“You still listen to them?”
“Hey, at least the people who write the music I like are still alive.”
Hunter just shook his head. He couldn’t see the pair of them surviving the night, if they kept this kind of thing up.
“You’ll be okay?” he asked Miki.
She nodded.
“Then I’m going to let you lock up.”
“Do you want me to do up the deposit?” she asked.
“We made enough for a deposit?”
“Well…”
“Leave it till tomorrow,” Hunter said. “And good luck. Both of you.”
“What, you don’t think we can get along?” Fiona asked.
Hunter gave them an innocent look. “No, I think you get along famously.” He paused for a moment, inserting one of Fiona’s “as ifs” to himself. “I meant good luck getting home. Crappy weather and all.”
His excuse wasn’t that far off the mark. Over the afternoon, the skies had gone from dismal gray to what it was doing now: letting fall a steady drizzle of freezing rain. The streets and pavement were already slick with ice. Buildings, traffic and street lights all sported long dripping icicles. The traffic was bumper to bumper on Williamson and in the past couple of hours he’d seen more than one pedestrian almost take a fall. Near the bus stops, clumps of wet commuters huddled under the closest awnings, ignoring the way the canvas drooped alarmingly under the growing weight of the ice. Or maybe they no longer cared, just wanting to get home as quickly and as dry as possible, given the circumstances. He put on his coat, not relishing having to go out and join the misery.
“Call me if you get a number for one of those Creek sisters, would you?” he said to Fiona. “If I’m not in, just leave a message on my machine.”
“Yessir, boss.”
“It wasn’t an order.”
“Nosir.”
Hunter sighed as the pair of them giggled. The phone rang, and that, too, for no reason Hunter could discern, struck them as funny. Miki was still snickering when she picked up the receiver.
“No,” he heard her say. “We still don’t have any Who bootlegs.”
Putting up his collar and wishing he had a hat, he left them in the store and immediately lost his footing on the icy pavement, only just saving himself from a fall by grabbing onto the side of the store’s front window. He refused to look back inside at their grinning faces. Instead, he shuffled off like the rest of the pedestrians, sliding his feet along the ice instead of lifting them, feeling like one more drone, inching his way down the assembly line.
By the time he got a few blocks away, his hair was plastered to his head with a thick coating of wet ice and his legs were aching from his awkward gait. If it were just ice, or just rain, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But the ice on the pavement was also covered with puddles which made the footing even more treacherous. You literally couldn’t do anything more than shuffle along.
He hated the winter, he decided. Or maybe just this winter, where it seemed that everything that could go wrong, had. And then some. He didn’t bother wasting his breath cursing how things had turned out. What was the point? But the miserable weather was putting him in the perfect mood for what he planned to do this evening.
7
Donal woke fully dressed on an unfamiliar bed, with a foul taste in his mouth and a pounding in his head. Sitting up made his stomach do a small flip. He waited a long moment, dully curious as to whether or not he was going to have to throw up, but the nausea went away. If only the headache would. Reaching under his pillow, he pulled out a mickey bottle of whiskey. About a half-inch of golden liquid sloshed in the bottom—what the old man used to call a cure in the morning. He downed it, grimacing at the bitter taste.
Jaysus. Jameson’s it wasn’t. It was barely a step above rubbing alcohol, insofar as taste was concerned. But it was eighty-proof and he could already feel the pounding in his head begin to recede a little.
Swinging his boots to the floor, he clomped across the uneven floorboards to what he hoped was a toilet. It wasn’t until he’d relieved himself and come back into the main room that he sat down on the edge of the bed and took a good look around, orienting himself. A hotel room, obviously, with the blinds drawn and next to no light coming in. Not exactly four-star. Not exactly a half-star, truth be told. The whole room seemed to sag—ceiling, furniture, the bed, the floor. Old and tired and worn out. But cheap, no doubt. He couldn’t remember checking in, but considering the state he must have been in, that was no surprise. He had so little memory of the latter part of the night, he’d probably blacked out before he’d passed out.
He picked up the mickey bottle and tilted it so that the last few errant drops could fall onto his tongue. Where had he gotten it? Most of the previous night really was a blur. He remembered leaving Miki’s apartment after she’d had her little snit, and really, what was her problem? You’d think she’d be happy that a Greer might do well for a change. Besides drinking and arguing, that was.
He turned the bottle over in his hands. There was no label on it, but why should there be? The bars had all been closed, so he’d come down to Palm Street, wandering aimlessly around the Combat Zone until he’d found a small after-hours bar down at the end of some alley. He’d had a few drinks there he was sure, then finally wandered off with this bottle of the barman’s homemade poteen, though it hardly deserved so poetic a designation.
Back home, poteen was the water of life. Kicked like hell once it got down, to be sure, but it was smooth on the going down. Or at least smoother than this rotgut the barman had foisted off on him. Jaysus, but wasn’t it foul. Mind you, he wouldn’t say no to another bottle of it right now.
He set the empty bottle down on the night table beside an old digital alarm clock radio with an LCD display so tired the time was barely visible. He leaned a little closer. Just past eight. There was something he was supposed to be doing by eight, he realized, but he was damned if he could remember what.
Go somewhere. Do something. With someone. Not Miki, he decided, bless her hard little heart. Cold as one of the Gentry, she was last night.
Then it came to him. It was Ellie. He’d promised to drive her up to Kel-lygnow this morning. Well, he’d be a little late, and she’d be a little ticked off, but surely she was used to it by now. Had he ever been on time for anything? Not likely. Ah, and what was the rush? That’s what he always asked. What was the rush? Jaysus, stop and appreciate things a little bit for a change, even if all you had to appreciate was that your life was shite.
Oh, don’t go all maudlin, he told himself. Things were looking up. Ellie was starting on the mask today, and between it and the Gentry backing him, he’d soon be looking back on days like these and fall down on his arse laughing that he’d taken it all so bloody seriously.
Pity he had to share the mask’s power with the Gentry though. He was taking all the risks, not them. Bloody mask could cook his brains into a stew if it wasn’t done just right. ’Course they were all vague about the details, them and herself, that strange old dyke who’d slammed the door in his face yesterday, Pretending she didn’t know him. Should’ve been a bloody actress, that one.
But Donal didn’t need their help. He had it all sussed out on his own. Because he knew how to pay attention, didn’t he? He hadn’t been like Miki, sitting there with her hands over her ears when Uncle Fergus and his cronies were going on back home. Nor falling down drunk like the old man. He’d paid attention to the tales those bitter old men told, sorted the wheat from the chaff in their spill of story.