by Gwyn Cready
She grunted, using the momentum of her body to propel herself. She kicked a leg and her shoe flew off, hitting a spectator in the forehead. Didn’t matter. Could apologize later. She could feel the friction on her palms as they rubbed the metal and the buds of blisters, just like in third grade. She should’ve rubbed her hands in dirt before she began. The bars were set on a rising incline, making the approach a matter of more than just distance. She wondered if she still had the shoulder strength. She wondered if she’d shaved her underarms. In between the sounds of the sirens, she could hear the thump-thump-thumpof a Donna Summer remix. Or was that just her head?
Each movement jerked her breasts a little higher out of her bra. Was wishing for God’s hands to squeeze tighter sacrilegious? She stole a glance at the people below. The world was jiggly. Drunken jiggly. And she was being carried on the glorious slow wave of imbibed substances like a rock star surfing the crowd. The women were cheering. The man who’d wanted to dance flashed her a thumbs-up. She was glad she’d gone for pants under the slip.
She reached the opposite platform, breathless but exhilarated, and a wonderful happiness uncurled into her fingers and toes. She didn’t know what was in the stuff Axel had given her, but she knew she could count on him to have the best. It was probably the one and only thing she could count on him for. The garbage can—wasn’t it supposed to be a cauldron?—flashed red lights, making it hard to see. She felt more than a little dizzy, but it was a dizzy mixed with thrill and exquisite satisfaction, like one of those Side by Side shakes at Steak ’n Shake. She squeezed her eyes tight to keep the world from spinning. She wished she’d had something to eat.
Axel clicked the lens into place and rejected the light meter for a more hands-on approach. He scanned the heads of the cheering crowd as “Bad Girls” played, looking for the telltale raven hair and ivory shoulders, but didn’t spot them anywhere. After another moment of searching, he wondered with a flicker of guilt if she was in the ladies’ room, divesting herself of the alcohol she’d consumed. Then he remembered the TAG Heuer guy and with a flicker of something far different hoped she hadn’t done something foolish.
“Va-va-voom,” muttered a man with a Tweety Bird tat-too. “Look at the lungs on that one. Snow White with titties.”
Axel adjusted his f-stop and shook his head. Effing asshole—Oh, shit! He jerked his gaze up. Ellery was teetering on the platform next to the makeshift cauldron, her back to the room. To the chants of “Off! Off! Off for Ynez!” she slipped her hands up her dress and came out with something that looked like a cross between his grandmother’s girdle and a Madonna throwback. Ellery tossed it into the can. Grinning like a kid, she turned to the crowd and began pumping her fists—and by default everything else under that thin silk—in victory.
Mr. Tweety made a kissing noise and said, “Niiiiice.”
Axel stepped directly into the asshole’s line of sight. “That’s my coworker. Knock it off.”
The guy was about to say something stupid and Axel felt his fists tightening, when the room erupted into a roar. Ellery had turned her back to the crowd and whisked off her dress.
It had been a long time since Axel had seen her half naked, but the spectacle hadn’t lost any of its power. Catching only a flash of that pale skin in profile, his heart cramped and his balls contracted—the one-two punch of what he’d lost and still desired.
The roar was deafening, and Mr. Tweety, who had caught the look on Axel’s face, snickered in amusement. “Thought that was your colleague, jerk-off.”
Ellery grabbed the prize T-shirt off the hook, slipped it on and turned to rake in the adulation, her cheeks pink with pleasure.
Axel lifted the camera automatically and clicked off half a dozen shots. On the sixth shot, however, he saw her take a step backward, which brought her unknowingly close to the edge of the platform. She lifted her foot again. He dropped the camera and ran.
It was as if she were slipping in slow motion, her foot questing and flexing before her arms instinctively went up to balance her. He was flying, his heart working in overdrive. In five paces he was almost beneath her—just in time to see the guy with the TAG Heuer catch her neatly.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Axel sat at the bar, frowning into his club soda.
At least she was safe, he thought—and finally interviewing someone. In any case, that’s what he hoped was happening on that couch in the corner, though he’d never seen an interview conducted with the interviewer’s feet in the interviewee’s lap. Fucking TAG Heuer. He’d never hated a watch so much.
He glowered into the carbonation, damning his luck. With a wave, he caught the bartender’s eye and asked her to take a cup of coffee to Ellery.
“Put some maraschino cherry juice in it,” he added. “And tell her it’s spiked.”
He pulled out his phone and checked it. Two missed calls, both from Black. He rolled his eyes and opened his e-mail. Black hadn’t stopped at calling. “Send me what she’s written so far. And I want a daily update. Eleven a.m., my time.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake.
Axel doubted she’d written anything so far—that is, unless she’d done her writing rolling around on her back. And he knew she’d be in no condition to write after this.
He sighed and looked at the time. Midnight. He had been hoping to get some candids of the people Ellery talked to, but he’d be damned if he’d take a picture of the guy on the couch.
The bartender returned from across the room with the cup of coffee still in her hand. “No luck,” she said.
“She didn’t want it?”
“Didn’t get a chance to ask. The guy’s been pouring Dom Pérignon.”
“What? No.” Axel jumped off the stool. After martinis, margaritas and who knows what at the hotel, the last thing Ellery needed was to turbocharge it all with champagne.
He fought his way through the crowd, but the couch was empty—and so was the bottle of Dom Pérignon, which sat upside down in a champagne bucket.
After a fruitless survey of the crowd, he stopped a waitress. “Did you see the woman sitting here?”
“The couple?”
He winced. “Yes.”
“She said something about a zebra, and they went that way.” She pointed toward the hallway that led to the restrooms.
Axel trotted down the hallway. When he made the turn, his blood began to boil. Ellery’s T-shirt was up to her neck, and the guy had his face buried in her breasts, snorting coke off them.
In two steps he was at the guy’s side. He grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him into the wall hard enough to rattle a picture loose. “She’s drunk,” Axel said. “There’s a line.”
The guy had no interest in a face-off with Axel and ran off. Axel turned back to Ellery, who had pulled her T-shirt down. She was old enough to take care of herself—Jesus, she was old enough to do whatever she wanted—and she looked at him with no apology. What she hid could fill a book, but in that moment he could smell her skin, taste the salty sweetness of her flesh and feel the coke charging like tiny thunderbolts through his lungs and into his heart. This must be what an alcoholic feels when he sees a drink, he thought. It was if he’d done the snorting himself, so alive was his sense of it in this dark corner.
And he had done it, though not with her. He remembered her question earlier and felt a rush of shame, wondering if that was what she’d meant.
Did you… I mean, when I first met you, there was this story about you and this woman.
Ellery’s look hadn’t changed, but her eyes had grown bolder. There was an offer in them, no question. To kiss her? To roll up a bill and finish what TAG Heuer had started? He wished she’d believe he was done with that stuff. He wanted his word to mean that much to her. But he also wanted to lift up that T-shirt, loosen those jeans and plow her thighs.
She touched his wrist. It was too much, as if all his sorrow and longing had been concentrated into a vial and released into his vein with the jab of a needle. He pulled her
against him and brought his mouth to hers. She kissed him eagerly, the pungent mix of liquors on her tongue filling his head. She leaned into him, just like the old days, skimming his ear with her fingers and nipping his lips. The aching pleasure of holding her again was more than he could bear, and when he moaned, she bit him.
He wrenched himself free, surprised at the willpower he’d had to marshal to stop.
“Axel,” she said sadly, curled into his chest, “why did you have to disappoint me so?” Then her body went limp and he caught her before she fell.
“Oh, there you are,” the bartender said, turning down the hall. “Your hamburger’s at the bar.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ellery’s head hurt, but that was nothing compared to the horrible sensation in her mouth. It was like she’d been chewing the lining of a litter box. She moved a little. Nope. Wrong about the head. It was definitely as bad as the mouth.
She slitted an eye.
Holy Christ, she’d been moved to the inside of a steam engine. Large silver vats topped with tubes and dials surrounded her. She could feel the glug-glug-glug of the pistons and smell the smoky scent of something cooking. She wondered for an instant if she’d been shrunk to the size of a cell and injected into the engine block of her mother’s ’71 Olds Cutlass.
She heard a scraping noise and shifted her head. It was Axel on a ladder at the top of one of the vats, and he seemed to be scrubbing the inside with something at the end of a pole. He was stripped to his khakis with his shirt tied around his waist, and Ellery watched the muscles in his back flex as he worked. For all the folklore about drug users being pale, scrawny types, Axel had always been quite the eyeful. In fact, laboring away in his current state of undress, he reminded her of something she’d seen before. Where, though? In the athletic world? No. Sculpture? No, though there was a marble statue of Hermes in the Met that had always annoyingly reminded her of Axel. Then she had it: There was a huge Art Deco mural of gold and gray glass from the thirties on the façade of that building in downtown Pittsburgh that showed a puddler, a steelworker who stirs molten iron with his ladle, with his shirt off. At night tiny lights twinkled on it, showing the sparks from his fiery work. It had always fascinated her, and Axel had the body to carry it off.
Ah, Pittsburgh. She had to admit, there were still some things here that made her smile about the place. She still wasn’t exactly sure where she was, but given the grainy scent wafting through the room and the fact that Axel was involved, she suspected she was either in a brewery or a meth lab.
“Morning,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“God, yes.”
He chuckled and climbed down the ladder. What on earth had happened to her last night? The last thing she remembered clearly was asking Axel for a pill.
Jesus, how did he do it? She felt like she’d spent the night in a rock tumbler. Gingerly she moved her hands, feeling the surface on which she was curled. The mattress was made of burlap and appeared to be filled with tiny beans.
She tried to focus on the red letters printed on it: “Vienna Malt.” Then she gazed down. She was five feet above the ground. Axel had laid her on a pallet of malt.
He returned with a mug.
“Can I just sniff it? I’m afraid to sit up.”
“Poor Pittsburgh.” He gave her a woeful smile and held the cup near her nose.
She peeled the burlap off her mouth, which seemed to have been glued into place with dried drool. God, she must look like hell. She got up on an elbow and felt her stomach roil.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Doubtful,” Axel said. “I’m pretty sure you’re running on empty there.”
A snippet of him holding her hair popped into her head. So did a prayer for a comet to hit the earth. “I already…?”
He nodded. “Ten times, at least.”
Great. She banged her palm on her bedding. “So, what’s with the kitty litter?”
“Kitty litter,” he said with mock insult. “You are sitting on one of the most lovely things on earth.”
“I always knew you were an ass man.”
“Your ass, while remarkable in many ways, cannot impart a sweet honey molasses flavor to beer.”
“I’d say you have no idea what my ass can impart to beer, but since I apparently can’t remember exactly what happened last night, I’m not sure I’d be on solid ground.” She held out her hand and, with his help, pulled herself to a sitting position, though a silent timpani banged away behind her forehead in complaint. She took the coffee and noticed a disconcerting freedom of movement.
“Do you, um, happen to know where my bra is?” My hundred-dollar bra?
“Wish I could take credit,” he said, heading back up the ladder, “but you really wanted that T-shirt.”
She looked down. The Monkey Bar: Where Girls Come to Play.
Oh, Christ.
“And my dress?”
“You really wanted that T-shirt.”
She put a hand on her forehead. She had a vision of jerking her way over the heads of the crowd, which would certainly explain why her shoulders were singing with pain. But why did she smell like men’s cologne?
Then she remembered the hand up her shirt, and a searing flush of embarrassment came over her. “Did we…”
He turned to her, very still. “Did we what?”
She squirmed. More images slipped over the floodgates. A man. Joe? John? Jake? His hands under her shirt, then her shirt up to her neck. Oh, good Lord!
“… get what we needed for the story?”
Axel returned his attention to the vat he’d abandoned. “I did. I’m not so sure about you. Though you were conducting quite an interesting interview toward the end.”
Axel must have seen it. She had no idea how she had ended up here, but at some point he must have found her. “I’m remembering a guy,” she said at last.
“Pretty unforgettable.”
“Not exactly Harold.”
Axel considered. “No.”
“How bad was it?”
“Let’s just say your breasts probably have their own Twitter following at this point.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Hey, it beats Ashton Kutcher.”
She rubbed her temples, wondering how each of her teeth could hurt separately. “Axel, what the hell happened to me?”
“Delayed adolescence? You know, it’s sort of like always getting immunized for the flu: You build up no tolerance. When the big one hits, you’re wiped off the planet.”
“Are you saying my young adulthood was sheltered?”
“Have you heard of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble?”
“Hey, I know how to party. Look at my shoes.… Oh, boy, where’s my other shoe?”
“I was a little curious about that myself.”
She sipped the coffee. It was strong and hot, not unlike the guy who had made it. “Hey, thanks for taking care of me.”
He shrugged. “No problem.”
“And now can you tell me what we’re doing in a brewery?”
He laughed. “I don’t know what you’re doing in a brewery, but I’m cleaning.”
“Cleaning? The man who never picked up a single sock? Who ate cereal out of a saucepan when he ran out of bowls?”
“Works for photographers, not so much for beer. This is Brendan’s place.”
Oh, yes, she remembered Brendan, Axel’s party-boy college friend. “So, why are you cleaning? Can’t Brendan just get a cleaning person to do it?”
He scooped the mug from her hand and took a long gulp. She felt a tingle where his hand had brushed her skin.
“First,” he said, returning the coffee to her and threading his arms back into the shirt, “brewing is cleaning. Sure, it’s not the glory part, and it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s about ninety percent of what a brewer does. Second, I’m hoping to buy this place soon.”
She lowered the mug. “What?”
“I want to make beer.” He but
toned his sleeves.
“And leave New York?”
He laughed. “Yes. And leave New York.”
“What about your work?”
“I figure I’ll still do some freelance stuff. But this is my dream.”
“I-I-” She didn’t know what to say. She knew he liked beer and had homebrewed while they were together, but to do it full-time? That seemed so unlike Axel. Of course, what did she really know about him anymore? “But you’re going to live in Pittsburgh?”
“I know it’s hard to imagine, but it is possible to be happy outside New York. I don’t really like the publishing business. I’m not going to miss it.”
He’d said this without a touch of venom, but Ellery couldn’t help but feel the words applied—if not particularly, then in general—to her.
“Where will you live?” she asked.
“For a while, at least, upstairs. There’s an office and a storage room up there. All I need is a bed.”
This was more than her bruised brain could process. New York would be different without him. While she’d taken care not to cross his path, she’d always known he was there, and in some ways the way he’d worked to stay on top of his game had inspired her to be better too. And now Axel would follow his dream. She felt a sudden emptiness inside.
“Gosh, I certainly wish you the best.”
He smiled, a nice crinkly eyed one. “Thank you. That means a lot.” He hesitated. “It’s funny about dreams. You think you’re happy doing one thing, and then something happens.…”
“What happened?” she said, instantly alert.
“I just meant in general,” he said. “You reach a point when you find you want something else, and the desire can be so powerful.”
She made an affirming “Mm-mm” and smiled.
“You’ve always followed your dreams. That’s one of the things I loved about you, you know. The Sill, New York, Vanity Place. Is there anything left for you to even dream about?”
