“Elias?” The surprise and confusion in the woman’s voice was unmistakable. He peered over his shoulder, trying to force the moisture back into his mouth. Cindi was marching up to him with that laboring waddle of hers and Hunter felt the sudden urge to put her head through the door.
Her face was all squished up. “Whatchu doing in the big man’s office?”
“Nothing.” The words no sooner came out that he realized how childish he sounded.
“Well, I guess if he’s okay with it.”
“Sure he is. Asked me to check on something he forgot to bring home with him.”
“Oh.” That harsh quizzical expression on her face was slowly giving way to the empty grin he was accustomed to. “Dr. Bowes is rather forgetful, isn’t he?”
“What are you doing here so late?” he asked, hoping to divert her attention.
“Filling in for Alice, but I’m done now.” Cindi cupped her elbows. “I hate staying here after dark.”
“Me too,” Hunter lied. But the truth was, he felt at home here. Maybe more at home than he’d felt anywhere else. When the sun went down, that feeling only became stronger.
“You finished?” Her eyes were bright.
“Yeah,” he answered reflexively.
“Great!” What would you say to that drink at TGIF?”
That plastic smile Hunter worked so hard to perfect was back and doing the job as good as ever. “I’m game.”
• • •
Two hours later, Cindi was leading Hunter into her bedroom, her hand clamped around the buckle of his belt and he could feel his hips being jerked forward with every tug. Ahead was the shadowy confines of Cindi’s bedroom. Even with a smattering of light he could see that the floor was littered with dirty laundry. A stack of “Hello!” magazines kept the door propped open. Two stained nurse’s uniforms lay crumpled and forgotten in the corner.
They were by the bed now and Cindi’s nightstand was covered with empty wagon wheel wrappers. She pulled the drawer open, dipped her hand inside and emerged with an orange condom. The level of Cindi’s precision with all this left him with the impression he wasn’t the first victim lured into her lair. They had sat for no more than three, maybe four drinks a piece, but he could smell waves of rum from the daiquiris rising up at him from the crotch of his pants where she was fumbling with the latch on his belt. After failing to make sense of the mechanism, she opted to unzip Hunter’s fly. In went her hand, poking and prodding as though she were searching for a stray wagon wheel that had tumbled to the bottom of her purse. A meaty set of fingers curled around the shaft of his penis and for a moment he was aroused, but all that changed when Cindi tried pulling him out through the zip hole, scraping every jagged tooth along the way.
“Fuck!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she whimpered, peering up at him like a scolded puppy. He could tell she was genuinely sorry, and Hunter wondered if this was how she sounded to the patients at Sunnybrook when she tightened their restraints.
“I think you tore a strip off.” He was limp as hell now.
“Nurse Cindi’ll make it all better.” He could sense her smiling even in the darkness as she took him into her mouth. She was swirling her tongue and sucking madly and Hunter wondered if she didn’t have a gobstopper in there somewhere.
Five minutes of the same and his cock was still about as firm as a strand of cooked spaghetti. It wasn’t so much the fumbling or the trashed apartment any more than it was Cindi’s shapeless body that was killing his erection. He had been with heavier women. Hell, there was something he even preferred about them. Maybe it had something to do with the little known truth that hot women were boring as hell in bed. Somehow they felt entitled to sit back and enjoy a free ride.
This whole evening was a sham from the start and he knew it. He had tried to fool himself at first, tried to pull the wool over his own eyes about why he was standing in Cindi’s room with his pecker out. And every which way he spun it, the answer came back the same.
Hunter was scared of the fat girl with the shiny eyes and the fingernails worn down to nubs. Scared shitless that she would rat him out about being in Bowes’ office. And because of that he’d felt he had no option other than to give her exactly what she wanted. He’d caught the signals of her attraction easily enough, there was no faulting his radar. No, that piece of equipment was working just fine. It was another piece of hardware—or in this case software—that was letting him down.
He watched the top of her head rocking back and forth. She wasn’t giving up. And in a weird kind of way, it made all the sense in the world. At this stage, Cindi’s self-esteem was on the line. For Hunter, however, he stood to lose a great deal more than a blow to his ego. His job at Sunnybrook for starters and certainly any hopes of writing that career altering research paper on Brenda Barrett. But what seemed to burn the most was the idea of losing free access to Brenda’s room and to the treasure trove of resource material waiting to be read on the selves of her library. He imagined Brenda lying in her bed. The tubes and hoses weren’t there anymore and she was beckoning him forward. She wanted him to lie down next to her and that’s when it happened. Cindi was starting to moan. Her hands and her mouth were moving faster. Rhythmically. Hypnotically. Hunter could feel himself becoming fuller, harder. He knew he could do this. As long as he closed his eyes and thought of Brenda, he knew everything would be just fine.
Chapter 19
The Duane Reade’s pharmacy on Broadway and 125th street was bright and cold and reminded Tyson of the stereotypical Judeo Christian vision of heaven: whitewashed and devoid of any hint of personality. Tyson’s fists were curling into tight balls and releasing almost in time to the pacifying sound of the Muzak belting out over the PA. He had heard once, and he couldn’t remember where, that the crap they passed for music in the large chain stores was laced with mind numbing subliminal messages.
Relax…keep shopping…we’re watching you…relax…
It must be a lie, he knew now, because he’d never been less relaxed in his entire life.
He was still steaming mad that Stevens had stood him up. Tyson had sat waiting by the Three Dancing Maidens for well over an hour, all the while feeling his gut working itself into knots and his temperature rising every time he dialed Stevens and got the little prick’s voice mail.
Hi, this is Doctor Charles Stevens at Sino-Meck. I’m either away from my phone or on another call…
When he finally accepted the fact that he’d been played for a fool, he’d jerked himself off that park bench and yelled “FUCK” at the top of his lungs. A young couple sitting nearby had risen almost in unison and walked briskly away, the man looking over his shoulder, worried that a slavering and foamy mouthed Tyson might be shambling after them. The yell had done something to dampen the anger he was feeling at the time, but not a thing to assuage his fear. Without Noxil, his only option was to hit a Duane Reade’s for the strongest non-prescription wake up pills they had. This wasn’t like the old days, he thought painfully, where he could count on an hour, maybe two of sleep, before he would wake up screaming. The situation had grown infinitely worse. He had run through the possibilities hundreds of times and the odds always came out the same. There was a fifty-fifty chance that stopping the Noxil would effectively slam shut that door connecting the dreamworld to reality. But what if he was wrong? What if stopping the Noxil only brought his nightmares back? What if something else was keeping that door from closing? The rotting foot of some unimaginable thing wedged in the frame, trying to push its way inside.
An image flashed before him and it made the skin on the top of his head ripple with gooseflesh. That ragged hospital gown worn by the woman he somehow knew was his mother. It had been soaked in gore and he could tell by the look on her face that she wanted his head against her blood soaked breast. Wanted to take all his pain away.
Come to Mommy!
Disturbing as the image was, lying in a woman’s arms was exactly what Tyson needed right now. And he knew
it. His immediate inclination was to pluck the cell phone from his pocket and start thumbing in Ruma’s number, but he stopped himself, his finger hovering over the send button.
He had come to understand long ago that relationships are essentially made up of doorways. Once they were closed, it was nearly impossible to open them again. Ruma’s felt as tightly sealed as they came.
After the first few months, when the nightmares and the lack of sleep had started slowly taking their long grueling toll on Tyson, he had eventually sought help. Mostly because of Ruma and Kavi. Even then he could see how much his behavior was hurting them. The ‘let’s see who can shout loudest’ game he and Ruma were constantly playing. Kavi trying to come between them, his tiny arms raised.
Stop hurting Mommy! Stop hurting Mommy!
Tyson’s gut clenched with grief. Imagine, a five-year-old telling his parents to behave. He hoped to God that one day Kavi would see that that wasn’t really his father doing those things. You deny someone sleep for long enough and their personality begins to bend and warp at an exponential rate and before long all those qualities that made them human had been swept entirely away.
He plucked three bottles of Picmeups from the shelf and scanned the directions. He had learned very quickly that most of the nonprescription stuff out there didn’t do a whole lot to keep you awake, other than to get your heart beating at a hundred miles an hour. The problem was that once you came down, and you most definitely came down, you were apt to fall asleep exactly where you stood. No doubt about it, this would only be a temporary solution. He had even gone so far as to try amphetamines once. But the thought of skulking through alleyways late at night, hunting for a fix had helped cure him of that bright idea. It was a slippery slope indeed and he knew that taking a single step in the wrong direction was liable to send him sailing right off the edge.
Even before the Noxil, he knew the key to avoiding the nightmares was simply refusing to sleep. But one month of playing that game had only compounded his symptoms and increased the ferocity of his nightmares. It almost seemed at the time as though the darkness was punishing him for trying to escape it. But now, dreaming didn’t have nearly the same implications as dreaming did even a week ago. Back then he might wake up from a bad dream and find himself screaming. Today, there was a chance that even dozing off for the briefest of naps might mean waking up next to something clawing his face off. Some horrible abomination that had followed him back from the damp and twisted corridors of his own mind. He was still holding the bottle of Picmeups when he heard the woman’s voice calling his name.
For a moment he expected to turn and find the haggard face of his mother glaring back at him. But it wasn’t his mother. The hand with the pills fell by his side and out of view, he hoped.
“Judy Stahl,” he said, and the surprise in his voice couldn’t have been more genuine.
Her mouth curled into a beautiful smile. Gleaming white teeth. She must have had braces. “I didn’t recognize you with your shirt on,” she said.
“Yes, Skip’s cottage.” The palms of his hands felt like raging rivers.
“I spend most of the year in the city, of course,” Judy said. “Spring and summers at…you didn’t think I lived up there all year round? You did, didn’t you?”
Tyson laughed and there was a touch of guilt there. “I admit, the thought had crossed my mind.”
“You just reminded me of something from grade school,” she said, switching her shopping basket to her other arm. “I had this teacher named Mrs. Martin and at ten years old I was convinced she slept in the classroom at night because she wore the same plaid skirt and blazer everyday.”
Even in Duane Reade’s flat, dead lighting, Judy’s eyes sparkled like sapphires. During one of his epic all nighters, Tyson had read in a National Geographic that eye color was a product of Darwinian evolution. Natural selection intended to help attract a mate.
Judy seemed to notice the shift in his expression. “I’m rambling,” she said starting to blush. “I’ve been told I’m a rambler.”
“No, I like it.”
Judy looked down at her feet and then back up at Tyson. “I guess I’ll see you up at Skip’s sometime. Did you finish pulling all those old dusty sheets off the furniture?”
“No, not yet. Can’t say I’ll be back up there any time soon, either.” For Tyson the memory of his mother’s leering face in the window and her shambling trek through the kitchen was still too fresh in his mind. In fact, he was sure her muddy footprints were still there. Irrefutable proof, if ever he needed it, that he was being crushed between two worlds.
“Catch you around then, Mr. Tyson Barrett.”
And the way she said his name, her auburn hair sea-sawing just enough to reveal the soft nape of her neck, left him feeling warm and rubbery. She was gorgeous, there were no two ways about it. Was it any wonder then that he felt an almost irresistible force pulling them together?
“What are you doing tonight?” he heard himself ask and right away his gut clenched with all the hallmarks of residual guilt. In spite of the fact that Ruma had left him, he had always accepted the plain fact that he had pushed her away. Her adultery and her lack of faith in him aside, he couldn’t fault her for what she’d done. The sad truth was, he had left her long before she had packed up his things and set them neatly at the door. The last six months had only been the final straw.
Judy was smiling at him. He almost swore he had heard her say “I’m free.” But he couldn’t exactly be sure since the thought burning like a wild fire through his tired mind was how familiar she seemed.
More than likely, he had spotted Judy in one of the eight million pictures Skip kept strung along the walls of his apartment.
It was that smile that had triggered the connection and he hated to admit that she and Skip might have been lovers at some point, the consequence of which would render her immediately out of bounds.
Stop throwing up road blocks in the way of a normal life. Who cares if she had a fling with Skip? Hell, Skip’s been with half the women in New York City.
“Great,” he replied and now he too was smiling. Two identical smiles staring at each other under the dead, pale lights of a Duane Reade’s pharmacy.
• • •
“Oh, this is fabulous!”
“You think so?”
“Oh yes. It’s nice to meet a man who knows his way around the kitchen.”
Judy had stopped and was staring at him. She was holding her fork between her index finger and her thumb and it was swinging back and forth suggestively.
“How is it a man like you hasn’t been snatched up yet?”
He glanced down at his left hand, almost instinctively. He wasn’t wearing his wedding ring and he felt a momentary sting of guilt.
“I was snatched. But now I’m unsnatched.”
Judy let out a burst of laughter and then stopped abruptly. “I didn’t mean to laugh, it’s just the way you said it.”
Tyson smiled.
“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I hit a bad patch and I wasn’t there like I should have been. No one else to blame but myself.”
“Relationships are rarely that one sided. I mean, so long as you weren’t cheating on her or beating her with a billy club.”
“No billy clubs, too soft.”
She grinned. “Then stop torturing yourself. Life is tough enough as it is.” Judy must have sensed his unease because she changed the subject almost at once.
“You grow up in the city?” she asked.
“No, upstate. Small town. One of the lucky few who made it out, I guess.”
“There’s something about the way you talk. You were a mama’s boy, weren’t you?”
He could see the expression on her face shifting from sweet playfulness to deep concern.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, has your mother passed away? I’m such an idiot. Always sticking my foot in my mouth. You made a nice dinner and here I go ruining everything
.”
“No, not at all. My mother…” Tyson paused. “My mother died a long, long time ago.”
She put her hand over his. “I’m sorry to hear that. I started a minor in early childhood development at Columbia U a few years back. I almost graduated too, but I found the case studies too difficult to deal with. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been growing up without her.”
Tyson seemed to be contemplating that last part of what she said.
“Growing up without her was the one thing that saved my life.”
Judy frowned.
That’s when Tyson’s phone rang.
He looked down at the number. It belonged to Dr. Stevens.
Chapter 20
“Tyson Barrett?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Detective Anderson. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Well, I’ll be honest, I’m a little disturbed. This number belongs to Dr. Stevens.”
“Yes, we know. That’s why we’re calling. I need to know where you were this afternoon between three and four o’clock?”
Tyson’s heart kicked up a notch. A tangle of jumbled thoughts were firing off in his head. He knew that soliciting Stevens to buy a potentially hazardous drug the FDA had slated for destruction wasn’t exactly legal, but he would never have expected getting a call by the NYPD.
“I was in Central Park.”
“We found your number on Dr. Charles Stevens’ phone. I see here you called him fifteen times today. That sound about right?”
“Yeah, he was supposed to meet me in the park at three and he never showed.”
“What was your meeting about?”
Tyson could feel the room getting hotter. Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. “We had some business to discuss.”
“Enlighten me, please.”
“He was bringing me some Noxil. I’d run out. What’s wrong, is he under arrest?”
“No, Mr. Barrett, he’s not under arrest. He’s been murdered.”
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