Death & the City Book Two (16 page)

"Smells of limes," I remark, looking at the shampoo bottle. "It's not helping me sober up. I'm just thinking about tequila instead."

"Yeah, I did think you'd had enough," he smiles, turning my shoulders gently so that my back is to him, and he can see the back of my head, which as he clicks his tongue sounds like it didn't miss out on the gore. He coaxes the tangles out by threading my hair through his fingers slowly, easing out the blood clots along with the shampoo bubbles. "Hopefully we won't have to do that again. I don't like working in a confined space like that. Not in public either."

"It's a bit Hollywood stereotype hit-man," I agree.

It goes quiet, as I get used to feeling his fingers comb through my hair, the only sound being the water drumming down onto us from the shower. I feel him squeeze the last of the shampoo out down the length of my hair, and his hands rub the backs of my arms briefly.

"Thanks," I say, turning back to face him. He's very close, studying me. "Has it all gone?"

"Think so," he nods. His hands move up to my shoulders and he kisses me. I don't think he intended it to be more than just one, but as we part and our eyes lock he moves in again. I feel a bit weakened and dizzy from alcohol, so as he goes further, an involuntary sound of protest escapes me, as I feel my back pushed up against the wall of the shower.

"Okay." Connor turns the water off, and pulls me away from the tiles into his arms, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around me. "Glad you didn't just switch the water on to
Cold
, but I get the message."

"Didn't know how to," I say.

"Wouldn't be right anyway. We've both had a drink this time. Having sex drunk is really last Millennium."

I tend to agree, although without it, I wouldn't have Junior. I feel my face burning red just hearing him say the S-word, and try to hide it behind the towel, drying my hot face and blushing ears. He switches off the light in the shower, and points me in the direction of the living-room.

"Make yourself at home. I'll go and find us both some medication we might need after tonight."

I wriggle out of my soaking denim skirt under the towel, leaving it next to our boots and jackets on the floor as he heads for the utility. The towel is big enough to wrap around myself like a blanket, and I manage to hit the TV remote buttons with my toe, while sitting on the giant circular sofa-bed. Weird old fantasy movie
Legend
is on
, probably better enjoyed drunk, so I leave it on the same channel.

Drunken curiosity getting the better of me, I kick Connor's jacket to turn it over, reach down into the inside pocket and find his darts wallet, opening the flap to take a look just as he reappears in the living-room.

"Please don't tempt me to use those on you," he warns, dropping the medical case onto the seat behind, and taking the wallet away. He sits down next to me, apparently unconcerned about his wet jeans on the furniture, and opens it. The dart in one slot is bloody. He slides out the clean one on the opposite side, and holds it out. "Don't touch the point, whatever you do."

I take a good look. It seems fairly ordinary, until I notice that what I thought was a pattern on one side of the barrel is a liquid level indicator. I check the tip, and see it is in fact hollow, as I immediately suspected.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Beauty treatment. Nice old ladies use it to get rid of frown lines," he says, cryptically. "Mixed with a few things that reduce social inhibitions."

"I'm a door supervisor, not a spa party drug dealer," I remind him. "In plain English, please."

"Neurotoxin copied from botulism strain, not dissimilar to Botox. Induces temporary muscle paralysis. Combined with even more temporary truth drugs," says Connor. "Means you get to interrogate someone, while they can't do anything silly like run away or hurt themselves."

"How did it not paralyse the dartboard?"

"You have to unlock the delivery spring by twisting the rings on the barrel," he says, and takes it back off me, putting it away. "Means it can't be used by accident. Or in the middle of the night, running away from me."

"I wasn't just thinking that."

"You so were." He puts the wallet in the medical case and flips through the other contents. "I've got a few more fungicidal treatments in here. Topical ones. Arms, face and neck you should probably treat."

He gives me a tube in medical packaging.

"Should probably take some vitamins to counteract all the alcohol and pep up your immune system too," he says, getting back up, picking up the darts wallet out of the medic's case again. "I'll get some orange juice."

He goes back to the kitchen. I open the tube after attempting to read the tiny writing on the side, and smell it. There isn't a smell, which at least is inoffensive enough, so I squeeze some out experimentally, and rub it on the backs of my hands. Thinking, hmmmm, darts. That's different. Proves he's more used to dealing with animals, at any rate.

I'm still thinking about animals, while Tim Curry's underworld demon creeps out the 1980's on the TV. Connor returns with two glasses of orange juice, and a packet of soluble high-strength vitamin tablets, looking anything but demon-like himself in comparison.

"Are they going to test that guy for rabies?" I ask. "Because I don't think this will help if he's got that too."

"Yeah, he'll get tested. And the others. I've got pretty much everything you'd need for that if it's positive. Come into contact with a lot of it in Pest Control jobs. Not to mention all the other little nasties they carry." He puts the glasses down and pops a vitamin into each one, which start fizzing. "That's going to take you all night. Give it here."

I relinquish control of the medicated cream, and let him rub it into my arms.

"You'll probably need to use it as well," I remark. "Seeing as you've touched me."

"Not as much as I'd like to," he points out.

I go quiet again, not knowing what the right answer is to that. He works his way up to my shoulders and around the nape of my neck. It feels nice, and takes my mind off the need to say anything, or to find anything to say.

Something occurs to me, eventually, out of the relief of any pressure to think about it.

"Anything you would have changed about our fake date if you could?" I ask him, not knowing if he considered it a good job or a bad one. In my experience of working alone, they're all the same. If I get out alive, at least that's a positive outcome.

"Yeah," he says. "The ending."

He moves around to outline the contours of my face with the medication, massaging it in with his thumb and fingertips.

"I think you'll need some eye drops," he ponders. "I can see blood in your tear ducts. You should probably throw those contacts away too."

"I've got spare at home," I confirm.

"Take them out now, then. Sooner the better." He puts the cream back in the kit, and takes an eye pack out, selecting a bottle and checking the label, as I pinch out my contact lenses. "Just stick them on the table next to you."

I know it's there, through the blur, so I just aim and drop.

"I think that was in my orange juice, but nice try," he chuckles. "Head back."

I tilt my chin up and he puts the drops in, which sting.

"Yeah, they're strong ones," he remarks, as I flinch. "Will stop any infection dead, though."

"Thanks," I say, blinking. "Sorry about that."

"No, it's all right - they're on the floor," he reports, leaning across me and picking up the two glasses, handing me one. "Got it?"

"Yeah." I feel the cold of the glass in my hands. "I meant about the ending."

"It's not over yet," he remarks. "I've still got to get my jeans off and into the wash, and your underwear has got blood on too, so it's all coming off this time."

I drain about half of my orange juice.

"I better go back in the bathroom, then," I say, and he steadies me as I get up. "It's okay, I can find it."

"Sure?"

I nod, and finish my drink before handing him the glass, then retrace my steps carefully back to the downstairs shower room, closing the door behind me.

Even without my contacts in, I can see the blood went straight through my t-shirt to my skin. Even the towel I was wrapped in has re-absorbed some of it, from where my underwear got soaked in the shower. I don't feel clean. After a few minutes wondering what to do, I decide I'll have to shower again to wash the rest off, trying to keep the medicated parts of me still medicated.

I find another towel in the storage cupboard, put the stained one on top of my underwear and our t-shirts which are still on the floor, and turn the water back on. It takes less than a minute, but when I switch it back off I hear Connor outside the door.

"Are you all right?" he asks, knocking.

"Yeah, just found a bit more blood to wash off."

"Maybe you'd better let me take a look."

I look down and briefly consider it, but I'm too shy.

"I think I got it all," I say instead, wrapping the clean towel around me, picking up the bloody things and opening the door. He's now wearing tracksuit bottoms, and is carrying my skirt and his jeans. He reaches out for the other stuff destined for laundry.

"You sure you're okay?" he asks me, and I nod. "I'll get you a t-shirt."

"I've got optional aspirin if you want help sobering up," he says, putting the packet down next to a cup of tea on the bedside table. "I didn't put it in your drink this time. The only one I did tonight was the vitamins in the orange juice."

"Thank you," I say, sitting up in bed with the duvet pulled tight round me, feeling very conscious of wearing nothing under his t-shirt. I take a couple of aspirin out and swallow them with a gulp of tea as he gets into the other side of the bed. "How are you feeling?"

"I've been worse," he chuckles. "Anyway, that's what we were supposed to be catching up on. The subject of your feelings, about being single."

"Oh, yeah," I recall, aware of a dark area of my mind that I had been avoiding stepping into, in conversation earlier. "How far did I get with that?"

"You were feeling a bit insecure about discussing it in public. No. Not insecure. I think I said vulnerable."

"Sounds about right." I drink some more of my tea and put the mug back down. As I lean back again I feel his arm go around me, and I feel about as vulnerable as I've ever been, in an under-dressed sense. I realise the only defence I have is to keep up with the discussion, as his hand moves up and down my arm absently. "You know that amber paperweight in the office. With the chrysalis. Is it yours?"

"Yeah, it's from South America somewhere."

"I was thinking about what's in a chrysalis. A caterpillar goes in, and it's lived all its life as a caterpillar. It doesn't mate, it just becomes an adolescent, and then it makes a chrysalis, and dissolves into nothing. Just liquid stuff. Which eventually rebuilds as something new, emerges as an adult, and finds a mate and all that. It feels like I've had a really long stage of being stuck in a chrysalis, being nothing. Not even knowing what's expected of me when I emerge, or what I'll be capable of, or anything like that. Like the teenage identity is redundant, but nothing has come along to replace it yet. It's all just random potential with nothing material or real happening to define it."

Connor sighs thoughtfully.

"I guess it's hard to describe when you don't even know yet what it is that you're supposed to have feelings about," he concedes. "Don't know what you're missing."

"I think I had an idea of what a relationship was meant to look like, from what everyone else I knew did and said in theirs," I reply. "But I didn't know what it felt like to experience one, so I couldn't really identify with it. Just tried to imagine instead."

"You used the past tense," Connor says. He puts his empty tea mug down on the side table, and rubs his eyes, before dropping his hand to pick mine up where I was resting it on top of the covers, locking his fingers through my own, playing with them distractedly. "You said you
didn't
know what it
felt
like. What does that tell you about how you're feeling now?"

It's awkward. I'm worried that if I say the wrong thing, whatever's happening now might still be nothing. When in spite of everything I thought about him earlier, I want it to mean something. Not just that I'm a scenario he's figuring out how to crack.