Nightlife (29 page)

The stairwell. Twenty-five steps, give or take, straight up to a door, blank except for a round peephole eye. Before it, above the narrow landing, a single naked bulb glowed with harsh light. Once he was up that high, no one in the outside world would be able to see him unless they were standing directly at the bottom of the stairs.

He paused halfway up, out of the gusty windflow, and smoothed his hair into place, fretting until it felt just right. Then he covered the rest of the way. A quick over-the-shoulder glance. All clear. He eased out the Beretta with his right hand. In his left he balanced the pizza box like a tray on the palm of a snooty waiter.

He knuckled the bell with his gun hand, dropped it after hearing a buzzer sound within. Held the gun behind his thigh, and with a practiced motion of his thumb, flicked off the safety.

Whoever answered, he’d say the pizza had been ordered in the other’s name. Momentary confusion, divide and conquer. Get the second one to the door, with a little luck.

He heard music from inside.

And then the unlatching of the inner door.

Saturday had been as close to a perfect day as April could remember. They could have been anywhere in the world, for absolutely nothing had intruded to remind them where they were. No business calls, no personal calls, nothing. The world was on hold, and they had managed to escape it.

Until the doorbell buzzed.

They were on the couch, the stereo playing as they looked through two albums’ worth of her childhood photos. The past he wanted to know more about, and she was happy to pop on the tour guide’s hat. Just the fact that he was interested was enough to send her into emotional cartwheels.

Last night, she was sure she’d lost him. Lost another one. One who, faults and all, she had found far more intriguing and deep than Brad had ever thought about being. She was finally starting to feel glad that marriage to Brad had crashed on the rocks two days prior to the event. Better things waiting.

A temporary Black Friday panic, then, finding that movie box on the refrigerator door. A world coming to an end, atomic fury. The difference in her spirits between then and now was like two distinct galaxies.

Because while it had very much mattered to Justin, it had not changed him. He had loved her. Had taken her to bed to prove it. Not in the voyeuristic turn-on way that Brad’s friends had seemed to want after the Great Disclosure.

But in a way that healed.

He had kissed her from eyelids to toes. Had ministered to every sensitive inch of her body with fingers and tongue. He had a wonderful touch, just right. Neither too gropingly rough nor too insubstantially light. It was a rarer happy medium than it seemed it should be. But he had it down right, magic tongue, musician’s hands. He had played her like a maestro at a vintage instrument.

And even now, she could catch periodic whiffs of the residue of their mutual orgasms, the blending of their fluids within her into a fragrance at once delicate and musky. She loved it. And him.

He could be the one, maybe. More time would tell. Once lives were back to normal, she wanted to take him over to St. Pete to meet her parents. They would love him too, had to,
just had to.
Their opinions meant everything. For their lifelong love of her, their endless sacrifices—to disappoint them now would be unthinkable. They had loved Brad, his stability, his predictability. Good husband material, father material, son-in-law material. Their silent reproach at the demise of the wedding—whose cause they did not fully understand —was almost more than she could bear back in December. Being unable to explain was the near-last nail in the coffin lid.

That her parents might find Justin a second-rate replacement for Brad was a definite possibility. His were good looks, but not from the clean-cut all-American mold Brad had been cast in. Not anymore, at least. Not since his career derailment. Screw it. She’d make sure he at least shaved on that day to come, and as for the rest, let the chips fall where they may.

The buzzer.
Hated intrusion.

“I shall return,” she said. Left him grinning over a snapshot of her, gap-toothed and seven years old and holding a squirming cat.

Barefoot, April crossed from living room to kitchen to far-right corner. Swung into the little entry hallway and turned left to open the inner door. She stuck an eye to the peephole of the outer.

On the other side was a stranger, round-faced and smiling pleasantly. Hard to tell how old. He didn’t look terribly bright, and sometimes the slightly deficient were older than they looked.

“Who is it?” she called through the door.

“Pizza dude.” Within the fisheye view, he stepped aside and raised one arm to show her the box.

“We didn’t order one. You must have the wrong address.” She saw him frown and read from the edge of his side of the box. “Gray? Justin Gray?” He rattled off the address. “Don’t tell me somebody phoned in another joke. Aw, fudge! I’ll catch trouble for sure!”

Well, she didn’t want that if it could be avoided. Poor guy, he sounded very plaintive about it. Maybe Justin
had
phoned in an order and forgotten to tell her. Less than a half hour ago, she had spent a few minutes in the bathroom. Maybe he had.

“Hang on a second,” she said.

hand lingering on the lock.

“Hey, Justin, did you order a pizza?” she called, louder.

while the music pounded on

“What?”
he yelled back over the stereo.

She sighed. Stepped back far enough so he could see her. “Come here a minute, okay?”

He nodded and stood, came forward. His hair caught a ruffling breeze that rushed in a near window and out a far one. He wore cutoffs, a sleeveless coral shirt. And looked absolutely adorable.
her fingers turning, unbolting the lock
“What’s up?”

dropping to the knob

“Did you order a pizza when I was in the bathroom earlier?”

twisting the knob so the poor dim-witted delivery man wouldn’t have to keep speaking to a faceless door
 

Justin frowned, gave his head a little shake. “No.” He was eight feet from the door, from her, and closing. . . .

as the door eeaaaased open

And there he stood. The pizza dude. She almost laughed at his clothes.

She should have been expecting it, a blustery day like today. Sometimes that stairwell acted like a giant wind tunnel when her loft windows were open and so were both doors.

One rushing airflow, circuit complete. Her hair flew back from her shoulders.

The pizza guy’s box, perched atop his hand, got sucked right out of his grasp. As soon as Justin walked up, suspiciously eyeing the door, the box went spinning into the doorway, as light as a paper airplane. For a second and a half, the bogus delivery man looked at it with utter surprise.

When she looked to Justin, he was already diving toward her. Definitely no pizza in
that
box. She got her hands on the knob to fling the door shut again, only to have it punted back open.

The pizza dude looked anything but dim-witted now.

Justin’s arms around her, they went spinning past the doorway toward the floor. She’d seen the long-barreled gun swing up, heard it bark with a soft little cough, and Justin cried out and flecks of blood speckled the inner door behind them.

She screamed once, thinking it would be loud. It wasn’t. It was like trying to scream in a nightmare. A weak, anemic warble.

The pizza box went sailing past her face like a hurled Frisbee, this time from the floor up, from Justin’s hand. It struck the pizza dude’s gun as there came that innocuous coughing sound again and the shot plowed into the wall.

They were rolling, and their bodies were blocking the door from swinging shut, and they were sitting ducks, yes, Romeo and Juliet, they would die together,
together,
and with that as a part of the bargain she didn’t find it all a complete loss. . . .

Movement from below, bottom of the stairwell, and she knew if she got out of this she’d never order a pizza ever again.

the silencer’s round hole, an unblinking merciless eye

And she saw that this wild card down below was wearing a pale brown shirt and olive pants and her senses were overloading excruciating clarity else why would she be noticing that he had purple socks
purple socks
of all things to notice as he hoisted something that looked like it belonged in the Wild West and something whizzed through the air until she couldn’t see it. . . .

And Justin was covering her body with his own now while she felt warm trickles from him that were not sweat not tears
had to be blood
and she found her voice and shrieked a good one now. . . .

And above them the pizza dude’s back arced like a sailfish breaking water and he gurgled, and she saw some terribly bloody spike protruding from his lower shoulder by at least a foot, and he stumbled and spasmed and left a crimson smear on her doorway. . . .

And his pistol clattered to the floor of the landing and her hands scrambled for it Justin’s hands hers closing first and she pointed into the ugly shirt looming over her and pulled the trigger pulled again again and now
she
was making the tiny cute coughing noises. . . .

And the pizza dude slid down on his rump inside the doorway and his head lolled bonelessly. While she knew that
this
delivery was incomplete.

April gently pushed Justin from atop her. He rolled beside her on his own, and she took that as a good sign. She wriggled on elbows’ and knees into the doorway, the gun held awkwardly in both hands. Just in case. The bowman was halfway up the stairs by now. An Indian of some sort, though definitely not native American. He watched her with piercing black eyes, and he had not reloaded another arrow.

“What do you want?” April scarcely recognized her own voice. So harsh, so taut, so feral.

“A man named Tony Mendoza,” he said. “And his green powder.”

She slumped against the floor, energy rapidly scuttling. She lowered the gun. Began to feel very ill at the prospect of having crawled so close to this fresh corpse, corpse of her own making.

Justin sat up behind her. Touched her.

And April knew that within some fifteen seconds, the rules of this game had warped
way
out of shape.

The night felt like a throwback to the more prodigious days of Justin’s former drug use. While he had at least managed to keep a clean nose since Apocalips, he was now having trouble assimilating the whole of reality all at once. At least he’d had a reason in the old days. Not a particularly good one, but a reason nonetheless.

Take them one at a time.

First off, he had goofed. Tony Mendoza had exercised some effort, no doubt, and found him after all. Not surprising, with hindsight. He hadn’t exactly crawled into a hole and pulled it in after him.

Next, a dead man was sandwiched between the inner and outer doors. Deceased all of fifteen minutes. Justin had wiped the blood up, had packed the guy’s wounds with dish towels and stretchy shipping tape so he wouldn’t leak anymore, then retrieved the five spent shell casings. The body would have to be dealt with, the sooner the better, given this heat and humidity.