“I was a total asshole last night,” I said. “And I’m very sorry.”
“Passive-aggressive and apologetic,” Marcus remarked. “You’re very talented, Miss Bracca.”
“That’s what they say.” I was still looking at Hoffman. She was staring back, and I wasn’t even certain she’d heard me.
Then the elevator stopped and we all got out, and they followed me into the offices of my attorney. Marcus and Hoffman waited near the back of the reception area while I approached Joy at the desk. She got to her feet when she saw me.
“Is Fred expecting you?”
“I hope so. He left me a message last night.”
“Why don’t you have a seat, I’ll tell him you’re here.”
There was a clock in the room, hanging over a Tailhook poster, one I hadn’t seen before. In this one, I was standing beside Van, with Click on a riser just behind us. The clock told me it was seventeen minutes past one.
It was reading twenty-nine to two when Joy, back at her desk, answered her phone, and then told me Mr. Chapel would see me now. I rose and joined her, and Marcus and Hoffman stayed put, unhappy with the situation. They wouldn’t be kept at bay for long.
When we were out of the reception area and winding through the halls, I told Joy that what I really needed was a bathroom, and could she direct me to one. She veered off course, leading me to the restroom.
“I’ll wait for you,” she told me.
“No, don’t do that.” I gave her my best embarrassed grin. “Make me feel like a total princess, you have to wait for me while I pee.”
She laughed, like I knew she would.
“I know the way,” I said. “I can manage the rest.”
“I’ll let him know you’ll be right there.”
“Great, thanks,” I said, and then went into the bathroom before she could say anything else, locking the door behind me. I stood with my back to it, listening, and I didn’t hear her leave, but I didn’t hear anything else through it, either, so it didn’t mean much.
Thirty seconds, I told myself. Give her thirty seconds, then go. More than that, Hoffman and Marcus will barge in. Less, she’ll still be there, waiting.
I watched the second hand move on my wrist.
Then I unlocked the door and took a breath, stepped out as if I knew where I was going and what I was doing. The receptionist had gone, and the only people in the hall were occupied with their own affairs, and paid me no attention. I set off toward Chapel’s office, heard his voice, strained, coming from the area of Joy’s desk. I didn’t stop, hoping that he’d keep Marcus and Hoffman busy, but it still took me almost three more minutes before I found the fire door and my way to the stairs.
The latch echoed in the stairwell when the door shut behind me, and as soon as I heard it click shut, I started running, one hand on the rail, the other on the backpack strap, trying to keep it on my shoulder. I went fast, two, three steps at a time, too ambitious, and I almost fell twice, but I didn’t slow down, and I sure as hell didn’t stop. The hangover swelled in my head. Marcus and Hoffman wouldn’t take long to figure out I was ditching them, if they hadn’t figured it already, and the best I could hope for was that they’d go back to my car, thinking that’s where I was headed.
Their bad luck that Portland has such a wonderful light-rail system.
There were two men standing in the rain, watching the ramp into the garage when I came out of the building, and I guessed they were cops, and turned my back to them before I had a chance to find out. Hoofed it across the street, my shoulders aching with the weight of the backpack, then jogged to the MAX stop. I made it by ten of two, and there was a train waiting, and I jumped on without paying the fare, working my way to the front of the carriage and dropping into a seat. It wouldn’t be a problem until I was past the Lloyd Center, since fares in downtown were waived, but I didn’t think I’d have time to hop out and pay then, either, and the thought that I might get caught only compounded my anxiety. It would be just my luck to have ditched the cops only to get picked up again for not paying public transportation.
It didn’t happen, and I made the train switch and all the way to the airport without trouble. Halfway to PDX, I started looking around the car, wondering if maybe he was on board, if he was watching, but after a minute realized that was futile. I doubted he was actually following me; the runaround was more to make certain I didn’t get any ideas, I supposed. Like I was going to start doing that at this late date.
Like I’d recognize him without his ski mask and parka, anyway.
The rain was coming heavier when I got off at the airport, and I swung through baggage claim and back outside immediately, heading for the cab stand. There were three people in line, and my watch was reading two forty-one, and the tremor in my hands was getting worse. I wanted a drink, settled for a couple drags of a cigarette, and got a Broadway Cab to take me back downtown.
“Third and Everett,” I said.
The driver, already behind the wheel and pulling us into traffic, glanced at me in the mirror. “You mean Twenty-third and Everett, yeah?”
“No, I mean Third and Everett.”
He started to argue, eyes on me in the mirror, then shrugged. If the strange white girl wanted to go to the heart of bum central, that was not his problem.
“Hurry,” I told him.
Everett straddles the dividing line between Old Town Portland and Chinatown, and there are storefronts all around the area that date back to the turn of the century, and in some cases, earlier. I almost missed the bar, because I was late by my watch, and now even more frightened that I’d fucked everything up. The rain was coming down in sheets, cold and solid, like walking through a car wash, and I had to go down the block twice before I was certain I had the right place, an unmarked and smoked-glass door sandwiched between a porno shop and a Chinese antiques store.
Inside was everything you’d expect, dark and a little dank, with the bar along the left side, and booths along the right, and enough room between the two that I could fit, if I walked sideways. I was soaked to the skin, and the straps of the backpack had dug into my shoulders so hard it felt like my arms would go numb. I was shivering, and it wasn’t the chill that was giving me goose bumps.
The bartender was a woman, alcoholically aged, trapped somewhere between forty and seventy, with drawn skin and gin blossoms on her face. She stared at me and I thought for a moment that she knew who I was.
“Jack rocks,” I said, and dug out a twenty, slapping it on the bar.
She took the bill and grunted. My watch was reading six minutes past three. Rainwater dripped down my neck, and I could feel it soaking the back of my shirt. The fingers on my left hand had started throbbing again. There were only two other patrons in the bar, and both of them would have scared me if I wasn’t already so preoccupied with other fears.
The door opened as I waited for my drink, and Brian Quick entered, soaked from the rain.
I turned hastily away, felt the panic claw at my heart. If I was right, he shouldn’t be here, this didn’t concern him. And if he was here, then I was wrong, and everything I was planning was worthless.
I heard him move to the bar, demand a bottle of beer, and the bartender snarled back at him to wait a fucking minute, then slapped my change down in front of me, planting my glass on top of it. I took the drink in a gulp. It was watered down, and if it was Jack Daniel’s to start with, I was Nina Simone, but it lit a raw fire in my chest, and made me think it was what I needed.
Brian Quick received a bottle, focused on the television hanging over the corner of the bar. He could have been just another midday alcoholic for all the interest he had in the world around him.