Bullets of Rain (10 page)

    At the concrete corral for the trash, he checked the recycling bin with a flashlight, fearful that he would find it brimmed with empty bottles. There was nothing. Thursday was also garbage collection day for the outlands.

    The rain agonized in like sleet, raking his arms and face. He was suddenly afraid his own door would lock him out. It swung toward the jamb, moved by the wind, as he approached-just subtly, enough to panic him and break him into a run for the house. Nothing definitive. The universe seemed organized toward disorienting him, not actually smashing him down. Not yet.

    Had he finally
cracked, shattered, lost his mind?
Blitz was still sitting exactly where he had been told, and somehow that frightened Art even more. Dogs could sense madness. When the TV news crews showed up, the first thing upon which they would fixate would be Art's modest library of serial killer books.

    He mopped up his own vomit and used lime spray to kill the acidic stench. He had to wash, to sleep, to restart his entire day and maybe his whole life.

    He wished Derek had left Joe Clawfoot's number… if either of them really existed.

    That was when his attention was snapped around to the sliding glass doors on the seaward side of the living room. A woman was outside on the deck, banging the slanted door with the flat of her hand, her voice strident. Blitz charged forward and began barking.

    Art inadvertently grasped his chest.
This is what a heart attack feels like,
he thought.

    

    

    Suzanne was about five-five, short and rounded, with hair chopped off straight at the chin line. Its tint varied, favoring amber, with a stark dyed violet streak arcing back from the left temple. She looked to be bravely weathering her mid-twenties. Beneath her inadequate Victorian sweater she came clad in a bewildering array of black undergarments that ganged to form an outfit; a lot of thin straps vied for space on each shoulder.

    Her clothing was completely sodden from the brutality of the rain.

    She entered Art's house goose-bumped and shivering, barefoot, her toes white as milk.

    Art had shaken off his bizarrerie long enough to tell Blitz to shut the hell up, and unlock the sliding doors. A blast wave of frigid ocean air practically pushed Suzanne inside. The abrupt quiet, once the doors were shut again, was precarious with pocket drama.

    "God!" she said. "Fuck, it's freezing out there!" Her eyes were a vague gray and seemed slightly hunted. They darted around to catalog Art's living room as if she'd just blundered into a police station or a church by accident. "Thank you, thank you, and thank you. I'm Suzanne." She did not stick out a hand. "Thank you."

    Opening lines were everything, but Art still had demons poking his brain matter with fondue forks. "What are you doing outside," he said, "in that?"

    "Sure looks like rain, don't it?" The fireplace caught her gaze and held it. "You don't mind-?"

    "Please." Art swept a hand toward the hearth as though holding open an invisible door. You had to invite people in. "How about a towel?"

    "That would be heaven. Hi, doggie."

    As soon as she moved, Blitz started barking again, bracing on his forelegs like a bucking motorcycle about to kick into gear. Art snapped, "
Halt's Maul!
"-shut up-and exiled him to the "dog den" off the kitchen pantry room: "
Verschwinde in deine Hutte!
" Blitz needed to chill, to occupy himself with his favorite hunk of blanket and masticate his chew toys while Art sorted things out.

    Suzanne was shucking her sweater with an
ugghh
sound as Art brought two huge towels of Egyptian cotton. The sweater clung like a jellyfish until it was bested. It hit the hearth with a moist slap.

    "I've got some clean sweats if you want to throw that stuff in the dryer."

    "You're trying to get me naked and I don't even know your name yet."

    Her breasts caught him looking but her eyes missed his flash of embarrassment. "Call me Art, and so far I think I'm pleased to meet you, but what the hell were you doing out there?"

    "You're supposed to say, What are you doing out there at this time of night, or don't you have enough sense to stay out of the rain?"

    "Well, that, too. Waif till your father gets home!"

    "Now you got it. Looks like there's a hell of a party going on here, too." All the beer bottles were still crowding the table space. "Smells like somebody puked."

    Art's flush of color was not too noticeable thanks to the light he had dimmed just minutes before. "Uh… I had company."

    "Did the dog barf?''

    "Something like that.''

    Art was already walking on glass and eggshells, playing host again too soon, still wondering if he was making all this up inside his mad cauliflower brain. It threw his composure and rendered his speech halting and hair-triggered. If he had invented Derek's entire visit, who was to say that Suzanne wasn't just another fantasy he'd conjured up?

    A really obvious fantasy, too, he chided himself.

    Suzanne unknowingly fought back the unreal with sheer presence. "You're not sure whether your dog barfed. O-kayyy…'' She toweled her hair vigorously and came up frizzy. "You want me to take my clothes off now?"

    Art nearly spluttered. Good thing he didn't have a drink in his mouth.

    "Sorry." She grinned evilly. "I mean, which way to the bathroom? You serious about those sweats?"

    It took Art another idiotic beat to reset. "Oh. Yeah, of course. Let me collect things. Two minutes."

    "I can't wait two minutes."

    "Two moments, then."

    "Moments, I can handle. You got any more beer or did you drink it all?"

    It wasn't an accusation, although it shrieked in and detonated inside Art's head like one. "In the fridge," he called from the guest bathroom.

    When he came out she was sauntering down the hall, a low-slung walk that rolled her hips naturally and was nearly impossible not to look at. She held a bottle of Dixie Double Hex and two of her many straps had drooped off her left shoulder. "Thank you, stranger," she said with a brilliant smile. "I'll be out in a bit." When she shut the bathroom door, Art heard her lock it.

    Battened on guilt, Art quickly eliminated the beer bottles from the table and cleaned up. Suzanne had left damp footprints on the carpet near the hearth. He picked up her saturated sweater. So far this seemed real-world enough. This visitor left traces of her passage. Blitz had instantly flipped out into intruder mode, another proof. But no circumstance had ever before delivered strangers to Art's door, and he was in danger of getting lost in trying to figure out what every little clue meant, like the guy who can't hear the music over all the noise made by the orchestra.

    He had bolted Excedrin and hydrocodone; the caffeine in the first was abetted by the buffering wave of the latter, and his skull began to relax its grip on his brain. Suzanne was oval-faced and attractive, with an almost Asian aspect to the set of her eyes. A bright intelligence danced in that gaze. His desktop schedule/planner was agreeably blank, his dance card clean, and he had no overwhelming desire to puzzle out his latest assignment or dip into another doorstop-thick, beach-read paperback. What else did he have to do tonight?

    The utility cubby did double duty as a dog den. The home of the washer/dryer setup, it was equipped with a drop-down ironing board and a clothesline beyond Blitz's reach. Upper shelves were laden with canned goods overstock from the pantry. The main power panels for the house were found here, upgraded for better amperage, along with indoor meters for utilities. Some basic gardening tools were also kept here; Art disliked leaving such stuff outside, where it might reclassify as potential hardware for a break-and-enter. When it was cold like this, Blitz enjoyed lazing about the room when the dryer was running. Right now the dog sourly regarded his master from the far end of the room.
I was just doing my dog job. What if she had been a monster?

    "You can come out if you promise not to be an asshole."

    Blitz livened up and sniffed the wet sweater in Art's hands. Some kind of aroma clung remotely to it. Perfume or body oil, more like a spice than a commercial scent. It helped add salacious thoughts to the shopping list already self-compiling in Art's imagination.
Stop it
, he remonstrated with himself.
Be nice
.

    He heard the shower running in the guest bath. That made sense. Pound the chill out with hot water. Suzanne knew how to avoid catching cold even if she couldn't stay out of the rain.

    Evidence of Derek's passage was so scarce that Art remained unnerved and off balance. The stack of dinnerware they'd used-for two-counted for nothing if he was delusional. He could have watched the movie by himself.

    Or he could, more simply, have been so lonely that he was using any human contact as an excuse to doubt his equilibrium. The haughty Suzanne certainly classified as a surprise shock.

    Blitz had heard that remark about the vomit smell.
Sure, somebody farts, somebody pukes, blame it on the dog. It's what we're for, you smug biped
.

    "That's a great shower," Suzanne said. Her return was fanfared by a roll of steam from the half-cracked bathroom door. Art could hear the heat lamp and exhaust fans running. "You've got one of those rainfall showerheads." She peeked out, a face amid a burly cocoon of towels. "Clothes?"

    "Oh." Art kept a whole row of variously logoed sweatshirts on the top rack of the linen closet. He pulled down a set in navy blue and added a T-shirt and thick socks. Suzanne was pink and radiantly warm from a brisk scrub with a back brush.

    "I don't suppose you can spare some underwear?" It did not seem like such an oddball request.

    "I think I can scare something up. Momentito." As he turned he saw her in the partially fogged bathroom mirror, towel drooping, nothing X- or even R-rated, just… interesting.

    Art's waist had acquired several inches since age thirty-five, but nothing that rendered his belt line grotesque. He rummaged up some size-thirty shorts worn almost as soft as flannel, so old the tags had faded to complete blankness. They smelled not soiled, but old, unused. Dusty, like antique clothing. When Suzanne reached out for them, the towel tucked across her breasts unfurled, and Art snatched his gaze away so quickly and automatically that now he felt like a genuine fool.

    He hadn't seen a thing, anyway.

    He wondered where he'd left the party flyer he'd discovered in the mailbox yesterday morning. That made him recall Derek's cryptic postcard, which also proved that Derek had merely mailed a card, not shown up for an evening of hail-fellow-well-met drinking, dining, drinking, man talk, and drinking. Which led, inexorably, to the message in a bottle, with all its unnerving portent and signposts hinting at Art's potential for "diminished capacity.'' The day, the vague madness, had begun when he found the bottle. It was empty now, perched on the mantel, having spent a month in the sand and a year in the surf, or more, only to find its way here.

    "You know Price?'' Suzanne had selected a spot close to the fire, and drifted directly to it, the sweats too big on her, but therefore warmer. She resembled a kid in jammies, feet and all.

    "Price." Information scrolled in Art's head. No matches found.

    "Price. I forget his last name. That's his house, down the beach from yours, past the place that looks haunted."

    "The party house," said Art. "Does he know somebody named Michelle?"

    "They're supposed to be married but I don't think they really are," said Suzanne. "God, Michelle is like… gorgeous. She's perfect. She's smart. She deserves better." Suzanne bugged her eyes slightly whenever referencing Michelle's bottomless list of attributes, every single one of which, apparently, was designed to make lesser beings give up in humiliation.

    "She some kind of actress or model?"

    "I don't think so." Suzanne genuinely did not know. "I think she's the sort of chick who turns down movies and modeling." She assumed a lotus position on the couch and planted the beer bottle between her heels. "Michelle is that rare and scary woman who always wins, and Price is the guy everybody wants to know. He's this big guy, used to be a biker, used to be a bodyguard, knows all the right numbers-who to call for the best drugs, who to call if you need a bullet pulled out of you with no hospital, that kind of borderline underworld shit."

    "Friend of yours?"

    "Not really. I mean, he was never like my boyfriend or anything. I went to his party because Dina went. Dina's my bud; I think she's sweet on Price, but fuck that, it's like: Get in line."

    "What's the party for?"

    "Bastille Day? Full moon? Cinco de Mayo? Who knows. Enough time passes, Price throws a party."

    "Not around here."

    "No, it's usually in a different place every time, and it's usually a lot closer to the city. I think he did this one to test who would actually make the drive. Weed out the hangers-on." She disappeared into introspection, just for a second, then ruefully added, "Yeah, that worked out like a dog turd in the champagne. Not you sweetie."

    Blitz approached, head low, willing to sniff, probably doomed to make friends with dismaying speed.

    The only-virtually sole-party Art had hosted in this house had been long ago. He and Lorelle had finagled nearly thirty-five friends into "making the drive" on Halloween, a workweek night, or "school night," as Lorelle liked to call them. Most had shown up in costume; fully half had lingered until dawn. They'd organized a huge Big Chill breakfast outside on the deck and turned the kitchen into a free-for-all. One guy (either Grant Chastain or Ernie Lawlor, from Art's old design firm) drove halfway back to the city just to score more beverages from a friend of his who ran a liquor store. The friend even came back with him, bigheartedly playing the Santa of liquid refreshment. He was greeted with applause. He'd had an impressive, basso laugh, an opera singer's laugh, but Art could never remember his name. There had been life in this house once, and an excellent time had been had by all. Now it seemed like someone else's old story.