He’d been home from Hawaii a month now, six weeks. He told himself enough was enough, it was time to beat this thing, not let the bastards get him down. The first step, he told himself, was physical – get back in shape, stop drinking, tighten up.
He stood behind Celine Nash as she pumped up and down on the Stairmaster. Her hair was fixed back with a hot pink headband. A patch of darker pink showed where she was sweating between her shoulder blades. Her ass was a phenomenal pumping machine. Up and down, step step step. Sweat was pouring off her. He thought about turning around and walking out.
It was okay, he told himself. He was here to work out and he’d chosen Hardbodies! because he’d already been in the place and it had the machines he was looking for.
He hadn’t seen her since she’d stopped in front of his house before the vacation, when she’d realized she couldn’t be in his life. Well, he wasn’t putting her back into his life now. Enough time had gone by since then. He wasn’t starting anything by showing up here.
He climbed onto the machine next to hers. ‘Yo,’ he said.
They were sitting together in the steam room. He was on a towel, leaning back against the cedar wall, in gym shorts and a t-shirt. She’d gone to the locker room after her workout, gotten rid of her leggings and changed into a one-piece black bathing suit.
The talking wound down. She was doing all right, she said, keeping busy. He wished he was. Well, at least he was exercising. That was doing something. Yes.
The temperature was near a hundred and twenty. The room was tiny, cramped, perhaps five by seven feet, with a furnace near the floor, which was covered with rocks. Celine got up and poured more water from a pitcher over the rocks and a cloud of steam lifted and hovered. She went to sit down on the wood where she’d been, then jumped and said, ‘Ouch.’
‘Here.’ Hardy moved enough towel out from under him to give her room. He could feel his heart pounding through his t-shirt. Their legs were together.
She leaned back next to him and took his hand, putting it high on her thigh.
‘Celine…’
‘Shh…’ Her shoulder came up against him. ‘I’ve been coming here for six months and have never seen another soul in this room.’
She lifted the elastic on her nylon suit and guided his hand under it. ‘Feel me,’ she said. She was shaved bare, the skin smooth as though it had been oiled, already wet where she was moving him.
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh dear God.’
One hand held him in place against her and the other lifted his shirt, found the band of his shorts and reached under them for him.
Silk and oil. Honey and salt.
That proved he had been right. He was no better than anyone else, and worse than most. He tried to tell himself, once, that he hadn’t been technically unfaithful. There had been no penetration, therefore he hadn’t really made love to her. Feeble. Beneath contempt. More honest if he had.
Now he had proved that the world’s assessment of him was valid. He wouldn’t hire himself to do anything. He could barely look at himself in the mirror.
He started practicing darts, putting away gallons of Guinness. Avoiding Frannie, avoiding himself. Putting on weight.
Thank God, Celine hadn’t tried to follow up. That, at least, seemed to be over.
But he resided in a deep cave, in total darkness.
It was ten-thirty. There were four bottles of Rainier Ale on the table now, a rocks glass with mostly water in the bottom, a faint taste of Irish to it. He blinked, wondering where he had been and tried to focus on the clock over the bar. No use. He stood uncertainly.
Jesus.
Outside, the night had turned cold and the street came up at him, forcing him against the outer stucco of the building for support. Seventh Street stretched empty for what seemed like miles, shining as though it were wet. Was his car parked up at the Hall of Justice? Even if it was, how could he get it home?
He tried moving along but everything suddenly seemed to hurt, to throb – his shoulder where he’d been wounded in Vietnam, the foot he’d hurt last year in Acapulco.
There were noises behind him, laughter, then a skipping, leather on concrete. It finally registered, coming toward him.
He straightened up, turned around, saw an arm, something, a blur that hit him in the forehead, knocked him to one side. He heard another dull thud – was that him? – and his head cracked back against the stucco and he went down.
There were images. The gagging jolt of smelling salts. A light behind his eyes. Something sticky under his hand. The cold concrete.
‘Let’s take him down.’
‘Wait a minute. Is this him?’
Hardy forced his eyes open. The flashlight hit him again and he winced. Shadows emerged, recognizable. Cops.
A lucky break. One of them had found his wallet, less cash, in the curb. Hardy had never given his badge back to Locke. If he wanted it he could come and ask for it.
‘Are you Dismas Hardy?’ one of them asked.
He supposed he nodded, grunted – something.
‘He as drunk as he smells?’
Another whiff of the salts. Hardy brought his hand up to his face, felt a crust. He looked down. His white sweater was matted dark.
‘I’m Hardy,’ he said.
They got him up. Pain, nausea. ‘Watch out, guys.’ He staggered a step or two away and vomited bile and beer. He leaned against the building. ‘Sorry.’
They stood back a couple of yards. He caught his breath, spat a few times, tried to see what time it was but his watch was gone.
If they could do it, he told them, he’d rather go home than the hospital. He didn’t think anything was broken. He might have a concussion; his head felt like an anvil attached to his neck by some two-pound test. And someone kept swinging the smith’s hammer.
They put him in the rear seat.
He rested his head back. Lights passing overhead, the freeway overpass. He closed his eyes. Nothing to see.
It was almost midnight, and Moses had been there for a half hour. To her brother, Frannie looked particularly vulnerable. She was now five months pregnant and showing it. Her arms looked thin, he thought. Her face was too hollow. Maybe it was the contrast with the fullness of her belly and breasts. There were circles under her eyes. She sat forward on the low living-room couch, her elbows on her knees, her hands crossed under the bulge of her stomach.
Moses was telling her that the best thing to do was wait. He’d turn up. Moses had had his own lost weekends, or nights.
‘This isn’t a lost weekend, Mose.’ She hesitated. ‘He’s with Jane. I know he’s with Jane.’
Moses shook his head. ‘There’s no way, Frannie.’
‘She came here today asking for him.’
‘Jane did?’ He mulled that. ‘What did she want?’
‘She wanted Dismas. She always wants Dismas. He’s gone back to her before.’
‘Frannie. Come on. He wasn’t with you then. He wasn’t with anybody. It probably had to do with her father being arrested. He and Diz were friends, right?’
‘Are, I think.’
‘Well?’
Why hadn’t she thought of that? These raging hormones were making her crazy.
‘He probably went down to get him out, help get him out, whatever they do down there. Lost track of the time.’
‘Diz never loses track of the time. What if he got Jane’s father out, and then they all went out somewhere to celebrate, and then her father left them together…?’
‘What if he was snatched by invading space creatures and dissected alive in the name of intergalactic research?’
‘I don’t want to kid about it.’
‘I don’t want to play “what if.” He’s probably just hung up. It happens.’
They sat for a long moment. ‘It’s just he’s been so unhappy lately, like he’s lost.’
Moses cricked his back, got up slowly and crossed over to the mantel. He rearranged the herd of elephants, something he did differently with every visit. ‘You know, Frannie, I just don’t think anybody’s ever prepared us, guys like me and Diz, for how tough real life is.’ He tried to make a semi-joke of it, but he was serious, and she knew it.