I waited for her to stop, but still she kept coming forward, and when she was close enough to touch me without needing to fully extend her arm, she did, pressing her left palm on my chest. Through the wet fabric, her touch seemed hot. The gesture itself was not hostile, but it terrified me, and I couldn't bring myself to move, to look away from her.
We stared at each other.
She had a full mouth, a narrow chin, a slender and small nose. Her eyes seemed large, and she didn't blink, and in the weak light I couldn't tell their color. Her ears were small, laid against the sides of her head, and she wore no jewelry. Her cheekbones were high, making all of the angles of her face that much sharper.
"My name is Alena Cizkova," she said.
I opened my mouth and heard my voice. I don't remember what I said.
There was a tiny, hot pain from my left thigh, and I forced myself to look down, saw her withdrawing the needle, saw her drop the syringe. It was a thin plastic one, disposable, and the plunger had fallen all the way, and I watched as it hit the pavement beneath us, making a little splash in a puddle as it landed.
I brought my eyes back up and said, "That's a stupid way to kill me."
She blinked. The corner of her mouth moved, and her lips parted, and she tilted her head back, and she started to laugh. My mouth was filling with foam, and I told her that it wasn't funny, and I tried to grab hold of her, grabbing at her arm where her hand was still on my chest. She stepped back, and I tried to move forward some more, to grab her again, and my left leg understood but my right wanted to stay exactly where it was, and I ended up on the wet asphalt on one knee, then both, then on my hands.
She laughed like my death was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. Part Two
Chapter 1
There was a Doberman.
The dog was a he, and he didn't have a collar, and he weighed at least sixty pounds, and his eyes, soulful dog eyes, seemed to be telling me that the jury was still out, and until it came back, I'd better be on my best behavior. A puffy scar ran along his neck, width-wise all across the throat, white-pink flesh that would never grow for again. He put his muzzle beneath my left hand, nudging it with his wet nose, and when I moved my fingers he turned away, his nails clicking on a hard floor.
It was day and the sunlight was strange, washing out colors and already heavy with heat, and I tried to make some sense of my surroundings as best I could without my glasses. Mostly I was seeing hues, light green and blue, past the foot of the bed, broken by a rectangle that was an open door. To my right, the wall continued, though it was disrupted halfway along with a painting, a swirl of colors that blended together.
The sheet across me was white, and there was no blanket. I lifted it and saw that my left leg was intact, and felt an enormous relief, so great that I fell back and just lay still, staring at the ceiling, at the fixture positioned high above me, at the blades of the fan as they whirred in silent rotation. There had been hallucinations, and there had been many of them, filled with people I'd known or still knew; the boy who'd beaten me up every day after school when I was ten; the drill sergeant who'd given me a faceful of Mace in AIT, then ordered me to run the obstacle course; the teacher who had humiliated me when I couldn't conjugate my Latin fast enough. All those people, faces I hadn't seen in decades, tormenting me each in different ways.
And there had been the people I still knew, the ones I loved. Bridgett saying that unless I could stop her she'd go back on the junk, and then making me watch as she cooked up her heroin, injected it, all the while begging me to stop her. Scott Fowler with a folder of photographs, the Backroom Boys, Gracey and Bowles, standing behind him, and each photo was of Antonia, and each picture was worse than the first, her body bent, stripped, broken, torn. One snapshot had Her Ladyship facedown on a concrete floor, her face obviously missing, like Michael Ortez in a warehouse in Dallas.
"That's what really happened," Fowler had said. "And why didn't you tell me?"
Those weren't the worst, and thankfully, all were already sinking into lost memory. But in one I'd lost my left leg, the tiny puncture in my thigh growing alive with gangrene, until rotting flesh had invaded my lower body. Then Drama had come and told me not to worry, that it was to be expected, and when I'd looked again, the leg was gone and she was walking away, taking it with her.
It had seemed real.
Birds were singing, and I turned my head to the left and saw sky and the tops of trees, and the color of the sky was a solid, vivid blue, and there didn't look to be a cloud in it. I listened longer, and there were a lot of birds, and then, behind their calls, the constant white noise of surf meeting shore.
There was a stand beside the bed on the left side, and on it were my glasses, a glass of water, and two tablets of Advil. I sat up and let the sheet fall and put the glasses on. Just that much movement left me breathless. My head felt swollen, and my mouth parched. My back was sore, the muscles along my neck and shoulder full of dull pressure, as if I'd held them in the same position for too long.
I took the Advil dry, then contemplated the water before draining the glass. It was tepid, but tasted pure. I got to my feet, standing naked by the bed. The floor was cool, red and brown tile in an ornate star pattern that repeated over and over to the walls. The air was warm and a little moist. My legs felt steady.
There was a square of gauze on the inside of my right arm at the elbow, held in place with a strip of cloth tape. I pulled it free, saw dried blood on the gauze, the bruising on my skin.
A pair of pants, the color of wet sand, was draped over the end of the bed. They were baggy and a little long, and secured around the waist with a drawstring. As I pulled them on, the Doberman came back, stopping in the doorway to look at me.
"Hi, dog," I said.
The Doberman's nostrils flared. But for the scar, he probably would have been show-worthy, and as it was he was clearly healthy, clearly strong. Without blinking he watched me tie the drawstring, then followed me as I went to the veranda.
I was on the second story of the house, and the house was atop a hill. It was constructed of concrete, painted a pale orange, and the veranda itself was open, twelve feet wide and long, closed to my right but open to the left where it stretched along the length of the house and turned a corner, out of sight. The ocean was perhaps half a mile away. The strip of beach was white, and the water was green near the shore, and then it turned the same blue of the sky as it stretched to meet the horizon. In the distance I could see a yacht with a white sail. The sun was behind me, blocked by the house, and it felt early in the morning. I knew the afternoon would be hot.
The hillside down to the beach was covered with trees and plants, flowers in bloom, and the growth was so thick I couldn't make out a path. The trees were palm and cedar and bamboo and mahogany, and there were others I didn't recognize, including several that seemed to be bearing fruit. The foliage confirmed it as much as the bird that was perched nearby on the rail, eyeing me suspiciously. The bird was small, yellow-bellied, with an almost hummingbird-like narrow beak, marking it as a nectar feeder. I'd never seen a bird like it before.
Not only was I no longer in New York, I wasn't certain if I was still in the same hemisphere.
The Doberman was looking from me to the bird on the railing.
"Wouldn't happen to know where I can find a phone, would you?" I asked him.