Faces in the Fire (17 page)

Grace shook her head, dismissing her thoughts. She wasn't a therapist or a pastor, here to analyze why people did the things they did. And if she were, her own life had rich veins of dysfunction to be mined long before she should ever start drilling in other people's lives. No, she was here to give clients what they wanted, build their own invented existences. Everyone needed that. Even Grace.

She found herself scratching at the insides of her forearms through the thin fabric of her long-sleeved knit shirt. She always wore long sleeves. Always. Yeah, she'd manufactured her own existence on her skin. Not tattoos, but a good bit of needlework over the past few years. The needle tracks created something of a patchwork quilt over the previous scars left by her mother.

(You got the dead blood, child)

Yeah. Well, if there's one thing she didn't need to concentrate on now, it was motherhood in general. Her own mother, in specific. Those memories were best left to the dragon.

Grace put down her bag, went to her room, flipped on the lights, rummaged through the converted dresser she used to house supplies. The ink was easy enough this time: all black. She opened another drawer, admired the prepackaged single-use needles inside.

Was it any wonder she'd been drawn to this trade? Was it any wonder she'd found a natural knack for skin art?

She set down her tools next to the chair just as she heard the bell of the front door opening in the lobby. She wiped at her hands, pulled a set of latex gloves from the box on the small table, turned to head back to the lobby.

“Hey, Grace.”

Chelsea was a pretty girl, a little thin, maybe, but that was all the rage these days. Hair colored dark, the color of—

(black tar)

—yes, Mexican Black Tar. Street slang for one of the most potent forms of heroin. The kind you injected. The most potent fire-breathing dragon of them all.

She stifled an urge to itch at her forearm and offered a smile. The itch was at a low simmer this morning, would stay that way all day if she just used a bit of self-control.

“Morning, Chelsea. Looks like you're ready.”

“Oh, I'm ready,” Chelsea said, excited. “Billy's gonna freak when he sees it.”

Grace smiled again. Yeah. Time to help Chelsea get her freak on.

23.

Chase the dragon, chase the dragon, chase the dragon, chase the dragon. Four times a day. Go to sleep. Get up and repeat. All in all, not such a bad thing, considering the alternative. Which was to live in the hell she'd created for herself.

Grace stood, went to her shop's waiting room to get some bottled water from the refrigerator she kept there. Maybe an apple or something for a snack. She was careful to eat organic foods, lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Vitamin supplements.

An odd contradiction for a heroin addict who added poison to her body several times a day, yes. But every life was a contradiction of sorts.

She'd needed some time to herself, so after her session with Chelsea and a couple consults with new clients, she'd sent Vaughn and Zoey home early in the afternoon. Neither had complained.

Standing, drinking the water, she looked out the window, caught the reflection of her GraceSpace logo—a warm, buttery yellow—in the glass.

GraceSpace. She'd never really considered calling it anything else, because that's what it was: the space where she defined herself, built her own reality. At home, away from GraceSpace, she was a woman who had failed as a human being, abandoned her family, chased the dragon down a deep hellhole. But here, she was in GraceSpace.

Other people were drawn to GraceSpace too. They wanted GraceSpace because they wanted to see Grace, enter her own private Dark Room for a closed-door session. No outside light, just the darkness and her work area—the smooth pink or brown or yellow skin illuminated by a small task light.

Maybe that was part of why she was so popular. She didn't view her work as advertisements
for her ability, as so many other artists did, but as expressions of the people wearing them. No two people were alike, and so no two of her tattoos were alike. Nuances of designs changed with every client.

She lingered at the open door of the refrigerator, enjoying the sensation of the cold air on her hands. Her arms stayed warm under her long-sleeved shirt, one of many that lined her closet. In public, she never wore short sleeves. In public, she never let anyone see the real person, the one who had once gone by the name Janet Sohler, and had lived in the small town of Red Lodge, Montana, as the wife of Kenneth and the mother of Tiffany and Joey. The one who had spent her first sixteen years as the daughter of Florence.

If anyone saw that person, they would never want to visit GraceSpace. They would want to lock her away for being so wretched.

She stood at the refrigerator, staring at nothing, thinking of the first time she'd been to Seattle.

The first time she'd tried to run away from her life.

9b.

She was no mother. She knew it. This, despite having a daughter. And she was no wife either. This, despite having a husband.

She curled into a ball on the bed of the small, ratty hotel room, shivering. It was hot outside—a ninety-plus day being something of a rare occurrence in Seattle, she'd been told by the woman at the front desk—but she shivered all the same.

It wasn't that she didn't want to be a mother. A wife. She just couldn't. Something was broken inside her. Missing. She had her own mother to thank for that, in many ways.

So she had left.
For
them, really. For Kenneth, her husband, and for Tiffany. They were better off without her. She knew it. Deep inside, probably they even knew it. Besides, she was here to avoid repeating her earlier mistake; Seattle would have places to take care of that, she knew. It was a city, and cities always had solutions to any problems you might face.

Also, she was better off without them. At least she would be, she knew, once she figured out where she was going, what she was doing. That was the other reason she was here, in Seattle. Wasn't it? She couldn't just go back, after walking out like that. Running out.

A giant thump next door broke her reverie. Something falling. Or someone.

She'd seen the guy in the next room a few times, out in the lobby, that kind of thing. He'd been in the hotel even longer than she had, and she'd been here four days now. She'd listened to him talking on the phone a few times, fascinated by his accent. Russian, she guessed. A little weird, too; he wandered around the hotel in bare feet, or sometimes just socks, even though he wore a complete suit with a tie. Maybe it was some Russian custom she didn't know about. She had no idea what he did, or how he came to be in this particular place at this particular time.

Of course, she had no idea how
she
came to be in this particular place at this particular time.

She listened intently for another sound of any kind from next door. Some scuffling, maybe, voices. Not much else. Was that good or bad? Should she go check?

No, no she shouldn't. She was here in her own world, in her Gray Zone, comfortably cocooned away from contact with others. She needed this.

But then: yes, yes she should. She should check because . . . well, because something just didn't seem right.

Yes, it was surely stupid to just walk next door, knock on the door, possibly walk into a situation she knew nothing about.

But she'd done stupid things before. Got married. Had a kid. Those were biggies, and would certainly be difficult to top. It wasn't that she hated the idea, or felt like being a wife or a mother was beneath her. Just the opposite: she wasn't up to being either. She herself was just a scared, weak little girl inside, and there was no way she could be the person a family needed. She couldn't be that person because—

(You got the dead blood, child)

Well, yes. She couldn't be that person because she had the dead blood. Good old Mom had instructed her in the ways of dead blood, in both word and deed.

Before she could think too much about it, she went into the hallway in her bare feet, walked to the adjacent apartment, knocked three times on the door. The door was locked, she knew; the doors were always locked in this building. But, being in an old building, the doors were also off center and mismatched. Whoever had closed the door last hadn't latched it all the way, and when she knocked, the door creaked open a few inches.

No answer from inside.

She pushed open the door, cleared her throat, ready to yell a “Hello?” and check on the Russian guy.

But when she pushed in, she instead saw the lower part of his body—those odd, bare feet—visible just beyond the small wall to the left of the entryway. No more than a dozen feet away. She knew the layout of the room very well; it was just like her own.

So Russian Guy was having a seizure, something like that, and had fallen in his apartment. That was the thump she'd heard. She rushed the ten feet or so past the wall on her left, coming into the main room, and saw, for the first time, another man. Russian Guy was half-on, half-off the dirty couch in the room, his body herking and jerking. Another man was on his knees, trying to put shoes on Russian Guy's twitching feet.

And next to that man lay a pistol.

No good could come of this. She'd just stumbled into something very bad. The man with his back turned hadn't seen her yet, he was too busy trying to squeeze a shoe onto Russian Guy's bare foot.

But then, here was Russian Guy, now lying eerily silent on the floor, a thin line of foam trickling from his mouth. She couldn't just abandon him right now, the way she'd abandoned Kenneth and Tiffany back in—

Stop. Just stop.

Okay, so she was a poor wife, a poor mother. And now she wanted to try being a poor hero. Fine. Just do it.

“Hello?” she said, feeling as if she needed to say something to let the guy with the shoe know she was there.

He stood quickly and turned to face her, shoe still awkwardly clutched in his hands. The room went silent for a few moments; even Russian Guy's thrashing and gurgling ceased.

She couldn't stand that, seeing the world around her frozen, a pregnant pause—

(don't think that word)

—and so she moved across the floor, dropped to her knees beside Russian Guy, and started CPR. Chest compressions. She'd decided to take classes after Tiffany was born. What if her baby started choking and she didn't know what to do? Everyone would know, instantly, she was a Bad Parent, because she had the dead blood, and because she'd never learned CPR. So she'd signed up. It was important, so important, to make sure other people didn't know she had the dead blood.

She concentrated on the compressions, not wanting to even look at the guy standing there. Let him think she hadn't seen the gun on the floor. If she guessed right, he'd get out of the apartment as soon as he could.

She was surprised when the guy didn't bolt. He simply stood there, saying nothing. As if waiting for something else to happen. Or maybe trying to decide what to do next.

After a few moments, he dropped the shoe and moved, as if to step over Russian Guy's body.

(The gun, he's going for the gun, he's going for the gun) “Come on,” she said. “He's gonna die if you don't help me.”

Without thinking, she reached for the guy's hand and grabbed it. Immediately, her blood began to itch. It was the only way she knew to describe it. An itch deep inside that would, years from now, become a hunger for heroin. But on this day, before heroin, before her adventures chasing the dragon, it was just an unusual, mildly electrical sensation beneath her skin.

Maybe it was just adrenaline. After all, she'd only grabbed his hand to stop his progress. And now, if she could get him involved in what she
was doing, maybe she could keep him from going for the gun. Maybe she could escape her own stupidity for putting her nose in this.

The blood itch was insatiable, so insatiable now that she couldn't continue. She looked at the inside of her forearms, certain she would see her veins crawling like snakes just beneath the skin of her arms. But nothing was there, and as she let go of the guy's hand, the itch subsided. A bit. She scratched absently at her forearms, looked at the guy again, who was barely containing his revulsion.

He
knew
. She could tell. He knew she had the bad blood in her, he knew she was an imposter, a person who pretended to be a Good Wife and a Good Mother, but was instead a pitiful joke. She could see this
knowing
in his eyes, and she could see he despised her for it. Who wouldn't?

She blew the hair out of her eyes, tried to control the trembling she felt in her body. Still, she did not want to die. Not here. Not now. Get him involved. Keep him occupied.

He dropped to his knees, pulled by her insistent grip on his hand.

“You know CPR?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, then shook his head. “I mean no.”

Good. He was muddled. At least his revulsion might help her get out of this mess.

“How about a cell phone? You got one?”

“No.”

“Figures.” She winced as she said it. No need to push the guy over the edge, even though she felt a bit of anger rising inside. She knew it made no sense for her to be angry in this situation, but she couldn't help it. Maybe she was mistaking her fear for anger.

She pulled out her own cell phone, turned it on for the first time since she'd fled Montana four days ago.

“Here,” she said, feeling she could return to the chest compressions. The blood itch had retreated a bit more, and she was getting her composure back. “If you don't know how to do chest compressions, you gotta make the call.”

Just keep him busy. Keep him off his guard.

The guy controlled his revulsion enough to start dialing. She listened to him talk with the 911 operator as she repeated the compressions on Russian Guy's chest. One-and-two-and-three-and-four-and-five.

He set her phone down on the floor, then spoke. “They're on the way.”