finally ready to be eaten. He stared at the neat pile of ham she’d placed on a napkin near the alarm clock radio.

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  She took a sip of beer. Surprisingly, it didn’t make her gag. “Why is it so hard to believe I’m a vegetarian?”

  “Because you abandoned your dog, for chrissake. How can you be an animal lover if you abandon your dog? And you ate steak at my place.”

  “Fed it to Premonition.” She examined her pizza slice with a critical eye. The sauce was definitely orange, the same rusty orange as the shag rug at The Palms.

  She stared harder at the pizza. Was that a hair? She pulled. Cheese. Hardened cheese. But maybe it was hardened cheese wrapped around a hair. Without looking at the pizza, she forced herself to take a bite. She chewed, feeling the hair adhere to her throat. She swallowed, grabbed the beer, and kept drinking until the bottle was empty. Then she tried a test swallow. She couldn’t feel anything weird, but there was no way she could continue eating. The meal had been ruined. And next time she ate pizza she would remember the hair.

  “Aren’t you going to have any more?” Daniel asked, seeing that she’d put the piece aside.

  She shook her head.

  “If you don’t like it, order something else.”

  “No.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin. And then she found herself lying to him the way she lied to everybody. It was easier than trying to explain to someone that something as harmless as a slice of pizza or a piece of pumpkin pie could taste and look like a hairball or a musty rug. “I ate earlier today. I’m not hungry.”

  In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth for a full two minutes. Then she removed the towel from her head and shook out what was left of her hair. Wet, it didn’t look as bad. Uneven, but not freakish.

  When she returned to the main room, Daniel announced that he was going to take a shower.

  She’d thought to leave when he was sleeping, but this could be almost as good.

  “And just in case you have any bright ideas, I’m taking the car keys with me.”

  “Did I ever tell you my brother taught me how to hot-wire a car?” She smiled. At the moment he would be wondering if she was lying.

  “Did you come from a bloody band of thieves?”

  “We were always in trouble.” Truth was, they were the best kids in the world, always trying to please. But whenever anybody asked about her family, Cleo always came up with an evasive answer. It was less painful.

  “Gimme your robe,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your robe. Give it to me. I want to make sure you don’t leave.”

  “I could wrap myself in a sheet.”

  “That might be a little conspicuous.”

  She thought about how far it was from the room to his car, about how many people they had passed on their way there.

  “Don’t tell me you’re too modest to drop the robe.”

  She took that as a direct challenge. Slowly she undid the belt and let the robe fall open. Then, with her eyes never leaving his, she slipped the fabric from her shoulders until she held the robe in one hand.

  He stared.

  “Don’t you want it?” She lifted the robe higher, her arm outstretched. “Here.”

  He took three long steps toward her, snatched the robe from her fingers, and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Have a nice shower,” she said, smiling.

  Inside the bathroom, Daniel leaned against the door, eyes closed, his heart beating in his ears. Damn. Why the hell had he done that? Why hadn’t he just used a set of handcuffs? He had a pair in the car. But he hated to handcuff a woman. He hated to handcuff anybody, truth be told. And son of a bitch, he hadn’t known she was naked under there. He’d figured she was wearing underwear.

  Oh, God, he thought, unable to stop seeing those full, rounded breasts, those sweetly curving hips, that narrow strip of red-gold hair. The boldness in her eyes. The dare. The challenge.

  What was she after? A trade? Sex for her freedom?

  This whole thing was a bad idea.

  He pushed away from the door and turned on the shower, not even bothering with the hot control. Ten minutes later, when he’d gotten all the blood and cola out of his hair and off his skin, he quit the shower, grabbed a towel and dried off. Normally he would have slept in the nude, but there was no telling what Cleo Tyler would do next. A man had to be prepared. He slipped back into his jeans and stepped from the bathroom.

  Cleo appeared to be asleep. Probably pretending, lying in bed, covers up to her chin, one bent arm against the pillow. Her hair was partially dry, falling across her face so all he could see were her full, slightly parted lips.

  Relieved that there would be no round two-or would it be considered round three?-he pulled the mattress off the nearest bed, covers and all. It was against fire code, but it was the only way he was going to get any sleep.

  He dropped it in front of the door so there was no way she could get out without waking him. Then he grabbed a couple of pillows and ea
sed himself down on the mattress.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the dream again. This time Cleo stood alongside the road, watching as the car approached. She tried to move, tried to shout, but even though she was there, she had no control over the event. It was like watching a movie. But unlike a movie, where you could turn away or leave the room, Cleo could do neither of those things. The car floated around the corner to head directly at her, headlights blinding. She lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Suddenly, somehow, she was inside the car, but she could see herself outside, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt.

  She heard Jordan ’s cry of alarm, felt the weight of the car shift, saw a cement wall hurtling toward them.

  This part of dream was always the same. The slow motion. The crunch of metal. The shattering of glass. Then her screams.

  Don’t look. Don’t get out of the car.

  But she did. She always did.

  Nobody knew how she got out of the real accident. Speculation was that she’d crawled through the broken front window, because glass shards were found embedded in her knees. But in the dream, she was always just out. Just standing beside the car looking in. But the car was empty.

  She turned around, the way she always turned around.

  And bumped into herself, into her wild-eyed self. “You’re a bad person,” the Cleo in white said. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

  “No.”

  Cleo in white grabbed her arm. And Cleo was amazed, because she could feel the deathly chill of the other Cleo’s skin, the pressure of her fingers. “Come and see what you’ve done.”

  “I didn’t do it, you did it.” Cleo hung back, planting her feet on ground that kept slipping away. “You killed Jordan. You did it. I can’t look,” Cleo sobbed. “Don’t make me look.”

  Suddenly she was in the middle of the road, staring at the broken, smashed pumpkin.

  Why, she thought, the way she always thought with such a degree of false confidence, it’s only a broken pumpkin. But then the pumpkin moved. And the pumpkin cried for help.

  Jordan.

  Jordan ’s voice. Full of pain. Full of beseeching, imploring pain.

  Cleo came awake with a start, trying to get her bearings.

  At first she thought she was back in the room at The Palms.

  No. Not The Palms. A hotel, but not The Palms. She’d tried to get away from The Palms, but Daniel Sinclair had caught her. Sinclair. She was in a hotel with Sinclair.

  Had she cried out?

  She lay there, listening. Silence, except for a steady, even breathing coming from the vicinity of the hotel room door. No, she hadn’t made any noise.

  From beyond the window, transports roared down the interstate. Reassuring artificial light cut in around the curtains, casting the room in layers of shadow. The pillow under her head, and the mattress beneath her, were damp with sweat. Fear covered her body like dew.

  Trembling, legs weak, she got to her feet and made her way through the darkness to the bathroom. Once inside, she turned on the heat lamp, then the shower, and stepped inside.

  At first Daniel couldn’t place the sound. Rain?

  Yeah, rain. He liked the sound of rain. There was something comforting about it. But little by little, reality filtered in until he realized it wasn’t rain at all, but the sound of a shower.

  Shower?

  Cleo had already taken a shower.

  He went from half asleep to wide awake in a fraction of a second. He jumped from his makeshift bed. She’d gotten away. Somehow she’d gotten past him. Somehow she’d stepped over him without waking him, leaving the shower running to throw him off.

  Adrenaline pulsed through him. He shoved the bathroom door open so hard it banged against the wall. He ripped aside the shower curtain.

  And froze.

  Cleo sat in the tub, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs, shaking and rocking.

  Daniel reached in and shut off the water. “Cleo?”

  Where earlier she’d boldly exposed herself to him, this time she grabbed the edge of the shower curtain and pulled it to her, wrapping it around herself as best she could. She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. “C-Can’t a p-person get a l-little p-privacy around here?”

  He straightened. “I just thought-” What he’d thought was that she’d gotten away. This hardly seemed the time to explain the reasoning behind his intrusion. Withdrawal, he suddenly realized. She’s going through withdrawal.

  He pulled a fluffy white towel from the rack on the wall and handed it to her.

  “What are you addicted to?”

  “W-what?”

  “Crack? Heroin? I can hook you up with some people who can help you.”

  Wrong thing to say.

  Slowly her head came up. And when her eyes connected with his, they were glittering with anger. “You son of a bitch.”

  She stood, towel forgotten, shower curtain forgotten. She stepped from the tub and lifted her hand, poised to smack him. He grabbed her wrists and pinned her to the wall, her hands locked above her head, the soft globes of her breasts smashed against his chest. Above his head, he could feel the heat from the overhead lamp burning into his back. Near his right ear, he heard the timer ticking away.

  Next thing he knew, he was kissing her.

  She stiffened. And then she began kissing him back.

  He moved his mouth over hers, sucking at her lips, pulling away, turning his head, finding her again. He plunged his tongue deep inside her mouth, and she met him, thrust for thrust.

  He released her hands and she wrapped her arms around him. Her leg curled around his thigh. With her back braced against the wall, he grasped her leg and lifted it higher, a layer of denim the only thing keeping him from sliding inside her.

  She let out a cry of frustration, unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, freeing him into the heat of her hands.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want you.” She guided him to her.

  “Wait,” he said in a breathless voice. “We need a rubber. You got a rubber?”

  “We don’t need one.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I’m looking out for both of us.”

  “But if either of us were tainted, it would be me, wouldn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  The heat lamp clicked, engulfing them in darkness. He reached behind him, searching for the wall switch.

  “Leave the light off,” she whispered.

  “I want to see you.”

  “I want to pretend you’re somebody else.”

  “You’re making me mad.”

  “I’m just being honest.”

  “Honest?” he said. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “What about you? You said you were tired and hungry, but this is what you really wanted, isn’t it?”

  “And you don’t?” He cranked up the heat lamp. The red filaments came on, giving the space around them a weird, darkroom kind of glow. He bent his head to kiss her. She turned her face away. She was still cradling him in her hands. She let go and pressed both palms to the wall.

  He still had a hand to her thigh, her leg wrapped around him. “Look at me,” he said, his voice smooth and low.

  She kept her face turned away.

  He slid a finger inside her. “Look at me.” She was hot and wet.

  He began to stroke her slowly. “Look at me.”

  Her face came around. Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted, her breasts rapidly rising and falling.

  His strokes became faster and faster, until her entire body tensed, until she threw back her head and cried out, until she went limp and they both slid to the floor.

  “It’s too bad you don’t have a rubber,” she said, her voice thick and slurred, still lost in a euphoria he couldn’t achieve. He rested his forehead against hers. “No shit,” he said, his voice tight and strained.


  Another minute passed with just the sound of breathing. “You could get one,” she suggested. He sensed that she was holding her breath, waiting for his response.

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “You think I’ll leave while you’re gone?”

  “Let’s put it this way, I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

  She shoved him away. He just kind of fell back. She stepped over him and left the bathroom. Two seconds later he heard the bed creaking, heard the sound of covers being adjusted.

  No, he didn’t trust Cleo Tyler for a second. And even though there hadn’t been any penetration, he’d be lying if he said they hadn’t been intimate. And he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t known better.

  Cleo fell asleep almost instantly. And this time she didn’t dream the pumpkin dream. Instead, she dreamed something that was disturbing in a new kind of way. She dreamed that she was pregnant-with Daniel Sinclair’s baby.

  Cleo woke up to find bright sunlight streaming in the open curtains and Sinclair, fully dressed, the Ozarks T-shirt stretched across his chest and bunched under his armpits, going through her bag.

  She bolted upright, pulling the sheet over her breasts. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to figure you out.”

  She pulled the sheet free of the bed and got to her feet, the fabric twisted around her.

  “A little bit late for that, isn’t it?” he asked, indicating the sheet.

  She took a sweep at her bag. He lifted it beyond her reach then lowered it.

  “I’ve already seen everything there is to see,” he said. “And I’m referring to the bag, in case you wondered.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Money. I should have known. Jo paid you yesterday, didn’t she? That’s why you took off.”

  It would do no good to state her case. And it certainly wouldn’t do any good to tell him that she’d planned to give back every last cent. He wouldn’t believe her. She knew he wouldn’t believe her.

  He scratched at the day’s growth of stubble on his cheek. “I ordered some breakfast from room service. As soon as we eat we can hit the road. That’ll get us back in time for you to spend the afternoon with Jo and have your voodoo session, reading those tarot cards and shit.”